We live in a world where everything is based around monetary values. And when we talk of wanting to live a wealthy life and we tend to link this to money in so much as if I have enough money to do all the things I want to do … then I’ll be happy.

Yes, a wealthy life does include a money element as you do have to live. But there are people out there telling you to visualize money arriving through your mailbox. Or sit back and imagine bank notes raining down on you. And recite an affirmation along with this to make it seem real.

Unfortunately that’s a very random approach to wealth, because if you just believe the universe is going to bless you and make you wealthy, you’re basically not sowing first. You’re trying to reap without sowing. That’s what you’re doing if you are imagining money arriving without your taking the necessary actions for it to arrive.

I love the definition that ‘wealth is the ability to get what you value by being of service to others’.

And did you notice that I didn’t say ‘money’? The reason I’m pointing this out is that some people have the idea that wealth is just having money. Let’s look at it this way. If for instance, you get a job and earn £500,000 a year, most people will be happy with that. But what if your highest priority was your family life and bringing up your children and your job is taking up six days a week and most evenings. Would that be wealthy for you?

It wouldn’t be wealth, it would be a real detriment because for you wealth is raising your children and having that family experience.

So on the other hand, if someone wasn’t that concerned about family life but they had a complete desire to build monetary wealth, then if they were able to have a job like that, they’d be very happy. It wouldn’t bother them.

So, wealth is based on what you value.

Now, here’s the key and remember this. You’ll never build wealth until wealth aligns with your true values. You’ll never build wealth, meaning you’ll never get the thing that you want, be it money or relationships or whatever else, until that thing that you want is in alignment with your current value system.

Wealth comes from the Latin root for “well-being,” it’s complete being, it’s one being.

The way to build a wealthy life is to start by identifying your true values and how you can use these in a way that serves others. This in turn will bring in the monetary aspect that will allow you to lead your wealthy life doing what you love.

Start by building every area of your well-being including relationships, health, fitness, social, dietary, money … and start to increase your overall well-being.

Article by Wendy Howard, Spirit of Venus
www.spiritofvenus.co.uk & www.grow-training.com

What do you do when you motivation to make changes for yourself has gone? Perhaps you’re in a place where you just feel as if life is just too heavy and there’s no point, and nothing really going on that will change your life and your business, your career or your job is no longer fulfilling.

What can you do to become motivated and to take some action that will have a positive effect on your happiness, because after all, happiness, is key to life isn’t it?

The first thing really is to find out why you’re de-motivated in the first place is a good enough place to start. Is it that you lack motivation, which is one thing, or is it that you are actually de-motivated, which is another thing, and the two are different.

So to analyse why it is you’re in that place, is a great place to start, and, if you can’t do it for yourself, then get a coach or a mentor or a buddy to work out why. Because there is a reason for it, it’s not just a state of play as it were, there is a reason why you are feeling de-motivated and, once you’ve then started to understand why, then with that knowledge you’re better placed to be able to do something about it.

And the piece about nothing really changes in my life, that’s a belief …… and the great thing about beliefs, is that they can change. Beliefs aren’t hard wires, they’re learned and, if you have a belief like that, which we would term ‘limiting belief’, That limiting belief can be changed and that’s really exciting, because when you start to recognize that, then the motivation shifts straight away before you’ve even looked at what is causing the de-motivation. Simply changing the beliefs starts the whole re-energizing process.

A great piece of research which was done by a gentleman called Victor Frankel, during the Second World War, and he was incarcerated in Auschwitz and Dachau for a number of years, and I think he was an Austrian psychologist, and as such, he observed his fellow prisoner of wars. And what he recognized was that their behaviour fell into one of two ways. He recognized that some people believed that they were never going to be repatriated, they had no control at all, and they felt as though they could no nothing. And so they basically turned and faced the wall. They didn’t do anything, they didn’t speak to other people, they did nothing.They’d given up.

And the other attitude was, I don’t know if and when I’m going to be repatriated, but it’s not going to stop me doing what I want to do. My captors may have taken all my physical liberty away, but what they cannot take away is my attitude. I can choose my attitude, so if I choose to be defiant, or choose to feel positive, then that feels good for me, that gives me control. It’s a choice.

And so this second group of people kept socializing, they kept themselves fit and healthy, they were exercising a lot of the time, their whole demeanour was completely different, and they looked physically better and more mentally alert than the other people with the negative attitude.

So, what he went on to do was develop a theory that people need purpose in their life, they need to have a direction, they need a way of validating who they are.

So start by asking yourself what’s your purpose? In a sense, why are you here? There are a lot of exercises to help you do this but of course too long to incorporate in here. However, understanding that having a purpose is a really important thing to do, not necessarily very easy, but it can be done.

The next thing to do is to look at your goals: do you have goals? You hear about goal-setting all the time, but how many people really do have goals? And there was that fascinating piece of research some years ago by Harvard University where students were asked if they had set goals after they left university, and particularly longer term goals such as where do you want to be in five years, and ten years time. And they found that only a few people had made any goals. And only 3% had written down clear goals. And, when these people were accessed again in 10 years further down the road, it was only that 3% that really showed any kind of success level. Infact, it was shown that these people were earning over ten times more than all the other students in the group put together. That’s awesome!

So this demonstrates that we all need goals and if we write them down and get them clearly on paper – we stand a much greater chance of materialising them.

Also it must be recognised that you may be one of those persons who isn’t motivated and energised by an end product, which you would call a goal. You may be more energized by the journey to get to the goal, and that requires another type of developmental model. However, knowing where you’re going is really most important, and sometimes you may be encouraged to develop really big goals, which can feel overwhelming and so what you find is that chunking it down into bite-sized chunks is really helpful. So you have the stepping stones to reach the bigger goals.
And, if you can break a bigger goal down into these small chunks, this can become more manageable and then you will get a sense of “I can do this”. And once you’ve achieved success there, then you can look at the next step. You can choose to have a success there and then and your motivation will go up and you will start to feel happier about things.

So start today. Identify where you’re not motivated. Explore why. Check out your attitude. Challenge some of those limiting beliefs. Start setting positive and achievable goals.

Article by: Wendy Howard, www.spiritofvenus.co.uk

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