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When the Words Won’t Come

Monday, May 21st, 2007

Last week, the day before my birthday, my dear friend Kathleen Dughi breathed her last breath as I, along with her other close friends, stroked her head and talked to her, keeping our promise to guide her to the threshhold of the journey beyond. I’ve been struggling to say something profound about the experience, something universal, but the words won’t come.

Four and half years ago, I was with Kathleen when she was told that she had breast cancer, that it was metastatic and aggressive, and that she had only a few months to live. In lieu of comforting words that would not come then, I suggested we go for a drink overlooking the bay. A drink or two helped Kathleen find the fighting words that defined the next four and half years: “Doctors don’t know everything.” Numbed by fear, shock, and confusion, I think I managed to nod.

As it turned out, the doctors did know how virulent this cancer could be. The only thing they didn’t know was Kathleen. I think that thriving four years beyond their predictions speaks volumes—about her courage, inner strength, stubbornness, intense desire to mother her son for as long as possible, and urge to push herself artistically.

She didn’t waste a day of those four years. If the doctors kept her sitting too long in the waiting room, she’d get up and threaten to leave (or actually walk out). If they told her she needed to stay in the hospital for five days after one of her many surgeries, she’d order the nurse to help her get dressed to go after only three. Her explanation required few words: “I have work to do.” And she did.

In the last four years, her jewelry designs have become internationally renowned. Tyra Banks has worn her creations for a photo shoot. Fashion magazines have done spreads on her. And her biggest source of pride, her son Oliver, has matured into a 14-year-old young man who cares enough to ask how you are or what he can do to help even in the midst of his own suffering. The morning before she died, he told her that she didn’t have to stay for him anymore, that he didn’t want her to suffer. None of us have any doubt that this is what released her to go in peace. None of us doubt the kind of man he is growing up to be. There are no words.

I can’t begin to describe the ache in my chest, the longing to hear her laugh again, to take one more hike together, to talk about our children’s latest achievements, to listen as she points to the latest blooms in her garden, naming them for me. The only words that will come are, “I admire you for making up your own rules. I will miss you, my dear friend.”

Go to StopEnduring.com to read excerpts from Jane Straus’s book, Enough Is Enough!, view her seminars and TV interviews, listen to her radio interviews, make an appointment for a personal coaching session, purchase the book, or sign up for her free newsletter.

Tags:children, dear jane, death of a loved one, dying, grief, Jane Straus, loss, parents
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Perceiving in High Definition

Monday, May 14th, 2007

Our limiting beliefs magnify and distort our perceptions, hindering us from seeing possibilities that someone else may. We miss out on opportunities that we never knew existed, all because of a tendency to see in black and white. For example, if your partner criticizes you, you may think, “He doesn’t love me.” However, the truth may be that he is afraid of being vulnerable and sharing what’s really going on.

Our guardian voice, the one that tells us to “duck and cover,” blows up our worst fears, reminding us of some painful past event such as past rejection, and then convinces us that this situation is exactly like that one.

Why? As I write about in Enough Is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life, the guardian voice’s job is to protect us from hurt, embarrassment, confusion, and rejection. However, to do this, it oversimplifies, dividing the world into good and bad, right and wrong, safe or dangerous, win or lose, friend or foe. The guardian voice can’t tolerate nuances or it will have fallen down on the job.

How can we quiet our guardian voice if it’s so persistent? We can listen to our spirit’s voice, the voice within that can perceive beyond black and white fear-based thinking, the voice that tells us to take a breath before playing out our knee-jerk reactions. Our spirit’s voice is the one that says there is probably more to this situation than meets the eye. It is the wise voice that says, “Maybe this perceived enemy is just scared. Maybe handling this person’s fears and my own will grant us more understanding.”

The spirit’s voice is the voice of the Teacher in Classroom Earth, not the Judge in Courtroom Earth. It doesn’t look for guilt or blame; it strives for compassion, peace, dignity, and respect.

To hear your spirit’s voice, first trust that it is there. Maybe it’s a mere whisper because your guardian voice has been drowning it out. Then do what the wise do: Follow what it says. Keep listening for it and your spirit will get louder, your heart will open more, and you will experience the crisp, bright, and vivid clarity of HD perception.

Learn more about how to live your extraordinary life by going to StopEnduring.com. There you can read excerpts from Jane Straus’s book, Enough Is Enough!, view her seminars and TV interviews, listen to her radio interviews, make an appointment for a personal coaching session, purchase the book, or sign up for her free newsletter.

