Winter Light appears courtesy of Bindu Wiles. All Rights Reserved.

In the last post, I wrote about a relatively simple approach to changing your in-the-moment scarcity mindset.

It was in response to Sarah who asked a lovely question in my comments section.

I didn’t really answer her question, though.

Her question was about engaging the 1st chakra to transcend a poverty mindset.

It was about decoupling from centuries of scarcity living and the stories, proverbs and beliefs that go with them.

It’s all in your roots!

The root chakra (the 1st chakra) is located between your tailbone and your hip flanges. In that bowl-shaped region, we carry the stories, beliefs, thoughts, sayings, experiences and traumas of our families of origin.

What Are Chakras?

Many ancient cultures have described the energetic systems.  The word Chakra is Sanskrit for Wheel.

A chakra works like a lung, continuously taking in and giving off energy.

It also works like a liver, metabolizing the information in the energy it takes in and processing related emotions.

You’ve felt your chakras. You know when you walk into a room and it’s charged with the relationship of two people? You can cut the tension with a knife?  You feel that tension with either your 3rd or 6th chakra.

Chakra Feelings

The butterflies in your stomach before a speech.

That feeling of choking when you’re trying to say something really, really important.

What your chest feels like when it’s going to crack open with joy.

Those are your chakras giving you information about your experience.

They’re not so foreign now, are they?

Chakras are magical. They’re miracles. As miraculous as a loaf of bread or a deep breath or a flower.

Intuition and Alignment

If our chakras are here to support us, can we harness them to make life easier?

Yes we can!

When we turn that chakra energy information into cognitive information, we call that intuition.

Intuition is listening.

Alignment is more like a conversation. It’s a back and forth, and it’s pretty easy to do.

This works for breaking the chains of a poverty mindset. It also works for everything else!

Here are the Basic Steps For Aligning Your Energy:

1. Become Calm and Present

2. Make Some Space in your Energetic Body by Feeling Your Feelings

3. Feel your Chakras

4. Visualize Outcomes. Let Your Intentions Be Known. Ask and Listen. Pay Attention.

Does That Sound Hard? Let Me Walk You Through It!

We’re going to clean out the fear of destitution and replace it with a deeply set intention.

Oprah Winfrey has talked about how she has this fear that she will be a bag lady, even though she has smarts, intention and money out the wazoo.

So, let’s say that you, too are having a big scarcity fear moment and you’re going all the way over to the bag lady daymare.

You visualize yourself by the side of the road with a sharpie pen and a piece of cardboard. You are hungry and gritty. How did you get here?

Let’s stop this scary daydream and realign, eh?

1. Become calm and present.

Take a few deep breaths. Count how long your breath is and make your exhale the same as your inhale.  Imagine that every part of you is relaxing, sinking a little, so that your muscles and fascia are hanging off your body like melty cheese.

Notice where your body is asking for your attention, either through tightness or pain. Imagine touching each one of those spots with a magic paint brush. Then imagine a magical pool of light flowing over you and touching each one of those spots. Breathe into each spot, acknowledging it. They will also loosen up and give you space.

2. Make some space in your energetic body by feeling your feelings.

I swear to all things holy, the vast majority of people are walking around all constipated with feelings.

You know what works great?

Feeling them. Feeling the feelings and dropping the story.  Not thinking about what your feelings mean while you feel them. Not thinking about how you’re going to fix things. Not thinking about how you got here.

Do not try to feel your feelings with your brain. Brains are bad at feeling.

If you find it hard to shut off the brain and just feel the feeling, ask your brain questions: What does this feeling feel like? Is it a dull pain? Or a sharp pain? Is it burning? Where am I feeling it in my body?

If you are having the I-am-a-bag-lady daymare, you are probably feeling afraid. So feel afraid. It’s not going to kill you. It’s not going to last forever. It’s really just a feeling.

The trick is not to try to respond to your fear while you are feeling it. You have time to respond to it later.

It’s like how some people do not listen. When it looks like they are listening, they are really just figuring out what to say next. Awful habit.

Feel your feelings. Don’t make plans on how to fix the problem. Don’t do a post-mortem of what went wrong. Don’t make an assumption that your feelings means something. Just feel them.

3. Feel Your Chakras

Does your left pinky toe hurt?

Did you see what you did right there? You brought your attention specifically to your left pinky toe. You felt it with your mind.

Okay, now do that with your first chakra.  Bring your attention to the area between your tailbone and hip flanges.  Feel the front side of this area.  Feel the backside of this area. Now try to feel the middle of this area.  It might feel like a dull ache. Now try to bring your attention to all three areas (front, back and middle) at the same time.

Stop doing this if it really hurts or if it makes you want to cry.  Just go back to deep breathing.

You can also put your left hand on your front and your right hand on your back in the vicinity of the 1st chakra. Push in, like you’re giving your first chakra a hand hug. This helps focus attention there.

It will feel full. It will feel biggish. Like a lump.  That’s your chakra.

Here’s something cool. Take that lump and imagine that it’s floating upwards, and let it rest between your hip flanges and your belly button. Feel it move.  Now, you’re hanging out in your 2nd chakra (home of creativity and sexuality).

Look at you interacting with your chakras! Excellent!

Okay, bring it back down to your 1st again.  And go on to step 4.

4. Visualize Outcomes. Let Your Intentions Be Known. Ask and Listen. Pay Attention.

Close your eyes. Imagine you as a bag lady again. Now imagine that you have a big eraser and erase the bag lady image.

Think about what you’d like to do or have happen. Then relax your face and let the scene come into your mind’s eye. Play it like a movie. Rewind and play it again, tweaking it until it matches exactly what you want to have happen.

Let your intentions be known by saying That’s it. That’s my intention.

You’re in an intuitive state right now. So you can also ask and listen.

Ask and Listen-

Ask a question, and then let all of your senses feel open. Relax your face and breathe and see what comes forward. or hear it. Pay attention.

