By Kalinda Rose Stevenson 

If Not Now, When?

When are you going to feel abundantly alive? Will it be when you are debt free? Or when you reach a certain annual income? $50,000? $100,000? $250,000? $100,000,000? When your investment account reaches $5,000,000?

The most critical word in “abundantly alive now!” is “now.” Right now. Not next week, not next year, not when your debts are paid. Not when you reach some predetermined income level. Not when your portfolio reaches some set number. The time to feel abundantly alive is right now.

“The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances.” (Martha Washington)

Are you asking, “How can I feel abundantly alive while I’m up to my eyebrows in debt?” “How can I feel abundantly alive while I am still living from paycheck to paycheck?” “How can I feel abundantly alive before my IRA reaches a million bucks?”

It’s Not Your Money, It’s Your Mind

If you cannot feel abundantly alive right now, no amount of money will ever be enough. This is why gazillionaires can live miserable lives. Being poor is not the answer either.

Abundance is not equivalent to the balance in your bank account. Abundance is first of all a state of mind.

If you tell yourself, “I will feel abundantly alive when my debts are paid off, I earn $300,000 a year, and have a million dollars in my IRA,” I ask, “Will you? If you can’t feel abundantly alive right now, what makes you think you will feel that way at some time in the future?”

The truth is that feeling abundantly alive now not about your money but about your mind.

The Moment is Now

The reality is that the only time any of us has is now. This is the moment of decision.

“I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That’s where the fun is” (Donald Trump, Real Estate Investor and Author.)

If you are going to live in abundance, if you are going to feel radiantly alive, the time is right now. I know that this statement flies in the face of just about everything all of us have ever been taught about money.

Work Now, Play Later

We all know the story about the grasshopper and the ant. The ant works all summer, putting away food for the winter to come. The grasshopper plays all summer and has nothing put aside for winter.

The story is told as a parable about planning and saving and putting away for a rainy day.

The negative reality of the parable is that it describes the way we are taught to live our lives, focusing on the future rather than the present.

The ant works all summer, having no fun, and the grasshopper plays all summer, with no thought of the future. If those are the only two options, why not choose the way of the grasshopper? At least, the grasshopper has more fun along the way.

When my husband was a child, his mother told him again and again, “You can’t play until you get your work done.” The temporary restriction of childhood easily becomes the lifestyle of adulthood. Childhood chores tend to be limited. For adults, the work never ends and so playtime never comes. “Work now, play later,” becomes a way of life.

Living in the Moment

Planning for the future is a wise thing. Putting life on hold until later is not.

Money worries can keep people so focused on the future that they don’t live their lives in the present moment.

In this era when debt levels are at record highs and saving levels are at record lows, many of us have become a strange ant-grasshopper hybrid. We work constantly, without saving, and spend recklessly without having fun.

Are these our only choices? Ants, who work and save without enjoying the moment? Grasshoppers, who play without saving? Or ant-grasshoppers, who work without saving and spend without having fun?

This Is The Moment To Choose

The better way is to feel abundantly alive now. This is the state of mind that allows us to live in the present without being foolish about the future. To be alive is to be fully present and fully conscious right now.

“Realize deeply that the now is all you ever have. Make the Nowthe primary focus of your life.” (Eckhart Tolle)

Now is the only moment you have. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow has not come. It is always that way. Tomorrow never comes. And yesterday is always past. All you have is right now. This is the moment you can choose to feel abundantly alive now.

[Originally published in Kalinda Rose Stevenson’s Abundantly Alive Now! Newsletter, September 7, 2004]

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For Your Abundantly Alive Now Life

Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.

Cross-published on

No Money Limits

Debt Or Alive  

A Proven Process For True Success

The financial crisis fills the news. Each day, we hear about more billions for stimulus packages to banks “too big to fail.”  We also hear dire warnings about the collapse of major corporations, such as the Big Three auto makers in the United States. The crisis is real, as is spreads throughout our entire economic system, both nationally and internationally.

In all of this, we hear talk of Main Street and Wall Street. To this point, the rescue packages, the stimulus packages, the bailout packages, have gone to Wall Street, with very little directed toward Main Street—the small businesses and ordinary people who are being dragged down with little hope of immediate rescue.

What I want to focus on is the contrast between two types of stories. One story teaches us to hope for rescue. The other story teaches us to be heroic and rescue ourselves.

Let’s start with the stories that teach us to wait for rescue. From earliest childhood, we have been taught to hope for a savior. The movies and TV shows have taught us that rescue will come, usually at the last minute, in the nick of time. The cavalry will ride over the hill. Reinforcements will arrive. The knight in shining armor will show up and we will be saved.

The hope of being rescued touches a deep psychological need for all of us. We hope that someone will help. Someone will care. Someone will do something to solve the problem.

Christian religion has made salvation a central promise of the gospel message. You are lost. You are hopeless. You are struggling. God sends a savior, to rescue you, because you cannot rescue yourself.

Twelve step programs teach that we are incapable of saving ourselves from our addictions. We need help. We need a higher power. We need to be rescued.

In other words, we hope for a hero to save us.

In all of this, I don’t mean to undermine, diminish, or challenge the idea that sometimes we really do need help. We really do need rescue. We really do need to be saved. If you fall off an ocean liner,  you will need someone to throw you a lifeline, to haul you back in.
 
But that fact that we sometimes need to be rescued, does not mean that we always need to be rescued.

In heroic stories, the hero is the one who finds a way to solve the problem. Sometimes the hero rescues others. Often, the hero has to rescue herself or himself. No one saves the hero. The hero is the one who does the saving.

And this leads me to my point. Especially now, when the economic crises pile up day after day. When things seem to get worse and worse, this is the time to be heroic about your situation. Rather than wait for rescue, resolve to find a way to rescue yourself.

The unofficial entrepreneur’s motto is:  “If it is to be, it is up to me.” This single belief is the real distinctive of true entrepreneurs. They don’t wait for permission, approval, or help. If they are in trouble, they act to save themselves.

