Dailyworth.com: Know Your Worth

Several months ago, I read that women still earn 20% less than men. The more I read, the angrier I became at the thought of hard-working women under-earning. But the self-help junkie in me knew there was a better way to think about it. I asked myself, “Why does this statistic make me so angry?” My inner voice (a.k.a. my ~ing) responded, “You’re angry because you too are under-earning.” Wow! My ~ing was right on. I was angry because I didn’t know my own worth.

This revelation caught me off-guard because I perceived myself as a kick-ass businesswoman. I’ve started several businesses, closed tons of deals, and managed my own books since I was 21. Why was I still undervaluing my worth?

I turned to the expert: my dear friend Amanda Steinberg, the founder of DailyWorth.com, a daily personal-finance email for women. “Women often approach jobs and contracts with fear and insecurity, not thinking about the established market value of what we bring to the table,” she said.

Once we understand our value, we can take action toward significant change. I committed to taking the necessary steps toward earning more and loving it.

The first step in know~ing my worth was the willingness to feel uncomfortable. Change can cause growing pains, but to move through them you must be willing to feel whatever comes up. I felt queasy thinking about negotiating, but playing small was no longer an option. I braved the discomfort and shifted my inner dialogue from, “That doesn’t feel good. Run!” to “Bring it on!”

I was ready to transition into the second step to know~ing my worth: practic~ing. The only way to transform my old patterns was to create new ones. Regardless of how uncomfortable I felt, I practiced negotiating every chance I got—from retail purchases to sponsorship deals. Each time I practiced, I transformed my fear and felt more worthy.

Despite my improvement, I noticed something funky during my practice period. Each time I asked for what I wanted, I felt the need to apologize by over-talking and justifying my requests. Whenever I over-talked my negotiations I sabotaged the deal.

This brings me to the final step in know~ing your worth: clos~ing the deal. This step is all about revving up your belief system. When you believe you’re worthy, others do, too. With that in mind, I tapped into my visualization meditation practice. I’d sit in a ten-minute meditation, imagining myself signing the contract on a sponsorship deal. Then I’d see myself cashing the check. Most importantly, I’d hold the vision long enough to feel worthy. The key to believing is feeling. By holding powerful visions through meditation, I guided myself into a true feeling of worthiness.

With this new belief system in place, I was ready to close the deal. At closing time, I asked my boyfriend, a killer negotiator, for advice. He said, “When you’re finished asking for what you want, shut up.” Man, is that right! There’s no need to backpedal or over-explain when you know your worth.

I practice these tools daily and have experienced miraculous results. I’ll negotiate with anyone, visualize and ask for more any chance I get—all for the sake of truly know~ing my worth.

You can check out more of my blogs here!

Photo Credit: Bill S

3 Reasons to Know Your Chakras: Love, Money & Confidence

Does the word “chakras” sound at all familiar to you? What if I said this post was about love, money, and confidence – and how you can experience more of all of the above? Yep, that’s right. Get to know your chakra system and you will. Our chakra energy system is where energy flows through our body, and when any one of our seven chakras are blocked – well, it’s not good. But learn more about your chakras and how to keep that energy flowing freely, and you’ll bring love, money, confidence, and much, much more into your life.

Love. “Get rid of the old to make room for the new” or “You must love yourself before you can love another” are just a few of the very true clichés we have all heard. Though these sayings are both very true, sometimes we need a bit of help in the way of making those statements truly come to fruition in our lives. This is where your heart chakra comes in (located at the heart). Your heart chakra represents your past, present and future loves – and if it’s not open, then you’re probably not going to be experiencing the abundance of love that is available to you. So, what to do? Well, an easy food fix for this chakra is eating green-colored foods. (Yay for green juice! Maybe this is why we all love Kris!) The other fix for this chakra is opening your heart—whether that means using yoga to open that chest of yours, or literally forcing yourself to say “I love you” to those you love; either will do just fine. My grandfather’s 1950s version of opening his heart chakra (whether he knew it or not) was silently blessing the first 100 people he saw every morning. You know what, it worked. That man was probably the most popular man in our town.

Money. Have you ever had a lower back issue? Perhaps it’s just reoccurring pain, or maybe it’s even a case of sciatica. If you were more familiar with your chakras you’d know that lower back pain (root chakra) can be traced to concerns over money. Yep, money worries = lower back pain. Famous financier George Soros used to say he’d always get out of an investment when his lower back would bother him. The good news for George and for us is that by doing some light yoga (like bridge pose) and eating red-colored foods, we can help open up our root chakra. I remember a time a few years ago, when I was on the road raising capital for a startup during one of the toughest financial environments ever, and guess what body part began to hurt? Yep, that’s right, my lower back. But the good news was that a friend in San Francisco had introduced me to the chakra system, and after some hard core lower back work, including a lot of restorative yoga, my lower back was back on track. And we ended up raising the capital we needed, too.