You’ll know it’s real when it feels like you are riding in the car instead of driving it.

Pay attention.

And then, when you’re ready, take another deep breath. Wiggle your fingers. Open your eyes.

And then keep paying attention. Your world will be different.

In about an hour, I’ll be announcing a really cool project. I want you to be part of it. Stay tuned!

Showing the Strain appears courtesy of Brian Smithson via a creative commons license.

Check out Sarah’s comment from the Poverty of Ancestry Post:

This makes so so so much sense to me and describes exactly where I have been most of my Life. I want out of it…how do change how my first chakra works?

Oh Sarah-
I am so happy that you asked that question.

How to Change (Nearly) Anything

Things happen at different levels of our consciousness.

Some of the things that we do are deeply ingrained behaviors that have nothing to do with current realities.

To fix that, there is a cognitive method that I use to change in-the-moment behaviors. And an energetic method that I use to align my energy with my greater purpose. I’ll put the energetic method in the next post, so you don’t feel like you are reading a book here.

Changing In-The-Moment Behaviors

(Or, How I stopped taking Grandma Helgeson with me to the grocery store.)

The method I use is simple:
1. Observe the Behavior.
2. Bring Consciousness to The Behavior.
3. Find the Good Root and/or the Unmet Need.
4. Align to the Good Root with Support.

1. Observe the Behavior

Let’s shine a light on those automatic responses we have.

Take an everyday activity, and notice all of the tiny behaviors that you exhibit in relationship to it.

For our example, we’re going to the grocery store.

But first, I have to tell you about my Grandma Helgeson. My Grandma Helgeson was notoriously frugal. She grew up during the depression.

She was so tight that she’d scrape mold off food gone bad and she’d eat the food, and if you didn’t catch her, she’d serve it to you.

It’s fine. she’d say.

She was, in many ways, a lovely lady. But she was as tight as a drum.

So, guess who goes to the grocery store with me?

I can hear Grandma in the back of my head, You’re going to pay an extra 25 cents a pound for organic? If you do that with all your vegetables, it’s going to cost an extra 10 dollars! That’s good money you’re spending there!

For years, I didn’t pay full price for anything. I bought what was on sale.

What’s wrong with buying things on sale? Nothing.

Unless the thought process behind it is borked.

If I needed to buy something, and it wasn’t on sale, I would feel this anxious whine. In the back of my head, my grandma would say, You’re going to spend thirty dollars for a set of coffee cups? Ish-ta!

(Ish-ta! I have no idea what this word translates to. It’s similar to Uff Da, but it’s more disgusted. Like you might say Uff Da, if you drop an egg. You’d say Ish-ta if you dropped the egg and then it was rotten and stunk up your house.)

I digress.

The anxious whine of paying too much. Of paying Good Money. Of feeling screwed by the store. And with that whine, all sorts of scarcity thinking.

2. Bring Consciousness to the Behavior

I don’t observe every behavior of mine. I tend to just notice when I’m freaking out about something. I’m stuck.

The observer in me will notice and say You’ve been standing in the cereal aisle for 5 minutes now trying to decide whether to spend an extra $2 on that box of cereal there.

What’s going on? What’s the underlying belief that’s driving this behavior?

With buying things on sale, my underlying belief is that I am a better person if I buy something on sale. If I spend too much on something, it means that I am foolish and also, I think too much of myself.

The next step is to look in your family to see who that sounds like: Grandma. (Ish-ta!)

Usually an unconscious negative belief has multiple weird behaviors associated with it. Only buying things on sale also comes with the strange behavior that if you compliment me on something, I will tell you where I bought it and how much I paid for it.

Nice Shirt.

Oh thanks, I got it at Target for 3 dollars!

3. Find the Good Root and/or the Unmet Need

There is nearly always a good root or an unmet need.

A good root is a belief that is supportive and in-line with your values. Most negative behaviors have a bit of the good root in them. That’s what causes us to do them unconsciously for a very long time.

The good root to always buying on sale is a belief like, I appreciate how much time it takes me to make the money to buy this, and I’d like to honor that by being good with my money.

The unmet need could be I don’t know how to disengage my value as a person from how I spend money.

Finding the good root is pretty easy once you know to look for it.

4. Align to the Good Root with Support

Moving forward, I decouple the unmet need from the behavior.

I recognize that buying something on sale has nothing to do with my inherent value as a person.

Then I align to the good root, using it as the decision point.

I appreciate how much time it takes me to make the money to buy this, and I’d like to honor that by being good with my money.

That might mean that I spend an extra 25 cents to buy the organic apples instead of the regular apples because I also appreciate a farmer taking the extra steps to better our environment.

Or that I save up and spend more money on coffee cups that I really cherish instead of buying the crappy ones, because I appreciate that drinking coffee is an important experience to me, and would be made better by a beautiful cup. It’s worth it.

Or that I don’t buy something because it isn’t worth it to me.

To support myself, I recognize if I have the presence of mind to go shopping or not. If I am not calm enough to keep that decision point in mind, I don’t go shopping. I don’t put myself in a position where I’m going to freak out.

Also, I work on recognizing my inherent value as a person. This takes some contemplative effort, but it’s worth it.

Making It Conscious!

1. Observe the Behavior.

What am I doing?

2. Bring Consciousness to The Behavior.

Who does that thought I sound like?

3. Find the Good Root and/or the Unmet Need.

Why do I do this?

4. Align to the Good Root with Support.

How can I make decisions that meet my good root more directly?  How can I use my good root as a decision-point?

By identifying the message or belief that you’re applying to a behavior and deciding if that really is what you believe, you bring a level of consciousness to your habit.

And then, by identifying the good root, and using it to make decisions, you make a new pattern. You re-pattern how and why you do what you do, until it is more in line with your conscious goals and values.

And that pattern becomes the new habit.

