A few years ago, it seemed that it didn’t matter how much I put into our bank account, it was gone at the end of the month and usually a little more. This was a little frustrating and stressful. When it came time to go on holiday in the winter months there never seemed to be quite enough to go on holiday, without going into debt.

A friend invited me to a 3 day course which he had free tickets for. I probably wouldn’t have gone, if I had to pay for it, but it did sound interesting.

One part was about saving money in Jars or Envelopes, the break down went something like this. You have 6 Jars/Envelopes (J/E) to split your income into.

• General Account – 55%:
• Financial Freedom Account – 10%:
• Education Account -10%:
• Long Term Saving for Spending Account – 10%:
• Play Account – 10%
• Give Account – 5%

General Account – The general account was to manage my everyday expenses and bills. This included things like the mortgage, rent, utilities, bills, taxes, food, clothes, etc and anything that we need to live, the necessities of life.

Financial Freedom Account – This was to help me become financial free. The money that I put into this jar was used for investments and building passive income streams.  The only time I was to spend this money was once I became financially free. Even when I became finical free, I was only to spend the interest and not the principal. The reason was that it was easy to keep spending and be back at the beginning with no money and no source of passive income.

Education Account - Money in this jar is meant to further my education and personal growth. Investment in myself is probably the best investment as I am always with myself and can create things in my life if I have the tools. I use this education money to purchase courses, books, CD’s, or anything else that has educational value to me.

Long Term Saving Account - The money in this jar is for the larger purchases, such as a new car or a holiday, maybe the house renovation that you have always wanted.

Play Account - This is a great account. The PLAY money is spent every month on purchases you wouldn’t normally make. No one else gets to tell you what to spend your money on. It may be very frivolous, the idea is to nurture you and not feel guilty for doing so. I’ve used this money to go out to the movies, skiing; I even bought an inner tube to float down a couple of rivers.

Give Account – This is money that you give away. Many people believe that you need to give money, but I don’t necessarily believe that to be true.

The Twist

So here’s my twist on it, I don’t think for most of us that having our month’s pay sitting in J/E on the kitchen counter is wise or advisable, yet it does give you the visual to see what is happening at a glance but it also gives anyone looking through the kitchen window the chance to have a Play account too.

What I did was to setup sub accounts, on our main bank account and every month it automatically deposited the 10% into their respective accounts. It went out each month without us having to do anything about it. We soon adjusted to the amount of money in the general account and learned to live within that budget.

The upside of this was that there was a lot less stress and worry about the bills and by the end of the year we had not really noticed any significant changes to our standard of living, however we had managed to save several thousand dollars that normally had just disappeared on things that we really had no idea what they were and hadn’t missed since we had not been buying them.

As for the 5% giving, there are a lot of people just getting by and giving 5% just puts them back in the hole further when they really could use the money themselves and I really dislike the guilt that is put upon people for not giving. I think giving is a wonderful experience and should not be over looked. However there are many ways to do this, whether it is your time, friendship or money.

If you don’t have the money, give some of your time or old possessions that you no longer need so that you receive the gift of giving and someone receives the gift of receiving.

The Secret, “Law of Attraction”, this is a topic that has had a lot of attention in the last few years and whether you believe that it is “The Law of Attraction” at work in a mystical way or you think that there is no such thing and “Shit Just Happens”, you are right. If you believe that there is a force at work and you put your trust in it, the chances are that if an opportunity does come your way, that takes you in the direction that you want to go, you will embrace it and feel that you had the power to create it and you can create other things and events you would like in your life.

On the other hand, if you think that “Shit Just Happens” and that you have no control over what happens in your life, you are left with the feeling that, it was done to you and you become a victim of your thoughts. Which is great, if you like the feeling of being disempowered and a victim?

I’ve noticed for myself that when I put it out to the universe/God or whatever else you like to call the essential energy of the universe, that things start to happen. I used to think that coincidence was just that and that was great, but now I see them as something that I attracted for a couple of reasons.

One, I like the feeling that comes with thinking that I create the coincidence or event and its way nicer to feel that I have the power to change stuff that shows up in my life and it becomes more of a quest. My second reason is that it’s a lot easier on my mind to put it out there in a positive way and then let go of it and expect the details to be taken care of for me, rather than trying to do the whole job my-self.

I uses to spend hours going down what I call worm holes, trying to figure out all the angles to make something happen, now I think about what it is that I want to create and hand it off to the universe, to provided it for me and if I’m really clear about what it is, it seems to come to me fairly soon, but not always in exactly the way that I thought that it would.

An example of this is this blog. I spent a lot of time trying to make it happen, but did not have the skills and kept getting lost and finding many dead ends. After a few months, I put it on the back burner, until I had time. Then I thought about it again and so surrendered to the universe and said, I want this to happen and I need your help. All of a sudden people and events started showing up in my life to make it happen. So I embraced the people and events that showed up, even though some parts were a little uncomfortable at times and here I am moving forward creating what is most important to me at this point.

Here’s the way I have been applying this to my life. Think of your thoughts as a magnet, you become what you think about. This can be summed up by 3 words “thoughts become reality “. So if you want your reality to be positive start thinking positive thoughts, even when it doesn’t look so great. I try as much as possible when a negative situation comes into my life to find two or three things that are good about the situation.

