Practicing prosperity and making wise real estate decisions is a lifelong process.

And I’m learning and evolving right along with you!

Here are some guides to illuminate your path, featuring the lessons I’ve learned along the way.  I’ve already paid the tuition for them – so I hope as many of you can get as much additional mileage out of them as possible.

REThink Real Estate Guides

Okay – so we’ve all been around this block a few times, by now. We’ve had a couple of years to do the resolution thing, and by now we all know what doesn’t work – especially since about 88 percent of resolutions fail. If you want to read about how to set S.M.A.R.T. goals (specific, measurable, and so forth), google it. It’s good advice, but we’ve certainly all heard it before, and even SMARTly set resolutions still fail. We’ve gotta go deeper, ladies, and rethink this whole resolution-setting thing in order to get the most mileage possible out of the year-end clean slate and motivational recharge.

Knowing what doesn’t work is easy. The tougher task is to set resolutions that we will execute. So we started at the very beginning: by renaming them from resolutions to deliverables. Click here to see why, but the long and the short of it is that the connotation of the very word resolutions indicates something so challenging or against your natural inclinations that you must “resolve” yourself to do it. By contrast, the concept of ‘deliverables’ indicates more of a task that you will execute as a matter of course – just like all the other tasks you get done every single day. {I also like ‘deliverable’ for the image of delivering yourself a gift every time to tick one of your tasks off the list!}

Here are the 10 items I have found to be critical in setting New Year’s deliverables that are highly likely to actually get done:

1. Screw realistic. Check it out – dreams, visions, plans – this stuff is free. And if you don’t go there mentally, you’ll certainly never get there in real life. So you might as well think big. Lots of things that fabulous women have achieved aren’t realistic. Is Oprah’s business realistic? Martha’s? Even Rachael’s or any of the 100 or so American women who have 100 million dollar-plus businesses? Nope. Not realistic. Someone else’s realistic might be your mediocre. Don’t let their mental limitations limit you. Goals are never unrealistic, although time frames can be – be compassionate with your expectancies of how fast you can dominate the world in business, etc. {Note to self – take own advice, here. Moving on.}

2. Be the architect of your success. In Nudge, the authors’ entire thesis is that we can design choice architecture for all sorts of decision-making contexts to make it more likely that the decision-maker will make an optimal decision.

If this sounds ‘out there’ to you, think of the guy who first came up with the brilliant idea to put the candy right at an 8-year-old’s eye level at the grocery store checkout counter. That, my friends, is strategic choice architecture.

There’s no reason you can’t do this for yourself, with your 2010 deliverables. You know yourself, and we can draw on that knowledge plus some wisdom about human/smart woman psychology to set up a structure for your deliverables that is likely to work for you:

* Write them down.
* Calendar the time you need to work on them.
* Set yourself deadlines for various tasks, then back into monthly and weekly (even daily) timelines and mini-deliverables for accomplishing them. Break it down.
* Spread them out throughout the year – for the majority of people, trying to make a large number of changes at once simply won’t work. {But you know yourself – I for one do better with wholesale massive changes at once. It’s almost like just deciding who I’m going to be on certain issues and just letting multiple changes flow from that identity.}
* Set up an accountability method, in advance. Get a coach. Pick an accountability partner (someone at least as motivated as you). Calendar check-ins at various points on your timeline. Set up rewards if you achieve certain benchmarks by certain dates.
* Set up soothing alternatives/distractions in advance. Spending, debting, checking out (mentally) during money conversations – these behaviors can be soothing or help us avoid discomfort. It’s tough to just get rid of a pattern – it’s much easier to replace it with another pattern. To avoid resorting to them in tense situations, set up your alternative behaviors in advance.

3. No ‘should’s. Someone else says you “should” do thus and so in 2010? Fabulous! Politely thank them for their opinion, but unless it’s also something you both think you should do and want passionately to do, do not put it on your list.

4. Maximize tasks and minimize behavior/habit change targets. Even the most super of superwomen only has so much willpower or whatever you want to call the mojo it requires to change ingrained habits and behavior patterns. Spread it too thin, and you’ll change nothing. Weight your deliverables list heavier with tasks, and pick a choice few ‘bigger’ habits you want to trade out for new prosperity and wellness practices.

5. Taste your ‘after.’ Only set deliverables that you can vividly picture, imagine, taste/touch/smell the way your new-and-improved life and experiences will be after you have delivered the deliverable to yourself. You’ll need this level of passion and imagery to carry you all the way through those tasks you don’t really look forward to doing, or through the discomfort of changing behaviors, even those you are really ready to release. Remember, most major endeavors aren’t worth the effort or the precious moments of breath of your life unless you can muster up wholehearted enthusiasm for doing them.

.