The real danger right now is for everyone in financial trouble—which includes millions of people—is to wait for the savior to come. These are tough times and they require commitment, determination, and a plan of action.

I wrote a book with a man who faced a financial crisis and did exactly that. He made a commitment to get himself out of his financial crisis, with focus, passion, and motivated action. In the process, he created a formula for the essential elements of financial freedom. Find out the formula that saved him from financial ruin here.

Maybe the government will find a way to bail out Main Street, and solve your financial problems. But don’t wait for it. Most of us do not fall into the category of “too big to fail.”  This means that the only real salvation will come from saving ourselves.

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

One of the primary reasons for the economic crisis is that banks have abused their ability to create money out of thin air.  Find out how banks create money in No Money Limits For Real Estate Investors:  Discover The Money-Making Secret In The Real Estate Game That Transforms Your Money Struggles Into Financial Abundance, Winner of 2007 National Best Books Award in Business: Real Estate Category. 

“Entrepreneurship is the recognition and pursuit of opportunity without regard to the resources you currently control, with confidence that you can succeed, with the flexibility to change course as necessary, and with the will to rebound from setbacks.”

Bob Reiss

Do you want to create abundance in your life? The single best strategy to do that is to become an entrepreneur. Why? Because the mindset and actions of entrepreneurs are the same mindset and actions that produce abundance.

“Entrepreneur” is one of those umbrella terms that can cover a range of meanings. In essence, an entrepreneur wants more out of life and is willing to do what it takes to have it. An entrepreneur is a dreamer, but dreamers are not always entrepreneurs. The primary skill of the entrepreneur is to imagine what doesn’t now exist, and to take actions to create it.

“Entrepreneurs are always up to something.”

Joel Roberts

It’s true. Entrepreneurs are always “up to something.” Talk with an entrepreneur and you will hear some big plan, some bold idea, some powerful dream to create something that doesn’t currently exist.

“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”

Peter F. Drucker

Compare someone who buys lotto tickets each week with the hope of striking it rich with the entrepreneur who sets out to create a profitable business. One hopes for an outcome. The other takes action to create an outcome.

Of the two choices, acting to create wealth has vastly greater probability of success than hoping to win a jackpot. Certainly, people do win jackpots, but the odds are miniscule. And the sad result is that many lotto winners end up worse off than they were before winning because they have no idea how to handle the money.

Years ago, there was a TV show called “The Millionaire.” Each week, a rich man sent his assistant out to give a million dollar cashier’s check to someone. The point of the show was to see how the money changed the recipient. It was usually not for the better.

When my adult son first watched the movie, “The Secret,” he objected to one dramatic episode. A boy wants a bicycle. He hopes and dreams for the bicycle and spends time gazing excitedly at a picture of the exact bike he wants. And then he sees the bike in the window of the bicycle shop with a “SOLD” sign on it. The boy becomes upset and gives up hope for the bicycle. After a period of despair, he again focuses his hopes and dreams upon receiving the bicycle. Throughout the entire episode, he does nothing but dream. The episode ends when the child opens the door to find his grandfather with the coveted bike as a present. We last see the boy riding off happily on his new bicycle. 

The episode is meant to demonstrate that happy and excited thoughts focused on a desired outcome will result in getting what you want. In the language of “The Secret,” the boy “manifested” his bicycle as a result of his concentrated positive thoughts and feelings.

My son contrasted this story with his own experience. When he was in middle school, he wanted a Go-Kart. We said he could have one if he earned the money for it. So he went out and offered to work for people in the area. He raked leaves, swept driveways, and did other odd jobs. In a short period of time, he earned enough money to buy his Go-Kart. He manifested his Go-Kart as the result of concentrated intention and hard work. He has commented more than once in the years since that we did him a great favor by encouraging him to work to buy his Go-Kart rather than to buy it for him. It taught him that he could have what he wanted by taking focused action to get it. 
 

“Entrepreneurs are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputations on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”
 
Victoria Claflin Woodhull

I don’t mean to dispute the possibility that people can manifest what they want to have by concentrated thought. In a world of quantum possibilities, the mind is a powerful creator. I do mean to make the point that entrepreneurs are much more likely to get what they want than dreamers are, because dreamers merely dream, hoping for an outcome. Entrepreneurs act upon their dreams.

So many of the stories addressed to children use magic as a means of manifestation. Fairy godmothers wave magic wands, genies grant wishes, boy wizards recite magic incantations. Children also learn about Santa Claus with his flying reindeer as the great wish fulfiller, a giant rabbit who brings colored eggs and candy, and tooth fairies who exchange baby teeth for cold, hard cash. As a child, I even learned to wish upon the first star I saw at night. I had no similar instruction in how to turn my wishes into reality by creating an action plan.  

During elementary school, as a child growing up on Cape Cod, I was involved in a summer children’s theater. I had some small acting roles and did some behind-the-scenes work. During the production of “Peter Pan,” I sat in a theater box to the upper left of the stage and did sound effects. One sound effect was to jingle little bells for Tinkerbell.

In the story, Tinkerbell drinks poison and is dying. Peter Pan calls out to children everywhere to save her life by believing. Peter addresses the audience directly and claims that if there aren’t enough children who believe in fairies, little Tinkerbell will die. At that point, the audience gets involves and wishes Tinkerbell back to life. My part in the dramatic moment was to jingle the bells louder to show that Tinkerbell had been restored by the fervent wishes of the children.

Now, many years after my brief career in theatrical sound effects, I look back on Peter Pan as one more way that the adult world teaches children magical thinking. Maybe it is all part of the wonder of childhood and maybe it is all harmless stuff. But I am not convinced. The common denominator in all of these fantasies is to instill in children the idea that if you only find the right magic spell, the right genie, the right wizard, the right fairy godmother, do the right things to please Santa, then you can have what you want.

Such magical thinking does not end with childhood. When we get older, we can substitute hope in winning the lotto, hitting the jackpot, or buying into the latest biz-op as the way to get rich without doing anything beyond hoping.