Strengthening the First Chakra

The good root strengthens your first chakra in real, tangible ways, which, in turn, makes life flow better.

Once I let go of the belief that buying things on sale has something to do with my worth, I find that I am way more likely to find what I need on sale! That’s so weird and cool! I’ll take it!

I would love to hear about the behaviors that you notice, the underlying beliefs and the good roots. Will you comment and tell us about them?

Okay, next chapter- Working with the Energy.

I’m not blaming my parents. My parents are good, loving people who try hard.

When I compare my childhood to theirs, my childhood was a huge improvement.

The Poverty Mindset is Ancestral

Women Cultivating a Field in France in 1917. Image Courtesy of U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

For most of us, our parents were confronting the ghosts of their parents’ childhoods.

When my grandparents were children, they dealt with food scarcity on a regular basis. The vast majority of their food came out of their gardens and from their livestock. And if they had a bad season, they didn’t eat. If the cow died, where did they go for milk?

If my tomatoes don’t make it, I’m annoyed. But I can go down to my grocery and buy heirloom tomatoes all summer long. My grandparents couldn’t.

Our Grandparents and great-grandparents lived at a time when most families had children that didn’t live to adulthood. Many of them grew up missing a mother that died in childbirth or a dad that died at the mill.

Death was common. Hunger was common. Loss was common.

We Carry These Losses

We carry these losses in the stories and sayings that we learned growing up.

My dad always told me not to Get My Hopes Up.

My mother would say, Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket.

My grandmother would come to us after dinner, our plates in her hands. If we wasted a speck of a vegetable or a teaspoon of ketchup, she made us eat it.

The fear and scarcity thinking can be hard to shake.

We Carry These Stories in Our Spirits.

Even more deeply, we carry these ancestral stories in our spirits.

The 1st chakra is where we carry our stories and feelings about money. It’s also where we carry the stories of our ancestors. You don’t even have to know what happened to your family. It’s in your spiritual DNA.

It’s the 1st chakra that makes us feel safe and secure. When it is dormant, we feel vulnerable, insecure, at the whim of a precarious world.

Our world is suffering from 1st chakra troubles, even though (for the vast majority), things are so much safer and easier than even 20 years ago.

The Good News

The fact that you are alive means that every one of your ancestors lived long enough to reproduce. You have control over what you carry, and what you believe about the world. You can change your conscious beliefs, and in time, you can change your unconscious ones.

You can change how your 1st chakra works. There are so many ways to impact it, to root down and connect to our source.

We have so much power to change our lives. We just have to be willing to use it!

My mother likes to tell the story about how, as a three year old, I would run into my parent’s room saying “It’s a sunny day! It’s a sunny day!”
I did this every day, whether it was raining or sunny or snowing.

Most of us are born abundant and then life talks us out of it.

Why is this?

We come into the world with our spirits fully formed. We’re spiritually intelligent. Our spirits are stronger and more mature than our bodies and minds.

It’s why Jesus told his followers to have the faith of children.

Our spirits are where we feel our emotions. Our spirits are our intuitive spots.

Because we are fully-formed spiritually, we feel more deeply than our bodies and brains can handle.

It’s difficult for our bodies and brains to handle the level of emotions that our spirits feel. Instead of being taught how to cope with our emotions, most of us are taught to bury them.

Were you ever told, Quit crying or I’ll give you something to cry about?

Do you know why you were told that? (We’re going to explore that in the next post, The Ancestry of Poverty.)

I’d love it if you’d finish reading this post first.

Born Empathic, We Handle the Pain of Others.

As children, we’re born empathic. We believe we can handle the pain of others more than our bodies can take, or our brains can comprehend.

Were you the kind of kid who told a crying mom that everything was going to be okay?

Did she ever tell you that it wasn’t going to be okay?

How do you think that affected you?

Did it teach you to not trust what you came into the world knowing about abundance?

What Did You Learn About Your Emotions As A Child?

Did you learn not to feel? How can you be abundant if you’re not present enough to feel anymore?

If you had a childhood that effectively shut down your emotions, you’re not here.

You’re not feeling. You’re scared to feel. You don’t want life to hurt.

In order to be abundant, you have to be here.

Abundance starts with a willingness to feel. You can’t be abundant without presence and connection.

The Good News

You can get back to the abundant person you were. You can learn this. You can re-pattern how you think and feel and live.

It is not easy, but it is not nearly as hard as you imagine. I know this to be true because I have lived it.

It takes courage and love. You already have those qualities.

It can feel very difficult, in a poverty mindset, to believe that you can feel and live differently. I’m not asking you to believe that right now. I’m asking you to imagine who you’d be if you weren’t shut down by the stories of your childhood. That person is still in you.

You Were Born Abundant is available as a desktop wallpaper. Download it here.

Much of the poverty mindset isn’t in your brain. If it was as simple as changing how you think about things, abundance would be a cakewalk.

The poverty mindset permeates your conscious and your subconcious reactions.

You respond to stimuli differently than a person who grew up getting their needs met.

And as a result of that, there are things that you do that cause you to remain poor.

If you grew up poor, your biochemistry is different.

As you grew up, you faced more anxiety and fear than a typical kid did. You faced more feelings of loss and scarcity and vulnerability. Your nervous system was bathed in cortisol, making you more sensitive, more easily alarmed and less likely to feel grounded.

You have the biochemistry of Chicken Little.

If you grew up poor, your body is different.

If you grew up with lack, if you didn’t get your needs met, your habits are likely to make you fat and out of shape.

Cheap energy is made up of fat, starch and sugar.

If you grew up eating the food of the poor, you are less likely to eat better food as an adult. You are more likely to just eat more expensive versions of the food you ate as a child.

I grew up on lots of spaghetti, rice and potatoes.

That translates into frozen pizza, food from our local Chinese restaurant and french fries.

