Your state is powerful!

Um, what?

Let me explain:

If you’ve been into personal development for a minute, you know how much your state – as in state of mind – matters to your success.

Have you ever thought about the state that’s needed to create a successful budget?

I hear so many complaints from people that budgets don’t work. Oh, but they do.

These folks are missing a key component of budgeting – the energy state that they were in while creating the budget.

In order for a budget to work, the energy behind its creation needs to match how you want to feel when you think about it, engage with it, and spend according to it.

If you create a budget while resisting budgeting, your budget will resonate with the energy or resistance. That’s why it feels like it doesn’t work.

If you’re in a state of success – whatever the feeling of success is to you – while creating a budget, you will feel successful when sticking with your budget.

In this video, I suggest a ritual to help you get into your best budgeting state.

Happy budgeting!

Transcript: A budget only works if it represents you well. It can’t just be a list of numbers that you feel trapped by. It has to truly resonate with you. Resonate with your values, with your passions, and what’s fun for you! All of it. It represents your deeply held desires as well as some of your shallow ones. I help people spend in alignment with their values, not ego, but we still need a little room for the ego. So you need to be able to look at your budget and feel a giant “yes” reverberate through you because it’s basically you spelled out in numbers. This makes you excited to stick with the spending plan. You’ll see that I used budget and spending plan interchangeably. Your budget makes life easier because you makee the big decisions once, at the beginning of the year when you create your budget, and you spend the rest of the year happy to see things through with the plan.

This kind of budget isn’t just haphazardly thrown together on a stressful Tuesday afternoon. You have to be in a good mental, emotional, and even spiritual place to create a budget that hits the right way. That’s why I recommend doing a little ritual every year, just before you sit down to create your new budget.

This can take hours or it can take minutes. It’s as long as you need to get into a calm, grounded, grateful, joyful state. Because the energy that you bring to the creation of your budget, will be the same energy that you experience when you live by it. We want to get you into your values and highest self, and disconnected from your ego as best we can.

There are two parts to this, in the first one, I recommend that you do things like

Meditating
Walking in nature
Writing a gratitude list
Listen to music that puts you in a feel good state.
Watch a positive movie that makes you feel inspired and hopeful. My personal favorite for this is “Happy” by Tom Shadyac – the guy who brought us the epic Ace Ventura movies.
Contemplate what gives you meaning, fulfillment, and joy.
Contemplate what you would like your upcoming year to look like

Now that you’re in this state, you’re going to make some lists about habits that are known to increase happiness. These habits are connection with people, contribution to community and world, personal growth and development, physical movement, pursuing passions, and being in nature.

List the activities you wish to do often
List the kinds of events you would like to attend or host
List the ways you would like to contribute to your family, community, and/or world in the new year
List the ways you would like to move your body (ie. exercise) in this year
List the ways that you would like to learn, grow, and expand in the new year, and what activities you’ll do to foster that.
List ways that you can easily and regularly spend time in nature

Now that you’re in the best state mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, you are ready to create a budget that you absolutely love and adore.

If this is your first time creating a values-based budget, and you need some help with budget categories, be sure to watch my video on the budget categories you need.

And for a deeper explanation of the ritual, check out my book, S.A.V.E. Yourself, Develop the Financial Fitness to Spend in Alignment with your Values, not Ego. The link to purchase the book is in the description.

Catch you soon!