“The entrepreneur is essentially a visualizer and an actualizer… He can visualize something, and when he visualizes it he sees exactly how to make it happen.”

Robert L. Schwartz

In contrast, successful entrepreneurs do what my son did. When they want something, they do something about it. As a result, entrepreneurs are more likely to create wealth than any other group of people.

What is the connection between creating abundance and being an entrepreneur?  Both require a similar mindset. At the heart of both is the desire to have more. Abundance is also the direct result of a creative process. Abundance requires focused action toward your dreams rather than a passive hope that someone will leave abundance on your doorstep. 
 

Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D., Publisher of “Abundantly Alive Now! Newsletter.” http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com
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“Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.”
Rabindranath Tagore 

I listened to a recording recently of two men having a conversation about the nature of abundance. In their conversation, the dominant metaphor for abundance was water. They said that we are like fish swimming in the ocean, not recognizing that we are immersed in abundance all the time.

As metaphors go, this is an intriguing insight into the nature of abundance. I have no idea of the consciousness level of a fish, but I imagine that fish don’t analyze their surroundings much. They live in water, but have no consciousness that they are swimming in water. And this is the point of the metaphor. We live in an abundant world, but don’t see abundance because it is the medium of our lives.

But there is a missing piece to the metaphor. The missing piece turns scarcity into real abundance in our lives. The missing piece involves a bucket.
 

Instead of the thinking of yourself as a fish swimming in the ocean, think of yourself in a rainstorm.  Rain is on my mind these days. I am writing this in the middle of a heavy rainstorm. The jet stream from Alaska has dipped down farther south than usual, bringing rain and rain and more rain. The San Francisco Bay Area just broke the record for the number of rainy days in March. So far in April, it has rained every day. Forecasters predict the rain will continue for the next two weeks.

And so with rain on my mind, I ask:  How is it that you can live in an abundant universe and not increase your own abundance?  The answer is simple. You aren’t holding out your bucket.

If you want to collect rain water, you don’t just stand in the stuff. You do something to collect the water. You take along a bucket. You set up a cistern. You use water tanks. You dig reservoirs. Otherwise, the water rolls off you as water rolls off a duck.
  
“The world is full of abundance and opportunity, but far too many people come to the fountain of life with a sieve instead of a tank car… a teaspoon instead of a steam shovel. They expect little and as a result they get little.”
Ben Sweetland 

And this is what sets apart those who live in abundance and those who live with lack. Those who live in abundance do something to collect the water. They take a bucket with them. They build cisterns, water tanks, and reservoirs. Those who live with lack just stand in the rain and get wet.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Acts 20:35

In other words, the ones who live in abundance know how to receive. Those who live in lack don’t.

One of the real reasons so many of us struggle with lack in our lives is that we internalized the words, “It is more blessed to give than receive.”  This Bible verse, taken out of context, sets up a value judgment: Giving is better than receiving.
 
 
I’m not going to do the critical work involved in telling you what the Greek words mean, or putting in these words in their biblical context. Let’s just look at the words themselves and ask what is wrong with this kind of universalizing statement.

“If you want greater prosperity in your life, start forming a vacuum to receive it.”
Catherine Ponder

Consider breathing. You breathe in and you breathe out. Somehow, we all got the idea that it is okay to receive when we breathe. What if you decide that it is better to breathe out than to breathe in? You can’t live very long before you realize that breathing is a cycle. If you want to continue to live, you need to receive air into your lungs as much as you need to breathe it out.

Even the rain itself is a cycle. The rain falls on Earth, runs into the creeks and rivers, flows back into the ocean, gets picked up into clouds and falls on Earth again. Breath and rain are part of life’s cycles of giving and receiving. But when it comes to Bible verses, this awareness of the cyclical nature of life often gets replaced by categories straight out of Greek philosophy.

The ancient Greeks, especially Aristotle, divided reality into opposing pairs, and then attached value judgments that one element of each pair was better than the other. So “reason is better is than emotion.” “Male is more human than female.” “A free man is a more moral being than a slave,” and on and on.

Christian theology picked up many of these same value-laden dichotomies, and imposed them on biblical statements and stories. As a result, many Christian people learned to think in dual categories, with value judgments attached. One example is that Christian theology has taken this one verse: “It more blessed to give than to receive,” and turned it into a one-sided rule for life.
 
From this simplistic notion, many of us learned that giving is better than receiving.
The obvious question is: How can you give what you don’t have?  And if you give all you have, how can you give any more?  To give, you have to have something to give. And to have something you have to receive it first.

“Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.”
Jim Rohn 

Giving and receiving together are part of the cycle called abundance. Abundance is a dance, involving give and take, back and forth, ebb and flow.

And so, if you are wondering how to create abundance in your life, claim the metaphor of rain as abundance. If you are standing in the rain, hold out your bucket.

This article was originally published April 4, 2006.

http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2006-04-04.htm.

“People with a scarcity mentality tend to see everything in terms of win-lose. There is only so much; and if someone else has it, that means there will be less for me. The more principle-centered we become, the more we develop an abundance mentality, the more we are genuinely happy for the successes, well-being, achievements, recognition, and good fortune of other people. We believe their success adds to…rather than detracts from…our lives.”
 
Stephen R. Covey

 During the depths of the Great Depression, the Monopoly® game appeared in the marketplace.  For many American children, Monopoly is the first introduction to using money for business decisions.   Monopoly teaches players to buy and sell property, collect and pay rents.  The game is fun, especially for the winners. My question is, Are the lessons you learned playing Monopoly killing your capacity to make real money in your business?

 Monopoly teaches at least three money myths that can keep you struggling with money in your business.

 Monopoly Money Myth One is that the amount of money available is limited.  The game begins with a fixed amount of money.  The game ends with the same amount of money.  The only difference between the beginning and the end of the game is that the money, which was evenly distributed at the beginning of the game, is now concentrated in the hands of the winner. The critical point is that no one MAKES money in Monopoly. Monopoly is a zero sum game.

