3 Ways to Deal with Tough Times

Times are tough. If you've been paying attention, you know that all of the economic gains of the last decade have gone to the top 1% of the population, leaving 99% of us no better off -- or worse off. You know that half of all workers earn less than about $23,600/year. Small business owners have been hurt more than other workers -- with an average decrease in income in the last few years of about 17%.

This has been hitting home in a number of ways.  Here's one:

Last week, a friend called me, saying she was at the end of her rope and didn't know what to do. Jenny is a talented psychologist in private practice, generally very positive, very together, very upbeat. Her clients think the world of her -- and say so publicly. But her business is down -- her sales are now less than her rent. Jenny, divorced many years ago, is going through her savings, and although she is in no danger of being homeless any time soon, she's terrified.

When I tried to commiserate with her, saying my business was way off, too, she sobbed, "But you have a husband, you own a home -- you have something!"

I had to acknowledge that that was true, and pointed out her close family and many good friends. Jenny has been a good friend to many people, and so many people would be there if she asked. But she won't ask.

"Why not?", I wanted to know.

Well, because many years ago, her mother, a stiff upper lip Brit, told her that, "People don't want to hear your troubles. If you tell them you have problems, they'll abandon you."

As my Dad (an educated man) used to say, "Them as don't ask, don't get." You have to ask for what you need! How else are people supposed to know you need something?

So for Jenny, step one is acknowledging to her friends that she needs help, and asking for what she needs.

99% of us are all in this together. So the next question, whether or not you're in need right now, is: what do you have to share? If you need a place to stay, can you offer services in exchange? Can you cook? clean? garden? If you have an extra room, are you willing to share that? What would you like in exchange?

 We're all in this together -- and the more we can share, the more outside shocks we can all withstand. United we stand...

There's more to it than just sharing, though. Gratitude is hugely important, too, and there are two reasons for this. First, if you are appreciating what is good in your life, you'll have a more positive frame of mind to deal with what is less positive. Second, what you focus on, expands. This is the famed Law of Attraction.

Here's a very partial list of things to be grateful for:

• food to eat
• clothes to wear
• a roof over your head, and the utilities to run the household
• any and all good relationships
• good health
• the ability to get from one place to another
• having a body, so you can experience the world at this most interesting time
• the beauty of the earth
• being connected to the world on the internet 

For a really easy and effective way to be grateful -- and totally not what you'd expect -- click here. 

To summarize, here are the three ways to deal with tough times:

1. Ask for what you need
2. Share what you can
3. Be grateful for you have

8 Business Lessons from the "Neighbor from Hell'

I worked really hard to get rid of the 'neighbor from hell' at a condo I own. (More about that here.) She left, finally, all because I got the owner to give me power of attorney to do it. As I look back on it, though, doing this has taught me a number of lessons which are much more widely applicable:

1) Have a clear intention (don't take no for an answer) -- The neighbor from hell (NFH) had been negatively affecting my life for years now. Because of her, I had a much harder time finding an acceptable tenant for that unit than for any other unit I own (and a few are in the neighborhood, so it really is comparing apples to apples). Further, the tenant in that unit turns over immediately at the end of each lease (if they even paid the rent on time, so that I didn't have to get rid of them earlier -- and this is the only unit where I've ever had to evict anyone).

When my wonderful current tenant gave me 60 days notice, despite acknowledging the fact that she has a lease which at that point lasted another 6 months, I got desperate. And desperation turned into determination that this ends now. And somehow, when I get determined, the universe lines up behind me. (This is most defiitely a vow, which seems to be a variant on the Law of Attraction.)

2) Be nice -- My first step was to contact the owner. Of course, I'd been trying that without success for over a year. She wouldn't answer my phone calls or emails. So what I did was pay her a visit. How did I have her address? When she bought the property, back in 2006, I was nice. I called her up (got that number because the former owner was a friend -- see, I'm nice), and said, "If I can help you in any way, please let me know. And oh, by the way, please give me your contact info", which she did.

3) Be organized -- I'm fanatic about keeping people's contact information. If you give me a card, all that goes into my database, even if I don't put you on my mailing list. My database is over 3000 records, everyone from the plumber to the dentist to the health insurance company to my extended family to my clients and on and on. So when I needed this woman's address, there it was, easy to find.

4) Know the rules of the game -- It's important to know what you can do, and what you can't. Without the owner authorizing me to do it, neither I nor my tenants could evict the NFH, who was essentially a squatter, paying no rent, no water or sewer bill, no gas bill, putting slugs in the communal washing machine. My tenant couldn't put the stuff the NFH had wrongly stored in my tenant's half of the shared garage out on the driveway, or in the dumpster -- that would have been illegal. We could, however, call the police to keep an eye on the place, and file lots of complaints about the bad behavior of the NFH. We could call Child Protective Services to have the mother investigated for leaving her minor child unsupervised for a week at a time. And with the power of attorney from the owner, I can file an unlawful detainer suit, which will eventually get her out for sure.

5) You can't always be nice -- Some people, like like the Neighbor from Hell, don't respond to nice. You can ask a Neighbor from Hell something nicely, and she'll either ignore you, or smile, say yes, and then ignore you. With these people, you have to be tough. That means using all the resources available to you -- veiled threats, contracts, police, Child Protective Services, the courts, whatever. (NLP would say, "the most flexible system always wins". And by trying everything, I am being flexible as hell.)

