You Are a Badass at Making Money

Here’s a hurricane and a flood the day you open your new business! Here’s
nowhere to park when you’re late for the job interview of your dreams!
When you have faith that everything happens as it’s meant to, you open
yourself up to receive the lesson, to stay the course until you’re successful,
and to not totally lose your shit.
In the midst of the particularly trying lessons and growing experiences,
you have to hang in there like your life depends on it. With the really big
stuff, very often you’re required to get to the point where your faith is the
only thing you’ve got left, because you’ve gone so far out to the edge that
anything familiar or safe or rational isn’t even a blip in your rearview
mirror anymore. It’s like flying or surfing or tripping: You have to focus on
your faith and surrender to the cosmic rock tumbler because your only other
option is to freak out and crash.
Badassery comes to those who take risks.
I recently had an offer from a production company to option the rights to
one of my books. The offer was good, but we were haggling over one
critical percentage and neither of us would budge. I wanted more, they
wanted to give me less, and no matter how much we rearranged and
tweaked other parts of the contract, this one point always just sat there,
staring at us with blank eyes, the dead cow that wouldn’t move.
I loved these people, felt they really understood my writing and my
sense of humor, and was so psyched to work with them. When they said the
dreaded words, “This is our final offer,” and that damn percentage had yet
to go up, I had to take a big ole leap of faith and pass. I didn’t want to, we
didn’t have offers from any other production companies I was anywhere
near as excited to work with, but the percentage felt low and I knew I’d be
resentful if I took it. I had to have faith that an even more awesome offer
was right around the corner and that my decision was solid, instead of
freaking out about what the hell did I just do, I just passed up the

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opportunity to have someone make a TV show out of my book while I lie
around getting hot stone massages and count my money.
Consciously keeping my focus on my faith was a challenge, I ain’t
gonna lie, but I did. I kept reminding myself that, of course, the deal I
desired was on its way, I kept envisioning this deal, kept feeling into it, kept
being grateful for it. I’m thrilled to report that their final offer was like
Cher’s never-ending final tour—they came around the following week and
offered us what we asked for and now we’re all happily moving forward
together. I never would have had the strength to pass, stay the course, and
wind up in this awesome situation without dear old faith.
At the end of this chapter I’m going to share some of my favorite
methods for developing faith muscles so firm you could bounce a quarter
off them. But now I want to spend a moment talking about the granddaddy
of all personal workout coaches: gratitude. Whether it’s strengthening your
faith or your beliefs or your frequency or your thoughts or your relationship
with Universal Intelligence, gratitude is one-stop shopping on your road to
mightiness.
Unlike almost anything else, gratitude puts you in close contact with the
spiritual realm. Gratitude, above all other thoughts, unites you with
Universal Intelligence because you’re basically matching your frequency to
the frequency of the Universe via thoughts and feelings of love. Think of it
like this: Let’s say you live in a neighborhood with lots of kids and you
bake a batch of cookies and hand them out. Some kids are so wrapped up in
their play that they wolf them down without giving it much thought, some
kids whine about wanting seconds, but there’s one kid who shows deep
appreciation. He’s grateful for the cookie, for the gesture, for your big ole
heart, he helps you clean the kitchen, refill your bird feeder, set up your
iPhone. He’s the kid who gets as many cookies as he wants and gets to lick
the bowl. He’s met your energy of giving with his energy of gratitude and
his high-frequency response opens him up to receive more of that same
energy from you as well as someone else.
Wealth appreciates for the appreciative.