 Compare the zero sum Monopoly game to what happens to money in business.   In business, you create a product or offer a service that actually MAKES more money.  This is how it works. You create a product. The product costs you money to produce, market, and sell.  If you sell the product for more than your costs, you make a profit. This profit is money that did not exist when you started the game.

 In other words, you actually create money.  You have not only added money to your bottom line, you have added more money to the money supply.  This is the critical money difference between Monopoly and business.  Profitable businesses make money.   No one makes money in Monopoly.

“I think it’s wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.”

Steven Wright

 Monopoly Money Myth One teaches players that money is a commodity in limited supply.  Monopoly cannot teach the fundamental truth that the amount of available money is potentially unlimited because money is created in transactions.  The more transactions occur, the more money is created.

 Monopoly Money Myth Two teaches that the game can have only one money winner.  (The game is called Monopoly for a reason.)

 As a model for doing business, Monopoly teaches that making profits in business means taking money away from other businesses, to end up with the biggest piece of the existing money supply.   This business model is still very much with us when we see businesses act like sharks in a feeding frenzy.   In fact, some businesses do win by following the Monopoly money model.

 When business owners understand the real truth that the supply of available money is potentially unlimited because money is created in transactions, it takes away the need to be sharks fighting over a fixed amount of money.  Instead, enlightened business owners can create mutually beneficial joint venture relationships with other businesses.  Joint ventures allow each business to increase profits and increase the amount of money available.
 

 The liberating money truth is that you can make more money by cooperation with other businesses than you will by attempting to take money out of the pockets of your competitors.  

“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 Monopoly Money Myth Three is that making money means hurting other people.    In Monopoly, the only way to get more money is to take it from other people, leaving them with less money than they had when they started.  The game is over for them when they run out of money.   

 Making money at the expense of others is obviously not a problem for Enron-type businesses that care only about making profits without regard for how much they hurt other people.   Monopoly originated in the Depression, when vast numbers of people endured real poverty while a minority of fat cats lived in luxury.  The Monopoly game reflects the realities of that economic era.     

“I have always recognized that the object of business is to make money in an honorable manner. I have endeavored to remember that the object of life is to do good.”

Peter Cooper

 In my own coaching experience, I have encountered many people who believe deep down that making money means hurting other people.  And since they consider themselves good, honest people, they are deeply conflicted about doing business.  They want to make more money but they don’t want to hurt other people in the process.

 If you are struggling with money in your business, ask yourself if these three Monopoly Money Myths lie at the root of your problems.   As a game, Monopoly can be fun.  As a model for doing business, Monopoly Money Myths will keep you stuck in a Depression-era mindset of haves and have-nots because it teaches that money is a commodity in limited supply.
 

“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”

Henry Ford

 You can play a much more liberating money game in business than Monopoly can ever teach you.  What happens to business when you stop playing with Monopoly money?  You will discover that money is unlimited because money is created by transactions, cooperation is more profitable than cutthroat competition, and you can make money while serving the best interests of other people. Best of all, you are much more likely to win the money game.
 

This article was originally published November 15, 2005.

http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-11-15.htm

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© 2005   Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Debt or Alive, Inc.
2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H
Minden, NV 89423
 

“We’ve been generous in the past, and we hope to be generous in the future,” [Linda] Lacy said, “but we can’t save the world. I don’t know where our limits are. We have a budget, too.”

Mark Bixler
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 The tsunami in Asia, hurricanes in the Gulf Coast, earthquakes in Pakistan, mudslides in Guatemala.   In recent months, we have seen catastrophe after catastrophe of human suffering, loss, and devastation.  

 Recent disasters in our world have opened the floodgates of donations.   Yet, as the catastrophes continue, the donations are decreasing.  Not only that, news coverage of far-away disasters has slowed down, as we grow numb to endless tragedies.  The devastating mudslides in Guatemala have barely made a dent in our collective consciousness.

 The charities now report growing “donor fatigue.”    

“After donating about $1.3 billion to help the victims of the devastating Southeast Asia tsunami and then contributing $1.7 billion to support relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina, many donors appear to be running out of steam.”

Jacqueline L. Salmon
Washington Post Staff Writer

 At the same time, our economy is entering a period of “stagflation.”  One cause is the destruction to oil production caused by the hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. 

“Inflation by itself is usually accompanied by brisk business conditions and an all-too-healthy economy.  Stagflation describes a world in which prices are going up but people can’t afford the increased prices.”

Steve Butler
Contra Costa Times

 So, as the need for help increases, the demands on our own budgets increase.   When do any of us we reach the point of saying, “Enough!   I can’t give anymore.”  My question is, In the face of overwhelming need, what are the limits to our generosity?

 I don’t pretend to have the answer to this question.   I do have some observations about the limits of responsibility for finite human beings.  

 In some respects, the question itself is a sign of our times. The internet and television have shrunk our world to the size of electrons.  Not so long ago, news was local.  Before instant communication, the rest of the world would not know about a tsunami in Indonesia, or a hurricane in Louisiana, or an earthquake in Pakistan, or a mudslide in Guatemala for days or weeks or months or years afterwards, if ever.  Now, with the speed of electrons, as soon as tragedy strikes anywhere, we know about it everywhere. 

 While l was teaching in a theological seminary, I had a conversation one day with two of my students.  One was a young man from Puerto Rico.  The other was a young man who was a refugee from El Salvador, whose entire family had been murdered by government thugs.  The refugee was lamenting the fact that Americans didn’t care about the suffering of his country.  And the young Puerto Rican chimed in with the statement that he was glad he wasn’t an American because Americans are so selfish.

 At that point, I felt the need to respond to these two comments by pointing out that each one was expecting all Amerians to care about his cause as much as he did.   At the same time, other aggrieved and/or suffering people expected Americans to care about Korea and South Africa, saving the whales and the redwoods and the spotted owls, protecting the rights of farm workers, and a laundry list of other oppressed people and worthy causes.  I pointed out that finite people cannot do everything.   The best any of us can do is to choose one area of need and do our best to help in that area. 

