The Breathing Prosperity blog

When you first begin learning about the Law of Attraction and the principles surrounding it, the very exciting prospect of being able to create your life any way you want it is usually where the motivation comes from.

As a little time goes by, perhaps you begin hitting a wall or noticing situations or places where you don’t always get ‘what you want’, and you feel some frustration. You begin to learn that you have hidden limiting beliefs that are keeping you within certain patterns. There are many effective ways to go about exploring and changing your limiting beliefs (quite a few of which you will see in our article archives).

One way in which we limit ourselves without realizing it is by fighting what is, or what has been. If you ever catch yourself saying ‘If only ‘x’ hadn’t happened, then my life would be so much different,’ or ‘If so-and-so would just wake up and appreciate me then life would be so great,’ then you are fighting instead of allowing.

Going against the stream of well-being, as Abraham-Hicks tells us, is fighting an uphill battle. Resentment, holding grudges, or being upset about a circumstance rather than concentrating on what we really want for ourselves (not others), causes us to be stuck and impedes our progress. It’s not the Law of Attraction that isn’t working - it’s us who are holding ourselves in a pattern of resentment.

While on the ultimate plane I believe we can affect reality completely, at this level we must work within the existing framework of our lives. We have a lot more power and freedom than we sometimes grant ourselves, and it is by letting go of limiting beliefs that we can be free to create in the moment, as we are meant to. For example, if you have identified yourself as a female who was abused when you were a child, you can release this identity while still being that person. Does that make sense? You are a woman. Period. The fact that you are abused does not go away if you cease resenting it. It simply loses its’ power over you, and is not part of your identity TODAY. Today, you can look forward and make conscious choices about your life and create the dreams you hold dear, without holding on to a limiting past resentment, however deep it may be.

The irony is that the things you are resenting are holding you back - YOU are the only one suffering by not letting go of grudges. As someone wise once said, resenting someone else is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. The same applies when we resent or hate situations - jobs, relationships, circumstances - the poison is yours; you are swallowing it. 

With all the LOA information available these days and most of saying the same things, it’s easy to think that limiting beliefs are generic and easily dealt with. This misperception is what keeps many people stuck and frustrated. As you will discover and as this article illustrates, your own limiting beliefs are very personal to you. The more specific to your life you get when exploring your subconscious beliefs and triggers, ther more effective you will be. For some further resources, try the following:

EFT is a powerful releasing method that doesn’t even require knowledge of the beliefs so much as the reactions you have when affected by them. Our associate Rick Wilkes is a pro, and his website is full of good information. You can find him at Thriving Now.

As many of you know, I am a big fan of Bob Doyle and his Wealth Beyond Reason program, as it contains so many valuable resources, including ebooks, guided and brainwave meditations, interviews with many and varied experts, and much more. Visit his site at Wealth Beyond Reason.

Enjoy and prosper!

Have you ever become so caught up in pursuing your goals that you don’t even realize you are getting closer until someone mentions it?

Change is often so slow and gradual that it goes unnoticed. We can see this phenomenon with our children or others; much of their growth seems almost nonexistent until someone comments on how big they are getting or how much they have changed. Conversely, the same thing happens as we age and neglect to exercise, or as we slowly settle into a job we dislike and give up; the downward slide is so gradual that it is difficult to detect. [Just writing that makes me feel extremely uncomfortable.]

When it comes to ourselves, we must ensure we pay attention all along the road to our goals, lest we get discouraged by thinking we have not made any progress. Positive reinforcement for little benchmarks may be necessary and vital to continuing motivation. It also feels great to get little jolts of gratitude and energy by recognizing small achievements. It doesn’t matter how small they are. Be sure and stop every day - every hour if you can - and say to yourself, ‘Wow! That’s great, I just went a day without being drawn into conflict,’…or exercised each day this week, or made healthy food choices, or whatever the small things are which you are doing but perhaps not acknowledging. Remember that although your tendency may be to beat yourself up about what you are NOT doing right, this is only a habit, and you can change it.