Tags:dear jane, fear, Jane Straus, limiting beliefs, listening to spirit, trust
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When You Don’t Have the Hallmark Card Mother

Sunday, May 6th, 2007

I admit it: I’m a people watcher, especially at the card racks before holidays such as Mother’s Day. I have watched people read every card diligently, scrunching their faces or shaking their heads from side to side, only to walk away cardless and, I’m sure, frustrated. Not every mother/adult child relationship can be expressed with flowery poetry or gushing accolades. If this is true for you, how do you handle Mother’s Day?

First, make a deal with yourself not to send false sentiments or you’re likely to build resentment, not ease it. If anything, it may be that Mother’s Day is a time for you to grieve what you never had.

If your mother was not the kind to bake cookies, attend PTA meetings, or tuck you in at night with a kiss on the forehead, that’s a loss of what never was. If your mom was on the Mommy Dearest side of reality—angry, perhaps addicted, or emotionally unavailable—then you have a right to grieve for the nurturing you deserved but didn’t get. The key is to not get locked into feeling guilty for what you can’t feel.

Maybe what you really need is a chance to forgive rather than conjure up gratitude out of thin air. Forgiveness is a gift we owe ourselves. Most of us just hope it will come to us, that we’ll wake up in the morning and there it is—instant, magical relief from resentment. But forgiveness takes conscious effort.

The first step in forgiving your mother or anyone is to acknowledge fully the wrongs that have been done to you. If you don’t make an honest inventory—if you minimize the hurtful behaviors—you are likely to feel stuck in resentment, bitterness, and avoidance.

The second step is to give yourself compassion for the effects these actions and behaviors have had on you. Give yourself what I call in my book, Enough Is Enough!, a pity party. A pity party is where you give people who care about you a chance to let you cry, sulk, pout, or whine for 30 minutes. They are not to judge you or try to fix your relationship with your mother. They are with you just to mirror compassion back to you. If anyone else in the group also needs a pity party about their relationship with their mother, they can take a turn too.

By the time you are done with your pity party, you are likely to feel lighter. That’s the magic of forgiveness work. I see it in my life coaching practice all the time: A client comes in angry or hurt by someone’s actions or words and stuffs it with self-admonitions like, “Oh, I shouldn’t complain. Other people have it a lot worse.” This line of thinking leads to self-abandonment, not self-care, resentment and regret, not forgiveness and compassion. Once someone gives herself permission to express the resentment and underlying hurt, they feel relieved and freer.

So a few days before Mother’s Day, practice true forgiveness. Acknowledge whatever wrongs were done to you by your mom. Don’t make excuses for her. Just feel the sadness for yourself.

Do you need to tell her you forgive her? It depends. If you mother has never admitted to any hurtful behaviors, then she may just get defensive or hurtful. But if your mom has admitted to being less than perfect, then letting her know you care enough to forgive her might be the best Mother’s Day gift you could possibly give her and yourself. Maybe Hallmark has a card that says just that. If not, you can always create one on the computer.

Jane Straus is a personal life coach and the author of the popular and insightful book, Enough Is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life. Visit her web site, www.janestraus.com to read excerpts from her book, see clips from her seminars and TV interviews, read her magazine articles and blogs, or to schedule a session with her.

Tags:adult children, dear jane, forgiveness, Jane Straus, mother's day, mothers, pity party
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Anger, the Time Machine

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

For those of us who anger quickly, the emotion seems to well up fast and furiously, activated by something just said or done that is hurtful or offensive. However, if we had the ability to play out every scene in slow motion, we might notice something interesting: Just before we feel the anger, we have a thought. That thought sounds something like, “This situation is familiar. I didn’t like it before. I won’t like it now. I’d better protect myself.”

In other words, the present upset is often a trigger of a long-forgotten situation, without our even being aware of it. If we pay more attention to the thought that triggers us, our anger will lose its power to whisk us back to the past so instantaneously.

If we pay attention to our anger instead of shunning it, or shaming ourselves for it, or stuffing it out of fear, we will more easily remember those long-ago events that taught us to protect ourselves with anger. When we remember and offer ourselves compassion for what we felt back then, we no longer need to put on the armor and get out the ammunition now. This is how anger becomes our ally and begins to serve as a healing force.