Food Isn’t Just Fuel, It’s Survival

If you grew up with food scarcity, food has a different meaning to you.

The memory of being the youngest child, dishing up last, and feeling like I didn’t get enough is deeply ingrained in my brain. So I serve far more food than my family could eat.

I am always asking my children if they are hungry. If my college kid comes home, the first thing I ask is Did you eat?

When I go home, the first thing my mother asks is Are you hungry?

Having enough to eat feels safe. As adults, we don’t know what enough is. We’re eating to try to resolve hungers that are 20, 30, 50 years old.

Little habits add up. Until last year, I was a member of the clean plate club. If food was put on my plate, I ate it, even if I was full.

If one of my children left a bite of food on their plate, instead of tossing it in compost, I’d eat it. My grandmother’s voice was in the back of my head, Are you going to waste that?

Food should be part of life. Food should connect you. You should eat to respond to who you are now, not to what you needed then.

If you can afford quality food, you should eat quality food. In this day and age, food is considerably cheaper than it was when I was a kid (and I am only 42).

Odds are good that you can afford vegetables.

Food is more than Fuel, It’s Comfort

If you experienced emotional scarcity as a child, and you learned to eat to comfort yourself, that becomes a deeply ingrained habit as well.

You shouldn’t eat to take your mind off your life. Or to deal with emotions you’re too scared to feel. You shouldn’t turn to food when you really just need to become conscious and connected.

This is something that I have to still remind myself to do. I’m not an emotional eater anymore, but it’s because I choose to break the pattern every day. And it gets easier.

And Then There’s Exercise

If you grew up poor, you are less likely to exercise.

Remember, the prevailing beliefs of the poverty mindset? Stay Small: I can’t go to a gym. People will look at me. or Escape the Pain: Exercise is so much work.

Or, for a minority, you’re over on the other extreme. You exercise like you do everything else, to exhaustion (Work to the Bone). You keep yourself on a really tight leash when it comes to food.

You don’t do these things because you love yourself. You do these things to control and punish yourself.

Did I Mention Constipation?

People with a poverty mindset hold onto things. They don’t eat enough fiber. They don’t move enough. And they put off the need to poop because they are too busy, life feels to urgent to stop and take care of that. And then they completely stop feeling that signal.

And What About Sleeping?

People with a poverty mindset don’t sleep enough, for many reasons. If you look at the prevailing beliefs you can see why.

When they do sleep, they have more anxiety, so they don’t sleep deeply.

Why Do These Behaviors Keep People Poor?

A lack of a healthy body means that you don’t have the energy that healthy people have. Without nutritious food as an adult, you have brain fog.

If you are a control freak about food and exercise, you bring a level of anxiety to your life that will defeat you. There’s no room for growth if you’re controlling yourself like that.

If you are not pooping enough and sleeping enough, you feel sluggish and awful!

The Root

All of these behaviors are automatic responses. They are what we do instead of consciously living our lives. They’re what we do instead, because as children we were taught that life is hard, and painful, and capricious, and we’ve taken what feels like an easier path.

It feels easier to eat food that appeals to our childhood emotions. It’s easier to sit on the couch. It’s easier to avoid going to the bathroom when you feel too busy to stop. It feels better (in the moment) to stay up watching TV than to go to bed.

We stop paying attention to what our body is asking for. And our body is the prisoner of our habits.

Changing the Poverty Mindset Takes More than Thinking Differently

You have to treat your body differently. You must consider why you eat and how you eat and what you eat.

It’s about loving yourself through good food, and through taking care of the emotions that you’ve trained yourself to eat through.

It’s about exercising. It’s about understanding why you don’t want to move, and figuring out ways to talk yourself into doing it.

(This exercise thing, it’s something I struggle with. It has to do with the immediate gratification problem. We’ll talk more about that soon).

It’s about pooping (really!).

And it’s about sleeping.

All these things that you did great when you were two, you need to get better at now!

I want this for you.

I want to help you move towards this. I want to help you change how you eat and how you use your body. I know that this has been the most difficult part of my journey, and I have a ton of ideas for how you can approach this with ease.

This isn’t a sales pitch. I’m not selling you anything here. I just want you to know that your body needs to support your abundance, and it can only do that with the right attitude, food and movement.

My mother nearly died when my brother and I were born. My family got hit with a huge hospital bill because my dad had a new teaching job, and the insurance company said that my mom’s pregnancy was a preexisting condition.

My family struggled to get by on one teacher’s salary, swimming in debt.

We struggled for years.

What Happens When You Grow Up Poor?

The prevailing message of your childhood is that there is never enough.

With poverty comes feelings of insecurity, a damping down of hope and a persistent thought that you will never escape tight times.

Life feels capricious and out of your control.

People facing poverty crave stability and safety. In their efforts to create stability and safety, they tend to fall into a poverty mindset.

Hey, Tara Gentile!

How are you different now that you’ve shed your poverty mindset?

Tara said, I feel like every question or idea is an opportunity. There’s never less, only the possibility of more. Breaking out of a scarcity mindset has also allowed me to see “wealth” in all areas of my life. My work, relationships, health and day-t0-day activities are richer.

What I love about her answer is that it’s not just about money, is it?

Tara’s answer is about life.

It’s about what we can do and experience with this one precious life.

It’s all about wholeness.

Money is only part of the equation. Everything else matters.

A Poverty Mindset has 4 Common Thoughts:

1. Work to the Bone: You have to work to exhaustion to get ahead.

2. Stay Small to Stay Safe: Don’t get too big for your britches. Don’t get your hopes up. You can’t afford to lose.

3. Money is Frightening: Squeeze your dollars until they scream. Be afraid of opening your mail. Be so overwhelmed that you can’t do any financial planning. Or do financial planning, but worry so much that you can’t be expansive in your monetary thinking. Lose sleep. Feel like you don’t deserve money. Feel like money is evil.

