Riches and Poverty are both the offspring of Thoughts

I was the poor girl-rich girl-poor girl!

The lack of, or having money may have resulted in my experiencing certain emotions or feelings. What I didn’t know though is that I have a specific Money emotion – that I have certain feeling about money, and this feeling is the primary driver as to why I did, and then didn’t have money.

Suzanne Styles, T. Harv Eker and Chris Styles

This emotion or feeling around money dictated to my subconscious mind whether I had a poverty consciousness or wealth consciousness. It didn’t necessarily dictate whether or not I made money, but it certainly dictated whether I kept money, and grew wealth – hence my giving this article the title of Riches and Poverty are both the offspring of Thoughts.

Since the bottom dropping out of my world financially, I have studied many of the greatest wealth creation teachers from around the world. They have varying thoughts around this. Dr Demartini teaches this around fulfilling your highest values, and whether or not money and wealth creation is one of your values. Other teachers, like T Harv Eker teach about your money blue print and Bob Proctor teaches you how to attract, retain and grow money. All of these teachers are experts in their field and I have found their teachings and methods very helpful.

Suzanne Styles, Dr John Demartini and Chris Styles

I was always good at finding ways to make money as I was a creative entrepreneur from a young age and you can read about them in my story  Do Whatever It Takes to Keep Learning and Growing. Chris often says that what I was back then, was a strategic scrounger because I had to continually find news to survive (not thrive). I could attract money because I needed it. Later in life when I became massively successful I found it hard to keep money because I felt that I didn’t deserve my success.

2013 was a difficult year for me. My mother died and there was a great deal of family drama around that. We had lost our home, we moved in to a maids quarters on a property owned by Chris’ family and everything we hadn’t been able to sell was now in storage. In the September Chris and I attended Millionaire Mind Intensive, a T Harv Eker event. During one of the sessions Doug Nelson, the Lead Trainer took us through an exercise whereby you connect with your emotion about money. This was a turning point for me. This exercise provided clarity around why I had lost everything.

Chris Styles, Robert Allen and Suzanne Styles

If you have read “Bringing up Douglas” in the Family Realm Series, you may recall me mentioning this. Doug Nelson took us on a journey to identify the time in our lives when our money paradigm was formed and the emotion linked to that paradigm. My moment was when I was 9 years old. My mother looked back at me through the mirror’s reflection and told me that I didn’t deserve any money. Even though I was only asking her for money for food, the vehemence with which she uttered the statement was a huge emotional event for me. So huge in fact, that it was embedded in my subconscious as a belief, that I was unworthy of money and that I didn’t deserve any. Throughout my life any negative financial experiences were added to this event setting up a series of links forming a Gestalt in my subconscious mind, about money. Ultimately my two primary emotions around money were guilt and shame (i.e. being unworthy and undeserving of money).

This realisation (that Riches and Poverty are both the offspring of Thoughts) was so extreme that I had to leave the room. I was ill at the thought of all of the money I had let slip through my fingers. Money I had loaned people who didn’t pay it back. Money I wasted on people that took advantage of me, and finally all the money I had lost in a business venture that went wrong. Now I knew why. With each experience I was being taught an extreme lesson. Each time I had refused to learn it, so the big one was having everything taken away.

Suzanne Styles, Marlon Smith and Chris Styles

In that moment I could have easily walked away from the T Harv Eker Millionaire Mind Intensive event. The urge to run screaming was at an all-time high. I wanted to throw myself a pity party and wallow in what had happened to me. After all it wasn’t my fault, look at my childhood, look at the idiots I had had relationships with, look how I had been taken advantage of! Poor me. Really? No, not at all. Every experience, everything that happened, every cent that I had wasted, every person that benefited, did so because I allowed it. I gave it to them, I signed the cheques and did the transfers. No one to blame but me.

Did you see you I highlighted the word blame? You see even though I have said it was all me and nobody else, when we do that we usually say that we are to blame. Even when circumstances may show otherwise. Acknowledging what occurred and your own involvement is not about blame. Living at cause is about taking responsibility for what happened not taking the blame. There’s a huge difference. After being quite ill on discovering my money emotion, I rinsed my mouth, washed my face, looked in the mirror and told myself to “Suck it Up Princess!” It was time to move on.