So, next time you feel that flash of anger, imagine for a moment that, like a time machine, your anger is carrying you swiftly back to your past. Ask yourself what this present trigger reminds you of. Even if the memory is vague, trust it. Then give yourself compassion for whatever hurt or humiliation remains from back then.

The trick is to give yourself compassion before you lose your temper. In fact, make a commitment to yourself that the moment anger arises, you will offer yourself compassion. This way, you don’t need a reason to justify the anger or your compassion. Anger will lose its power as compassion works its magic.

Jane Straus is a life coach, keynote speaker, media guest, and the author of Enough Is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life. Visit www.janestraus.com to read her articles, view her TV interviews and seminars, buy the book, or hire her as your personal coach.

Tags:adult children, anger, compassion, dear jane, healing childhood wounds, Jane Straus
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Deeper Thoughts on Abundance

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

I’ve shared in the past a definition of abundance that resonates strongly with me: “Abundance is that which already exists.” I realize from personal experience as well as from listening to my clients that it is sometimes a stretch to believe this. How can abundance already exist if your bank account is low, your credit card debt is high, and you can’t afford to take even a weekend off?

Here’s what I have come to realize: If we think that money or lack of it reflects our abundance, we are making a huge error. Abundance isn’t about money unless we see it that way. Money only has as much meaning as we attach to it.

When you feel lack, it is because you think you are lacking within. You are believing the Big Lie: that you are in some way unworthy. Money or lack of it simply reflects this belief because you allow it to.

If you allow yourself to believe The Big Lie—that you are unworthy—you may create debt to reinforce your belief. And debt will give you an excuse to hang out surviving rather than thriving. If you don’t believe you deserve to thrive, you will not let yourself do what you really want in life. What better way to hold yourself back than by mounting up debt, feeling lack, worrying, spending too much, or making poor financial choices?

Abundance is that which already exists because we are abundant within ourselves—our creativity, our capacity to love and feel compassion, our humor and joy. We don’t get abundance from the outside in. We express our abundance from the inside out.

When you are willing to believe you are worthy, you will call upon your inner abundant resources. You will stop being afraid of failing. You will live your best life. You will share yourself even more. You will feel enRICHed regardless of your financial circumstances. You will understand that abundance is that which already exists.

Tags:abundance, dear jane, inner self, Jane Straus, manifesting, money, unworthy, worthiness
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Being True to our Word

Saturday, April 14th, 2007

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My 79-year-old mother received a letter from the Austrian Government a few weeks ago. You see, my mother, along with her family and many other Jews in Vienna, was forced to flee when the Nazis invaded in 1938. She was just 10 but she remembers clearly the name of the Nazi Commissar, Anton Kaiser, who stormed her family’s home and forced her father to sign over the deed to their apartment, her father’s life insurance policy, his business, and all his possessions. She remembers looking out the window and seeing her neighbors kneeled over on the ground. Unable to understand what she was seeing at the time, she later learned that the soldiers were forcing them to lick the sidewalk while urinating on them.

Fast forward to today and the letter…The Austrian government now acknowledges, 70 years later, that much of the art that hangs in their museums belongs to victims of the Holocaust. However, the government politely requests, as it has many times over the years when acknowledging that so much of what the government has today doesn’t actually belong to it, that my 79-year-old mother be patient while it sorts out “the logistics.” My mother has had one heart attack, one bout of cancer, and a host of other health problems. Many of her Holocaust survivor friends are sick or have died. Certainly, no one is left from her parents’ generation, whose homes, businesses, and all worldly goods were stolen. Many of that generation, if they escaped at all, died young–heartbroken, overworked, or both. My mother’s father, kicked out of his beloved Masonic Lodge for not paying his annual dues (his membership lapsed while he was in prison being beaten by the Nazis), emigrated to the U.S. but died at the age of 49, struggling to feed his family.

“Be patient.” “We’re trying.” “We’re doing the best we can.” How do you feel when you hear this from a company, a government agency, even a friend? It’s happened to you, no doubt. Your credit rating is wrong due to some technical glitch. You call to have it corrected. You go through all the proper channels but check a month later and your rating hasn’t inched up even a point. You call again. “It takes awhile,” you hear. You want to scream.