4. Escape the Pain: Life is so painful, we need to escape it. Spend your money before you lose it. Party Hard. Fill the emotional hole with shopping or food or alcohol or sex. Disconnect from life because otherwise you’ll hurt. Don’t invest in your life. Move on from a project before things get hard.

Each person with a poverty mindset suffers from one or more of these thought patterns. It turns some of us into workaholics and some of us into lifelong welfare recipients. And these thought patterns keep everyone with a poverty mindset in a lifelong prison.

That’s the Poverty Mindset, My Friend.

I’ve been there. Sometimes I still go there. But, I’ll tell you, the poverty mindset takes years off your life, and it sure takes the life out of your years.

Does this sound like you? Did you grow up with feelings of scarcity? Do you feel like you are at the whim of a capricious universe?

You can’t have an enjoyable, rich life if you suffer from a poverty mindset.

Let me show you how to transcend it. The next part of this series talks about how the poverty mindset isn’t just in your head.

Kitchen Conversation

Tell me about your feelings on the poverty mindset. Tell me about your childhood financial memories. Tell me about what you’d do differently if money wasn’t an issue.

"Fail Road" appears courtesy of Firefly the Great via a creative commons license.

“I am such a fuck-up!”

I was recently working with a client who could not get up the nerve to call someone about a job.

A former colleague had said that she was perfect for this opportunity and to give him a call if she wanted to work for his company.

It was a job she’d love to have.

She needed a job.

Every time she went to the phone, she froze and couldn’t call.

I am such a fuck-up! she said.

And I knew what was about to happen next…she was about to pull out her failure merit badges.

It took her an extra year to finish college.
She didn’t get that promotion at her last job.
She can’t find a man that she wants to be with.
She was late with her taxes and had to pay a penalty.
She has library books that she took out in 1993.

She’s a failure. She can’t get it together.

Humans are So Good at Trotting Out the Failure Merit Badges.

Why do we do this? Why do we look back down the road and just see where we fell down?

It’s a neurological response. Our body and brain says Hey, we don’t want to do that again. That didn’t feel good.

Failure is a teacher, but we can’t seem to get out of our desk when the lesson is over.

You are more than your failures, your trials, your tribulations. You’re even more than your triumphs and successes.

Deep down, you already know that.

Setting Ourselves Up for Failure

When we trot out our merit badges, we’re setting ourselves up to fail. We’re underscoring, neurologically, the failure. We’re asking ourselves to look at the failure, focus on it.

We can identify so strongly with our failures that we fail to identify with our potential success. And then we simply fail.

You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to do any of that. You can choose to do something different.

You have many success merit badges too. Far more successes than failures.

Put your failure merit badges away.

When I look at the colors that people chose for 2012, I think of my grandmother who used to say that Nothing is so bad that it’s not good for something.

I’m not going to share the details of her life, but let me just say that she did not come by that wisdom easily.

The colors of 2012 show a depth and power that I haven’t seen before. People are taking heart, bringing their courage and their power to the forefront.  In the past, I’ve seen more comfort colors.  This year, the colors are about stepping up and doing. These are the colors of people who don’t care so much about risk or losing, because they’ve had some loss, and realized that they’re stronger than that.

,

So thank you for sharing your colors and your donations to so many terrific organizations. I think it’s going to be a terrific year.

Who Won?

So many people entered their colors on instagram and pinterest and in blog posts! Thank you for spreading the word and for sharing your colors!

The two winners are Stacey and Naomi! They each won a Shop at the Bridge necklace! Congratulations!

What’s Next Around Here?

We have a lot of interesting changes happening at the Intuitive Bridge, and I’m excited to have you as a reader.

We’re doing more with color.

We’re doing more with intuition.

We’re doing less with marketing and product development.

We’re doing more with transformation.

We’re doing less ranting.

We’re doing more healing.

I’m really looking forward to this year with you!

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There are no bad colors.  There are colors that are not great fits for some people, but really, every color serves a purpose.

Most people instinctively pick something that’s a great fit.

I find color theory fascinating, and I’d love to spend more time talking and sharing about it.

A few short words about the color yellow.

Yellow is a terrific color. It’s good for power, will, clear self-perception and positive interaction with others.

It’s related to the 3rd chakra, which is the metaphoric domain of those concepts.

And yet, most people are rendered uncomfortable by yellow. It’s not their first choice, by a long shot.  In 2012, I encourage you to pick a yellow you can live with and buy a yellow coffee cup or cereal bowl. It’s an easy way to bring a little yellow into your life.

All right!

Onto the last 5 colors of the year!

Alison's Yellow

Alison

Ah! a bright, yet soft yellow.  This is a straight-up yellow, no sliding into red or blue.

Alison, you’re going to have a year where you further learn to wield your power with temperance and grace.

When we understand the dynamics of others, sometimes we don’t want to enact our power, because we don’t want to upset an apple cart, or to be a catalyst that causes change and muddies the water of another.

And yet, if we’re wise and careful, we can powerfully enact our power and be that catalyst, without inflicting damage.

That act of stepping into graceful power is your gift this year.

Naomi's Gunmetal Grey

Naomi

Metallic colors are some of my favorites. A metallic color always includes the sense of heat, molten change, and the ability to turn sand into glass.

Your gunmetal has blue and black in it. It’s a temperate color. Blue is wisdom and mystery. Black is pressure.

When we are drawn to a color like this, we’re ready for a challenge.

This year will be challenging, but not in a grueling, what fresh hell is this way.

When blue meets black, wisdom meets pressure.  The part of you that’s held back is going to come forward, and even though there is going to be risk, and we don’t know the outcome, you’re going to learn a lot.

Get ready to play, because the coach is putting you in.

Heather's Black and Red Swirly

Heather

Wow. Yours was a stumper! I had to think and intuit on yours plenty, and I hope you like the picture I drew.

