Chapter 09
My financial life
“Finance is part of the big 3
Health, Finance and Relationships”
Carol
PREFACE
My financial life as a young adult was a mess. There was little to no financial planning, and it was largely at the whim of my career at the time—the model agency. As the agency was grossly undercapitalized, so too was my financial life. I can’t say that it was enjoyable prioritizing everyone else above myself and still failing everyone else.
After I left the Model Agency, I went to work for an internationally recognized photographer and videographer. He was one of the highest paid and most respected photographers in the world at the time, and we photographed top fashion magazine covers, created TV commercials for some of the leading beauty brands in the world, and also produced music videos for A-list singers and bands. Here, I was paid an actual salary every two weeks. This was a significant difference and enabled me to pay my bills and live what many would consider a more normal life.
As I progressed through the corporate structure, I was generally able to get by; sometimes I was more fortunate—other times were more of a struggle. Overall, however, since leaving the model agency, I have been reasonably financially comfortable, and I am very grateful for that.
As I have come to better understand how my finances actually come into being, I am able to see the shifts that occur as my internal attitude changes and as I open myself up more fully. I don’t worry about money anymore, and I believe that I will have what I need when I need it.
PREMISE
While I was at the model agency, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t care if I was being untruthful about money, but rather that I did care. I cared about trying to keep myself safe, and I was always doing the highest and best that I could do, given what I believed was true. However, when I changed my mind—even if I never said a word about it—my outer world would begin to change too.
Every time that I’m interacting with somebody, my goal continues to be that I really want them to know that they aren’t guilty and that they haven’t ruined themselves. I must consistently think, How can I be of help? If I do that consistently, my finances tend to improve, as well as my life.
I can improve my financial life by diving deeper into the core of my being—where my intuition is—and discovering where I blame myself, then stopping that pattern, letting go of my guilt, and observing what shifts. If my finances are not where I want them to be, then I need to go internally to see what is being triggered, because cause and effect often feel closely connected. I need to consistently do this, and with that habit (consistency), my financial life improves because my finances are largely an outer reflection of how well I am doing this—letting go of guilt.
Because the world is a mirror, everything about my finances appears to relate to inner peace, and so the real engine that drives my finances has an internal origin—my internal attitude. To improve my internal attitude, the most important thing that I can do is be fully present and openhearted, as loving as I can, and be attending to the welfare of myself and everybody around me.
I must change my thinking and the focus of my attention, remembering that at any moment I’ve only got two things to choose between. I can choose between my own ego thinking—i.e., what can I do for my own self-promotion and protection—or I can choose to follow my intuition and allow myself to be guided internally, even if what I’m being guided to do doesn’t seem to make sense. Those two options are, in practice, the only two things that I ever choose between.
If I want to change an area of my life—like my finances—then I must do something to change, and the thing that I must do is to change my mind about something. With the change of thinking comes a change in my finances. These daily choices become daily changes, and actions speak louder than words.
I am always, in a sense, influencing the things that happen outside of me because I am contributing to what unfolds around me. The idea that things just randomly happen—that my finances are randomly just either good or bad and I don’t have anything to do with exactly why they are—doesn’t feel accurate to me. The implication that I just try to do my best to make the best of it also feels incomplete.
Instead, what I have in the world is closely connected to what I have put in front of me. My world is my mirror. It is, in many ways, a reflection of my thoughts and therefore my general state of mind. Everything within my world—including my finances—has a relationship to that internal state.
Letting go of guilt is job number one above everything else. Anything that I would say is on the good side of the ledger—the happiness, the safety, the finances, the satisfaction, etc.—is very often a result of the innocence that comes with letting go of guilt, and, of course, the opposite tends to be true as well.
At the same time, I recognize that there are periods in life where external events create real disruption. Legal matters, health issues, or sudden life changes can impact my finances in very direct and practical ways. In those moments, it’s not necessarily a reflection of failure in my thinking, but rather the reality of what I am moving through.
What still matters, however, is how I hold that experience internally. Even in the middle of disruption, I can return to a more grounded, open, and steady state of mind. In doing so, I am better able to move through the situation, make clearer decisions, and allow things to stabilize again over time.
So while my internal state strongly influences my financial life, I also allow for the reality that life can present challenges—and my role is not to judge those moments, but to navigate them with as much clarity and consistency as I can.
What is money anyway?
It is a tool for trade.
A medium of exchange.
It allows me to trade goods or services more easily.
It standardizes value.
It stores value.
Dollar bills do not have inherent worth—only what they represent has worth.
Money often flows to people who recognize that they are beloved and that they deserve it. It tends to flow to people who are generous with other people—not just by donating money to charity, but by being generous in their own loving acceptance of others.
