This article reveals the tip of a significant iceberg.
Icebergs are huge chunks of ice, shaped like a pyramid. The tip of that pyramid shows above the water level, the rest of the iceberg is underwater wreaking havoc.
The other way to illustrate this is by looking at a duck… calm, collected, smooth… but under the water level the legs of the duck work feverishly.
With most things in life, the invisible part, what is under the water level is what works against you, unless you bring awareness to it.
Accomplishing any meaningful purpose, including money goals, is blocked by these gatekeepers. These are beliefs, your own, your inherited beliefs, societal agreements, parental suggestions, stuff that isn’t spelled out anywhere, and yet it seems binding, it seems how the world works…
One type of these hidden blockages is agreements that were never made.
This distinction earned me, half of what I paid the $2400 tuition for, when I did the Partnership Program.
The other was the distinction that you live in a world of your own design.
It has since cleared up 50% of what kept me stuck, miserable, and a victim. So please pay attention and allow this distinction to make as much difference for you as it has made for me. Without having to pay the $2400 and shuffle off to Los Angeles six times, pay for that trip, hotels, hotel meals… arrrgh. Please!?
My personal, tragic example is this: I had something bad happen to me at the age of 3 and a half.
When I got taken back to my mother, she turned away in disgust and said: “You are a whore.”
I didn’t know what whore meant, but I knew it was something bad. and I also knew it had something to do with money. I had heard that word in one context only: the daughter of the family that lived in the basement apartment, expensively dressed, thin, beautiful… aha… I am not supposed to be like that.
Result: I dress as if I didn’t have money. Even if I have some nice clothes, I don’t wear them. I am always on the verge of poverty.
Once I reviewed that “agreement” that never took place, I was free to renegotiate the agreement I made, one-sided, and have been sticking by it. I am planning to negotiate a raise of what I consider poverty, until I find out what is blocking my way from being truly prosperous… I am excited and curious.
What does this mean to you? How do you find your own hidden blockages? How do you get unstuck?
Other agreements that I have distinguished that never happened: parents never promised to take care of you. They never promised that when you get in trouble, they will bail you out. They didn’t even agree to feed you or clothe you… They definitely did not agree that they will love you.
The world never agreed to be fair. The marketplace didn’t agree to buy the higher value product (that happens to be yours) or even to treat you fairly,
Most things that we assume were promised were never agreed to are hidden blockages… for the simple reason because they never came up, no one has ever requested them, so no one had to say yes or no.
Whether it is you that others think should deliver on the agreements you never made, or others, making agreements is a good thing, and unmaking agreements that either are assumed or should not have happened is your accountability if you want to live a life where there is more in the visible realm than in the hidden, murky world of assumptions, guilt, suppression, resentment, and uneasy feelings.
Once you take an inventory of the agreements and bring them from the assumed to the realm of reality, you will be able to move with a lot of ease and grace, in all areas of life, including your finances.
In other disciplines these agreements are called beliefs
In other disciplines these agreements are called beliefs, but I see that this is a misnomer: you have no power in changing beliefs, but all the power in changing agreements.
One of the areas you can start working on changing the agreements by making them is meeting others expectations. And the next: meeting your own expectation of yourself.
Both will reveal a lot of mischief, and a lot of what keeps you bound with invisible but very real ropes.
Now get cracking.
Some of my students have started to do the five-questions exercise, and are starting to see some of the ways they are delusional, misguided, mistaken, and can see that the exercise is a great opportunity to remove some of the discrepancies between reality and your map of reality.