Red, as you probably know by now, is the 1st chakra. It’s sustenance. It’s family. It’s your roots.  And Black is pressure, and swirls are movement.

When we get pressure at the roots, it’s like our system gets the dust and gunk blown out.

It’s a fast, sometimes painful change, but the outcome is serious clarity and, once everything has settled down, a good platform to build on.

I’d like you to think of this more like energetic wasabi than a volcano.  Have you ever had a bit too much wasabi? It really cleans out those senses, eh?

It’s a powerful cleansing.

I would recommend that you build in structure and support for yourself as you go on this journey. And also, that you find  your place in your family tree.  Look at how you fit into the lineage, and celebrate what you bring forward.

Marie's Star Shine

Marie

This is the most ethereal color choice I’ve ever seen. It’s almost more texture than color, and as you know, an opal’s relationship to light is ever-changing.

This is a year of ethereal lightness for you. It’s a year of the 7th chakra, and much interaction with the divine.

When you pick a color like this, it can feel very good, especially at the beginning. I’d like to bring a little word of caution here.

When people go ethereal…when they meditate or pray or take certain plants or otherwise reach spiritual ecstasy,  they want to stay up there. Your energy is going to want to rise up out of your body a bit, to be ungrounded, to un-tether itself from the feeling of substance that is your body and this planet.

You don’t need to do that to experience the lightness of the divine. In fact, you can do more and feel more if you stay grounded.  So while you are discovering this light, and reveling in it, remember to keep in touch with the ground.

Randi's Copper

Randi

When I saw that you chose this copper color, I could not think of a better choice for you!

Copper is deep molten orange-brown. It’s the 2nd chakra, with heat and motion.

The 2nd chakra, of course, is the domain of creativity, sexuality and fertility.  The coaching that you do with women who are considering having children needs a strong 2nd chakra.

The other beautiful aspect of this color, for you is that as copper ages and oxidizes, it turns green. Green is the 4th chakra, the place of love and compassion, so this is such a beautiful visual metaphor for how our fertile, creative interactions with others lead a deepening of our understanding and a strengthening of our abilities to love and live in compassion.

You are in for a beautiful year, my friend.

Melinda's Marigold

Melinda

And last but not least! Melinda!

I almost put you in with the oranges. This yellow-orange marigold is so gorgeous. Marigolds remind me of the Day of the Dead. They are the flowers that many use to decorate the graves of their loved ones.

And indeed what flower better exemplifies the vibrancy and juiciness of life than a marigold?

You are in a sweet spot of 2nd and 3rd chakra power.  Creativity and fertility and power, will, self-perception and interaction with others combine into a heady mix of life.   When you pick this color, you get lots of great ideas and the power to make them come to life.

This is a color that requires a lot of self-care. This year is a rally race, not a sprint. It’s a series of ideas coming to fruition.

Okay! I think that’s everybody! If I missed you, please email me and let me know.

Have a beautiful 2012. We raised over $300 for charities. That’s a great way to start the new year!

Purple, green and blue are about water and night and internal sight. They speak to intellect, courage, heart, and sovereignty. They combine the feminine of the heart chakra with the masculine of the crown chakra.

Green is love, compassion, courage, freedom from grief.

Aqua creates clear communication.

Indigo brings clarity and wisdom.

Enjoy your color!

Alannah's Midnight Blue

Alannah

Dark is not bad. It is just dark.

I’m not predicting tragedy. Your color is not the dark of grief. This is the midnight blue of night, but not the dark night of the soul.

Back before lamps, we had a different relationship with the night. The dark has always been rather frightening, but before lamps and candles and wood torches, the dark also subtle.

We could see gradients of light. We were aware of the stars and we renewed our relationship with them nightly.

When you choose the color of Midnight, you choose the color of wisdom gained through the willingness to confront mystery, to be part of the subtle soft of dark, to differentiate between that which is truly dangerous and that which is simply making noise in the bush next to you.

In the dark, things call out, naming their place in the world, and others go quiet, sleep, stay small.

Mice, Owls, Jaguars, Bees, Birds, Bears, they do not have stories about the night. They don’t have an oral tradition. They are simply living in the woods at night.

When you choose this color, you choose to explore the night, to put behind the lore and what others have said. You are choosing to see this mystery of life anew.

Let your eyes adjust to the night.

Leave the stories behind.

By the end of the year, it will be time to go beyond the observation and name your place. Name your role beyond observer.

When you come back,  you will be marked by your understanding. You might even be a thing that goes bump in the night!

.

Alexandra's Pale Green with a Little Bit of Blue

Alexandra

I’m struck by the pale translucence of this color, Alexandra. It’s 4th and 5th chakra, to be sure.

The 4th chakra, the heart chakra is a busy energetic train station of love and compassion and knowledge.

The 5th chakra, the throat is responsible for clear communication, speaking and hearing.

The throat is also responsible for the integration of intuitive information and observed information.

When these iterate, you have a clean, clear understanding of people, their intentions and of the importance of events that occur.

This color, the milky translucence points to the experience of this clarity.

For not only will you integrate your intuitive and observed understandings of people, places and concepts. You’ll be able to speak clearly and in language that others understand.

Words fail us. Words limit. We can’t convey the entirety of truth in everything we say. Yet, you, this year, will enjoy easy speaking, easy relating, words will flow from your heart and to it, and it will feel excellent.

Amy's Evening Sky Blue

Amy

Do you like the circus? Most people like the circus; the bright lights, the glitz, the chaotic array.

This is a cerebral circus color. It’s smart. It’s still the circus.

We like to be at the circus for a bit, right? A night or two?

It’s an entirely different experience when you choose to live it for a year, isn’t it?

Your blue is the unrelenting blue of chaos, beautiful art, soaring heights, an absence of safety nets and the smells of cotton candy, popcorn and elephant poop.

You will love it.

You will want to go home.