If we can balance keeping our eyes on the big prize with acknowledging small victories and turning points, we stand a great chance of achieving what we set out to do. For instance, lately I have been thinking I have no goals, or more specifically that I have not  yet achieved the numbers I set regarding my financial independence goal. However, as a perfectly timed gift from the Universe, I found a goals sheet that I wrote only two years ago, and was shocked to see all the things I have accomplished from that list. It’s incredible…and because I am now living many of those things eg. own my own businesses, work from home, active every day, healthy relationships, travel regulalry, etc., it now seems so familiar that I forget how far I have come.

Another reminder, and the point of this post, was provided by a lovely reader named Suzanne on her own blog, who linked to us and put me in some fantastic company. She said that my posts ’shine with positive energy’, and this gave me such a huge smile and burst of gratitude because it has been my goal all along to shine with positive energy. THIS IS IT! I have reached my goal if that is how I come across. How wonderful!

When it comes to our goals, we need to reinforce our pictures of who we think we are - who we choose to be. Sometimes, as above, it takes another to remind us of this. For me, this means I have either been slipping in my goal- and self-defining work lately, or it means that I am living it so much that I didn’t even realize it. I suspect it is the former and will go write out and clarify my current goals when I am finished with this post.

NOTE: You  can never work on or look at your goals list too often. This is how we transform our lives; by becoming the person we choose to be on paper, and by constantly visiting this and amending as we go, we make it really workable. This is how we reinforce ourselves - the selves we are in our ideals. We can clearly see as we reach small milestones. We can look at that goal that said ‘I am active every day’ and remember that when we wrote it, we weren’t…we wanted to be, but it was a future goal. Now it’s so true that it doesn’t need to be a goal anymore. Don’t deny yourself of this pleasure!

For more on being your own motivator, you may enjoy the post Motivation and the Expectations of Others. Have a great day!

For those who are attracted to Law of Attraction learning because they want to become wealthy, I understand there is a lot of frustration building up. If you feel you have been doing a lot of ‘work’ but not making any progress, read on…

First, let me say that personal development of any kind is like a spiral, and even when it feels like nothing is happening, there really is change occuring under the surface. However, there may be something missing in your toolbox when it comes to building wealth (or health, or great relationships, etc.).

For myself, I had the first inkling that I could change my mindset and increase my prosperity when I came across the term ‘wealth consciousness’ in the late 1990’s. The term intrugued me and felt like a missing puzzle piece, and I began to voraciously search for and consume everything I could find regarding wealth consciousness. All the information I read seemed to reinforce the same idea: change your inner thoughts and beliefs and your outer world will change accordingly.

After a lot of personal development work and purging of beliefs, I realized that I was not getting significantly wealthier, although the quality of my relationships and my own self-esteem grew by leaps and bounds as I grew. I reasoned there still must be a missing step, and have now come to see it is proper financial education.

For women in particular, there is a deplorable lack of education in the financial arena. It was not until I faced some of my internal beliefs and looked to see where they came from that I realized that a) I had been not been taught about money and how to make it, and b) I was not alone. Almost everyone I meet through Breathing Prosperity and Follow Your Path tells me that they don’t know enough about money to feel confident about their financial futures, let alone their present. This situation is, in my mind, pathetic, and we need to correct this on a massive scale. The fact that children are not taught basic financial matters in school frightens me, because I can see the devastating results of that ignorance in my own earlier adult life, and the lives of those around me. The strongest impetus for creating Breathing Prosperity was to help people - women especially at the outset - become financially independent, both by learning how to change their lack mentality and by getting a basic financial education. Financial education is one of the most important things we can receive in our lives, and if you haven’t been one of the few lucky ones, give YOURSELF the gift.

The two issues - financial education and the mindset of the wealthy - go hand in hand. If you feel like you are missing any pieces, try looking at it this way. You cannot develop true, lasting wealth (financial health) without addressing both sides of the coin. Being financially free is so empowering and changes EVERYTHING about your life. Without worries about money, you are free to be who you really want to be and offer your unique gifts to the world. Everyone can do this, and it is not just for a chosen few.

The first step is, start reading and learning. I have read countless books about the financial markets and the wealthy mindest in my quest for a financial education, and you can see just a few of these in the recommended reading section of Follow Your Path.