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Gratitude allows you to raise the energy you meet each situation with.
When you’re grateful for the lessons in challenging situations instead of
feeling pissed off or put out or sorry for yourself, you raise your frequency
and open yourself up to receiving more high-frequency experiences instead
of repeating crappy old ones. Resentment attracts more resentment; denial
keeps you stuck in the same place. But gratitude gets you out of the loop of
lowness, opens you to new possibilities, and sets you free.
Let’s say you’re unemployed and you’re driving to a job interview and
you get into a car accident. Now you’ve missed the interview, lost the
potential income and you’re going to have to go deeper into debt to get a
new car. I’m all for cursing and kicking tires and bursting into tears and
getting the rage and frustration out of your system. This isn’t about denying
or suppressing your feelings, but it is about choosing to perceive your life in
a powerful way. Even if you have no freaking idea what the lesson is in this
situation, once you’ve had your temper tantrum, be grateful that it
happened. You are in one moment in time, stranded on the side of the
freeway, suddenly surrounded by shattered glass and traffic cones, and you
have no idea how this situation is going to play out in the scope of your life.
You could discover years later that it saved you from taking a job you
would have hated instead of getting the one you now love, you could fall in
love with the EMT who shows up on the scene of your accident. Or you
could finally wake up and decide to do whatever it takes to get rich because
having your car totaled was the final straw that inspired you to face your
money issues and go whole hog to change your life. You can choose to be a
victim to your circumstances or take responsibility for how you choose to
perceive them.
You can’t see the silver lining through victim goggles.
Have faith that you and the Universe have created everything for your
growth and be grateful for it. No matter what. Get practiced at making
gratitude your go-to, notice the eight trillion things around you at all times
that you can be grateful for, and feel into the grateful expectation for all the

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things coming your way. The good, the bad, the ugly, the salsa stain you just
got on your new white shirt, become a gratitude machine for all of it.
There is no lack of things to be grateful for if you remember to pay
attention.
If you’re feeling frustrated and upset by your lack of income, spending
some real time on gratitude is critical, especially if you feel like you’re
doing everything right—if you’re clear on your specifics, hauling ass,
taking big risks, making scary sales calls, paying people money you’re
scared to spend to help you get your Web site up, and still . . . no dinero.
WTF? If you’ve got everything right, but you’re dropping the ball on being
grateful, you are most likely pushing the money away out of desperation for
this freaking money to come in, already. Desperation repels, gratitude
attracts. When you’re desperate, you’re stuck in the worry that the money’s
not there and that you need to get it rather than knowing that it’s already
here and there’s no need to get anything. Remember, money is currency and
currency is energy. When you switch into gratitude mode and focus on
feeling grateful for all you have and all that’s coming your way, even if
there isn’t any money anywhere in sight at the moment, you strengthen your
faith that the money will be there for you and align yourself energetically
with this belief, and you will start manifesting the very things and
opportunities you’re grateful for.
I have a friend who’s an interior designer. At the beginning of every year
she figures out how much money she’d like to make, what it’s for, gets all
in a tizzy about it, and then she drives around her town and looks at all the
houses, seeing each one as an opportunity to realize her dream. She
obviously doesn’t decorate every house, but she uses this exercise to anchor
in the belief that there are countless houses and people who could use her
services, who she could help and who can help her in return by paying her.
For this she is deeply grateful, her faith is rock solid that, of course, she can
have what she desires, and every year she meets her goal. Even if she
doesn’t have one damn client at the beginning of her little driving tour, she
is grateful for all the clients that she knows the Universe is sending her.

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It’s like when you’re on a plane and you take off on a drizzling, dark,
depressing day. You look out the window at the gray sky, the sad little
houses below getting misted with rain, then you head right into the dark
clouds themselves. It’s black and bumpy and scary and then—ta-da!—all of
a sudden you pop out on top of it all into blue sky, fluffy clouds, and
sunshine. The sunshine and fluffy clouds were there all along, you just
couldn’t see them from your perspective.
I don’t care how insane or hopeless your situation appears to you right
now, because it’s not the truth, it’s just what you’re experiencing at the
moment. There’s an entirely different and sunny reality out there waiting for
you, all you have to do is make the decision to blast through your own
storm clouds of fear, doubt, and worry, stay in grateful expectation with
unshakable faith that the sun is there even though you can’t yet see it, and
stay the course through the turbulence until you reach the other side.