You will love it.

You will want less grit, less living on the edge, less show.

You will love it.

You’ll practice and learn new amazing skills. You’ll get frustrated.

It’s a trial by chaos, with moments of wonder and plenty of behind the scenes information.

Aubrey's Pimento with Olive Green

Aubrey

Whoa! What a combo!The green-yellow olive, dashed with shiny red. It points to the heart, belly and root chakras.

In the middle of everything, this pimento peeks out to remind you that you’re part of many lineages (a long history of strong, interesting game-changers) and that you are consistently sustained and supported.

Throughout this year, you’ll have a beautiful, slightly muted experience of love and power.

This is the year with the freedom to know yourself so well, and to love yourself so much that the expression of your power becomes easy and graceful, a loving act.

Beth's Intense Purple

Beth

This might be my favorite color of the year. This deep purple to iridescent pink, it’s  rare shiny vibrant.

This is a balancing color, working the 7th and 1st chakras together, with a touch of the 6th.

The 7th and 1st chakras are partners.  One grounds. One reaches.

When we allow our 1st chakras to ground us, to take care of our legs, to help us stand upright, we find so much more freedom in the rest of our bodies.  When we don’t have to use our whole bodies to stay grounded and upright, we get to use them for other experiences.

For you, these experiences will be about further developing the divine relationship. And while some people develop divine relationships in meditation, in spiritual ways, you’re also going to be seeing and experiencing the divine on the earthly plane.

There is also something about your experience being shared with many many people.  It’s an outward experience as well as an inward experience.

Bridget's Aqua

Bridget

This color flips between blue and green. It’s breathing a new life into your ability to convey truth from the heart.

Truth is always in context to the entirety, to all that is. Truth can be fleeting or truth can be relatively unchanging. The ability to hear and speak truth in context to all that is, to hold everything in a balance, that’s a rare opportunity, and it’s yours for this year.

This is a singing green, the bright reaching-out, a giving color.

This aqua is a gift for you to listen to your own heart.

Carol's Bright Apple Green

Carol

Ah! This green is gorgeous. Bright granny smith green.

Green is the color of heart chakra. And a bright apple green is the sign of a light heart that resonates the joy around her.

Around us, always, are thousands of subtle experiences, energies that are positive, supportive, sustaining, difficult, dark, depleting, and everything other feeling too.

We have the opportunity to resonate the energies that move our world positively forward, and when you carry this apple green color into your year, it means that you will find it easy to find the exciting good around you, to see the happy holiness in the people around you and to celebrate it.

Ellen's Aubergine

Ellen

Don’t you find it interesting that the same soil that gives us green broccoli and green beans and green lettuce also gives us this deep aubergine of the eggplant?

When this color of purple appears, it’s to remind us that within the very ordinary are the ingredients for the extraordinary.

Expect a year of grounded understanding and a year where you step into your sovereignity, quite naturally.

This is a year where it won’t matter so much what other people think of you, because you will understand the innate value of yourself and the daily value you bring to your work, your people, and your life.

This is a grounding purple.  This is a purple where you work from that deeply intuitive place, trusting your gut. Nothing can harm you. You’re untouchable.

I’d pair this with a touch of pumpkin orange around the edges to truly make this year one of queenly brilliance.

Greg's Pantone 252

Greg

Ah! What a refreshing color! Wow! If the ability to be in on the cosmic joke could be expressed as a color, it’d be this vibrant light purple-lavender.

This is light, profound connection with all that is, with the divine, with the cosmos.  It’s not taking it all too seriously. It’s the color of a happy buddha.

You know that feeling when you see all of the cosmic connections between people and events, and it makes you laugh to see such synergy?  Yes, that.  This is synergistic pleasure and happiness, and also a dash of being a conduit of divine wisdom, and a sharer of the global experience.

Juanita's Deep Purple

Juanita

Originally, I had a lighter color here, but when I saw you write that you saw a purple black, I tried to find a color that was a more accurate representation.

Do you remember, as a child, hiding under the table or even better, hiding under a pew in church. People walking right by you and not knowing you’re there?

That’s this color. This color is an initiation into the dark, quiet hush that others walk right by, not noticing.

It’s the color of repose, of old wisdom, of being welcomed into the fold of a long lineage. Still, being a child in an order of ancients.  Relax into it.  Dream.

Karen's Ocean Rising

Karen

Ocean rising.  Green moving to teal  to blue, to purple to violet and back. Flowing.

This is a suggestion that while you experience many different moods and ideas, you see what stays the same throughout your experience.

For though the colors change, they’re made up of the same thing, water and light.

There is less pressure near the top of the ocean, where the colors are the brightest.

Expect a year of light, teeming with life, and all of the good and difficult that comes with it. Pay attention to what stays constant.

Kitty's Lavender

Kitty

This light grey-purple is a quiet color, a time of subtle softness.

This is the color of Sunday afternoon winter naps, when you slip between the covers of your bed and your sheets feel cold through your pajamas.

It’s the color of winter light. It’s a time to be quiet and take things in at your own pace. You do not need to rush.

It is definitely the color of divine interaction, but more the soft brush of the feminine divine, the soothing hand brushing the hair off your face. It’s a good, soft time.

Kyeli's Dahlia Purple

Kyeli

Whoa! This purple rocks! What a gorgeous, bright, yet natural purple!

You know that part of you that feels light on your feet, that’s fleet and fun and happy? Yeah, that part is going to be front and center this year.

This is a royal color, a sovereign color but it’s the color of a merry queen, someone who is the head of a happy, working queendom.

There’s no confusion in this color. Nothing to figure out. Nothing even, really, to do other than to take pleasure in your experience.

Purple is always about the crown chakra.  One would expect divine interaction, but I’m not getting that. I’m getting more that this is the color of tapping into the joy of collective consciousness.