A couple of resources that helped me make turning points in my understanding and progress include:

Wealth Beyond Reason: Bob Doyle, who you may recognize from the movie The Secret, was a pioneer in Law of Attraction education, with his WBR Program. His laid-back mannerism comes through in everything he does, and it instills both confidence and patience in the student. The Program is extremely thorough and includes books, interviews with various experts, amazing meditations exclusive to the Program (I still use these meditations all the time…I have never found anything that even comes close) as well as an interactive forum and much more.

Rich Woman: Written by Kim Kiyosaki, wife of the famed author of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series (also highly recommended), this book is a real eye-opener for women and is recommended for EVERY woman you know, and men as well. The stats Kim quotes are truly frightening, and this important book is a must-read. It is inspiring and empowering, and even though I have come a great distance with my own financial situation, it still had a huge impact on me when I read it recently.

Choosing Prosperity: This site and the resources were created by the lovely Elyse Hope-Killoran, and the best part is the Prosperity Game, which is a mindset transformation game. It never ceases to amaze me when I go back to play and see all of the things I have accomplished that I wrote on my ‘want it’ list. Very expanding and enlightening.

This is in no way an exhaustive list; it just outlines some of my key influences and if they can help you as well, then it is my pleasure to share them with you. Enjoy, and prosper!

‘I wanna be rich!’

Shout it…

‘I wanna be RICH!!!!!!!!!!!’

Yell it out!….How does that make you feel?…

For many people, words like selfish, corrupt, heartless, slimy, user, I can’t, impossible, not for me; yeah right, don’t we all?…come to mind. How about you?

When we use words such as prosperity, wealth, and abundance, we are of course referring to far more than just money, and include in these definitions such things as health, love, passion, happiness and life balance. However, financial abundance - riches - are definitely a part of this, at least for us.

Until you can hear the words money or rich and all you think is ‘yahoo!!!!!!’, you still have some work to do in the area of allowing wealth for yourself.

If you have been trying to ‘get wealthy’ or ‘experience prosperity’ but the word rich brings up some deep negative connotations, you have been fooling yourself. Your subconsious cannot be tricked in this way, and it knows that you are talking about money. Your underlying beliefs always come into play in what you produce in your life, so if this all rings a bell for you, working on neutralizing the concepts of money and riches may be a good place to start.

The rewards are well worth the work, and if you make it all fun, it’s even better! Life is supposed to be a rewarding, exciting journey, and if you see it that way, you will enjoy each moment and each discovery more. Where you are at this moment is absolutely perfect. Enjoy!

When was the last time you got excited like a little kid?

Somehow we have it in our minds that being excited is silly or immature, when in fact that feeling - that positive surge of energy - is what life is all about. That excited feeling that made you jump up and down and clap spontaneously when you were a kid is what you need to cultivate in order to attract - to create - the life of your dreams. Think about it…if you have a vision of the things and circumstances you wish to create for your future, how do you FEEL when those visions are swimming in your head? Aren’t you excited, and vibrant, and happy?

You know from the Law of Attraction reading you’ve likely been doing that you need to be vibrationally in alignment with what you want, so if you aren’t acting excited, vibrant and happy, then how can you attract all that great ‘future’ stuff and circumstances?…

We don’t always express our positive emotions for fear of being seen as silly or unstable, and of course we are not advocating jumping up and down and clapping in the middle of a business meeting. Isn’t it true, however, that the people who are the most positive are the most fun to be around, the most uplifting and the most successful? I’m not talking about Pollyanna-type, ‘everything is always rosy’ positivity; this is deeper than that. Rather, what we are after is a deep, belief-based positivity that says you can always affect the way you perceive and deal with things and that there is always a solution if you ask the right questions. These deep beliefs are those which give you true confidence, such as ‘I am strong and resilient,‘ ‘Everything that happens is part of my perfect path,‘ ‘I can handle anything,‘ and ‘I always focus on what I want in any situation,‘ etc..

