In reading this week’s submissions I found many to like, and two that really stood out. They are hereby awarded the Necessary Virtues Order of Merit for outstanding contribution:

• Mark Shead’s outstanding piece on The Debt Mindset from Debt Consolidation. It begins provocatively:
  

  “Many people just expect to be in debt. It is part of their world view…”

• The current installment of Erek Ostrowski’s invaluable series, Getting Out Of Debt (Part 2) from Verve Coaching. I look forward to the next article.

Here are all those that made the cut listed in mostly chronological order, with a little treat at the end. Enjoy!

Matt Hutter kicks it off with tips on How To Avoid Using Credit Cards and the benefits of purchasing with cash rather than plastic.

Next is a timely seasonal offering from Ririan with 20 Fabulous Tips To Holiday Spending that range from proper planning to debt avoidance to identity theft protection.

From Andy at Money Walks comes 5 Reasons why people are in debt, including a wake-up call for university students to graduate debt-free.

Andy Boyd offers us a refreshingly honest and direct look at his personal finances and his plans for getting out of debt in My Credit Card Debt Repayment Plan. This is a valuable contribution in that it’s all practice and no theory.

Next we have a great series of tips from Joe Caterisano on How to save money. He points out that small changes in our behavior can reap large benefits.

From Free Money Finance comes How to Pay Off a Boatload of Debt Quickly, a helpful, concise summary of an article originally published on MSN MoneyCentral.

Mark Shead contributes a very thought-provoking piece on The Debt Mindset. He points out how much our lives are influenced by our past experiences and our present associations. Highly recommended, particularly for anyone who has struggled to change their behavior in relation to money and debt.

From Waller we have a wonderfully passionate and practical article on Reducing Debt With A Snowball. If you’ve been making minimum payments on your credit cards, you have to read this!

Erek Ostrowski continues a valuable series with Getting Out Of Debt (Part 2). This installment is all about making detailed plans to achieve specific goals that contribute to your overall goal. The most important part? Follow your plan!

Trent tells us that debt has driven him to some pretty desperate measures in the past, including surviving for a month on only $10 worth of food. He gives us twenty tips on how it can be done in Nourishment on a Desperate Income.

From Steve Faber we have Debt Elimination Scams to Avoid – You’ll Just Pay Twice, which gives details of two scams that prey on desperate debtors.

The next article is really a call for discussion from Ben, who asks What was the World Like Before Credit Cards?. You can post your answers on his blog.

Jim clarifies a distinction that many find mysterious in Student Loan Deferment vs. Forbearance. If you have a student loan, make sure you know the difference.

From the Prince of Thrift we hear that the worst of the worst get the Lemon Award for Bad Banking, and the finalists are… Lemon Award Finalists Named on CreditCard.org’s Website.

Next Sagar Satapathy presents a comprehensive set of 101 Financial Tips you Never Learned in High School (but should have). Be sure to read all the way to tip 101!

Joe Caterisano returns with What is a FICO score?, offering a concise guide to the factors that comprise your FICO score.

Henry of Binary Dollar continues his personal chronicle with The Race to $0: December 2006 Net Worth (+$3,284). He continues to retire his student loan while adding substantially to his retirement savings.

No Credit Needed contributes this Sure-fire Debt Reduction Process. It’s simple and it actually works. You just have to be willing to follow it.

And to round off this week’s offerings, we have a humorous Ode To Prosperity from Madeleine Begun Kane.

Next week’s host, on December 11, is Blunt Money. Thanks for visiting, and happy holidays to all!

2. A budget empowers you to take control of your money instead of letting your money control you.

3. A budget can improve your marriage. The number one cause of marital strife is money. Your budget is a neutral tool to help you and your spouse communicate rationally about money. It can help to give you a common purpose and to minimize arguments about money.

4. A budget helps you prepare for emergencies. The top causes of bankruptcy are sudden unanticipated expenses or job loss. When you have an emergency fund, you are much more likely to get through a situation that would otherwise sink your financial ship.

5. A budget makes money available so that you can use it on the things that really matter to you rather than impulse purchases.

6. A budget can help get out of debt or stay out of debt.

7. A budget gives you peace of mind. You won’t lie awake at night due to worry about your finances.

Budget Q & A

What exactly is a budget?