I have shared with you what I did with my money in Our Story – There is more to life, and if you’ve read this article, you will have noted how certain friends and colleagues intimated that I was a spend thrift. That I spent money like it was water, that I was always spending money on myself. Now here is where my story differs from theirs – and this is the true and very real story. Yes I spent money, but not much of what I spent was on me. I had a great annual international holiday and for a few years I purchased a piece of good jewellery. This ended though when I had three rings, a necklace and a pair of diamond earrings. I have never been a clothes horse, and because of the feelings I had about my body, which you will read about in Just Love Your Body and I was fat because my mother told me so I didn’t buy designer clothes. I had my hair done every eight weeks and I liked to get my nails done too. Does this sound like an extravagant woman? I know women earning substantially less than I did who spent significantly more every month.

Suzanne Styles, Chris Styles and Althea Grant

I spent on everyone else, take my sons for instance. When my eldest son returned from England, it was me that had paid to relocate him. I paid for his driving lessons and helped him to get his driving license. I helped my youngest son to get his driving license at the same time and I bought them each a demo model car. My eldest son wanted to attend an expensive plumbing course, and I paid for it. Did he complete the course? No. My youngest son enrolled at UNISA to study English as a major. Did he get persist with this studies and get his degree? No. Then he wanted to study a very expensive graphic design course. I paid for that. Did he complete it? No. Yet, I kept on paying, never calling them on their inability to see anything through to completion – never holding them accountable for their lack lustre actions. Clothes, haircuts, spending money, trips, I supplied the money for it all. I haven’t spoken a lot about my daughter in this series as she features in my upcoming book, The Queen Particle, but she never hounded me for money for things; as such it was a joy to do for her whatever I could and did.

Be this as it may, my sons saw my behaviour around Mr Keeping Up Appearances, they saw that I was the bank, and they both used to call me BOM, pronounced BOMB, being the Bank of Mom. They saw the money I spent on Mr Young Man’s Fool and the projects I was involved in with him. I couldn’t see any of this at the time though.

Over the seven years I was with Mr Keeping Up Appearances, I had loaned him vast amounts of money to get his business going, the one that I ran on his behalf, that was a service provider to my media company. I paid for our holidays, our meals out, and as you read, I paid for my own engagement ring.

Suzanne Styles and Chris Styles at National Achievers Congress 2013

When I met Mr Young Man’s Fool, I felt that for the first time in a very long time I was appreciated for me; this wasn’t really the case though, he was just a masterful manipulator and the fruits of my money tree were ripe for the picking (money does grow on trees you know…). I was very vulnerable and in many ways I have been naive all my life. Maybe because I had to grow up at 8 years old and make adult decisions with a child’s mind. I expected people to do what they said they would do, in every aspect of my life. If I did something for someone and they offered something in return I expected it to happen.

It cost me more than $ 25,000 to get rid of Mr Keeping Up Appearances as he wanted to try for more under a common law spouse claim, and although he wouldn’t be successful, it would have cost more than $ 25,000 to defend, and it would have dragged on for years before getting to court.

Mr Young Man’s Fool needed a car and could not get finance, so I bought him a car. He repaid a portion of the cost of the car but when things started to get difficult between us he stopped altogether – of course he did, after all, he had no skin the game as I’d bought his car cash and so when he didn’t pay me back it wasn’t like I was going to ruthlessly repossess his car like a bank would. I sponsored his dance training, clothes, local and international travel and even gave him a credit card, albeit for the business, and he spent lavishly on it. I know – go figure – you see how Riches and Poverty are both the offspring of Thoughts – their short-term riches (in the way of financial and material gain) and my poverty (just giving away money in the hope that I would be liked and appreciated and loved) were the offspring off thoughts, theirs and mine!

Loral Langemeier, Suzanne Styles and Chris Styles

Another “dance-industry fair-weather friend” was experiencing financial difficulty and was about to have his house repossessed, so I loaned him the money to prevent this, and after a few months, he too reneged on his repayments. In reading Nature or Nurture and The Art of Betrayal, you will have read that I loaned large amounts of money to mother. I could go on and on because the leaking tap of my money did, go on and on.

I felt that I had to do this, I had to help everyone and share my good fortune, until there was almost nothing left. If I think back there was never a time that I felt comfortable with my good fortune with money. Isn’t that a shocking thing to say? In two ways, firstly was it good fortune? No it wasn’t. I worked hard for the money, building a successful business, and as my reward, I earned they money. But, I never felt worthy of it. Secondly if it was good fortune, why couldn’t I feel comfortable with it then? It all comes back to my money emotion, my not feeling worthy of money and therefore I felt guilty when I had it and so I subconsciously repelled it all away from me so that I could return to a place where my internal money blueprint felt okay again about things.

