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Happy Monday (night!) I’m a bit slow on today’s Know Abundance blog post. I’ve been prioritizing hanging out with people in person, face-to-face, instead of connecting via words on a computer screen.

There’s just something about seeing someone’s eyes and having the chance to hear a laugh that trumps any Facebook or Twitter update.

A friend gave me a book recently that I love. The message is simple and yet profound.

The author, Cami Walker was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 33. She spent months immobilized by depression, unable to stop thinking about how the disease would ruin her life and dreams. She became addicted to her meds and self-absorbed in her problems.

She had a friend and spiritual adviser, Mbali Creazzo who told her that she needed to stop thinking about herself. “If you spend all of your time and energy focusing on your pain, you’re feeding the disease. You’re making it worse by putting all of your attention there.”

She encouraged Cami to spend some time focused on others – and to do this by giving away 29 gifts in 29 days. But Cami insisted that she needed to focus all her attention on her own healing, she was worried that focusing on others would sap energy she needed for herself.

Mbali replied, “Healing doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but through our interactions with other people. By giving, you are focusing on what you have to offer others, inviting more abundance into your life. Giving of any kind is taking a positive action that begins the process of change. It will shift your energy for life.“

And it did! You can read Cami’s inspiring story in her book: 29 Gifts – How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life. Or watch a video of her on the Today Show as she describes how the simple act of giving transformed everything.

Now, 29 Gifts is a global giving movement with nearly ten thousand members in 42 countries. I joined today. My first gift was $5 to the man who sings love songs at the train station entrance in the evenings. His music is always a gift to me after a long day of work – a reminder of the joy of giving and sharing without expecting anything back.

What do you have to give?

Happy Monday dear Know Abundance readers,

I was busy all weekend hanging art and covering my windows with black trashbags and black curtains for the next Frisbie St. Art Show: Illuminating Shadows – Art Show in the Dark.

So today’s post is fairly short. I’m excited about a new book that just came out by Kathy LeMay called The Generosity Plan.

I heard Kathy speak about the book on Friday and was inspired by her vision of a world transformed by everyone, “Doing what they can, with what they have, where they are. (This is a Teddy Roosevelt quote Kathy used to sum up the heart of her book.)

Kathy says, “There’s no single dollar amount, no particular activity or cause that is better than another, no income level or demographic that matters to generosity, no set variable that is best for giving one’s self to another in time of need.

It’s about finding your passion, envisioning a better world, and putting yourself on the path to making that vision become a reality.”

The Generosity Plan can help us all learn how to better share our “time, treasure and talent” to improve our communities and the world.

Happy last Monday of 2009!

I want to thank you for reading our Know Abundance posts this year.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the mix of topics and the new voices we’ve added the past few months.

Your feedback is always welcome. Let us know what you like and don’t like and if there are things you want us to talk more about in 2010.

This blog was started as the economy in the U.S. was tanking and recovery wasn’t in sight. Even then, the world around us was full of abundance. But our focus was on scarcity and lack, panic and fear as we faced the unknown.

We are being asked by necessity to create new systems and new ways of being with each other and living life on this planet.

How do we untie ourselves from an economic model based on endless consumption with scarcity as a key motivator? We realize that everything we need, we already have.

Start with yourself. Give thanks for what you do have. Let that be enough.

(Happy Monday! Today’s post is from Elizabeth Husserl, our money expert. The photograph is by Susan Freundlich.)

As the memories of our recent Thanksgiving gatherings linger behind us, I find it a perfect time to reflect on the flip side of the “act of giving thanks” which is “knowing how to receive.”

In our holiday season we usually get the opportunity to practice the art of giving and to experience its abundant benefits – giving promotes a sense of inner and outer generosity, a sense of peace and well being, and is an act of selflessness which benefits those around you.

Yet, just as important is the act of receiving. Receiving opens our hearts, it allows us to feel loved and plants essential seeds of feeling supported and held within our community and circle of friends. Without receiving there is no channel in which to give, and the cycle of abundance and flow is broken.

As Bernard Lietaer would describe in his Yin/Yang economy, polarities such as giving and receiving inherently exist within the other, and can not flourish if there is the absence of one.