Confidence. Self-worth, self-confidence, self-esteem–call them what you want–we’ve all dealt with these at one time or another. When we’re not feeling as confident as we should be feeling, we can perpetually sink ourselves into feeling worse. There are loads of great books and self-esteem boosters like affirmations to help get us back on our confidence track. There’s also our solar plexus chakra (located above the navel) as well. By indulging in corn, some yoga that is ab-centric, and by even shaking that booty of ours (yes, dancing helps), we can open up our solar plexus chakra and get our confidence back where it should be. I particularly love this chakra because of its location within our abdominal muscles. The healing of our solar plexus chakra, more so than any other chakra, is directly related to working out and moving our bodies, particularly our abs. This really illustrates the important connection between our physical and spiritual health as an ever-expanding waistline can affect our health and our spiritual energy.

Jason Wachob is a curator and one of the founders of MindBodyGreen.com, Jason’s goal is to promote the idea that wellness is for everyone – and that it can be fun and fulfilling. After years of successfully trading equities on Wall Street, Jason decided to make a lifestyle change – focusing on wellness and building companies that promote it.

Photo Credit: hint of plum

Love List: Crazy Sexy Biz

Love Listers,

Over the past decade, I’ve experienced the power of health, spiritual wealth and happiness. This journey sparked my entrepreneurial fireworks and led me to create my own wellness company. I’ve learned that it’s not easy being a business maven, but if you’ve got a passion and you want to share it with the world, you need to stock your entrepreneurial toolbox with knowledge and courage (and be prepared to make a lot of mistakes!). This year, I’ve discovered some of the most powerful ladies in biz today and they are rocking my world, which is why I’d like to dedicate my love list to them this week. Enjoy!

1. Marie Forleo’s B-School

Marie Forleo is my new BFF–the soul sista from a past life who I finally reunited with! She blows my doors off every time we get together, Skype, or brainstorm about business-savvy web magic! If you have a business that is making money, but not fully leveraged through online marketing and you want to monetize the heck out of what you do, then this program was made for you. Rich, Happy & Hot Marie Forleo has created an eight week online program for women (and men!) business owners (online or offline) looking to take off on the web and make their companies soar. This is an intense program made for entrepreneurs who already know what they want for their biz, but need help harnessing the power of the internet! Sound like you? Learn more (registration ends August 16th)!

2. Danielle LaPorte’s Fire Starter Sessions

Danielle’s no nonsense, spirit-packed approach to business resonated with me from the first time I heard her voice! Her Fire Starter Sessions virtual experience lit my entrepreneurial fire. I found myself saying, “Yes!” out loud as I read through FSS and watched her inspiring videos. If you’re looking to pinpoint your passion or launch the idea that’s been brewing for years (maybe decades!), Danielle is here to help you see the journey through. Want more one-on-one attention? Danielle offers phone consultations, but I have to warn you, buckle your seat belt and be prepared to take notes like the wind before you get on the horn with her!

3. Amanda Steinberg & Gabrielle Bernstein’s Know~ing Your Worth Teleclass

Want to get your wallet in order while fine-tuning your personal connection to cash?  Amanda Steinberg of DailyWorth has teamed up with Gabrielle Bernstein to create the Know~ing Your Worth teleclass. These four teleseminars will help you make the connection between your well being and your financial health. Amanda and Gabrielle will get you on the road toward healing your inner and outer relationship with money while you learn how to move toward financial success! Check out their website and learn more during their free introductory call on August 11th.

4. CrazySexylife.com Nominated for a Veggie Award!

And speaking of business…why don’t I give my own company a little love? CrazySexyLife.com was nominated for “Best Website” in VegNews’ 2010 Veggie Awards. Cast your vote today!

Peace & moo-lah,
Kris Carr

Photo Credit (cash register): plain_jane53177

Photo Credit (Danielle LaPorte): Anastasia Photography

Michelle’s Lessons from No Impact

No Impact Man, the film, opens today! Check here to find a theater near you. Today, Michelle Conlin shares some of her experiences during the No Impact Year…

My author husband, Colin Beavan, decided in late 2006 that he wanted to stop writing about history and start writing about global warming. He was so excited about his idea—attempting to live for one year in the middle of New York City without making any negative environmental impact—that when he asked me to join him, I immediately went all wifely and lobbed back an effusive yes.

