Prosperity Project Day 26

Welcome, prosperous friends, to Day 26 of the Prosperity Project.

This morning, as I write this, I am back at home after a glorious week in a beautiful mountain hideaway.  The home we stayed in was much bigger than my everyday home, with far more creature comforts than I am accustomed to.  It would be easy to look around me this morning and see all of the ways in which this little house I live in is not quite good enough.  I could choose to focus on the fact that it is really tiny, and there is no beautiful room that is exclusively mine, where I can write undisturbed and take long afternoon naps.  I could also choose to focus on the fact that the kitchen is unfinished, and that although I live with a cabinet maker, I have no cabinets.  I could totally focus on the steamy Florida weather and compare it negatively to the crisp mountain air.  In short, if I wanted to, I could choose to be very discontented this morning.

But I'm not.  Sure, there is much that could be done to this little cottage to make it more livable, but improvements mean projects, and projects are a wonderful way to create memories at the same time as we create beauty together.  Sure, September in Florida is way too steamy for human comfort, and September this year seems to have bled, unwelcome, into October.  But in just a matter of weeks, the weather here will be dry and cool, and while many people are freezing and lamenting the ice and snow, I will be wintering in Florida.   I'm not discontented this morning because I made a choice a year ago to choose to have an attitude of grateful appreciation no matter what life may throw my way.

This week, I've been reading a book by Carolyn Myss, Invisible Acts of Power:  Personal Choices That Create Miracles, in which she describes the acts of service associated with, and motivated by, each of the seven main chakras.  In an earlier post, we talked about giving financial and creative support, which is an act of service powered by our second chakra.  The attitude of grateful appreciation of which I speak today is a sixth chakra act, the chakra often called the Third Eye and associated with wisdom.

Having an attitude of grateful appreciation is a choice; the normal human response is to whine and complain and to see everything that is wrong with our world.  We must actively choose to see our world with a grateful eye, and we must consciously cultivate a grateful attitude, particularly in the face of obstacles, sorrow, and pain.  Myss describes one man, Jack, who managed consistently to keep an attitude of grateful appreciation.  When asked how that was even possible, Jack explained:

"It's been easy for me to find something to appreciate every day.  I gave up expectations.  Tomorrow doesn't have to be better than today for me in order to have a good day.  I don't have to have all my dreams come true in order for me to decide my life is good.  I don't care if I don't drive a certain car or have everything I want.  I don't want that much.  So, it's easy to appreciate life.  I took the burden away from God that he had to provide everything for me so I could be happy.  Oddly enough, I'm happier now than when I lived possessed by having life turn out my way.  People ask me, 'How come you're so happy?' as if I'm on to something.  I just decided to choose to see good somehow in people and to appreciate what each day might have in store for me.  It makes for a better life."  

Like Jack, I choose to see my life as good, just as it is.  But that doesn't stop me from imagining something different for myself.  The trick is being able to visualize more while remaining contented with what is.  It's not that hard really; like Jack, we just need to decide that it will be so.

***
If you are reading this, I want to congratulate you for coming this far with me.  Some people have stopped reading these posts, thinking that we are only spending imaginary money here, and they are waiting for me to start writing clues again.  They don't realize that the clues have been cleverly hidden within the game itself.  So if you are here, you are the kind of person who will dig deep to find the clues you seek.  Good for you! 

So let's spend some money:

$26,000   My share of proceeds from the Living Gratitude Conference, a day-long event featuring speakers specializing in gratitude, appreciation, and the Law of Attraction.

$  2,500   Performing Arts Center building fund
$  5,000   Wealth Building Account (Total $90,000)
$18,500   Vacation Home (Total $97,500)

Looks like I'm easily going to reach my goals before the game ends.  How about you?
How will you spend your $26,000?

Prosperity Project Day 25

Greetings, and welcome to Day 25 of the Prosperity Project.  With just a few days to go in our experiment, we have the nice round sum of $25,000 to dispense with today.

Before we get to spending money, though, I'd like to ask you a question.  How much of the life you already have do you keep in storage?  Why is it there?  Do you not have enough space for all the stuff you have?  Are you saving some of it for a special occasion?  Do you have a lot of remnants from a prior life that you just aren't willing to part with?  The answer to that question may have a lot to do with why you are not yet attracting into your life the abundance you can see with your mind's eye. 