 This conversation with two young seminarians, both foreign students, brings to the surface a range of conflicting emotions, attitudes, and beliefs about human responsibility.   The root meaning of “responsibility” is the ability to respond.    The question is, How much can any of us respond to the needs we see around us, both within our own communities and around the world?

 Underneath the question itself is another word, which I decided long ago was the most unhelpful word in the English language.  I am very careful about language, both in my own writing and speech.  I am also very conscious of the words that other people use.  And there is one word that I work very hard to avoid, both in what I say to myself and what I say to others.  It is the word, “should.”

 ”Should” carries with it an amazing arrogance.  “Should” claims that the speaker knows better than you do what is best for your life.   “Should” is also a word chock-a-block full of judgment about what is right or wrong about your actions.

 I made a decision years ago, as a seminary student, that I would never use the word “should” any time I preached a sermon.  I have heard too many sermons that were nothing more than lectures telling people what was wrong with them and what they “should” do or “should not” do.

 I am confident that I never used the word “should” in a sermon.  In my preaching years, I always assumed that my task was to tell people what was right with them rather than what was wrong with them.   In my vocabulary, “should” can never accomplish that function.

 I have made the same decision about my writing.   I am very careful never to tell you what I think you “should” or “should not” do.   I intend never to use the word in any article or book I write.   I will not tell you what you “should” do, ever. 

 And this brings me back to the problem of donor fatigue.  At the same time that technology has made us more and more aware of catastrophic human need, many of us also carry deep guilt about our responsibility to give to anyone who asks.  Every time we see more pictures of human suffering, many of us feel the incessant demand, “You should do something!”

 This is particularly true for people who have grown up in religious institutions that have taught that it is better to give away money than to have it. I grew up in a church that taught poverty rather than abundance.    One example we heard about often was the story of the poor widow who gave away all she had to live on.   We heard about this story as the prime example of what God wanted us to do.
 
 My husband and I used to attend a church in San Francisco.   In urban San Francisco, homeless people are everywhere.   We could count on the fact that someone would be standing outside the church on Sunday demanding money for something.  We would hear the story about how the car broke down and they needed money to get back to Oregon. (For some reason, they always had to get back to Oregon.)  And if they didn’t get money, they would start to proclaim very loudly, “And you call yourselves Christians.   You’re supposed to help.”

 In other words, if you have money, you “should” give it to others.  For those of us who learned that being good meant being poor, we can easily feel guilty for having money when others don’t.    Each time the media assaults us with gut-wrenching images of human suffering, the word “should” romps around in our consciousness, telling us that we “should” do something. 

 And for Americans, there is the added burden of being the world’s superpower, supercop, and superfixer.    If it happens anywhere, much of the rest of the world will tell us that Americans are both collectively and personally responsible to fix it.

  In his book, The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey makes a significant distinction between Circles of Influence and Circles of Concern.   Circles of Influence are those things you can do something about.  Circles of Concern are those things you care about but cannot change.

“Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence.  They work on the things they can do something about.  

Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern.   They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control. “

Stephen Covey

 My student from El Salvador focused everything through the lens of the horrors and grief of his own losses.   He could not understand why the whole world was not rising up in anger and outrage.   What he could not see at that moment was that there are more than six billion of us in the world, and no one can take on the sufferings of everyone else.  We would all collapse under the burden. 
 

“For donors like Linda Lacy of Atlanta, who said she gives 10 percent to her church, First Baptist Church of Atlanta, and an additional 10 percent to charities such as the Boy Scouts, Samaritan’s Purse, the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association, the string of disasters underscores something she already knew.

“There is such need in the world,” she said.

She has traveled to Brazil on church mission trips, she said, and her husband has helped build churches in Montana and Pennsylvania. He just got back from several days feeding storm victims in Mississippi on a trip coordinated by the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board, based in metro Atlanta. Members of her Sunday School class traveled to Iran after an earthquake killed thousands there in December 2003.”

“We’ve been generous in the past, and we hope to be generous in the future,” Lacy said, “but we can’t save the world. I don’t know where our limits are. We have a budget, too.”

Mark Bixler
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 I return to the comment by Linda Lacy, which ends with these words: “I don’t know where our limits are. We have a budget, too.”

 Even abundance has limits.   No matter how much money you have, you do have a budget.  You are one person, living in one place, with your own limitations.  You are not infinite, omnipotent, omnipresent.  In other words, you are not God.  And if you notice, even God doesn’t make all the suffering go away. 

 My own personal challenge always comes back to my tendency to get caught up in overwhelm.  Seeing too much, attempting to do too much, the feeling that I “should” be doing more.  I can think of no combination better suited to fill life with frustration, anxiety, and lack of accomplishment than this. 
 
 As Covey makes clear, there is a difference between being concerned and being effective.  Whatever your personal challenges, you simply cannot do everything.   The key is to choose something within your own Circle of Influence.  

 The choice again comes down to focus.  Among all of the needs you see before you, and with the limitations of your own time, money, and energy, it is up to you to choose how you will respond, not because you “should” but because you can.  

This article was originally published October 18, 2005.

http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-10-18.htm.

WARNING: BEFORE YOU INVEST IN REAL ESTATE… FREE “No Money Limits Consumer Guide to Real Estate Investor Training.” www.nomoneylimits.com

© 2005 Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.

 Debt or Alive, Inc.

 2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H Minden, NV 89423

Anyone may so arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible. He is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes.

Learned Hand
1872 – 1961
U.S. Federal Court judge

 You know that old riddle.  “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”  I have my own version of the riddle.   “Which comes first?   Taxes or expenses?”

 Unlike the chicken or egg conundrum, this riddle has a clear answer.  And the answer is, “It depends on whether you are paying taxes as an individual or as a corporation.”
 
 We hear a lot of talk these days about the inherent unfairness of the tax system.  The claim is that “the rich” get tax breaks while middle and lower class taxpayers pay far more than their fair share. 
  
 What gets lost in these comments is an even more fundamental imbalance in the tax system.   The tax system favors corporations vastly more than it favors individuals. 