A budget is a realistic reflection of your current financial situation plus a projection into the future based on reasonable predictions. So it’s both a snapshot and a plan.

I’m new to budgeting. What’s the best way to get started?

First, do your homework. There is lots of budgeting advice available in bookstores and online. You can download our favorite budgeting guide for free in e-book form right here.

Second, keep track of your actual expenditures for at least a month. Write down every penny. You’ll be astonished at the money leaks you discover.

Third, plunge in and make your first budget. It will undoubtedly need tinkering and adjustment, so don’t let the desire for perfection stop you in your tracks. Make a budget, compare your actual expenditures to the budget, and see where you have to change the budget or your spending. It’s a process, not a single destination.

Looking for a way to organize your budget online? There is one service we recommend above all others. Click here to find out more or click here to get started right away with a free trial.

What is success?

The dictionary defines success as “the achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted.”

So you must decide for yourself what success is, depending on what you seek in your life, your relationships and your career. If you’re an athlete, success can mean obtaining that gold medal. If you identify yourself as a parent, success can mean raising children with good moral values. For a doctor, success can mean relieving pain or saving a life. To many of us success means a job promotion or acquiring wealth. It depends on your perspective and how you perceive yourself and your life.

You are the only one who can judge your success. If you try to achieve success according to someone else’s standards or society’s standards, you will never be satisfied that you have achieved it.

Yet even when we know that we define our own success, we often seem to fail. We feel dissatisfied, empty, tense. Our minds are not at rest, not peaceful, not harmonious. Our thoughts are full of “if onlys.” You know what they’re like: “If only I had more money, I would be happy.” “If only I could lose 20 pounds, my life would be perfect.”

What’s the difficulty? Are we setting unrealistic goals? Maybe, but that’s not really the problem. Are we not trying hard enough? Usually that’s not a factor either. What is it? Us! We are our own worst enemy. “We have met the enemy and he is us,” as Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo, famously wrote.

How do we sabotage our success, undermine our goals, subvert our desires? Through the largely unconscious programming of our minds. That’s the whole answer in a nutshell. It’s our thoughts, the thoughts we allow to parade through our heads and invade our subconscious. When we can learn to change our thoughts, then our success is assured.

Your mind didn’t come with an instruction manual. You were given a lot of instruction by your parents, your teachers, your friends, by books, movies, TV. But did any of it tell you how to control your thoughts? Did it tell you how to program your mind?

You do have the power to change your life if you want to. You do have the power to achieve the goals you set for yourself. But you won’t succeed if you don’t learn to control your mind first.

The seat of power in your life is your unconscious mind, the mind that works 24/7 on whatever program you have set for it. You set these programs by empowering your thoughts with vision, expectation, belief and desire. Before anything that you wish for can happen, you must envision it clearly, desire it, believe deeply that it will happen, and expect confidently that it will happen.

The unconscious mind will act based on your ability to program it. You constantly send your unconscious information and messages, whether you think so or not, but many of the messages tend to be negative (“if only”). When you think “if only” you tell your unconscious that you are not a success, that you are in a state of lack and limitation.

So be very careful of your thoughts, beliefs and actions. If you worry about not having enough money, you are programming your mind for lack. If you worry that you can’t accomplish your goals, you are programming your mind for failure. If you believe you haven’t the opportunities you need to get ahead, you are programming yourself not to recognize them when they appear.

Why? The unconscious mind is constantly working on the information that you have sent, and negative information yields negative reality. As the computer geeks say, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

You can have success; you can change your life. But you must change your mind first.

Read more on this topic »

Excerpted from The Master Key System, by Charles Haanel.

Some men seem to attract success, power, wealth, attainment, with very little conscious effort; others conquer with great difficulty; still others fail altogether to reach their ambitions, desires and ideals. Why is this so? Why should some men realize their ambitions easily, others with difficulty, and still others not at all? The cause cannot be physical, else the most perfect men, physically, would be the most successful. The difference, therefore, must be mental – must be in the mind; hence mind must be the creative force, must constitute the sole difference between men. It is mind, therefore, which overcomes environment and every other obstacle in the path of men.