In the end, what does it matter what anyone else thinks? It’s your life to enjoy, and if you aren’t enjoying it, who will?…Your attitude and how enthusiastic and excited you get about your life affect how your life goes. It’s the Law of Attraction in action. Knowing this, why not use your emotions to create more of what you want? If you want joy, happiness, excitement and satisfaction, start allowing yourself to feel and express those very things!

If you’re a little stuck on the ‘how’ involved, try partaking in some simple things. Go to a fair and ride the ferris wheel, find a meadow and run through it or lie down in it and look up at the clouds. Quite simply, go to your nearest playground and just sit on the bench and watch the kids play. Kids are the best demonstrators of how to be excited and happy and live in the moment. Let your current fears and concerns go for a few minutes and just enjoy being alive. You may be surprised to find ‘negative’ feelings surging through you as you realize just how much pressure you have been putting on yourself. Pressure to be adult, to be successful, to be making the right decisions. Let these flow - they will dissipate quickly because you allow them to be felt. Relax…and allow yourself to get excited like a little kid. It’s a far healthier - and more effective - place to be. Enjoy!

If one of your main goals is wealth or financial independence, you may find yourself noticing more and more the money-related issues that surround you. Perhaps you now notice the quality of clothing people choose to wear, or their cars, or just general presentation. Perhaps as you overhear snippets of conversation each day you have begun to pick out lack-based comments vs. wealth- or abundance-mentality phrases, where before you would not have thought to make such distinctions. Have you noticed your own mentality changing and metamorphosing as you go?…If not, you have a long way to come… 

As you have read here and elsewhere many times, it is your thought processes and patterns that create your outer world, and in order to change your circumstances, you must change your thoughts. This is a noticeable occurence, as things around you will begin to be perceived differently and the meaning or significance you attach to events will change. Your values will shift and your your alignment and comfort with certain situations and people will undergo change as well.

If all this talk about change makes you uncomfortable, that is the first challenge to tackle. When you hear that you must change your thougts, it literally means you must undergo change - you cannot stay the same and expect different results. You can choose to view this as an exciting challenge or as a scary prospect. In all likelihood, the people around you will seem to change as well, as they interpret and react to the changes in you; in fact most of the time they will not have changed at all, but will be responding to the change in you, and not always in a happy way. Change threatens many people, and if you are one of those people you need to hop on over to the other side of the fence, where change is acknowledged as the only healthy and natural constant, and start rolling with it…relish every little change you notice, and be open to new views. Otherwise, how can you create your dreams? To repeat, unless YOU change, your life cannot change.

Aaron at Today is That Day points us to a great couple of posts by Steve Pavlina that follow his progression through some financial changes, and his story is well-articulated and worth reading for the lessons in it, pertaining to this subject.

Thanks to Aaron, as always, for pointing us to this fantastic content, and I hope you enjoy as many insights from Steve’s writing as I did.

For any of you who have seen The Secret, there will be a familiar line about how, if you focus on what you really love about another person rather than the things you don’t like, the Universe will set things up so that you ‘zig’ when the other person ‘zags.’ In other words, the Law of Attraction works so that you cannot be in the same space as someone is vibrating with a totally different energy level than you are, at least for long.

Today I have a question, because it seems to be plaguing me as far as what is ‘right’ in this game of understanding and applying the Law of Attraction. If you are in a relationship with someone there will be things that you wish the other person would change…if you are in it long enough! Knowing about Law of Attraction, you may decide instead to look inside and see what you are doing to create whatever the situation is, and if the actions of the other are destructive, you may choose at some point to end the relationship. My question is this: at what point do you draw the line?…What if the other person’s actions are not harmful to you, but somehow you feel you need or want something more/different and you realize it is not fair to expect anything of the other person than to be who they are…? If we are absolutely in control, then we should be able to create the perfect relationship with just about anyone…thus there should never be a reason to leave ie. if we change ourselves enough, any relationship should work out. Of course I am not discounting the desires, and level of maturity, development, etc., of the other party; this is merely a concept I keep kicking around and cannot seem to find a solid answer. I have been asked by many people who are unsure of the point at which they should give up on a current relationship, and I’m asking myself the same question. After ensuring they are not staying out of fear of being alone, how does one decide? If there is already a relationship with a lot going for it, how do you know whether to focus on enjoying the good parts (ie. make those expand in your consciousness and in reality), or to really go for having everything you want, 100%…?