You are working on your computer and your internet connection goes down. You call your provider. The message says that if you have a problem, log onto the internet for help (which, of course, is a Catch 22 as this is the reason for your call to begin with) or hold for the next available assistant. The automated tape reminds you frequently that you have a choice of faster service by using the internet for assistance. By the time someone gets on the phone, you are ready to scream. You explain your problem and that you work from home so you need service as soon as possible. “Be patient.” “We’ll give you the first available appointment…next week.”

I’m sure you can imagine what it feels like for my mother and all the Jews of her generation to be told “be patient” at this point. Here’s why the Austrian government is stalling: Once my mother dies, the property and the life insurance reverts back to the Austrian government. There is no clause for survivors (my generation) to make a claim to our family’s property. “Be patient. “We’re doing the best we can” has a hollow ring to it.

Being impeccable with our words, making amends that are heartfelt—without excuses, without hedging our bets—constitutes the difference between a world of pain, grief, hurt, and suffering and a world filled with compassion, comfort, trust, and joy.

You are probably appalled at my mother’s story as I would be appalled at hearing many of your stories. But the question for all of us is, “Am I doing everything in my power to be trustworthy, to follow through with my commitments, to consider others’ feelings, to be fair and just?” If the answer is no, then make amends. Now. Today. Let’s not ask others to “be patient” while we gather our courage or heal our issues. We are only as good as our word. Let that word be trustworthy.

Jane Straus is a life coach, keynote speaker, media guest, and author of Enough Is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life. Visit www.janestraus.com to read articles, view her TV interviews and seminars, purchase the book, or to find out about having Jane as your personal coach.

Tags:as good as your word, dear jane, fair, Jane Straus, just, making amends, trustworthy
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Why Your Truth Matters

Friday, April 6th, 2007

Why Your Truth Matters

If we don’t know our truth—what we feel, think, or believe—we cannot tell others our truth. And if we can’t tell others, we can’t let them in. And if we can’t let them in, we will feel lonely.

If we are afraid of speaking our truth to others, we will don disguises and acts. We will become “the good one” or “the competent one” or “the helpful one” or “the addict” or “the selfish one.” Others will come to believe our acts, causing us to become resentful that we can’t be ourselves without risking abandonment or judgment. Worst of all, when we are in our acts for too long, we risk forgetting who we really are.

If we are too afraid to live in our truth, we will feel disconnected from our spirit, leading to abandoning our future while enduring and surviving in a world that feels drab and predictable.

Knowing, speaking, and living your truth matters. You matter. You have unique gifts to offer, gifts that will become ever more apparent as you explore and trust your truths. Choose truth and you will flourish. Choose truth and you will find your courage. Choose truth and you will feel happier and inspired to live your extraordinary life.

Jane Straus is a trusted life coach and the author of the popular book, Enough Is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life. To read her articles and excerpts from the book, watch her on TV, listen to her on radio, order Enough Is Enough, or to hire her as your life coach, visit stopenduring.com.

Tags:dear jane, extraordinary life, Jane Straus, live your truth, speaking your truth, truth
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5 Keys to Healing Addictions

Sunday, April 1st, 2007

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How did I get into all this debt? In just these few words, posed all too often by clients, I can hear their shock, shame, frustration, and hopelessness. When we are in this terrible state, we can feel very alone and isolated. Yet left to our own devices, we will get worse, not better.

So here are 5 Keys to healing any addiction, whether it’s spending, drinking, cheating, lying, gambling, eating, or whatever else you have been overtaken by.

