INCREASE YOUR WEALTH IN 5 STEPS

EMOTIONAL WEALTH

“As human beings we all want to be happy and free from misery... we have learned that the key to happiness is inner peace. The greatest obstacles to inner peace are disturbing emotions such as anger, attachment, fear and suspicion, while love and compassion and a sense of universal responsibility are the sources of peace and happiness.” 

~ Dalai Lama

Are you living in poverty? The poverty I am addressing is not the lack of basic needs: food, water, shelter and clothing. It is the emotional emptiness that results from neglecting, forfeiting or ignoring aspects of yourself. Emotional poverty is a deficiency of knowledge when it comes to dealing with the emotional ups and downs of life. It shows up as low self-esteem, self-trust and resilience. It stems from never having learned how to understand and use your emotional and mental skills in a healthy way in response to life’s challenges. It can also be the result of self-limiting beliefs, such as, I am not good enough, deserving enough and/or it never works out for me. These beliefs cause you to hold back, hold on or hole up when you need to move forward, let go and reach out.  Many people have large amounts of money and property and still live completely impoverished lives. Sometimes people hold an emotional ransom over their own heads, denying the very support or belief in themselves that they need until the ransom is paid. The ransom is the “change” or the “thing” that they need to do in order to be worthy of love, enjoyment and peace right now. They need to lose weight, be better, achieve, and/or win favor and then they can finally live the “rich” lives they desire. What if you could go from emotional rags to riches? 

“We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us —how we can take it, what we do with it —and that is what really counts in the end.” ~ Joseph Fort Newton

BLOCKS TO EMOTIONAL WEALTH

1. BELIEVING YOUR FEELINGS – You are not your feelings, you are the one observing your feelings. Your feelings are an indication of the quality of your thoughts and your consistent actions. If you feel bad, it does not mean you are bad. It means you need to shift a thought and make a different choice in order to produce the feelings you want to experience. To increase emotional wealth you must proactively choose and create your feelings.

2. BLAMING OTHER PEOPLE FOR YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES – Other people do not control your joy or your peace of mind. They certainly can impact it, but it is within each of us to create boundaries, forgive and take responsibility for the quality of own lives.

3. SHUTTING DOWN- This is the emotional equivalent of denial and it is not the same as acceptance. Acceptance is knowing what is and making choices from that place. Denial is ignoring and shoving down, out of fear and frustration and allows you to avoid making conscious choices. Emotional abundance requires us to face what is, get support and take steps to deal with the current reality.

4. COMPLAINING- This only perpetuates the problems, reinforces the fear and frustration and never, ever solves anything. I have tried it and it has always resulted in… well, nothing helpful. Short bursts of conscious complaining can blow off steam and help to clearly identify the areas where change is needed, but chronic complaining is a sure fire way to bankrupt yourself of the emotions of peace and joy. 

5. LOSING PERSPECTIVE- This is thinking about things as all-or-nothing and losing the big picture. It is dramatizing, forgetting the good, and the tying of one’s identity to a problem. You are more than one event, problem and challenge and in order to be emotionally wealthy you need remind yourself to maintain perspective. This encourages solutions, less stress and greater resilience and gratitude for what is good in your life.

Emotional poverty can be overcome. Be honest about your emotional awareness. If you find yourself struggling to respond to life with balance and clarity begin to recognize where you are emotionally, ask for support and surround yourself and model individuals who respond to life with the ease of Buddha, the humor of Ellen DeGeneres and the courage of a women wearing a bikini after a long winter.

FROM RAGS TO RICHES

Emotional abundance is not maintaining a “stiff upper lip”. It does not mean powering through the tough times. It means feeling what you are feeling, but shifting the thoughts and reactions to minimize the stress and maximize your ability to hang onto yourself throughout the experience. One of the biggest indicators of your increasing wealth in terms of your emotional bank account is the abandonment of the victim mentality. When you are the victim you generally avoid responding to the circumstances as they come your way, you instead get washed away with time, waiting for someone or something to rescue you or shift your fortune. Emotional wealth is seeing the value in all your emotions;  as tools for growth and change and indications of what to do more or less of. Pay attention to your emotional landscape, take responsibility for how you feel and watch your abundance of joy and peace grow.