Money represents other things that I can do; it represents access to experiences and, at times, ego-driven desires. It allows access to worldly things—there’s no doubt about that.
Money is a symbol of human productivity and achievement. Prosperity is not just physical cash, but certainly that is a part of what prosperity represents. Prosperity—and things flowing—can look like having what I need at the moment I need it, and this often connects back to my internal state of mind, not just wise fiscal planning. Therefore, if I do wise fiscal planning, that’s likely an effect and not the root cause, because the deeper cause tends to be my internal state of mind.
Money is a good thing—or certainly can be a good thing.
VISION
I see myself as living in an abundant universe, and today I live in the richest country and at a remarkably prosperous time. There is plenty of opportunity, and I believe I am capable of being a significant financial success, as I always have been in my own way. I will continue to create value for others, and I will treat money well and not abuse it. I will enjoy it, have the best of what life offers, and at the same time enrich other people’s lives.
My experience of the universe is as abundant as I allow it to be. If I feel guilty, it tends not to feel like an abundant universe, but if I recognize both my innocence and the innocence of everybody else—and continue moving along that path—then financial worry begins to fall away.
If people have money and it dwindles, it may not be so much that they abused money, but that they do not yet have the internal framework to sustain it. If their mindset remains rooted in scarcity, it can feel as though it slips through their hands.
Even if people believe they must invest wisely and be careful with their money—if they don’t have a sense of internal abundance, things can still go sideways: poor decisions, bad timing, or unexpected events. It can sometimes seem that without that underlying mindset, even strong financial strategies don’t hold. I may intellectually understand investing very well, but if I don’t have the internal foundation that supports prosperity, it can be difficult to maintain it over time.
Should I know precisely and with clarity how much money I want and need? As far as I can tell, probably not. It’s difficult, if not impossible, because I have no idea what will unfold in my life. So rather than trying to define an exact number, it feels more accurate to say that if I continue to let go of what blocks me internally and become more aligned with who I am, then I will have what I need when I need it.
Let’s say a hurricane comes through and destroys my house. Of course, I would need money for that—but I wouldn’t need it if the hurricane shifted slightly and missed me. Life is fluid like that.
So if I am asked today to decide how much money I will need for the rest of my life, not only would I not have the faintest idea, but I also don’t feel the need to know. I trust that whatever I need in any given moment will be there, even if I don’t know where or how it will come.
Should income far exceed expenses so that I may have more than I need and be able to share with others? Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. What I do believe is that as I continue to look deeper within myself, I will have what I need at any given time. That becomes more natural as I recognize that I am a valuable and worthwhile presence—that underlying sense of my own goodness and innocence supports everything else.
It’s great to be grateful for what I have, but I don’t feel the need to visualize money already sitting in the bank. The more I can acknowledge my own inherent worth, the more things tend to take care of themselves. In that sense, it becomes its own kind of security.
Of course, this is a process, not an event. As I continue to deepen my awareness and appreciation of who I am, things begin to fall into place more easily. If something came along and I suddenly needed a large amount of money, I trust it would come from somewhere, regardless of what I had planned or expected.
My life takes care of me when I allow it to do so. That doesn’t mean I sit back and do nothing—it means I continue to act, work, and make thoughtful decisions. But the underlying support of my life—the sense that I will have what I need—comes more from my internal state than from the amount of money in the bank. The money itself tends to be an effect, not the primary cause.
I see myself as being rich in experiences and relationships, as well as financially. I also want to teach my son, Edward, respect for money.
I visualize having the money I need to live comfortably, provide for my family, help my neighbor, and make a difference in the lives of others. I see myself letting go of the guilt from my time at the model agency, as well as the guilt of growing up without money. As that continues to happen, money tends to flow more easily into my life.
I am grateful for the money that I have. I try not to spend frivolously, but I also do not worry about meeting my financial obligations, because I trust that they will be met.
PURPOSE
My purpose in life is to love my neighbor and myself. My purpose is to love and to remember that love and connection are the key. My financial purpose is not about having the most money that I can obtain—because that has a more worldly sense to it—but rather my purpose in life is releasing guilt, and in doing so, it allows for more love. The natural result of more love tends to be better finances. The purpose, then, is a higher Quality of Life—money is simply the result. My purpose is to follow my intuition, release guilt, and monitor my own thinking so that it becomes more loving and more inclusive.
So why do I want better finances? It can help all the other categories. Obviously, at the time-and-space level, it is a medium of exchange, and if I’m going to live comfortably, then I do need a medium of exchange—there’s no doubt about that.
This is not just my financial purpose, but in many ways reflects my purpose overall, because my highest Quality of Life is closely tied to my sense of happiness and my internal sense of quiet, innocence, and deserving. As that strengthens, it naturally supports a higher Quality of Life. There are many people who have a lot of money and who are not happy.