It took the lesson of 2011 and the failure of the Bob Proctor project to make me the poor girl rich girl poor girl again. To make me understand that if you don’t value something and respect it, you will lose it. I didn’t value the money I had earned, I didn’t know how to love and respect my money because I didn’t think I was worthy of it.

Christmas 2011 saw my dearest friends coming back to South Africa for a family holiday. This had been a long time in the planning and we were taking them to our beloved N’Kelenga, in the Thornybush Game Reserve, and on to Cape Town for New Year. Chris and I were almost at breaking point, but we couldn’t let it show. It was one of the most stressful holidays that we have ever had, and there was no way that we could tell my friends about this. In fact Chris and I haven’t had a holiday since.

I feel differently about money now because I really understand that Riches and Poverty are both the offspring of Thoughts and so I mind my mind. It’s been a very long road to reshape my money blueprint, to shift my primary emotions around money away from shame and guilt to joy and gratitude. I am definitely not one of those “come up to the stage and tell you rapid success story” personal development case studies. My change journey around money has been hot, hard and very challenging. I’ve walked through the scalding hot fires of my mind over and over again, being burned to a crisp and having to return to GO and start all over again. Eventually the breakthroughs came and now, when I have money in hand, I love the feeling which comes over me. Thank you Doug Nelson and thank you T Harv Eker for floating up from within me, exactly where the cancerous root of my money blueprint lay – I am forever grateful to the two of you for this.

Having read Poor Girl Rich Girl Poor Girl I hope you’ve learned three powerful universal truths, the first being that your thoughts become things, the second being that money is important and the third being that being rich is a choice – an excellent choice!

In the words of Wallace Wattles who wrote The Science of Getting Rich, the all-time classic book upon which the blockbuster movie The Secret was based, “Whatever may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich. No man can rise to his greatest possible height in talent or soul development unless he has plenty of money; for to unfold the soul and to develop talent he must have many things to use, and he cannot have these things unless he has money to buy them with.

A man develops in mind, soul, and body by making use of things, and society is so organized that man must have money in order to become the possessor of things; therefore, the basis of all advancement for man must be the science of getting rich. The object of all life is development; and everything that lives has an inalienable right to all the development it is capable of attaining.

Man’s right to life means his right to have the free and unrestricted use of all the things which may be necessary to his fullest mental, spiritual, and physical unfoldment; or, in other words, his right to be rich.

No man ought to be satisfied with a little if he is capable of using and enjoying more. The purpose of Nature is the advancement and unfoldment of life; and every man should have all that can contribute to the power; elegance, beauty, and richness of life; to be content with less is sinful.

The man who owns all he wants for the living of all the life he is capable of living is rich; and no man who has not plenty of money can have all he wants. Life has advanced so far, and become so complex, that even the most ordinary man or woman requires a great amount of wealth in order to live in a manner that even approaches completeness. Every person naturally wants to become all that they are capable of becoming; this desire to realize innate possibilities is inherent in human nature; we cannot help wanting to be all that we can be. Success in life is becoming what you want to be; you can become what you want to be only by making use of things, and you can have the free use of things only as you become rich enough to buy them. To understand the science of getting rich is therefore the most essential of all knowledge.

The ownership of money and property comes as a result of doing things in a certain way; those who do things in this Certain Way, whether on purpose or accidentally, get rich; while those who do not do things in this Certain Way, no matter how hard they work or how able they are, remain poor.”

Questions:

1. Do you choose to be rich and prosperous, to experience all that being rich has on offer, or, do you choose to be poor and miserable?
2. And, if you’ve decided to be rich (hooray), what exactly are you doing about making this happen?

I had a belief around money that I was not worthy and deserving. This belief was given to me through one massively significant negative emotional event involving my mother. As a result of this, whenever money flowed in to my world, it flowed out again at an equally rapid speed because my internal money blueprint was little short of a horror story. I discovered this whilst on Millionaire Mind Intensive and then I set about doing the work, doing the hard yards and hard they were.

It’s not that the work which has to be done on the inside is difficult, it’s that it hurts, like hell – but tempted as I was to quit, I didn’t. I persisted and now today, over 2 years later, my money blueprint is now solid as a rock and money and I have a simply splendid relationship. Whereas I would previously squander my money on others in a futile attempt to buy their affection, now I have no need (nor desire!) to do this. Quite the contrary, not only am I now very thrifty with the money Chris and I have, I also make a point of saving some as just that builds the discipline required to master money. Soon our saving will translate in to investing and so we will grow wealth intelligently and through the right disciplined actions around money.

To your new, powerful money blueprint! With love

Suzanne Styles

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