6. Put Divine Order to work for you. – Prosperity cannot flourish where there is chaos & confusion. Set deliverables around creating order, clarity and efficient management of your personal finances. Jesus made the disciples count the members of the crowd before he multiplied the loaves and fishes. I’m just saying – order is Divine. I’m also still working on this one! If you’re a paper person, create a small file for your prosperity area. If you’re a computer person, have a desktop file or file in Google Docs (which has a spreadsheet function). Either way, take the free teleclass at Conscious Bookkeeping – my buddy Bari over there will have you really understanding how orderly (and preferably digital) books are the link between your heavenly aspirations and manifesting them on earth. Does that sound crazy – maybe, but she’s really convincing. Check it out.

7. Ritualize your deliverables and make ‘em yummy. Light candles, buy cute office supplies (who among you doesn’t love good stationery?!), build in yummy treats (my friend Bari over at Conscious Bookkeeping uses organic dark chocolate – mmmm) and do other things to create positive associations with reconciling your checking account or setting your bills up for Autopay, etc. Make new rituals – rethink dreaded tasks as yummy opportunities for creating clarity.

8. Watch your words. Refuse to allow your tongue voice doubts – even if you have them. That can start you down the path of spinning, and be your undoing. Instead, affirm your deliverables and transformations for 2010, speaking about them as though they are already done. This is really critical – speak power over your situation. Don’t be self-deprecating, sarcastically funny girl this time, around these things. In your verbal universe, allow no other possibility than that your deliverables are delivered.

9. Manage your energy. Plan your time, sure. But also be smart wise about how you manage your energy. Get the sleep you need. Fuel your energetic body with whole, real, nourishing foods. Work out and/or practice yoga – whatever works for you. And let the energy drainers, haters and saboteurs ‘opt-out’ of your experience. Release the relationships that exhaust you or otherwise make it tougher for you to be all that you can be. Yes, I just quoted the Army slogan. Couldn’t help it – it is a good slogan.

10. If you get stuck,{symptoms: you fall asleep every time you start working on your stuff, you can’t seem to find the time to sit down and write your deliverables up, or your deliverables list ends up being 15 items you’ve been trying to get done for 15 years) visit the REThink Real Estate Guide to Getting Unstuck.

1. Read If the Buddha Got Stuck: A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path by Charlotte Kasl. {Actually, read everything Charlotte Kasl has ever written that is relevant in any way to your life.}

It’s in my personal Ignition Kit (keep reading) and it’s a reference book you can get a jolt out of whether you’ve got a hour-long spell of writer’s block or you’ve been stuck in a hateful career for 20 years. It’s a lovely, guilt-free and super-effective Zen approach to self-activation. I’ve been working this book for so long that I’m certain the rest of the list draws at least some inspiration from there.

2. Explore your payoffs. As a human being, you don’t do things (or refrain from doing them) for no reason. Get to the bottom of what you’re getting out of staying stuck. Does it let you avoid growing all the way up? Do you get to be ‘right’ as against your partner’s or parent’s ‘wrongness’? Do you get to be the sad story, get attention, not have to be fully aware of things that hurt? There’s something in it for you – figure out what it is, and you can do the really grown up work of deciding what’s really more important to you: this payoff or the ‘after’ picture of your life that you envision.

3. Know the difference between floundering and stuck. If you think you’re stuck, but you’re working hard and the various things you’re trying just don’t seem to be working, consider that you might actually be floundering, as opposed to stuck. If you’re in motion, doing the work, staying awake, and trying to manifest the vision, you might not actually be stuck. Give yourself a break, and try to work with this image: vision without attachment to that vision, as it will undoubtedly change over time.

Living an awakened, prosperous life on this planet requires the ability to flex around events beyond your control and stay able to course-correct when circumstances change without railing at the unfairness of every broken plan. And ask any so-called “overnight success,” world-domination (if that’s your gig) doesn’t happen overnight – even when you really want it to.

4. Make a homemade ‘Ignition Kit’ – consciously search out reading materials, practices and other tools, experiment with them, and cherry-pick the ones that work for you. Put together a condensed ‘kit’ of your personal favorites, and have it ‘live’ wherever you most often feel the most deeply stuck. Your desk, your bedside table, your car, your meditation spot – all three – your gym bag, whatever works.

You can make an Ignition Kit in a variety of flavors – or even do a combination of the following (I have several, in different spots):

1. a pile of books
2. a document of affirmations, quotes and excerpts
3. a list of websites you can count on for inspiration
4. how-they-did-it articles about businesswomen or investors you admire
5. a friend to call
6. strategies
7. meditations – still or moving (sun salutations, etc.)

5. Practice gratitude in your most stuck moments – it’s the best distractor from mental spinning and chatter. A lot of the times, when I’m stuck, it’s because my focus has been thrown off by my spinning on my current problems or situations.