 The crucial difference between corporate taxes and personal taxes is the point at which taxes are calculated.   If you are taxed as an individual, your taxes come off the top of your income.   If you are taxed as a corporation, your taxes are calculated after expenses. 

You don’t pay taxes – they take taxes.
 
Chris Rock

 Consider how the taxation system works.  If you are an employee, you collect a paycheck.   Before you ever get your paycheck, there will be deductions.  Federal tax, FICA, maybe state tax, maybe medical insurance.  You will be left with your “take home pay.”  Interesting concept, isn’t it?   What you “take home” will be less than what you earned. 

 In other words, you get to use whatever is left over of your salary or wages after taxes.  Food, housing, clothing, transportation, medical, dental, recreation.   You need to pay for all of these expenses with your “after tax” money.

Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

Benjamin Franklin

 As one example, let’s consider medical costs. Who pays your medical expenses if you are an employee?  Medical insurance in the United States is an unwieldy and expensive mess.   Maybe you are covered by your employer, maybe not.   What we do know is that medical costs are rising exponentially, and most striking unions cite increasing medical costs to employees as their primary grievance.   Even if you have medical insurance, you will have to pay deductibles.   And you will pay these expenses with after tax dollars. 

 And when you finally come to calculate your taxes on your 1040 form, you will find that you cannot claim medical costs as deductions on your tax return unless medical expenses exceed 3% of your income.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

John Maynard Keynes

 What happens if you set up a corporation?   You are the founder of a corporation and hire yourself as the employee of the corporation.   As the founder of the corporation, you are able to set up a health insurance plan with pretax dollars.   If there are insurance deductibles, you, as the founder, can write a resolution and put it in your corporate book.   Your generous corporation will cover all of the costs of medical care for its employees (that means you,) including deductibles, and any medical costs that most insurance policies will not cover.

 After all, as the founder of the corporation, you are free to set up any medical reimbursement plan you wish, as long as you put it in writing in your corporate resolutions.  And before you figure out how much tax the corporation owes, you first calculate all of the medical expenses paid by your corporation and then calculate the tax after expenses.

 That means, instead of filling out a 1040 form for personal taxes, with your non-deductible medical expenses, you file an 1120 corporate form.   If you are an employee of your own corporation, your corporation can pay for your medical insurance.   And if there are deductibles, your corporation can file a resolution to cover all uninsured medical costs.  Do you grasp how significant this distinction is for your economic well-being?

 This distinction is particularly meaningful for me.  I have a chronic health condition that my former medical insurance company considers “high risk.”  The insurance company agreed to continue to insure me, but at a cost that was exorbitantly high, and would have come out of my personal after-tax income.   For me, this was not only a matter of money.  It was a matter of being able to get any kind of medical insurance.  Many people with chronic health problems become “uninsurable” at any price.
 
 However, since I am the CEO of the corporation I founded, I was able to set up a health insurance program through the corporation, at a significantly lower rate than the one offered by my prior insurance company.  The corporation now pays the health insurance premiums with pre-tax dollars.   And as the founder of the corporation, I have written a resolution that the corporation will pay any deductible costs, and any other costs related to my medical care.  Only after all of my medical costs are paid, the corporation will calculate the taxes it owes. 

 I could give other examples.   Your corporation can provide generous pensions, annuities, life insurance policies, and other benefits to you as an employee.  It can even donate generously to nonprofit corporations, schools, and churches, if it chooses.   And after it has paid all of these expenses, and made all of these charitable donations, it can then calculate tax on the wee bit of profit left over.   Or maybe the corporation will not have any profit at all, and then it will not pay taxes at all.

 I feel compelled to point out that it has not always been this way.   Corporate America used to pay a much higher portion of taxes than it pays now.   This is the real unfairness of the tax system.  The discrepancy between tax rules for corporations and tax rules for individuals means that the tax burden has shifted from corporations to individuals.

We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.

 Leona Helmsley

 Why are “the rich” getting richer?   At the heart of the matter, “the rich” understand the tax system and know how to set up corporate entities to make the most of the favorable tax laws available. 

 Is it fair?  Is it just?  Can you or I change the system?  For myself, this is a bigger challenge than I am willing undertake.   It is the way it is.
 
 Unless you want to play David against Goliath, or Don Quixote tilting at windmills, you would do well to understand the inherent imbalance in the system, so that you can use the system for your own benefit.  This means that the fastest route to keeping more of your own money and creating wealth is to set up a corporation and pay taxes as a corporation rather than an individual.

You know, gentlemen, that I do not owe any personal income tax. But nevertheless, I send a small check, now and then, to the Internal Revenue Service out of the kindness of my heart.

 David Rockefeller

 My point is that setting up a corporation allows you to use your income to provide benefits you cannot afford with your after-tax dollars.  The corporate tax code allows you to create wealth in ways that you will never be able to accomplish as long as your taxes come off the top of your income.  In addition, corporate tax rates are lower than personal tax rates.  

 If you have not set up a corporation, I encourage you to consider doing so.   People are afraid that incorporating means a lot of extra work and trouble. Yes, incorporating involves time, effort, and expense.   And keeping your corporate records up to date also takes time, effort, and expense.   You will also need to have increased knowledge of taxes and accounting.   The reward for this extra work and effort is that you will be able to use corporate tax rules for your own benefit, and the benefit of those you choose to support with your money.   

 
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
 
Winston Churchill

 To answer my own riddle, “Which comes first?   Taxes or expenses?”   If you are paying taxes as an individual, the taxes come first.    If you are paying as a corporation, the expenses come first.  

 This difference is enormous.   When you understand this distinction, you have one of the most powerful means to transform your economic life from struggle to abundance. 
Knowing how to use the corporate tax code legally and ethically will allow you to create an abundant life far beyond anything you will be able to create with the personal tax code.     

 
For Your Abundance,

Kalinda Rose Stevenson

This article was originally published October 4, 2005.

http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-10-04.htm

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© 2005   Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Debt or Alive, Inc.
2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H
Minden, NV 89423

The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.
 