I used to have dreams in which I would find hidden rooms filled with stuff I didn't know I had.  Sometimes it was a house I owned; sometimes I was a guest in the house.  In those dreams I'm always filled with wonder at the beautiful things that I've found in the secret room.  In one busy dream, I had rented a house and found that the garage was crammed to the top with junk.  I spent the entire dream cleaning out that cluttered garage.  Sometimes I will dream that I am in a house I had dreamed of previously.  I'll wander through the house trying in vain to find rooms that had been right there during the last dream.  I'll show up at a house I recognize, and try to find my previously favorite room to sleep in for the night.  Sometimes I find it; most often it is gone, and it reminds me to take advantage of things while the taking is good.

I've heard that, in dreams, houses represent our consciousness and rooms represent different aspects of ourselves.  If we find rooms we didn't know existed, we are in the process of discovering untapped parts of ourselves.  I guess the night I spent cleaning out the garage I must have had a lot of junk to clear out of my own life.  Anyway, I've spent so much time dreaming about houses and rooms that I've had many years to think about this concept.  I've decided that dream rooms are not the only rooms that reflect our consciousness:  the rooms in our living space are also an excellent reflection of the current state of our selves. 

So again, I ask you: Do you keep a lot of your stuff in storage?  Are there parts of your house that you don't use at all, that are filled with a bunch of stored things?  Do you have junk drawers?  Junk rooms?  Are parts of your home left unfinished?  I would like to suggest that our lives will grow when we have become too big for the lives that we currently have.  As long as you are not fully using the life, the home, the stuff, that you have now, I'm thinking that more stuff cannot yet come to you.

So if you're really wanting a change, if you are serious about wanting to attract the things that you are writing about here on these pages, then go let some light and air into the dark places of your home.  Take stuff out of storage.  Play with your toys.  Give things away if you no longer have a use for them.  If you are storing things from your past, find a way to display them so you can see and use them every day.  Sleep on the good sheets.  Eat off your best china.  LIVE!!!

$25,000   Every day, I'm beginning to meet someone who has heard of my books.  I believe that even after this Prosperity Project ends, I will continue to attract money because I will continue to add value to the world with my writing,  and because I continue to gratefully use and appreciate all of the wonderful things that I already have.

$  2,500   Performing Arts Center building fund
$  5,000   Wealth Building Account (Total $85,000)
$17,500   Vacation Home Fund (Total $79,000)

Wow.  I feel really good about this.  When this run of money starts to wind down I will have saved $100,000 and will have bought a home in the mountains free and clear.  For right now, that is the wildest that my dreams get, so I'm contented with how this has turned out.

What about you?  How will you spend your $25,000 today?

Prosperity Project Day 24

Greetings, prosperous friends!  It is Day 24 of the Prosperity Project, and we are here to dispense with $24,000!

This past week I've been staying  in a gorgeous vacation home up in the Smokey Mountains.  I've thoroughly enjoyed playing with all the dishes, and towels, and linens, and tables, and lamps, and chairs, and couches, and beds, and pillows.  I've been like a little girl in a doll house.

Yesterday, I learned that the owner of this beautiful house (who is not here with us) sees it much differently.  To her, this house is kind of crappy.  The stuff in it is junk.  None of it is quite good enough.  I know people like that.  Because the stuff they can imagine is so much better than what they have, they think that what they have is junk.

I have a family member like that.  Everything she gets, she finds fault with it.  She complained of having no transportation, but now that she finally has a truck she hates it because all she can see are its faults.  After months of unemployment, she finally got a job which she now hates.  She wanted a different kind of job, and this one just isn't good enough.  Someone gave her a free cell phone because she couldn't afford to buy one of her own, and she hated it because it didn't have the features she really wanted.   She has the kind of attitude that makes you NOT want to give her things.  She wonders why she's so unhappy and dissatisfied with her life.  Hmmm, let's think ...

I like that we on the Prosperity Project all kept our original homes and lifestyles, because it shows that we are the kind of people who appreciate the value of what we already have.  Sure, there are more things that we could be, do, or have that would be nice.  But we are the kind of people who can readily see that what we have now is already very good.

No matter where we are on the road to manifesting our dreams, if we can look at what we already have with grateful appreciation, we will be sure to attract more good things.  When I get home from this trip, it will almost be tent weather back in Florida.  Although I'm not yet in a position to build myself a room, I can totally set up my huge tent in the backyard and make that my writer's den for the winter.  I'm learning that if we have things we should use them, not hoard them; so that tent is definitely getting used this year, and not just for my annual camping trip!

Let's see how the numbers work themselves out today:

$24,000   Motherpearl Enterprises is steadily raking in royalties from books and CDs!

$  2,500  God's Money to the Performing Arts Center building fund
$  5,000  Wealth Building Account (Total $80,000)
$16,500  Vacation Home Fund (Total $61,500)  Almost time to start picking a spot!

OK, it's your turn!  How will you spend your $24,000 today?