If I think money is going to make me happy, then I likely need to go back to the drawing board, because I tend to have the amount of money that aligns with my life as it is. It might be X amount; it might be five times X amount—and it will vary widely from person to person.
The underlying idea is that I play a central role in shaping my own sense of self, and the more guilt that I let go of, the more I begin to see things differently. Yes, I have made a lot of mistakes, but I have never truly touched the innocence of my own being. And the more that becomes anchored in me, the more I may not know exactly where my income will come from, but I begin to trust that it will be there. In that sense, my own innocent nature feels like the foundation of my prosperity.
Of course, it’s not that I must make myself into an innocent, loving being, but rather that I continue to recognize that this is what I already am, and I work to let go of anything that blocks my awareness of that.
Why do I want more money? It can help in all eleven other categories from this Lifebook. It can provide nutritious food, support my emotional life by enabling meaningful experiences, and allow me to do things that I enjoy. For example, my boat—money enabled me to buy and renovate it, and I enjoy spending time on the water. It can support my love life and my relationship with Jennifer, as we are able to travel and share experiences together. It can support the other categories as well, but it does not fix them.
Money also has a benevolent role in that, as I provide value for others, I can contribute to making their lives better. I have a desire to do good, and money is a tool that can support that goal. As I let go of guilt, many areas of my life tend to improve, including my ability to have and experience things that I otherwise might not. It provides a greater sense of freedom—freedom to do what I want, where I want, and how I want. It can increase my ability to create and to help other people.
STRATEGY
My goal continues to be that every time I’m interacting with somebody, I want them to know that they aren’t guilty and that they haven’t ruined themselves. I must consistently think, “How can I be of help?” If I consistently do that, then my finances tend to improve, as well as my life.
In practice, this looks like:
- noticing when I am reacting from fear or self-protection
- pausing and asking how I can be helpful instead
- returning to a more open and grounded state before acting
- making decisions from that place rather than from pressure
My strategy to improve my financial life is to dive deeper into the core of my being—where my intuition is—to discover where I blame myself and stop blaming myself, allowing me to let go of guilt. If my finances are not where I want them to be, then I need to go internally to see what is being triggered, because cause and effect often feel closely connected. I need to consistently do this, and as I build that consistency, my financial life improves because my finances are largely an outer reflection of how well I am letting go of guilt.
To improve my finances, I must improve my internal attitude, and the most important thing that I can do to improve my internal attitude is to be fully present and openhearted, as loving as I can, and attentive to the welfare of myself and everybody around me.
The idea that having good finances or poor finances just randomly happens, and that I don’t have anything to do with why they happen, doesn’t feel accurate to me. The idea that I should just try to do my best to make the best of it also feels incomplete.
What I have in the world, including my finances, is closely connected to what I have put in front of myself. My world is my mirror. It is, in many ways, a reflection of my thoughts and therefore my general state of mind. Everything in my world—including my finances, whether good or bad—has a relationship to that internal state.
MY FINANCIAL STRATEGY
Everything in the universe appears to operate through cause and effect—things tend to happen for a reason. Wealth can be understood as the effect of certain patterns and actions. If I do the things that create wealth—change my thinking, let go of guilt, and improve my internal attitude—then I am much more likely to create wealth. If I don’t, I likely won’t.
In a practical sense, my financial strategy includes:
paying attention to my internal state before making decisions
letting go of self-blame when it arises
acting in ways that create value for others
making thoughtful financial decisions without fear driving them
People often become wealthy because they decide to move in that direction, and they begin doing the kinds of things that support that outcome. Others may struggle financially because they haven’t yet moved into that pattern of thinking and action. Of course, I must make decisions similar to those who are financially successful, but beyond that, I take action—investing, building, creating. It’s not purely intellectual, but it’s not devoid of thought either. Those decisions tend to rest on a growing sense of my own worth, innocence, and value. I make better decisions when I recognize that I am a valuable presence and have a right to be here.
The sense of well-being here (in the USA) includes a certain level of financial stability, and financial planners often suggest expanding one’s time horizon as far as possible. But how can I truly know what my life circumstances will be five, ten, or fifteen years from now? As far as I can tell, I don’t need to know. What matters most is being present today and doing the very best I can in my interactions and in my thinking. When I do that, things tend to unfold as they need to.
If, on a daily basis, I am inclined to be helpful—to myself and to others—then I can begin to trust that what I need over time will be there. I may not know what I will be doing in five years or how it will occur, but financial improvement can follow as a natural result of shifting my thinking. It becomes less something to worry about and more something that unfolds.