One cure for the mental chatter is yoga – if you’re a yogini, you’ll know that the whole entire purpose of yoga is not, contrary to popular belief, to get a yoga butt, but rather to still the mental chatter and physical discomfort so wise women (okay, and men) can sit for lengthy periods of time in meditation.

Meditation itself is another form of training in thought control – if you want a fairly non woo-woo gal’s analysis of how meditation can keep you from obsessing over drama so you can do the real work, check out Eat, Pray, Love –actually, check it out anyway.

The only other sure-fire way I know to manage the mental spinning is to practice gratitude. It links you tightly with the source of the things you already have (which, it just so happens, is also the source of the things you will have in the future), and makes it nearly impossible to veer off into fear or nervousness or anxiety or whatever.

When you feel a money freak-out coming on, stop yourself and list – in your head, on paper, wherever – all the people/places/things/experiences for which you’re grateful.

6. Eliminate. Earlier this year, I had an epiphany while potty training the girls. [Love me, love my dogs – check out Aiko + Sumiko pics on my Facebook page].

I’m a big no potty in the house-type gal. I was watching the girls (4 weeks old at the time) closely to prevent  accidents, and noticed that when it was time for them to do their business (my puppies are business-women, too), they would circle the border of the rug with laser-beam precision.

Then came the a-ha moment:

When we’re going in circles in life, that might be a sign that it’s time to

eliminate.

Unlike the girls, though we’re not just eliminating the leavings of grain-free gourmet puppy food with Omega-3, 6+9 fatty acids.

When we’re stuck, it’s time to meditate on what needs eliminating. Some candidates for elimination:

· Habits that no longer (or never did) serve us

· Limiting thinking patterns

· Deactivating words and speech patterns, like spinning

· Power- and energy-draining relationships

Elimination is a powerful image for me. Others might respond better to the less aggressive image of letting go, or releasing. I find releasing to be an especially effective practice for working with letting go of attachments to outcome (attachments being the Zen version of the root of all evil human suffering).

Louise Hay, in You Can Heal Your Life, has some powerful affirmations and practices for releasing mental patterns that create “dis-ease,” both in our bodies and in our lives.

7. Go to beginner’s mind. You really should read Charlotte Kasl on this point. Long story short – start over. Rethink it. By it, I mean everything about the thing on which you are stuck. Especially when it comes to things you’ve been stuck on for years and years, ask yourself this question: if you were just now starting this project, and you knew nothing about it, how would you proceed.

Half the time, we overthink our goals and dreams and projects, creating mental obstacles that don’t exist in the real world, overcomplicating things that are actually simple and generally getting in our own way. In fact, if you’ve been stuck on it for years, revisit why you wanted to do the project in the first place – you might not actually want it enough to be a worthwhile pursuit anymore, or you might simply need a new infusion of passion and a refreshed vision of your ‘after’ picture to get you back in motion.

8. Get ready to unwind. And I don’t mean unwind, as in relax. Ayurvedic practitioners (Ayurveda is an ancient Indian wellness system) often refer to unwinding as the uncomfortable symptoms of detoxifying and properly nourishing a your physical body when you’ve been feeding it nonsense like Cheetos and other foods that are fake or even just inappropriate foods for your unique constitution.

As you work your prosperity practice (or unwork your scarcity practice, as the case may be) – especially at turns in the path that involve habit transformation and big-time rethinks – you will undoubtedly experience discomfort (both mental and, sometimes, physical) and angst. Sometimes you’ll feel empty, or you might feel a gnawing in your stomach (this can cause overeating).

Maybe you want to fall asleep every time you try to do your Fiscal Health Day or start an argument when you try to take a more mature approach to making joint money decisions with your partner. You might feel intensely alone when you eliminate friendships that no longer serve the you you are becoming.

Expect the discomfort, experience it and know that it’s a sign you are evolving – if you know about yourself that you’ll be tempted to resort to the old patterns (e.g., spending, eating or bitching to soothe the discomfort), set up some new, soothing behaviors in advance that you can resort to when the yuck emerges, like:

· taking a bath,

· doing some sun salutations {om},

· watching something distractingly, absurdly funny {episodes of Arrested Development tend to work for me}

· obsessively rubbing Burt’s Bees lemon cuticle balm into your nail beds.

9. If your stuckness is around starting a business or building a brand or doing anything online, do a Fire-Starter with Danielle LaPorte over at White Hot Truth. She’ll take an objective look at your stuff, evaluate it with her wide ranging expertise on everything from social media to authenticity to book publishing, and inject more energy into your world than Obama injected into the banking system – no joke.

Do you have any homemade ‘stuckness’ cures that work well for you? Please comment and share – help your sisters out!