1. Realize what a slippery slope addiction is: It’s a lot easier to get into debt than to get out of it. This is because getting into debt doesn’t require a plan; in fact, it often requires unconsciously not planning. The same can be said for an addiction to food or any other addiction. It’s much easier to gain the weight than it is to lose it because gaining it means simply “going unconscious.”
2. Recognize the benefits you get from going unconscious: There are two short-term benefits to going unconscious using addictive behaviors: First, we get temporary relief from the pressure of having to take responsibility. Secondly, we get a temporary high from our addiction. The relief and the high are intertwined because the high offers a heightened sense of relief.
3. Reach out NOW: You obviously can’t maintain an addictive high permanently. When you do finally come down, it is a crash landing. Each time you experience the cycle of your addiction, you tend to feel worse and fall further, right? Consequences become ever more severe, including destitution, suicidal thoughts/depression, total loss of self-esteem, or poor health or even death. If you try to go it alone, you will probably let your shame run you. Shame isn’t a good motivator. Compassion is. Find a group or a competent coach or therapist to work with.
4. Stop lying to yourself: Quit telling yourself that if you had more money, you wouldn’t be in this much financial trouble. Or if you had better metabolism, you’d be thin. Or if you had a nicer mate, you wouldn’t be cheating. None of these excuses are true. If you continue to believe your excuses, you will lose more of your dignity and waste more of your precious life and energy. If you are in deeper and deeper debt, what is true is that you are addicted. Winning the lottery wouldn’t change that. After all, over 70% of people who win the lottery end up with as little or less than they had before they won. If you are drinking more and more, changing from “the hard stuff” to wine isn’t the cure. That’s like believing that smoking will cure a food addiction. Trading addictions isn’t healing addictions. It is a game your addictive mind will try to play but you can’t win at it.
5. “Tap” into healing: You are misusing money or food or sex or alcohol or drugs or TV to try to numb something. What memories, feelings, or situations trigger your addiction? Once you stop avoiding the core reason for your addictive behaviors and begin to get comfortable with feelings you once dreaded, you will feel less compulsion to behave addictively. There are so many valid options for healing addictions, including 12-step programs, therapy and coaching, acupuncture and other holistic approaches, even prayer for many people. In addition, I use EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique, with my clients. EFT is a quick, efficient, yet powerful “tapping” method for releasing the anxiety and pain that trigger addictions.

The bottom line is that you don’t have to suffer tomorrow from your addictions just because you are suffering today. You are a worthy being who deserves to thrive and live your extraordinary life.

Tags:addiction, dear jane, EFT, healing addictions, healing process, Jane Straus, shame, unconscious energy
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How to Find Clarity in a Confusing World

Monday, March 26th, 2007

We can become confused when our two inner voices, the Guardian and the Spirit, clash. Our Guardian is there to protect us from potential harm, both real and imagined. Ideally, our Guardian keeps us from getting into the car to drive home after a night of drinking; or it warns us, “There’s something a little off about that person…let’s avoid him.”

Ensuring our survival keeps our Guardian very busy. The problem is that the Guardian can get stuck on a loud, attention-getting frequency (Watch out! Don’t open your heart!), seeing danger in every situation and around every curve. In fear for our very survival, the Guardian can shout down the Spirit. When it does, we will get confused, wondering why we’re in endurance, feeling bored, lethargic, cynical, or hopeless.

I was a classic example of this “shout down” strategy by my Guardian and didn’t even realize it. Before being diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2003, I had a list of reasons why I couldn’t write Enough Is Enough! I convinced myself that with a fulltime life-coaching practice and a young child to raise, who had time to write a book? Interestingly enough, however, once I was told that I might not survive the brain surgery or that I might not have all my faculties afterwards, suddenly those reasons seemed more like excuses.

I tried not to beat myself up with self-judgments like coward. After all, my Guardian was just trying to help me avoid my fears of rejection and of not being good enough. It took a wake-up call for my Spirit to speak up. When I pulled through the surgery unscathed, I was able to “miraculously” find time to write. What I realize from this experience is this: If we listen to our Guardian voice only, we will end up stuck in confusion and endurance. If we are willing to pay closer attention to what our Spirit has to say, we will find our way out of our ruts and onto the road less traveled, a road that leads to the surprising and the extraordinary.

Jane Straus is the author of Enough Is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life. Visit stopenduring.com to read more articles, preview her seminars, order the book, or have her as your personal coach.

Tags:clarity, dear jane, endurance mode, fear of rejection, Jane Straus, listening to spirit, spirit, wake up call
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5 Keys to Abundance

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

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Are you really open to abundance in your life? Recently on Oprah, I heard a shocking statistic: Over 70% of people who experience a financial windfall from such strokes of luck as winning the lottery or inheriting a large sum of money tend to be back to where they were financially within just a few short years.

Most of us think this would never happen to us. Our thoughts probably run along the lines of, “If I won a million, two million, ten million dollars [take your pick], it would change my life forever. All my worries would be gone. I’d be happy.”

How can it be that what seems like an inevitable happy ending just doesn’t turn out to be true for such a large majority of people? Are those who come serendipitously into wealth dumber than we are? Are they all spendaholics, compulsive gamblers, inept business people, or at the very least so codependent that they can’t say “no” to family and friends who ask for handouts?