When the creative power of thought is fully understood, its effect will be seen to be marvelous. But such results cannot be secured without proper application, diligence, and concentration. The student will find that the laws governing in the mental and spiritual world are as fixed and infallible as in the material world. To secure the desired results, then, it is necessary to know the law and to comply with it. A proper compliance with the law will be found to produce the desired result with invariable exactitude. The student who learns that power comes from within, that he is weak only because he has depended on help from outside, and who unhesitatingly throws himself on his own thought, instantly rights himself, stands erect, assumes a dominant attitude, and works miracles.

It is evident, therefore, that he who fails to fully investigate and take advantage of the wonderful progress which is being made in this last and greatest science, will soon be as far behind as the man who would refuse to acknowledge and accept the benefits which have accrued to mankind through an understanding of the laws of electricity.

Of course, mind creates negative conditions just as readily as favorable conditions, and when we consciously or unconsciously visualize every kind of lack, limitation and discord, we create these conditions; this is what many are unconsciously doing all the time.

This law as well as every other law is no respecter of persons, but is in constant operation and is relentlessly bringing to each individual exactly what he has created; in other words, “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.”

Abundance, therefore, depends upon a recognition of the laws of Abundance, and the fact that Mind is not only the creator, but the only creator of all there is. Certainly nothing can be created, before we know that it can be created and then make the proper effort. There is no more Electricity in the world today than there was fifty years ago, but until someone recognized the law by which it could be made of service, we received no benefit; now that the law is understood, practically the whole world is lit by it. So with the law of Abundance; it is only those who recognize the law and place themselves in harmony with it, who share in its benefits.

Edited and adapted by Steve Diamond from Hill’s masterwork, The Law of Success

Editor’s note: We will be publishing more excerpts from and material about Napoleon Hill’s The Law of Success in coming weeks. You can buy it directly from Amazon using the link in this paragraph, or you can wait for us to announce its availability as a downloadable E-Book, coming soon.

It’s interesting that Hill begins his list of your most dangerous enemies with “the fear of poverty.” You’ll quickly see that this short essay, like the rest of Hill’s work, is extremely relevant to your financial state. The suggestions he offers here can lead to freedom from poverty, debt, and fear.

Every person on earth is afraid of something. Most fears are inherited. In this essay you may study the six basic fears which do the most damage. Your fears must be mastered before you can win in any worthwhile undertaking in life. Find our how many of the six fears are bothering you, but more important than this determine, also how to conquer these fears.

The purpose of this essay is to help the readers of this course throw off these deadly enemies. Observe that the six characters are at your back, where you cannot conveniently see them.

Every human being on this earth is bound down to some extent by one or more of these unseen FEARS. The first step to be taken in killing off these enemies is to find out where and how you acquired them.

They got their grip upon you through two forms of heredity. One is known as physical heredity, to which Darwin devoted so much study. The other is known as social heredity, through which the fears, superstitions and beliefs of men who lived during the dark ages have been passed on from one generation to another.

Let us study, first, the part that physical heredity has played in creating these six BASIC FEARS. Starting at the beginning, we find that Nature has been a cruel builder. Form the lowest form of life to the highest; Nature has permitted the stronger to prey upon the weaker forms of animal life.

The fish prey upon the worms and insects, eating them bodily. Birds prey upon the fish. Higher forms of animal life prey upon the birds, and upon one another, all the way
up the line to man. And, man preys upon all the other lower forms of animal life, and upon MAN!

The whole story of evolution is one unbroken chain of evidence of cruelty and destruction of the weaker by the stronger. No wonder the weaker forms of animal life have learned to FEAR the stronger. The Fear consciousness is born in every living animal.

So much for the FEAR instinct that came to us through physical heredity. Now let us examine social heredity, and find out what part it has played in our make-up. The term
“social heredity” has reference to everything that we are taught, everything we learn or gather from observation and experience with other living beings.

