I woke up this morning with the words, “Wall to Wall Gratitude” blasting in the ears of my imagination. As a person who is heavily reliant on my ability to hear and sense information through my ability to listen, I’m considered an auditory learner. Information comes to me in the form of hearing something either in physical reality or whispered internally.
As I heard this statement, ‘Wall to wall gratitude, I reflected for a moment on the message and was taken aback by the irony of it all.
The reason that I haven’t blogged in a while is because there have been many changes in my life over the past month that have been very challenging and difficult. In fact, the ripple effect of all this learning of these hard lessons, has been so big that it has inspired me to make changes in my life and business. Now that I can look back beyond the tears, and pain, I can realize that I am so grateful for these lessons that have so recently surfaced in my life. They have truly helped me to uncover strengths in myself I never knew I had. I’m coming back stronger than ever and I am filled with Wall to Wall Gratitude. Let me tell you why.
Until recently I never knew that I had an issue with a poverty consciousness. Growing up with a silver spoon in my mouth, money was never a challenge for me. It was always around, plentiful and readily available. Living with my dad and my step mother, Rosie, we were very comfortable. We grocery shopped for food a month at a time, our pantries were filled to the brim, impulse spending was the norm and money was typically spent like water.
You’ve probably heard me mention that I spent years running the family business with my father’s mom, who I lovingly call, “Nana” Nana and I were partners in running the buildings. I did this in order to help my dad who was unable to continue his responsibilities in running the buildings hands on.
For years I believed that the work that I did for the family didn’t count and that it was unreasonable to ask to be paid what anyone else in my position would have received. I was an overprivileged gal with no sense of money. What would I know about negotiating effectively?
When I first started working, my father and I agreed that I would get $150 a week salary plus some of my expenses would come out of the business. There was a lot of tension around dad’s absence and he was very bitter. All he seemed to care about was money. He discouraged me from making repairs for the tenants, gave me a hard time about employees salaries, and in general made my life a living hell. Yet I hung on, running those buildings, doing my best, listening to my intuition, collaborating with Nana, taking risks to add value to the property at the risk of consistently disregarding his demands.
During those years, we were estranged from one another. Although I worked for him, and answered to him regarding the buildings and the tenants, I was angry and rebellious to think how our loving relationship could have changed so much. I felt as though I had lost my best friend. For years he barraged me with constant criticism and scathing commentary on his observations regarding my poor business sense. Our relationship devolved to a pure business transaction. He even once told me in a conversation, “Don’t think of me as your father, think of me as your boss.”
After 15 years of soothing my hurt pride and trying to fill the gaps with food, following my Nana’s death, I found a local Women’s Empowerment group that helped me to step into my power. That shook up my beliefs about the value that I brought to the table and it empowered me to the point where I marched up to my dad and demanded what was mine or suffer the consequences of my leaving the business flat.
I went from a mouse to lion in a day, under the steam of my women’s support group. Dad was shocked at my new attitude and he told me, Andrea, I never knew you had it in you. We came to an agreement and settled verbally. That ended our estrangement and opened up a whole new level of communication for both of us as father, daughter and partners.
For the past few years, I’ve been running my business, The Juicy Woman with the proceeds from that agreement. Since then my relationship with my dad and our verbal agreement has gone to seed.
Here’s the takeaway for you, my Juicy Woman. For years, I made the mistake by thinking that what I had to offer had no value. As a result I offered a great deal of my time and services for free or next to nothing. I felt that as long as I had my secondary income, I didn’t need to rely on making money as a coach.
That stinking thinking led me to fall into a pattern of abject spending and a disregard for money, assuming that I would be taken care of by a man, in this case my father.
I hadn’t realized until recently how deeply that cut into my beliefs and affected me at every level. I’ve been doing a beta test of a colleague’s new program. Her name is Linda Storey and her upcoming program is Soul Plan for Prosperity. It’s a brilliant combination of EFT, NLP and Law of Attraction. With Linda’s expertise in years of banking and running her own businesses, she brings new life to women who want to run their businesses and make money doing what they love.
Thanks to Linda’s work and my willingness to challenge my own ratty beliefs that kept me in false security, I am now able to rebuild and reinvent myself again. My specialty is still working with women on overcoming emotional eating, however now I have more insight than ever to share.
I’m sad to say that I’ve decided to take a break from my Juicy calls, but I will be offering tons of great free resources through my forum, my position as co-moderator on the EFT for Weight Loss Forum and my ecourse and my free article.
This is the beginning of a great relationship and I’m tickled pink to share more juicy goodies with you. Check out Linda’s site Give her a call or shoot her an email and tell her Andrea, The Juicy Woman sent you. If you’re struggling with a scarcity consciousness like I used to, it’ll rock your world.