It’s true that many of us who are not used to handling large sums of money are inept with it. It’s also true that a lot of us are codependent enough to fall prey to wanting to be loved by giving everything we have. If we’re already doing that, we’ll probably do it more, not less, if given half a chance. And if some of us aren’t spendaholics now, like kids in a candy store, we certainly might become crazed with buying the first time we have a wad of cash in our hands. But even these shortcomings and lapses in judgment don’t explain the expected fate of 70% of us who would end up no better—and possibly worse emotionally due to shame—than before our sudden wealth.

Many of us don’t budget at all, claiming that there isn’t enough money to do so. We pretend we aren’t choosing to use up our available resources with the argument (while our debts mount), “I work hard for my money. I should get to enjoy it.” We fall deeper and deeper into debt, feel incredible stress, depression, and shame, and wind up having to work harder and longer. And still we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot arguing that we deserve to spend our money any way we want to. We treat ourselves like entitled brats, demanding that reality fit our fantasy. But underneath this façade of entitlement, we are deluded by what I call The Big Lie. More about that in a moment.

There is no one roadmap to creating abundance, just as there is no single roadmap to creating a loving relationship. To find a relationship, you can date online, join a club, hang out at your favorite pub, buy a dog, or ask friends to set you up. To make more money, you can find a better-paying job, go back to school, learn a new skill, ask for a raise, gamble, or play the lottery. Getting isn’t the biggest problem for most of us, whether it’s a relationship or money; the trick is to learn how to keep and build upon what we get.

Until we open up to abundance and become “spiritually fit” to receive, the truth is that we are just as likely to deplete our treasure chest the same way our neighbors do and just as likely to find ourselves continually short on cash and long on debt. So here are five keys to building, maintaining, and enjoying abundance:

1. Embrace the true meaning of abundance: Abundance is that which already exists. In an abundant state, we understand that we are dipping into an overflowing well. Abundance is everywhere. Equally, it is within us. We are abundant. We don’t have to seek abundance. We can say yes or no to this belief. It is up to us.
2. Stop using the world as a reflection of your worthiness: The Big Lie I mentioned earlier is the belief that we are unworthy. Most of us decide base our worthiness on outside barometers such as who likes us, what kind of house or car we have, how much money we make, how much education we have, or what clothes we wear. As long as we measure our worth based on outside factors, we our happiness is at the whim of others.
3. Practice worthiness as though it’s a skill: While some of us were born believing we were worthy, life experiences may have convinced us otherwise. To retrain our thoughts, we must change our behaviors. Ask yourself what you would be doing differently right now, today, tomorrow, next week, this year if you already believed you were entirely worthy. What behaviors and activities would you stop? Which ones would you start? Make a commitment to yourself to “fake it ’til you make it.” Practice your new behaviors until they become second nature, replacing the old habits you are shedding. Change your actions and your thoughts are sure to follow.
4. Recognize what your jealousy is telling you: Jealousy is what we experience when we don’t believe we will have (or deserve to have) what someone else has. Therefore, jealousy comes from a belief in lack. If we put the first three keys into active practice, our jealousy will dissolve into gratitude for that which already exists. Gratitude doesn’t mean that we become complacent. It means that we strive, not from fear and lack, but from the joy of thriving.
5. Be generous now: If you wait until you “have enough,” whatever that means to you, the message you are telling yourself is that there is lack within and around you. Abundance thinking is a leap of faith for many of us. Faith, by definition, is only validated once we have made the leap. My friend had promised to tithe to his church and then “cheated” because he was broke. One day of scarcity led to the next until he woke up one day and realized that he was not trusting abundance (or God) at all. He was waiting for proof. How could waiting for proof be an act of faith? That day he took a deep breath and emptied the change from his pockets into the church’s coffers. Immediately he felt the peace that goes along with keeping an agreement with oneself, no matter how difficult it is. He also felt strength in choosing to decide to have faith. Almost immediately, his phone began ringing off the hook with work offers. For him, this was wonderful evidence. But even more lovely, he didn’t even need the evidence at that point. Since he already trusted, he was less fearful about the ups and downs of business and felt more relaxed about experiencing abundance however it presented itself.

Will you get rich by practicing these five keys? Nobody knows what the Universe has in store for us. But you can begin to define rich in new ways that give you appreciation for the abundance that already exists. You are already a wealth of knowledge, support, energy, artistry, compassion, and ideas. How can you maximize and share your abundant wealth today?

Tags:abundace, codependent, creating abundance, dear jane, Jane Straus, jealousy, manifesting, money, wealth, worthiness
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