As my internal state becomes more grounded, less reactive, and more open, I tend to make clearer decisions, respond more thoughtfully to opportunities, and interact with others in a way that creates more value. Over time, those shifts begin to reflect outwardly.
It’s not that money suddenly appears out of nowhere, but rather that my relationship with it changes. I’m less driven by fear or urgency and more able to act with clarity and consistency. That alone can influence the kinds of choices I make—how I work, how I relate to others, and how I handle opportunities as they arise.
Because of that, financial improvement feels less like something I have to force or chase, and more like something that develops over time as a result of how I’m showing up. It becomes less something to worry about or control, and more something that unfolds as I continue to stay aligned, present, and engaged with what’s in front of me.
This doesn’t mean there won’t be challenges or periods of strain, but even within those periods, I can still return to a more steady internal state. From that place, I am better able to navigate what’s in front of me and allow improvement to occur gradually rather than trying to force it all at once.
There is also an element of patience in this process. The shift in my thinking does not always produce immediate external results, and there can be periods where nothing appears to be changing at all. In those moments, it becomes even more important not to fall back into fear or doubt, but to remain consistent in how I am thinking and acting.
What I am doing internally is not always visible right away, but it is still shaping how I respond, how I make decisions, and how I move through opportunities over time. Because of that, I don’t measure progress only by immediate financial results, but also by the stability of my thinking and the consistency of my actions.
In that sense, financial improvement is not something I force into existence, but something I allow to develop over time as I continue to show up in a more grounded and aligned way—making decisions with clarity, responding rather than reacting, and staying consistent in how I approach what’s in front of me.
The more I can stay steady—especially when results are not immediate—the more I support that process unfolding in a natural and sustainable way
Financial advisors often suggest that:
“The poorest people in our society are those people with the shortest time horizon—they think only in terms of today… Their behavior often leads to financial problems, debt, and poverty.”
They also say:
“Building wealth takes time and requires discipline. Short-term sacrifice is often necessary for long-term security… People begin to improve financially when they begin thinking long term.”
There is value in this perspective. However, life doesn’t always require me to sacrifice the present in order to secure the future. If I don’t have what I need now, it may be more useful to look inward at my current state of mind rather than only at my investment strategy.
While it can be helpful to think long term—investing, planning, building—I cannot think only long term. I also need to remain grounded in what my purpose is today. My financial life is influenced not just by long-term planning, but by where my mind and attitude are right now. I can plan as much as I want, but if I am not in a good place internally, those plans may not unfold as expected. Because of that, I focus on developing an inner state that supports success.
Financial advisors also say:
“Financial freedom comes to the person who saves 10 percent or more of what they make over time.”
There is value in that advice. At the same time, if I am internally misaligned, simply saving money may not lead to true financial freedom—or freedom in any sense. So while having a plan is important, it is equally important to develop a mindset that supports abundance. That includes recognizing my own worth and that I am not here to be punished.
Living comfortably will vary from person to person, but living in a way that feels safe, supportive, and aligned with who I am feels like something I am meant to experience. That outward experience tends to reflect an inner recognition of being valued, innocent, and whole.
Financial freedom does not live only in the spread between income and expenses. It is also connected to how I relate to myself and others. That, more than anything, seems to be where it begins.
Don’t Lose Money
Financial independence is more accessible today than at any time in history. We live in a time of significant opportunity and abundance. These opportunities, combined with an improved internal attitude, can support financial success. I believe I am capable of creating that success and continuing to grow.
Financial advisors often say:
“The time it took to earn money is irreplaceable. Losing it means losing a part of your life. Holding onto money creates security.”
There is some truth in being careful with money. At the same time, the idea that simply holding onto it guarantees safety may need to be reexamined. Responsible saving matters—but equating control with security may come more from fear than from clarity.
They also say:
“Always invest wisely. If you spend money, it’s gone. If you invest it, it can grow.”
Again, there is value in this. But the deeper principle I’ve come to understand is that what I give tends to expand in different ways. That doesn’t mean giving everything away, but it does challenge the idea that holding tightly is the only path to stability.
There is also a long-standing belief that giving equals losing. If I give you something, I no longer have it. But shifting that belief—seeing giving as something that can create connection and even expansion—changes the experience entirely.
That doesn’t mean I give away everything I own. It means that when I give appropriately, in alignment with what feels right, it can benefit everyone involved. It’s about moving beyond the idea that giving equals loss.
If I don’t have my head and heart in a good place, I can still undermine my finances in unexpected ways. Because of that, my focus remains internal.
The deeper cause of everything appears to be internal. My focus is on following my intuition and guidance, even when it doesn’t align with conventional wisdom. At times, that guidance may lead me in a direction that doesn’t seem logical from the outside—but for me, it can turn out to be exactly right. :
