This blog is based on a lecture I gave a few years back...but still is relevant to us every day. Thanks for reading.
What is Money?
Basically, money is a form
of energy exchange. We have decided what is of value in our culture and we
exchange our time and our energy in lesser or higher amounts to get what we
need and want.
If we think about money as a
form of qi, this may help us to revise our thinking and our relationship to
this vital part of our life.
What do we know about
diseases of the qi? There are two
basic things that can go wrong in the body (or in the universe) with qi.
1.
Not enough
2. Not flowing freely (right amounts in the right
direction at the right time)
So, with money too, if we
remove all our value judgments about it, we need it in adequate amounts and we
need to keep it flowing freely, as long as it is the basic form of human energy
exchange that is currently in use.
However, if you have
unnecessary internal “judgments” about money in your bodymind, it may be
difficult to maintain #1 and 2 above. For example, if your money style is
hoarding, it will be difficult to maintain the free flow of it in your
life. If your money style is an
avoider or a monk, it may be difficult to ever have enough money because the
money makes the avoider nervous and it makes the monk feel guilty. (More about
these later)
Not enough
1. Undercapitalized start-up
2. Not charging enough for
services
3. Not selling other
products and services in your clinic
Why should your services be
of less value than the practitioner down the street who does have enough?
Do you believe enough in
yourself and your services to charge what you need to charge to be adequately
prosperous and have enough patients who agree with you?
Are you grateful for
prosperity and do you truly believe that you deserve it? Do you share your
prosperity with others as you can?
Do you offer for sale good
quality products to your patients in your clinic?
Not Flowing
1. Money is like the
water/fire phase dynamic in Chinese medicine:
-there has to be enough fire and enthusiasm generated
by you as the practitioner to draw patients
-there has to be openness of heart and willingness to
spend/share/prosper for the qi of money to move freely through your life.
- money is represented in Chinese feng shui by the
water phase. It must flow freely for
more of it to be generated. If you are not open to having as well as
spending/using money, you will not be able to attract it to yourself
Complexity or Chaos
Theory & $$$
Because money is an
important (possibly too important) player in our overall culture, there are
certain things about the larger picture that we obviously cannot control.
Recessions come and go. The value
of the dollar against other currencies goes up and down. These are
things we cannot
control.
But we can have control over
our conscious attitudes and behaviors concerning marketing ourselves, selling
our services, and how we use money.
Looking at your
relationship with $$$$ honestly
If you don’t have enough,
can you analyze why?
Do you really feel open and
willing to have and use money?
Are you willing to share
prosperity with your staff, family, children, community?
Do you need to charge more
for your services? Or do you need
to connect better within your community? Do you need to move to a location
where there are not a gazillion other practitioners? Or where you can offer
slightly different or better services?
If you are unwilling to
offer products for sale in your clinic, have you analyzed why that is repugnant
to you? Are there any products that you could offer with a soft sell approach
that you would feel comfortable about?
Family Money Traditions
Every person receives a
whole variety of messages about money as children. This often unconscious “information”
can cloud our vision where our finances are concerned and keep us from having a
healthy relationship with the green stuff that we need to be emotionally
healthy individuals.
We all received a variety of
verbal messages about money. What did you hear as a child?
“money doesn’t grow on trees”
“money is the root of all
evil”
“money makes the world go
around”
“do you think I am made of
money?”
“you have to work hard to
have money”
“you need to marry a rich
spouse to survive”
“a penny saved.....”
“our family doesn’t know how
to deal with money”
“it’s impolite to talk about
money”
“don’t spend money on
foolish things”
“never buy things that aren’t
on sale”
etc.
Because money is such a
survival issue, these messages get imprinted deeply within us and can control
us unconsciously all our lives, often to our detriment.
Each of your parents
probably had a different money “style”. Each of these styles has good and bad
points in how they handle money. How has this impacted your professional life
and relationship with $$?
Were your parents:
Worriers
Monks
Gamblers
Amassers
Overspenders
Avoiders
Hoarders
Risk-takers
Were there arguments about
$$?
Was there enough to be
comfortable?
Did anyone ever talk about
money to you?
Did you receive any specific
instructions about budgets, investing, money management, etc.?
Was the subject taboo?
My Relationship to Money
1. What messages about $$
did you receive as a child?
2. Did your family have traditions about $$, work,
spending, saving, and/or investing that you are adhering to or departing from
in your life and how well is that working for you?
3. How have those messages affected your relationship
with $$ as a professional for better or worse?
4. What one thing would you like to change about your
relationship with $$?
5. How would that one thing improve your professional
life?
Take some time to think
about the questions listed above. Write down your answers. Written messages to yourself have great
power.
Definitions
(Over) spenders believe $=
happiness, love
1.
Buy things for themselves all the time
2.
Hard time saving anything
3.
Not into delayed gratification
4.
Lots of credit cards and debt
5.
Can’t cope with budgeting
6.
Shopaholic
7.
Rarely have long term financial plans
Worriers $
= security, excessive responsibility
1. Spend lots of time thinking about $ and all the “what
ifs” that go along with that
2.
Balance and rebalance their checkbooks
3.
Usually a pinch penny
4.
Easily overwhelmed by $ responsibilities
Monks $=
corruption, evil, dirty
1.
Most comfortable when struggling w/ $
2.
Lots of pro-bono or volunteer work
3.
Few or only socially responsible investments
4.
Shops only at garage sales/thrift shops
Gamblers $=
Freedom, excitement, possibilities, entertainment
1.