Lay aside any prejudices and fixed opinions you may have formed, at least temporarily, and you may know the truth about your Six Worst Enemies, starting with:

The FEAR OF POVERTY! It requires courage to tell the truth about the history of this enemy of mankind, and still greater courage to hear the truth after it has been told. The Fear of Poverty grows out of man’s habit of preying upon his fellow men, economically. The animals which have instinct, but no power to THINK, prey upon one another physically. Man, with his superior sense of intuition, and his more powerful weapon of THOUGHT, does not eat his fellow man bodily; he gets more pleasure from eating him FINANCIALLY. So great an offender is man, in this respect, that nearly every state and nation has been obliged to pass laws, scores of laws, to protect the weak from the strong. Every blue-sky law is indisputable evidence of man’s nature to prey upon his weaker brother economically.

The second of the Six Basic Fears with which man is bound down is:

THE FEAR OF OLD AGE! This Fear grows out of two major causes. First, the thought that Old Age may bring with it POVERTY. Secondly, from false and cruel sectarian teachings which have been so well mixed with fire and brimstone that every human being learned to Fear Old Age because it meant the approach of another and, perhaps, a more horrible world than this.

The third of the Six Basic Fears is:

THE FEAR OF ILL HEALTH: This fear is born of both physical and social heredity. From birth until death there is eternal warfare within every physical body; warfare between groups of cells, one group being known as the friendly builders of the body, and the other as the destroyers, or “disease germs.” The seed of Fear is born in the physical body, to begin with as the result of Nature’s cruel plan of permitting the stronger forms of cell life to prey upon the weaker. Social heredity has played its part through lack of cleanliness and knowledge of sanitation. Also, through the law of suggestion cleverly manipulated by those who profited by ILL HEALTH.

The fourth of the Six Basic Fears is:

THE FEAR OF LOSS OF LOVE OF SOMEONE: This fear fills the asylums with the insanely jealous, for jealousy is nothing but a form of insanity. It also fills the divorce courts and causes murders and other forms of cruel punishment. it is a holdover, handed down through social heredity, from the stone age when man preyed upon his fellow man by stealing his mate by physical force. The method, but not the practice, has now changed to some extent. Instead of physical force man now steals his fellow man’s mate with pretty colorful ribbons and fast motor cars and bootleg whisky, and sparkling rocks and stately mansions.

Man is improving. He now “entices where once he “drove.”

The fifth of the Six Basic Fears is:

THE FEAR OF CRITICISM: Just how and where man got this Fear is difficult to determine, but it is certain that he has it. But for this Fear men would not become bald- headed. Bald heads come from tightly fitting hat-bands, which cut off the circulation from the roots of the hair. Women seldom are bald because they wear loose fitting hats. But for Fear of Criticism man would lay aside his hat and keep his hair. The makers of clothing have not been slow to capitalize this Basic Fear of mankind. Every season the styles change, because the clothes makers know that few people have the courage to wear a garment that is one season out of step with what “They are all wearing.” If you doubt this (you gentlemen) start down the street with last year’s narrow- brimmed straw hat on, when this year’s style calls for the broad brim. Or (you ladies), take a walk down the street on Easter morning with last year’s hat on. Observe how uncomfortable you are, thanks to your unseen enemy, the FEAR OF CRITICISM.

The sixth, and last of the Six Basic Fears is the most dreaded of them all. It is called:

THE FEAR OF DEATH! For tens of thousands of years man has been asking the still unanswered questions – “WHENCE?” AND “WITHER?” The more crafty of the race have not been slow to offer the answer to this eternal question, “Where did I come from and where am I going after Death?” “Come into my tent,” says one leader, “and you may go to Heaven after Death.” Heaven was then pictured as a wonderful city whose streets were lined with fold and studded with precious stones. “Remain out of my tent and you may go straight to hell.” Hell was then pictured as a blazing furnace where the poor victim might have the misery of burning forever in brimstone.

No wonder mankind FEARS DEATH!

Determine, if you can, which of the Six Basic Fears is doing you the greatest damage. An enemy discovered is an enemy half whipped.

Thanks to the schools and colleges man is slowly discovering these Six Enemies. The most effective tool with which to fight them is ORGANIZES KNOWLEDGE. Ignorance and Fear are twin sisters. They are generally found together.