When my best friend from childhood, filmmaker Laura Gabbert, later heard about No Impact, she begged Colin to let her and her partners film us. After they promised Colin to make as low-carbon a movie as possible, he agreed. His sustainably produced book—made from postconsumer recycled paper and chlorine-free cardboard, with energy supplied by biogas—is titled No Impact Man. It hit stores Sept. 1. The documentary of the same name begins opening nationwide on Sept. 11.

Truthfully, when I said yes to this Woody Allen-meets-Walden affair, I didn’t fully think through what it would mean to live with a toddler and a dog in a one-bedroom, ninth-floor Manhattan apartment using no elevators, no electricity, no disposable diapers, no food grown more than 250 miles from home, no TV, no takeout, no beauty products, and no washing machine. Oh yes, and no buying anything; for the next year I would shop my own closet.

Little did I know that a year after the project’s completion the global financial system would implode, or that the era of high-impact living—using one’s house as an ATM, jetting off on a lark—would come to a spectacular and cataclysmic end. And here’s the strange and unpredictable twist: Going No Impact for a year turned out to be sublime preparation for the post-subprime life.

In our 10 years together, Colin has bought himself three things: a second-hand cell phone, a used PC, and a folding bike. He bought me a diamond ring from a flea market. So no spending problems there. I, however, was an inveterate credit dipper. (As a last-chance binge before the project began, I indulged in a $900-plus pair of stiletto, knee-high Chloe boots. Then I had a moment of silence for my Sample Sale self.)

At first, the call of the stores was strong. Life on the hedonic treadmill is a habit—and I had to break it. Soon I started coming up with end-runs that gave me an even bigger high. Not buying anything new didn’t mean I couldn’t partake of Jane’s Exchange, a children’s consignment depot. We took our daughter, Isabella, there for her birthday, and I told her she could pick out anything she wanted. She chose a hardly-worn pair of princess slippers. Cost: $1.

We cut most other expenses, too. The Con Edison bill dropped to zero. Restaurants were out. But we did partake of the freegan lifestyle, eating bakery leftovers. Coffee was also verboten. There is no such thing as locally grown coffee—tragic for a girl who before going off the bean was averaging 20 shots of potent, iced espresso deliciousness every beautiful day. On my last run, I blew through a $25 Starbucks gift card in a single workday. Withdrawal was ugly.

But thanks in part to cutting out all my bad habits, within a month, my debt was gone. We ended up cutting our discretionary expenses by at least 50%—often more. Honestly, when my paycheck started loitering around in my checking account, it actually felt uncomfortable. From my journal: “I CANNOT get my bank balance down for the life of me. I spend Nothing. As in NOTHING.” Without knowing it, we were early adopters of what would become the new frugality. We even started giving away 10% of our money to charity.

The No Impact project also provided an opportunity to do a lifestyle redesign. In a nation of extreme commuters, mine was a micro-jaunt: Greenwich Village to Midtown Manhattan, 20 minutes door to door via subway. But Colin and I foreswore all modes of carbon-based transportation (except for BusinessWeek reporting trips). Not because we are against mass transit. But because the point of the project was to be radical: to go completely off the grid, drop out of the culture, and see what would emerge.

At first I walked the 40 blocks to and from my 750-square-foot nanoplex. But this was taking too much time away from my then 2-year-old. So I started to use a push scooter. The scooter itself became a workplace objet fixe. It was irresistible to my colleagues, who swiped it to vroom up and down the halls à la Romper Room. I had long been too tired—from not working out—to get to the gym to work out. But by exchanging my time on the subway for a self-propelled commute, I dropped 10 pounds; my new locavore diet didn’t hurt either. I had the energy of a supermom in my slacker mom’s body. My insomnia evaporated—the scooter was No Impact Ambien. My palate also began changing. The local food, though heavy on the parsnips, began to taste delicious. Three months in, I started getting through the day without the usual afternoon Dunkin’ Donuts high followed by the crash. The pastry mania and shame hangovers were gone. My pre-diabetic condition vanished.

Work was my fast life. Home was my slow life. No lights, no cell phones, no TV. I know it sounds like deprivation. But the truth is that when I opened the door to the No Impact house at night, I felt like I was walking into a vacation. The days felt like they lasted forever. No Impact was a great ritual destroyer. What I realized was that so many of my rituals were so bad for me (my health), for us (our bank account and all the family time lost to my scurrying off to shop), and for the environment. What I learned from No Impact was that there is a steep cost to supporting all your stuff. To a life devoted to getting and having. In my days of high consumption, I’d been searching for something. It turned out that it was right in my own home.

This article was originally posted at the No Impact Man blog.