 Paul Broca

 Do you have a favorite story that gets to the essence of your life?  Rabbi Arthur Green begins his book, Seek My Face, Speak My Name, with such a story.   I refer to him not because of the story he tells, but because of what he writes about having such a story.

This tale by Rabbi Nahman has become my story.  I have been retelling it for twenty years or more.  Whenever I tell the tale, I ask those who are hearing it for the first item to share with me in the task of interpretation.   Seldom do I tell it without coming away with some new meaning that I had never seen in the story before.

Arthur Green

 I also have a story that has become my story.  It is a true story, based on an experience with my son.  I can tell you only a little about what I have learned from this story, and what I continue to learn from it.  For me, this story is a hologram, a single story that contains the whole.  
 

Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.

Eric Temple Bell 

 When my son was sixteen, he bought his first car, a well-used navy blue VW beetle.  He bought it from the next door neighbor with money he had earned on his own.  After he bought the car, he drove it into the garage and began to rebuild the engine.  I don’t know everything he did beyond replacing wires and spark plugs and various other worn-out engine parts. After all of his work, he reached that that magical moment when he turned the key in the ignition, ready to start the engine in his first car.  However, there was a problem.   When he turned the key, nothing happened.   

 I have always been close to my son and so it was perfectly natural for him to stop into my study to tell me that he could not get the engine started.   At that moment, I had one of my intuitive flashes and said, “It’s the distributor cap.”

 Eric’s response to this statement was “The distributor cap??  The distributor cap??!!  And since he clearly thought this was an utterly stupid idea, he gave me a mini-lecture on distributor caps.  He explained that the distributor cap is connected to the spark plugs and that the wires from the spark plugs go through the holes on the top of the distributor cap to carry sparks to the pistons in the cylinder.   I remember clearly that the lecture ended with these words. “It can’t be the distributor cap because the distributor cap doesn’t do anything.  Nothing can go wrong with the distributor cap.”

 At that point, the only fact he knew with absolutely certainly was that nothing can go wrong with a distributor cap. As for myself, I had no need to be right or wrong about the distributor cap as the source of his problem.  The idea came from someplace other than the rational part of my mind.  I went back to my writing and Eric went back to the garage.  
 

We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions.
 
Stephen R. Covey

Eric was on a school vacation and didn’t have a job at that point, so he spent all of his time in the garage working on his car.  I remember that we had our first conversation on Monday.  I could be wrong about the timing.  As I remember, he worked all day on Monday and far into the night.  He worked on Tuesday and far into the night.  He worked on Wednesday and far into the night.  It was all I could do to get him to stop for meals.  I think it was on Thursday when he came back to my study, slumped down in my visitor chair, and said, “I give up.”

 I had never seen him defeated before. Eric is one of the most persistent people I know.  If he sets out to do something, he stays with it until he has accomplished what he set out to do.  And for the first time in his life, he had reached the point of saying, “I give up.”

You must stick to your conviction, but be ready to abandon your assumptions.

Denis Waitley 

 At that point, I heard myself saying, “Eric, if you are stuck, it is because you are making an assumption that is keeping you stuck.   I don’t know what is wrong, but the problem with your engine has something to do with the distributor cap.”

 I didn’t get a lecture on distributor caps this time.  Eric stood up, went back to the garage, and came back a few minutes later to announce that he had found the problem and started his engine.

 He then explained what had happened.  When he replaced the wires between the spark plugs and the pistons, the wires that go through the holes in the distributor cap, he had connected the wires out of phase.   So instead of running wire A between spark plug A and piston A, and wire B between spark plug B and piston B, he had run the wire from spark plug A to piston B, and so on for the four spark plugs and pistons.  This miswiring meant that the engine was out of phase and so each spark plug fired at the wrong phase for the piston.  This is why nothing happened when he turned on the ignition.

 I tell you this story because this story of my son and the distributor cap on his VW beetle has become the foundational story of my life and work.   The longer I live with the story, the more I see in it.

 The most immediate benefit from the story is the point of the words I heard myself say.  “If you are stuck, it is because you are making an assumption that is keeping you stuck.”  I call this “Kalinda’s First Law Of the Universe,” even though I can take no credit for it.  I recognize the difference between insights that come to me and ideas that I dream up inside my own head.  These words came to me as insight.

The harder you fight to hold on to specific assumptions, the more likely there’s gold in letting go of them.
 
John Seely Brown

 In the years since these words popped into my consciousness, I have seen the truth of this “First Law” again and again.  Underneath any experience of being stuck, there is an assumption.  And until you identify and challenge the assumption, you will remain stuck.

 How do you know when you have hit this assumption?   One of the clues seems to be that your first response is the same as Eric’s first response.   “It can’t be the distributor cap because the distributor cap doesn’t do anything.”  In other words, the formula is, “It can’t be ________ because __________.”   You immediately reject the idea and give a reason why it cannot be true.

 I want to make clear that I am not telling you this story to impress you with my intuitive insight.   Sometimes, being intuitive is a dubious gift, which I usually keep to myself.  I have lost at least two friends because they were offended by what they heard.   In each case, a friend came to me and asked for help with a health problem.  And in each case, I had a sudden moment of insight, which my friend immediately rejected. Later events proved that my insight was accurate, but the cost of my insight was a friendship.

 I am telling you this story because I have seen again and again that people stay stuck because we are making assumptions that keep us stuck.   If you hear yourself saying the words, “It can’t be _______ because ________”, my experience teaches me that you have come very close to the assumption that keeps you stuck.

 There is so much more that I have learned from this story that I can only hint at here.  One lesson is that answers will come to your questions if you ask them.  And the answers will come sooner rather than later.  We live in a vastly interconnected spiritual universe.  Answers will come in ways that your logical mind cannot anticipate and will often come from the most unlikely sources.  
 
 One of my own mysteries over the years has been why my insights are always both accurate and inaccurate, both enough and not enough, at the same time.
 
 The fact is, Eric was right when he reacted to my statement about the distributor cap.  It’s true that nothing can go wrong with a distributor cap because a distributor cap is just a rigid cap with holes in the top.  
  