But for IGNORANCE and SUPERSTITION the Six Basic Fears would disappear from man’s nature in one generation. In every public library may be found the remedy for these six enemies of mankind, providing you know what books to read. Begin by reading The Science of Power, by Benjamin Kidd, and you will have broken he strangle hold of most of your Six Basic Fears. Follow this by reading Emerson’s essay on Compensation. Then select some good book on auto-suggestion (self suggestion) and inform yourself on the principle through which your beliefs of today become the realities of tomorrow. The Mind in the Making, by Robinson, will give you a good start toward understanding your own mind. (Editor’s note: You can purchase these books directly at Amazon using the links in this paragraph.)

Through the principle of social heredity the IGNORANCE and SUPERSTITION of the dark ages have been passed on to you. But, you are living in a modern age. On every hand you may see evidence that every EFFECT has a natural CAUSE. Begin, now, o study effects by their causes and soon you will emancipate your mind from the burden of the Six Basic Fears.

Begin by studying men who have accumulated great wealth, and find out the CAUSE of their achievements. Henry Ford is a good subject to start with. Within the short period of twenty-five years he has whipped POVERTY and made himself the most powerful man on earth. There was no luck or chance or accident back of his achievement. It grew out of his careful observation of certain principles which are as available to you as they were to him. Henry ford is not bound down by the Six Basic Fears; make no mistake about this.

If you feel that you are too far away from Ford to study him accurately, and then begin by selecting two people whom you know close at hand; one representing your idea of FAILURE and other corresponding to your idea of SUCCESS. Find out what made one a failure and the other a success. Get the real FACTS. In the process of gathering these facts you will have taught yourself a great lesson CAUSE and EFFECT.

Nothing ever just “happens.” Everything, from the lowest animal form that creeps on the earth or swims in the seas, on up to man, is the EFFECT of Nature’s evolutionary process. Evolution is “orderly change.” No “miracles” are connected with this orderly change.

Not only do the physical shapes and colors of animals undergo slow, orderly change from one generation to another, but the mind of man is also undergoing constant change. Herein lies our hope for improvement. You have the power to force your mind through a process of rather quick change. In a single month of properly directed self- suggestion you may place your foot upon the neck of every one of your Six Basic Fears. In twelve months of persistent effort you may drive he entire herd into he corner where it will never again do you any serious injury.

You will resemble, tomorrow, the DOMINATING THOUGHT that you keep alive in your mind today! Plant in your mind the seed of determination to whip your Six Basic Fears and the battle will have been half won then and there. Keep this intention in your mind and it will slowly push your Six Worst Enemies out of sight, as they exist nowhere except in your own mind.

The man who is powerful FEARS nothing; not even God. The POWERFUL man loves God, but FEARS HIM NEVER! Enduring power never grows out of FEAR. Any power that is built upon FEAR is bound to crumble and disintegrate. Understand this great truth and you will never
be so unfortunate as to try to raise yourself to power through the FEARS of other people who may owe you temporary allegiance.

Man is of soul and body formed for deeds
Of high resolve; on fancy’s boldest wing
To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn
The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste
The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield.

Or he is formed for abjectness and woe, To grovel on the dunghill of his fears,
To shrink at every sound, to quench that flame
Of natural love in sensualism, to know
That hour as blest when on his worthless days
The frozen hand of death shall set its seal,
Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease.

The one is man that shall hereafter be,
The other, man as vice has made him now.

- SHELLEY

The question people often ask me is-when their self-development work and personal growth finally “takes,” is this when will they stop having negative thoughts-I wish I knew. Although I’m afraid the answer could be never.

I play CDs with positive subliminal messages while I sleep each night. I start each day by reading something positive, and end each night the same way. I have many positive, success-oriented people in my life. I feast regularly on positive books, tapes and other programs. But I have an embarrassing confession to make . . .

I’ve had lots of negative thoughts. Sometimes ten a day. As rich, successful, healthy and happy as I’ve become, I have often still had fear-based thoughts. Looking back now, I see a lot of things I did, thinking they were prosperous, but I see now they were fear-based.

When I bought a bike, I bought a titanium professional race bike for $3,000. I remember thinking then that if things got bad, I could always sell it for some quick cash.

Well I bought three Vipers at the same time, I felt secure, knowing I could always sell one or two and scrape together a hundred grand.

Coming from the place I did, I always felt like I was somehow cheating destiny. That God, or the universe, or someone was going to wake up one day and discover that I had acquired wealth by mistake. I still had that niggling thought in the back of my mind-the defensive, better-prepare-for-the-really-bad-scenario, and have my options covered-just in case. And not get my hopes up too high-because then I was setting myself up for a great disappointment.