Planet Ponzi

I don’t know about you, but I sure enjoyed Bernie Madoff’s ponz-o-matic perp-walk for the cameras yesterday. Who doesn’t love a billionaire on the red carpet in cuffs? Fascinating! How does a greedy geezer get away with such a colossal swindle for so long? But I’m not talking about government’s lack of oversight here (that’s a whole other mess), I mean the quiet checks and balances within a man’s own soul. This is why we stare at pictures of criminals, isn’t it? We hope to find answers written somewhere in the face. We need to sigh with relief that they’re not us… But not so fast. It turns out we do in fact share something in common with Madoff, and his scam offers us a valuable opportunity to understand ourselves in fresh terms. That is: the human race has been running a vast con job on mother earth herself… and the gig is nearly up. Welcome to Planet Ponzi.

A Ponzi scheme is basically when you pay off early investors with money from newer investors. It’s also called a pyramid scheme because it grows in the shape of a triangle – each new tier of victims must be bigger to cover payments to all previous tiers. This is sustainable only so long as you can keep more and more fresh money flowing in. But once that dries up, even a little, the whole thing collapses. They always do, and usually quite quickly. What’s astonishing about Madoff is that it went on for so long and got so big.

But Bernie’s mischief is a sideshow to the main stage. Are you sitting down? The global economy actually works in a similar way, and we’re watching the whole house of cards teeter as voodoo economics collides hard with planet earth.

Capitalism is all about growth. It thrives on the creation of more and more wealth. Follow the money back to its roots and you’ll always find natural resources. Our desire to exploit natural resources is certainly nothing new. But for thousands of years we, like all living things, were part of a food chain that was limited by each year’s sunlight. We understood the circle of life because we lived in it. But through the millennia our pesky penchant for science, mixed with some God-given dominion, slowly pulled us away from the garden. Our dislocation took an abrupt turn off track with the discovery of oil. Suddenly, a million years worth of stored sunlight was available in a moment. The industrial revolution kicked into high gear. Enormous amounts of energy were applied exploiting other resources, which in turn were used to exploit yet more resources, on and on in a vicious cycle of production, consumption and waste that grows like… you guessed it, a Ponzi scheme. Today we have a complex industrial food system that’s 30 times more energy-dependent than just a century ago. Not to mention all that stupid shit they sell on infomercials late night.

Capitalism is a cool party train so long as the oil wells are pumping and there’s somewhere to dump the waste. But over the past decade or so, we’ve been shaken with the realization that Mama Earth has her limits. She’s slamming on the brakes and the boxcars of the Economy Express are piling up in a spectacular derailment. As the dust settles, we’re beginning to think hard about a new way of doing business where the earth gets to vote again.

I’ll never forget my first lesson in ecology: a Native Alaskan ceremonial mask I saw in a museum when I was a kid. A crazy-assed spirit face, and on the sides it had hands with big holes in the palms. I learned the holes represented a guiding rule: for every salmon you catch, you have to let one slip through. When’s the last time you saw them do that on Deadliest Catch? The next big lesson came from the compost pile: in nature, there is no waste. The thing is, there’s nothing romantic or remarkable about this view of life. It IS life. Nature is self-sustaining, ponzi schemes are not. Native people acted on behalf of their unborn’s unborn, corporations act on behalf of the next quarterly report. The earth is round, yet we’ve been jamming it into a pyramid-shaped box.

In court yesterday, Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty. The fallen billionaire will probably die in prison. He hung his head and expressed deep regret for the pain he caused. He explained that when it started, he thought it would end quickly. It just grew out of control. He said, “As the years went by I realized this day, and my arrest, would inevitably come.” Call him the greedy sociopath he certainly is – don’t forget the swine specifically targeted charities! (he also screwed amazing activists like John Robbins of Diet for a New America fame). But let’s also stop and think about the Madoff in all of us. The part of us that knows we must stop, knows our day in court will come, but we lack the courage to do the right thing. Old Bernie’s cooked. But for us there’s still time – although not much. Big Mama’s negotiating for a limited time only.

Our ticket back home is renewable energy. Sun, wind, and waves are forever so they can’t be boxed into a ponzi scheme. Amidst this crisis there’s enormous opportunity and great hope. The days of denial are over. We have a new leader of the free world who embraces science and progressive, holistic, long-view solutions. These first 50 days of Obama’s term have been dizzying in the scope of change. So much legislation and money is being directed to these issues that I can’t keep track. Huge sums for renewable energy. Please share links and details that you may have!

We all have to do our part to fan these winds of change. As my wife Kris says, it’s time to “turn shit into champagne.” Of course, that’s a sustainable, local, organic shit vineyard. 2009 will be a great vintage.

Peace,
Brian