Liberty's Bergamot Tea

Liberty

This color really threw me, Liberty! But then I thought of this color applied to yarn (because I can’t think of you and not think of yarn!).

It’s earthy. Mineral. The color of slate. This quiet color is indicative of finding peace in natural circumstances.  Peace in nature.

This color asks you to slow down and notice the subtle changes in the everyday. There’s beauty that you will see that nearly everybody else will miss.

This color is a reminder that even in the most ordinary of times, there’s incredible beauty and joy to be found.

Liz's Deep Summer Green

Liz

Oh Liz. What a gorgeous color! This green is a condensation of the 4th chakra. It’s a clean color of green, one that’s sifted out the parts that don’t belong.

And it’s a deep bottle green. It’s the color of my living room, and that’s no accident, as this room is the heart of my home.

This is the color of a healing heart, not a heart that is healing itself, but actually a heart that heals others.  You are going to have a year of acknowledging that your heart heals the hearts of others, and once you acknowledge it, you’ll be able to take in the acknowledgement of this from others. It’s such a lush, rich color! I am so pleased you chose it!

Meg's Cerulean Blue

Meg

This is the straightforward 5th chakra. This is the ability to know exactly the truth of a situation and to articulate that truth with clarity and conviction.

This is a natural evolution of your current way of being.

This color has serious flow to it, and much the same way that the entire sky is blue, this color has an aspect of shared experience.

It’s not just that you are telling the truth or conveying it, you’re holding a space for the sharing of truth.

That saying The truth shall set you free is evident (without that but first it will kick your ass crap.)

Looking forward to hearing your crisp, clear words.

Michelle's Glow Factor Violet!

Michelle

Wow! Check out this violet! This nearly ended up in the pink section, but there’s just enough purple to put it here.

Your intuition is going to play a key role in this year.  You’re going to learn to rely on that incredible 6th sense of yours.

The depth of this color is stunning. It points to a significant change in your way of being.

This change, tied to your ability to easily rely on your intuition, indicates that you’re going to come through this year with a completely different understanding of your worth. And that understanding is going to come from using your intuition in a deep, profound way.

Mike's Indigo Blue Violet

Mike

This midnight sky purple velvet is all about wisdom and mystery. Similar to Alannah’s but deeper and bluer.  When you are out in the country, and you look up at the night sky, there’s no direction that would give you a two-inch patch of dark, is there?

And yet, we have this one here. This is the wisdom between the light. And in much the same way we can see light from stars that burned out a thousand years ago, we can gain wisdom from nothingness.  We can gain wisdom from the space between the light. That’s what your year is about. It’s about the mystery of nothing, of anti-matter, the wisdom of clear space.

It’s decluttered clarity, a making of space for you and for your people, and a reveling in the joy of nothingness.

Rachael's Peaceful Blue

Rachael

I think Martha Stewart has chickens that lay eggs this color.

This beautiful wedgwood blue is soft and kind. It’s a simple summer-time hue of clothes on clotheslines.

This is a year of happy and simple and uncomplicated. It’s kind of a year off from having to try too hard, or from being plagued with problems and annoyances. It’s a good time year.

Expect softness.  This would be a good year to regroup too, to take some time to decide what you enjoy and what matters, but in a light way, not too serious.

Sara's Manatee Green

Sara

I love sea cows. They are so gentle. This color is muted and dark, a green-grey.

This is the time when you sit back, sit quietly and ponder what’s in your heart. It’s not a time for doing anything but sifting and thinking and feeling.

Your heart is safe, but it needs the application of your gentle clarity. A quiet time to understand your own heart’s wisdom, and your place in your family and greater community.

Here’s to a soothing year, my dear.

Stacey's Deep Ocean Blue

Stacey

This color is the color of the ocean at night, the nautical blue that’s seen by the person on night’s watch.

I know a fellow who owns a company that sails boats from France to the US. Often, he’s made this trip alone. When you sail alone across the ocean, you’re at sea for several weeks. And although the ocean is vast, it’s not impossible to meet a ship.

So Steve would set an egg timer for 15 minutes, fall asleep, and then when it dinged, he’d wake up and look around and make sure there wasn’t a ship on the horizon. The horizon line was 15 minutes away.

Then he’d fall back asleep.  Sleep for 15 minutes at a time all the way across the ocean.

This year is a year of night’s watch. A quiet night with a few ships met.  This is a year where you will feel how strong and confident you are, what a lovely vessel of a life you are on.

You do not have to worry about not having enough sleep. You’re not alone on your journey. Take pleasure in the night, on your ship, on a gentle sea.

Susie's Blue Iris

Susie

Oh Susie, I am so pleased you chose this Iris color instead of Tangerine Tango. It’s much more inline with your energy.

This bright vibrant blue-purple is natural exuberance, a heady dance of bright. This color can’t last forever, but for this year, you’ll find yourself pretty happy, pretty joyful and with plenty of energy.

This is a time of connection, of sharing and eating and dancing.

Have a great year!

Tina's Power-Up Plum

Tina

Power-up plum is aptly named. It’s the combination of red and purple, usually with a brush of grey-blue.

The red is the 1st chakra. It’s blood, sustenance, chutzpah, guts.

The purple is the crown chakra, the 7th. It’s wisdom, divination, collective conscious.

When these are combined, it brings into power every other chakra as well. This is the revved up engine of a powerful year.

And the best part is that you are in control of this year.  You get to manage this thrilling adventure, and you’re up for it.

Virginia's Caribbean Blue

Virginia

Your blue is not that different from my color or Meg’s. It’s got a little more white in it, which means that your 5th chakra truths won’t be so intense.

You can expect clear, gorgeous communication, and the integration of intuitive information with observed information.

You’ll combine the tangible with the ethereal.

You’ll combine the linear with the tangential. You’ll speak and hear clearly, and be in context with the tides.

This color is a balancing act. It’s fluidity incarnate. You’re going to have a great time!