I pick stuff that I can believe about the situation, so my mind doesn’t start out telling me that I am BS-ing myself. For instance I got a flat tire on the way to see a friend the other night, it was dark and I couldn’t see much, the spare was nearly flat and I didn’t have my cell phone with me. This could have been a downer but instead.

I changed it in the dark by feel, which was kind of interesting, it wasn’t raining and the little amount of air in the spare was enough to get me to a garage. There were a whole host of other things that I liked about the situation and I was able to be left with a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment with no stressful feelings.

When I think of what I want, solutions come to me and I have a positive experience of the situation. When I start thinking about event’s that are negative, I attract more negative, it doesn’t matter whether this is a past thought or present I attract more of it, because of what I am thinking about.

You need to look at what your predominate thoughts are. Are they mostly negative or positive? The odd negative thought is not going to course bad things to happen, but habitually thinking negative thoughts will attract more negative thinking and events to you. Even if they are not negative, you will see them as negative.

As a side note, this is what I have experienced with depressive thoughts, they create more depressing thoughts, until that’s how I saw the world even though I knew it was better than that. After finding 3 things that I like about each situation to turn the thought around,  I soon found my thoughts became generally more optimistic.

Apparently positive thoughts are 1oo’s of times more powerful than negative thoughts. Something to think about is just, because you have attracted something into your life, it doesn’t mean that you are at fault or blame for the things that show up in your life. Right and wrong, good or bad, need each other to exist and some time good come out of bad and bad come out of good, so if you can let them be without too much judgement or attachment to them, you will find it easier on the mind.

Be kind to yourself and in turn the world will be kind to you.

Feeling good, it’s like standing on a beach with a warm tropical breeze blowing round me. It lifts the soul, opens the heart and mind and I just melt into the oneness of it all. I don’t think of the past or of the future I just know, thoughts just flow through my mind but I don’t attach or get hung up on any of them and have no real judgement, it just is.

This is the human state at its best for me, I am in an enlightened state, I am intimate with everything and everything is intimate with me, there is no war with the mind or the world. I haven’t   had these experiences for a while; it used to be common place a couple of years ago. Just lately the feeling is coming back.

On reflection what came to me was, that I had been a victim, a victim of myself, I didn’t really know it at the time, I just thought that I was tired, burned out and depressed and I was, but not for the reasons that I thought I was. I thought that it was external to me.

What I came to realize was that I was creating my experience of the world in a negative way, by not taking responsibility for my thoughts and so had disempowered myself to the point of depression. I could have kept on with my self-absorption, by using my mind, the same mind that had created the pain and suffering in the first place, but choose to stop the insanity.

I figured that if I could cause such pain and suffering, I could also create great joy and happiness .That it was in the choices that I make when things come up in my life. I create the world I live in, I may not get to create an event like a volcano, but I do get the choice of how I experience it and from that choice, I will create my experience of the event and the world.

If it is a negative choice, my mind resists and I begin to suffer, the more that I resist, the more that I will suffer. If it is a positive thought the more I will become intimate with and connect to a happy and joyful self. The outside world doesn’t care whether I like it or not, it just is what it is. Like the sun shining, it does what it does, that’s it, no experience of itself and no agenda.

On the other hand, we experience our thoughts and feelings. You might think that we experience the objects in our world directly, but we really don’t. First our world has to be experienced through the senses and then it is translated into thoughts.  We have a great mind like a huge hard-drive on a computer that stores all this information. The information is either stored directly, like touching a hot stove or there are the indirect sources like social conditioning, parenting, etc.

The problem comes when the computer mind throws out thoughts trying to come up with the answer and we start to believe them. If I tell you the sky is green you most likely will dismiss it and laugh, because it is obviously not true and you have the feeling of lightness. However you could think I’m strange or a little simple, at which point you may feel right and justified in thinking that but nothing out of the ordinary.

You can really get into this thought and think I’m a complete idiot and how the hell could I think such a thing and spend a lot of time and energy , trying to convince me that I’m wrong and your right and then tell your friends the story that I am right out there.

The problem is that the more you make up the story that I’m not right and this is not the way it should be and believe it, the more resists come into the equation and the more frustration and pain that you feel. The only thing that you really got mad about was a resistance to a thought that went through your head and there are thousands that go through your mind each day. The saying that “reality is kinder than my thoughts” comes into play.

The reality is that I had a thought/belief, it doesn’t require response on anyone’s part and looking at the sky it is obviously blue, but on a daily bases we spend hours resisting and trying to change other peoples thoughts and thing that have happened that are in the past, instead of realizing that we created a story, an illusion of something that was not real in the first place and so we suffered for it.

We suffer because we attach to a thought that is a picture that floats through the mind that we don’t like, we feel good when we attach to a thought that we like. Both are just stories but if we like it we connect to it and there is no reason to change it.

The secret is to let go of the thought, don’t resist it, there’s no right or wrong, good or bad thoughts, there all just thoughts and have no agenda and no experience of their own. You give that to them when you believe in them and from that you create your experience. If you can just watch your thoughts they will leave you without causing paining and you will be able to see the reality of the situation.

This is easier said than done and that is one of the reasons people meditate. This can also be done through The Work.