6) Talk to people in terms they'll understand -- This is actually a basic principle of NLP, phrased as "The meaning of communication is the response you get." I always took this to mean that if you didn't get the response you wanted from the words you chose, you should try different words.

That's part of it. Another part of communication is not your words, it's your actions. The NFH basically lives by working the system (Section 8 & disability payments for 5 years that I know of, even though she's capable of painting apartments for extra income). So I made sure that the information came from an authority figure (attorney), who said that if I even filed an unlawful detainer (i.e. eviction) lawsuit, it would follow her around forever. (Translation: you'll have a really hard time finding another apartment for the rest of your life.) Funny thing, the U-Haul truck made regular appearances right after that.

7) Be transparent -- that is, tell the truth, and tell it to everyone who needs hear it. This is one of the wonders of email. You can easily have a one to many conversation. You don't have to say the same thing over and over to keep everyone up to date, and you don't have to wonder who said what to whom, or when. When I email my tenant about what's going on, I often cc the property owner, the attorney and the police. Same thing when they email me. That way, everyone is on the same page, and we can all go forward together. In fact, we all begin to trust each other more, too.

8) Reach out to the community -- When I told a friend my saga of the NFH, she said, it sounds like bad custody battle. And she has a point. The custody problem is directly between the parents, but it affects the children, and anyone to whom those kids act out. A people problem is therefore a problem for the community. This is why Child Protective Services exist. It's why police, aka peace officers, exist. It's why the courts exist. They are all her to provide formal community solutions to community problems. Use them.

What's the difference between being scared & excited?

I made a 1 minute sales presentation this weekend. It's amazing how hard it is do it that fast! Anyway, right before I did it, I checked in with myself, and found that I was right on the line between scared and excited. So I wondered, what's the difference between fear and excitement.

It's very simple --if I have a positive expectation, then I'm excited. If I have a negative one, then I'm scared.

Try it yourself -- right now, think about something that's coming up that could be great -- or not. When you project a great outcome, how do you feel in your body? When you project a negative outcome, how do you feel? And which is the better way to go? Wouldn't you rather project a positive outcome and feel better?

And when you think of the Law of Attraction, which is that what you focus on, expands, wouldn't you rather stay positive? If you attract what you focus on, why wouldn't you focus on the positive?

The News Diet

A couple of weeks ago, my guides insisted I go on a 'news diet'. That is, I needed to avoid the news as much as possible, so that I could create what I choose in my life, and in my world, without allowing 'what is' to tyrannize my vision.

I've done that, with 2 results.

First, I'm much more peaceful. (You should try the news diet!)

Second, I've learned something:

When I 'look' at the future, I always 'see' that things will continue on, much as they've been going, with gradual shifts, rather than huge shocks (with the exception of weather-related ones). Now I understand why. It's because most people don't really follow the news in the (more or less obsessive) way I've been doing since the theft of the 2000 US Presidential election. That means they go along their usual way, assuming things will be the same, and so they continue to act the same, until something like the change in the price of gasoline intrudes. So things do stay more or less the same; change is generally gradual.

Belief creates reality -- expectation is a form of belief, so expectation creates reality. (Oh, right, the Law of Attraction, in mass form.)

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Or
Be Careful What You Ask For

You remember that old Disney cartoon, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, don’t you? Maybe you remember it better than I do, because all I remember is that the apprentice used the sorcerer’s tools, while not really knowing how, and made a BIG mess. Well, I’m feeling a bit like that sorcerer’s apprentice at the moment.

I’ve been working with a new, powerful manifesting tool I’ve channeled recently, based in the “Heart of Relationship” (see http://10minutesaday.blogspot.com/2006/09/web-of-creation.html for details on the Heart of Relationship). And though I’ve advised people for many years that they need to be complete when they ask for something, carefully considering all aspects of what they choose to manifest, I find I’ve been falling short myself! Here’s an example:

I choose to easily manifest a car which runs on vegetable oil. As I’m not a mechanic, I need to either buy some kind of a diesel car and pay someone to convert it (and there is no consensus on what are the best cars to convert), or buy one that someone else has converted. This is looking like quite a project!

First, it probably requires that I have the money for the car (yes, there are other ways, but let’s not quibble). I figure I can find one that I actually want to drive (a relatively recent Jetta TDI) for $15,000 (you can find ancient Mercedes converted for less, but I don’t want an old clunker), which means finding $15,000 so that I can sell my old car after I have purchased the new car. (I generally don’t buy depreciating assets, like cars, with credit. And I hate spending my savings, so I want money to “show up”.) So I do my process, saying “I choose to have $15,000 show up.” That was the complete statement.

A couple of weeks later, while I was out of town, my husband called me to say that there was a FedEx envelope from my investment house for me, and did I want him to open it? Well, I had no idea what this could be, as I hadn’t talked to my financial advisor in months, so yes, I did want him to open it. There was a check for $15,000! Normally, if I want them to send me my own money, I have to fax a request, which I obviously hadn’t done in this case. When I called to find out why I’d been sent a check, the advisor’s assistant could give me no reason, was suitably embarrassed and apologetic, and, of course, resolved the issue as though it never happened.

But I do know, on a deeper level, why I got that check — I got exactly what I asked for -- $15,000 showed up! Now I am being more specific — I choose that a NEW $15,000 show up to buy my veggie oil car!