Believe great risk leads to greatest rewards
2. Easily seduced by the idea of getting something
for nothing
Amassers $=
power, self-worth
1.
Tend to be workaholics
2.
Believe lack of $=failure
3.
Like to touch, count, “play” with their $
4.
May also be spenders or hoarders
Avoiders $=too
much responsibility, chaos, potential for failure, overwhelm
1.
Never balance checkbook
2.
“I’ll think about that tomorrow” attitude
3.
Never know what they have or owe
4.
Usually don’t invest
5. Difficulty keeping that part of their life
together
Hoarders $=
security
1.
Planners; very orderly nature
2.
Like creating budgets
3.
Don’t buy, prefer to save
4.
Classic “$ hidden in the mattress” type
5.
Have difficulty enjoying their $
Assignments:
Hoarders (Money =
Security)
1. Buy something for
yourself at least once per month.
It must cost, say, over $25. If you cannot buy for yourself, buy something for
your practice or office that is not required (not needles, supplies, etc.) This
might be a beautiful painting or photo, a carpet, a small fountain, a crystal, a new book etc.—something
unnecessary but enhancing to your office.
2. Don’t look at your budget
for at least one week...two weeks is better. And....
3. When the inevitable
feelings of money insecurity arise, look at the feelings, write about them in a
journal or a letter, or draw a picture about them, but don’t let them force you
to rework your budget or live on rice and beans.
Spenders (Money =
Pleasure/Freedom from boredom)
1. At least every other time
you are ready to pull out your credit card, don’t do it.
2. Keep a log or journal
about every item you did ..... and did not buy each week. At the end of end of
each week, look at your purchases for the week and think about why you bought
each one. Did you really feel any lasting pleasure from each purchase?
Highlight one item on the list that you will not buy the next time.
3. Put the money you save
from not buying frivolous things into marketing your practice! Create a plan
and a marketing budget for using the money you will not spend on things that
don’t help you meet long term goals.
Money Monk (Money =
Evil/Corruption)
1. Once per month at least,
spend some money on yourself that you have previously considered selfish or
decadent. See if you can actually
enjoy the experience.
2. Write a journal about
what you would do if you had a full practice at $85 per treatment, 40 people
per week and you were taking home $100,000 after taxes. How would you spend
your money so that you don’t feel corrupted by it? In what way could you expand your own life and the lives of
others?
Avoider (Money = Complexity/Creates
feelings of inadequacy & overwhelm)
1. Once per week, make sure that you address one aspect of your
professional or personal money life that you would usually avoid. (Add up the
deposit slip from your clinic and take the money to the bank yourself....or,
balance your clinic check book.)
2. Create a money schedule
for yourself. (An example might be that every Monday you will look at the
previous week’s clinic receipts and analyze how well the clinic is doing in
terms of patient visits, office product sales, patient rebookings, etc. in
comparison to the week before.)
3. Get a friend to come over and help you plan a 6-month
marketing budget for your clinic or practice with both time and money
expenditures listed. Create a
calendar or time line for these expenses and activities. When the inevitable resistance to doing
this arises, make sure your friend is there to help you with that resistance.
Amasser (Money =
Self-worth or Power)
1. At least one day per week, don’t be involved with money at
all. On a weekend or vacation,
spend an entire day not thinking about your investments, budgets, or
professional plans that involve money.
2. Write a list of goals and
dreams that don’t require or involve money to accomplish and that might lead to
other kinds of pleasure and emotional fulfillment than what money can bring.
Take one action step toward achieving one of these goals.
3. Volunteer to do something
in your community that has nothing to do with money. After this participation,
write down your feelings about this. What did it feel like; did you like or
dislike it? Or, volunteer to work with an organization as the person in charge
of amassing money for them.
Worrier (Money =
Security/responsibility)
1. Focus your worrying. For
example, sit in your clinic at the end of the day and write down all your
worries on paper. (I.e., What will happen if I don’t have 40 patients per
week?.. what will happen if I spend $1000 on a fancy table that goes up and
down?....what will happen if I get sued by a patient?)
2. Assign yourself “days off”
from worrying, for example on Friday, Sat. and Sun. I will not worry about
money.
3. Write an essay about the
benefits of worrying about money. What bad things would happen if you did not
worry? What would your professional life be like if you stopped worrying about
money? What would you do with all the energy you don’t spend on worrying? Get
your essay published in Acupuncture Today or the CJOM!
Assignments for all Money
Types
1. Whatever your
combination of money types, think
about the ways in which our money life is out of balance, and come up with your
own assignment combination. Write them down.
2.If your money imbalances
are part of your Chinese medical pattern discrimination, why not use
acupuncture, herbal medicine, qi gong, and/or feng shui to help you balance
your financial life as well as the other parts of your life?
3. If money is another form
of qi, create a visualization for having Sufficient Amounts of money in your life Flowing Freely in your life.
4. Qi is attracted by qi;
take a $100 bill, put it in a clear plastic wallet-sized pouch and place it in
your wallet. Write down some money goals and wrap them around the $100 bill.
Don’t spend it unless you are able to replace it immediately. Notice how much
security/power/pleasure/ it gives you to carry this around. (This one came directly from Marilyn Allen, for those of you who know her.)
5. Believe that the universe
will support you!
Those are some ideas for working internally and externally with our various, inevitable money conditioning. Hope you found this interesting.
“We’re in the money,
Come on now honey,
Let’s
spend it, lend it, send it rolling along!”