And like I told you, I’ve had those kinds of thoughts recently, as many as ten a day. But here’s the difference . . .

I notice every one of them now. Immediately. And I often laugh about how silly they are. Best of all, I see the progression of my mindset.

First, I had hundreds of negative thoughts a day, and noticed none of them.

Then I graduated to the point that I had lots of negative thoughts a day and noticed some of them.

From there I got to the point that I had less negative thoughts a day and I noticed a lot of them.

And gradually over time, I started having less and less of them. Some days I have none. And now when I do have them, I catch myself right away.

I used to wear a rubber band on my wrist, and snap it when I had a lack thought. Now I no longer need to do that. I just tap my fingers on my forehead. That’s the signal to my mind, and I instantly reject that thought, and replace it with another one. And once that happens. The world changes.

So when do the negative thoughts end? I doubt they ever do. The sheer enormity of how much negative and lack programming you will be assaulted with over the course of a lifetime makes that seem unlikely. (But let’s not affirm that.)

In any event, if you keep counter-programming-you will win the fight. Because once you control the programming-you control the mindset. And once you control the mindset-you control your destiny!

Start a life journal and track your negative lack and limitation thoughts and tally them. At the end of each day, spend some time thinking about this subject.

When you really analyze the day and think about this regularly-you will start to notice these thoughts. And once you do that, they lose most of their power.

And your mindset starts to change . . .

You change your core fundamental beliefs. You believe you are supposed to be healthy, happy and prosperous. You believe you are worthy. And when you are confronted with dozens of situations each day, most minor, some bigger, and even some that are major-you expect good things to happen to you!

And because you expect good things to happen to you-you approach life differently. You approach it expecting to end up on top. And because you believe it-that’s exactly what happens! Ain’t it great?

* Excerpted from Randy Gage’s BreakthroughU.com Daily Awakening

Grow your prosperity consciousness and start living a life of true abundance.

You are meant to be healthy, happy and prosperous. Once you recognize and accept this, it is simply a case of learning the principles that abundance is based on. In this insightful book series, you will move from lack consciousness to living in the light of true abundance.
Get The Prosperity Series by Randy Gage!

For more than 15 years, Randy Gage has been helping people transform self-limiting beliefs into self-fulfilling breakthroughs to achieve their dreams. Randy Gage is a modern day explorer in the field of body-mind development and personal growth. He is the author of the best-selling albums, Dynamic Development and Prosperity and director of www.BreakthroughU.com . For more resources and to subscribe to Randy’s free ezine newsletters visit his web site.

Kasia is a talented landscape designer who speaks several languages, and when she jokes about being a "Polish princess" it’s because she actually has the pedigree to support that claim.

That’s not why she’s amazing. What’s remarkable about Kasia is her ability to play with words in a creative way.

You don’t have to speak five languages in order to play with words, but I’m guessing that playing with words is pretty helpful when you’re trying to learn five languages! So, let’s take a page from Kasia’s multilingual notebook and see how she plays with one particular word in English.

The word? Money.

Now, Kasia could rattle off the appropriate word for "money" in more than five languages if asked, but what she focuses on is tweaking that word so that it loses whatever negativity, scariness, or other baggage it might have for her.

So, whenever she hears or says the word "money" she substitutes it in her own head with the word "monkeys"–and watches how that completely shifts the tone.

Think about it. What if whenever you said, "I don’t have enough money for that" you instead said, "I don’t have enough monkeys for that"?

Or how about this: "counting money" or "saving money" becomes "counting monkeys" or "saving monkeys" instead.

Suddenly, those retirement plans and college savings programs don’t seem so scary. In fact, they start to sound kind of fun and interesting.

Now, I’m not saying you can give up on the concept of money altogether and just joke around about the idea of financial security.

No, no, no. I’m saying that you can use this quirky little mindfulness technique to help you lighten up about an area that may cause a great deal of stress or frustration for you.

Money can be a pretty malleable concept, and depending on how we were raised (and a whole bunch of other factors), we develop our own sense of its value, importance, purpose, and possibilities.