 So, why didn’t I get the insight, “Eric, you wired your engine out of phase?”  Why did my insight come to me with the words, “It’s the distributor cap?”  

  I don’t know the answer to this question.  Maybe it is not enough to receive  information from someone else, no matter how accurate the information is. To break through the assumption that keeps you stuck, you have to challenge your unchallenged assumption.   What you THINK  is true is often the assumption that is keeping you stuck.

 Eric had to go to the garage and actually look at the distributor cap, all the while knowing that nothing can go wrong with a distributor cap.   But when he really looked at the distributor cap, he found that the problem with his engine did have something to do with the distributor cap. 

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.
 
Alan Alda 

 Whatever your struggle in your life right now, I invite you to ask this question.  “What am I assuming that is keeping me stuck?”  And when the answer comes, as it will inevitably come, and you hear yourself saying, “It can’t be ________ because ______, you have probably found the assumption that is keeping you stuck.   The path to freedom is to act as if the answer is true, especially if the answer comes from the most unlikely source.  When you challenge what you think is true, you will very likely find the solution to the problem that is keeping you stuck.
 
This article was originally published September 6, 2005.

http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-09-06.htm

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WARNING:  BEFORE YOU INVEST IN REAL ESTATE…
FREE “No Money Limits Consumer Guide to Real Estate Investor Training.”
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© 2005   Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Debt or Alive, Inc.
2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H
Minden, NV 89423

Please visit my website on money strategies for real estate investors: www.nomoneylimits.com

“Some people plant in the spring and leave in the summer. If you’re signed up for a season, see it through. You don’t have to stay forever, but at least stay until you see it through.”  Jim Rohn 

Today is the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.   The turn of another season.   The end of spring and the beginning of summer.

Each season has its gifts and its challenges.   The gifts of summer are warmth and light, the essential elements of growth.  The challenge of summer is persistence.

Most people begin new projects with enthusiasm, even though starting a new project can mean a lot of work. 

Back in my gardening days, I used to live in New England.  I used to think that the most successful crop in my garden were the granite rocks deposited by ancient glaciers, granite rocks that had to be pried out of the cold ground, and deposited with the others in the rock wall at the edge of the property.   No matter how many I had pried out the year before, each spring thaw heaved another crop of rocks into my garden.   

It’s hard work to plant a garden, but spring is the time of promise.  There is something about a new beginning at the end of a long hard winter to motivate hard work.

Each year it is the same.   You repeat the magic ritual of planting seeds and setting out small plants, carefully placing them into the earth with the ardent expectation that they will grow and flourish.   You imagine the garden in its fullness even as you dig in the bare ground.

And then summer comes.   And with the change in season, you face a different kind of work. 

Summer work is tending, weeding, hoeing.  And it means working when the sun is hot, or when the sky is so perfectly blue that you want to quit working and go off to play.

Summer is the time when it is easy to quit.   You tell yourself that it is too hot, too buggy, or too humid.   Or it is so beautiful that you want to go swim in the lake or go for a picnic in the woods.  

The famous fable of the ant and the grasshopper catches the temptation to stop working in the midst of the summer. 

The ant works very hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he’s a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Comes winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

Summer is the real trial for all of us.  Most of us can begin our projects, with hope and hard work.   The capacity to persist in the middle of summer divides the beginners from the finishers.  Who wants to be out weeding the garden in the hot sun?  Yet weeding the garden in summer is an essential step. 
 
This is the lifecycle of any creative project.  Every project has a beginning, a middle, and an end, just as any dramatic story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.  Middles are always the hardest to sustain because they are not as exciting as beginnings and endings.  

For two or three years, I took several screenwriting courses and even wrote first drafts of four screenplays.   I began but never finished any of them.   

 I loved everything about the process, and came to appreciate how incredibly difficult it is to tell a good story following the structure of the classical three-act drama.   And I watch movies differently now than I did before I studied screenwriting. 
 
One of my teachers described the three act structure this way.  

“In the first act, you get your hero up the tree.
In the second act, you throw rocks at him.
In the third act, you let him down.”

In the classic “hero’s journey” story structure, the first act sets the scene, introduces the characters, and sets the hero out on the journey.  In the third act, the hero has a final confrontation with the primary antagonist that either ends triumphantly or tragically.  In either case, the hero is permanently changed.

The middle act lasts as long as the first act and the third act put together.   In this act, the hero keeps enduring in the face of obstacle after obstacle.  The middle act is the hardest to write.  The middle act shows the hero slogging along between the bold beginning and the final brave resolution.   

Look at the blockbuster trilogy movies.   Star Trek (the early ones,) The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix.  Each movie is one act in a three-part drama.  The middle movie of such trilogies tends to be the darkest and the most problematic. And typically, the middle movie is the least satisfying of the trilogy, resulting in bad reviews and unfavorable comparisons to the excitement of the first-act movie.  It’s hard to be a hero in the middle of the journey, and it’s not as much fun to watch.   Yet the middle act is essential to the structure of the drama.  The hero who faces the antagonist at the climax of the movie has earned the right by persisting through the trials of the middle.   

“It is summer, it is the solstice
the crowd is cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail permanently, seriously without thought.”   William Carlos Williams

In the seasons of the year, summer is the middle act.   It’s fun to plant in the spring.   It’s not much fun to weed in summer. Yet, the harvest in the fall depends on what happens in the summer.  The heroic task of summer is to stick with it, even when you would rather be doing something else.

The true mark of the hero is the willingness to keep on keeping on.  This is also the true mark of any successful person who finishes any creative project, whether it is writing a book or building a business.  You keep on keeping on, even when you would rather be doing something else.  The word for this is “persistence.”

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”  Calvin Coolidge

And so at the beginning of summer, when the days are long and the temptations are great, the question is, “What did you begin in the spring that you need to sustain in the summer to harvest your reward in the fall?”

Kalinda Rose Stevenson

This article was originally published June 21, 2005.

http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-06-21.htm

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