My financial
When I was starting as a commissioned broker, I never really knew for sure if I would make money the next month or not. It was scary. I’d think, Gosh, I had a good month this month, but what about next month? Then I’d freeze in a panic.
The more I froze, the more depressed I felt, and sure enough, suddenly there was nothing I felt enthusiastic about buying or selling for my clients. Even when I did try to transact businesi with them, they could pick up on the lack of enthusiasm in my voice and didn’t want to buy from me. It was as if they knew something was wrong. It was uncanny.
I remember being in this terrible funk once, and since I figured my clients would pick up on it anyway, the way I decided to deal with it was to stay home from work one day and escape by watching TV. I happened to catch one of those PBS fund- raising drives. As I continued to watch, I became really moved by the participants’ passion, and during one of the pledge breaks, I picked up the phone and pledged $300. Three hundred dollars seemed like quite a hefty amount to me at that time, but somehow I felt that was the right number.
I can’t tell you how good I felt when I hung up the phone. I got up, called a few friends, went back to work the next day. Later that week I was in my office, smiling, when Cliff, one of the brokers down the hall, came in and said, “Looks like you’re in better spirits. What happened?” This made me stop and think for a moment. I really didn’t know at first, but after retracing the few days before, I realized that my mood had switched right after I gave the money to PBS.
From then on, every time poverty consciousness hit me and I sank into another money funk, I’d remember that first day. I would promptly take out my checkbook and send a check to one charity or another at the time. It was the strangest thing, but
would feel much better right away. Even stranger, as soon as I was feeling spunky again, lots of people would call and want to open a new account with me, or a newspaper article about me would appear and the phone would start ringing off the hook.
every instance, the amount I had given was showered back on me tenfold in no time. More important, with each check I wrote, whether it was for $5 or $500, I felt more powerful. I was able to extinguish the feeling of poverty that had been burning at me. That act, for me, was worth its weight in gold.
It took awhile until it hit me that I had stumbled upon—or perhaps was guided to—the answer to my questions “How does one release one’s anxious grasp on money? How does one make oneself open to receive?”
By giving.
I started to test my theory with my clients. I went back through many of my files and divided my clients into two groups, one that gave money to charity on a regular monthly basis and one that did not. What I found was that those who donated regularly had an abundance of money, more than they really needed. Most of the others didn’t.
I was fascinated by this but couldn’t tell if my little study was accurate, because I had no way of knowing whether my more generous clients had more money to begin with; maybe their abundance had nothing to do with what they were giving. Maybe it was a fluke. So I took a different approach. When new clients who weren’t doing so well came to see me, I asked those who I thought would be open to it to start donating money each month to a place they’d feel good about giving to. To new clients who also weren’t doing so well but (in my opinion) wouldn’t be open to it, I said nothing. I couldn’t believe the results. The better people felt about themselves, and the more they kept their hands open to receive by relinquishing money, the more their financial situation improved. It was thrilling. The key was to start respectfully to give money away by making an offering on a regular basis. They had moved toward financial freedom by giving their money to others.
