How do I feel abundant when I’m broke?

This is one of the most common questions I receive, and it’s a good one! You’ve heard from many teachers the importance of rooting yourself in gratitude, but I have one more tip: Never, and I mean NEVER, sacrifice these three things no matter how broke you get:

1) The amount of food you keep in your house, and the quality of the food you eat. Okay, if you used to spend hundreds of dollars a week for premium organic produce and meats, you may not be able to sustain that lifestyle. But if you subsist on processed foods, you will soon feel incredibly poor. Eating and nutrition is a basic human need. You also eat at least three times a day! Do you really want to be reminded three times a day that you can’t afford the basics in life?

2) Always pay yourself enough money before you pay others so that you can have social interaction. This doesn’t have to be a lot of money, but you need to leave enough money in your wallet so that you can get out into the world and live. This could be a weekly movie, coffee or lemonade with a friend or whatever inexpensive outing is important to you.

3) Never treat your surroundings like they are temporary. If you’re not in your ideal apartment or house, act like it’s your dream place. Decorate it, settle in and make it a pleasant place to call home.

These things are the basics of life: food, friendship, and shelter. If you see them slip away, your mind will start to play with you and you’ll fuel your worries and fears.

Here’s one more tip:
Never allow your bank account to go below a certain pre-ordained threshold. For me, this is $100. No matter how unsettling my financial situation used to be, as long as I had $100 in my checking account an $50 in my wallet, I felt at ease about money.

This is a basic rule of valuing yourself. It also allows for mistakes in your check register. I can’t tell you how many people I meet who waste hundreds and even thousands of dollars a year in overdraft charges because they didn’t take this very simple precaution. And there’s nothing like a bounced check to remind you how broke you are and play with your mind.

In creating a better financial reality, these tips will really help you sustain what you need on the inside even if your outside isn’t quite where you’d like it to be … yet.

1. james says:

   February 7, 2010 at 1:26 pm

   thanks for this posting. unfortunitly this speaks to my life at the moment.

   I am the co-leader of a Law Of Attraction Meet up Group & we are now focusing on making the L of A work for the members.

   This suggestion on changing one’s mind focus is great.

   James