Substituting the word "monkey" for "money" allows us to become more aware of the number of times per day we hear, see, or say that word, and it helps us zero in on the physical and psychological responses we may have as it triggers our own particular reaction.

Listen as you and others say the following phrases:

"If only I had enough monkeys for that!"

"I’m saving my monkeys to buy _____."

"I need to make more monkeys."

"When I have enough monkeys, I’ll live the life of my dreams."

"It seems like I’m constantly running out of monkeys."

"My husband and I are always fighting about monkeys."

and my personal favorite:

"Monkeys don’t grow on trees, you know."

I once spent a winter studying primates at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. I stood outside in the snow for hours making little notes about the Japanese snow monkeys I was observing. I became quite attached to them by simply watching them interact with each other.

They had their grouchy days, just like humans, but overall, they were lighthearted and playful even in their old age. And their demeanor could shift dramatically when one of them would initiate play–suddenly, there was much chasing and chattering before they all settled down again for a group grooming session.

In other words, things were unpredictable, but even during chaotic moments, they seemed to recognize that soon enough, they’d be hunkered down together quite calmly.

Money can be like that. You try hard to control it, but whether you invest in the stock market, real estate, college tuition, or orthodontia, there are times when you wonder why you bother at all. Just when you think things are going smoothly, something comes along and zaps a huge chunk out of your bank account.

Start viewing money management as monkey management, and you’ll begin to feel lighter about the whole process of saving and spending. There are benefits to controlling your finances, no doubt about it. But there are also advantages to seeing money as an unpredictable and even amusing character that sparks greater mindfulness and helps us see what matters most.

Try a little monkey mindfulness whenever you write checks or make a deposit. Picture them having a swingin’ good time in your bank account, and grin a little even as they leave the compound.

There will be others climbing in soon enough.

(C) Copyright 2005, Maya Talisman Frost

Maya Talisman Frost has taught thousands of people how to pay attention.  Her playful and powerful eyes-wide-open approach to mindfulness has been featured in over 100 publications.  She is currently living in Old Mazatlan, Mexico, where she is having a swingin’ good time watching her monkeys.  To read her free special report, "The Dirty Little Secret About Meditation," please visit www.Real-WorldMindfulness.com.

She sat there dumbstruck.

Here we go again, I thought.

Suddenly a high pitched cackle came from her mouth as the ride went sharply up…then back down again.

She was only four – and she loving every single minute of it. Where else could you pay only a dollar to get a reaction like that, I wondered?

It may have only been one of those little child rides in a shopping mall, but to Katie – it was the most exciting thing she had ever done!

Now – two years on – and her laughs come from repeated viewings of Harry Potter. She knows exactly who’s going to say what next – and yet she still covers her eyes at the scary bits and cheers as Harry Potter wins!

Isn’t it a shame that we can’t bottle the enthusiasm we have as children?

When was the last time YOU got really excited about something?

For most of us it seems such a difficult thing to have to recall, doesn’t it?

It shouldn’t have to be that way.

You shouldn’t have to go through life without being really enthusiastic about what you’re doing, should you?

It’s not always possible to just quit your job and spend all your days enjoying your hobby – but you should at least aim for some time during the week that you can look back at with a smile!

It’s no use going through life worrying about the ‘if-onlys’.

Dale Carnegie (the author of the classic ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People) once said:

“Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.”

Don’t struggle through life without at least trying to achieve something that you can be proud of. To quote Carnegie – “Shake yourself awake” – and find something that you can get excited about!

The most successful people get enthusiastic about what they do. They look upon their lives as a series of challenges to their skills and ingenuity.

- What really excites you?
- What would you be really proud of if you achieved it?
- What excuses are you finding to put off doing what you’d really like to do?

This isn’t about money.

You might be able to make a living out of what you love if you work really hard at it – but don’t ever turn your passion into a job. Make sure that you do really love what you do before you have to rely on it totally.

Get excited about something – at least once a week. Life isn’t all about becoming wealthy, or famous – it’s about making the most of what little time we really have.

Too much importance is placed on money in our society – it may ‘make the world go round’ – but remember that you can never buy happiness at any cost.

Be enthusiastic at least once this week – and you’ll be surprised how much more creative and happy you will be!

To Our Success!