Are you waiting for a special ’some day’? Perhaps one or more of the following might sound familiar:

• When you lose 10 pounds
• When you meet the right person
• When you get a raise
• When you have more time
• When you get organized
• When you are debt-free
• When you get all your ‘to-do’ list stuff done

THEN you’ll be happy, and better prepared for that wonderful future you want.

Does ’some day’ stand like a wall between your NOW and your FUTURE? Have you ever looked at it this way? To most people, some day IS the future, but is it really? Or is it just some fictional place or time in your mind when things will get done, when things will change and as if at dawn, wonderful light will suddenly be shining and your life will be fantastic (or at least better than it is now)?…

Further, is it possible that we could spend every day of our lives either living in the past or wishing things would be different in our ‘future’, and get to the last day and realize we didn’t spend enough time in the present? Although your wedding day may have been or will be very special, it is no more special than today. The memories you cherish are important, but the moments of this very day are equally precious. Every day. Every moment. Cherish each one, because - at least for this time - we only have so many rides on the merry-go-round. Smile and laugh and have fun with the people around you, just as they are right now.

Sounds like a bedtime story…and in a way, it is, because it is familiar and close to the heart for many of us. 

I am reading a Louise Hay book (called The Power is Within You) and in it she quotes someone wise who once said ‘You can choose to be happy or you can choose to be right.‘ Yikes!

We all have situations in which we feel we are so undeniably, justifiably right that we hang on to that conviction at the expense of our own peace of mind. Forgiveness is a word that is bantered around a lot in personal development circles, and I am aware that to forgive someone else is really to let go of something in my own mind, but when I read that sentence it just rang alarm bells in my head. Why, I wonder?…The thought of letting go of the anger and resentment I feel towards my ‘person’ is very difficult, especially when their behaviour affects my life and daughter’s very deeply, and I feel it is totally inappropriate and hurtful. Just listen to all that judgement! I know very well that I cannot change another person’s behaviour and should only look to my own reactions, however it is certainly a case of ‘easier said than done’. The sentence about choosing happiness really got my juices going, because maybe I somehow believe that to decide to be happy anyway means I am condoning the behaviour of this other person rather than dealing with it…hmmm….so yes, I can choose to focus on my vision of the yacht pulling up to a pier in Monaco (water gently slapping against the dock, sparkling in the sun…white boat gleaming, cool breeze, shopping and lunch…mmmm) but when I get back to reality I still feel ‘rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr’.

I also know that because there is such emotion here, there exists a huge opportunity to grow past it and enjoy new clarity and peace of mind. I do indeed value my peace of mind highly and also want to be happy, but this ‘person’ really knows how to push my buttons (code for I still have issues here - inside of myself). Rrrrrrrrrr….

Some tricks I am trying are a) acceptance of things just the way they are, b) to attempt to see the situation form the other’s point of view (with the underlying thought that we all do our best given our own set of beliefs and skills), and c) to focus on the end result that I DO want…

I feel better already. I must keep trying, as I’m sure you will agree that it’s really none of our business how other people act, and that to minimize the impact on ourselves is a valuable skill to cultivate.

Have a great day!

I just read this lovely saying in my fave magazine (Elite Traveler) and it seems to sum up the way i feel about things…it certainly made me grin from ear to ear, and I want to share it with you:

“Be daring, be different, be impractical;
be anything that will assert integrity
of purpose and imaginative vision against
the play-it-safers,the creatures of the
commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”

Want to be happy? Wealthy? Satisfied? The answer is as simple as they come…..be yourself. There is no one like you in the entire universe, and if you deny - or don’t even know - yourself, you deny the rest of us of the gift of seeing you shine and enjoying your unique presence. The most beautiful gift you can give to yourself and others is to be the most authentic YOU you can be. As someone wise once said, you can try all your life to be like other people, but what you should be trying to do is be more of yourself. No one can do it for you, and no one can do it LIKE you!