This holiday season allow yourself time to reflect on how well you know how to “receive.” Oftentimes receiving can make us uncomfortable. We become the center of attention, we may have childhood defense mechanisms that block the entry of this particular energy flow, or we want to receive love and acceptance so dearly that we are not really sure how.

Use the practices of receiving in your organization to help guide you on how to receive in your daily life. (Sometimes it is easier to receive when it is for someone else!) Some of these may include:

• Know how to let “resources” come in. Reflect on how you feel when when a grant or donation comes in. Your heart may get warm and a smile may come to your face. Take the time to let both the monetary resources and emotional resources come in. This deepens our felt sense experience of being supported and sustained by those around us.

• Allow the energy you received to flow and be expressed through you. Try to find your unique way of giving thanks in return. It may be through a card or something different this year such as a picture, a collage or a drawing. The more you allow the embodiment of your act of receiving to be an expression of “you”, the more the act of receiving nourishes you from within.

• Allow there to be times where you just receive. Just as important as the suggestion above, allow times in your life when you receive, where you do not have to give anything back immediately, but you can rest, relax and “be” in the state of receiving. Here you can explore what you like about receiving, what may make you uncomfortable about it and what effects it has for you.

The more you intentionally know yourself in the act of receiving the more you can truly know abundance, from within.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Monday! Thanks to Deb Cottrell who shared this inspirational video with me last week. Perhaps you’ve already seen it? 26 year-old Nick Vujicic talks about never giving up, no matter how many times you fall down.

He was born without arms or legs. And yet his life is full of abundance. So often we live our lives thinking, “If only I had x,y, & z, I would be happy.”

Can we be happy with where we are and with what we have?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MslbhDZoniY

Happy Monday!

The most pernicious myth of our existence is that there is something outside of ourselves that we need.

The most powerful freedom that knowing abundance gives us is this: the freedom from seeking external fulfillment.

What does this mean? Let’s break it down.

Name something you would like to do – to be – to create. A dream, vision or goal. Write this down.

Pause for a minute. Scan your life. Can you see where this dream, vision or goal is already present in your life? Already happening? Already in existence?

Can’t find it? Keep looking. It’s there.

Look everywhere – don’t limit yourself to your idea of how things should be. We do that a lot – create scenarios for how we think things should happen and narrow our perspective to only that which fits within our view and understanding.

For example, here are some myths that I’ve had:

The myth: “I need to go to art school to be an artist.”
Reality: www.breatheonelove.com

The myth: “I need a lot of supplies to create something.”
Reality: Glue sticks, magazines, paper, eyes and hands.

The myth: “I need to own this building to create an art/community space.”
Reality: www.frisbiest.com

What scarcity myths are your thoughts circling around?
Everything starts from what you already have and grows from there.
Again we come back to ourselves: everything we need, we already have.
What do you have? What can you share?

Happy Monday!

I went to a fundraising dinner on Saturday night where more than $45,000 was raised in less than 10 minutes.

I also went to the mall on Saturday to buy a top to wear to the dinner. The mall was Christmas-time packed with long lines in every store I entered or walked by.

Even in “these economic times,” there is money. People are buying things they want and giving to causes they care about.

There was no lamenting over the economy during the dinner program. Every speaker focused on core mission and impact.

Personal stories were shared highlighting:

1. the need/problem
2. the solution
3. what had been accomplished so far (because of our support)
4. the continuing need
5. how this need was going to be met (with our support)

Given the challenge “Are you in?” from a dynamic speaker, the stage was set for the fundraising ask. And people responded. $10,000, $2,500, $1,000, $500, $100, $25 gifts were enthusiastically made and gratefully received.

There is money. We might not be raising as much as we did last year – but people are still willing to give.

Adjusting to change, especially change we don’t particularly want and didn’t ask for, can be difficult. We can become myopically focused on what used to be or what we wish was.

Babysitting for a friend this week, I watched her five-year-old daughter dissolve into total misery when she couldn’t have what she wanted. We were eating lunch and she had her food, but wanted it in a blue bowl (which her sister had.)

She became fixated on what she didn’t have, refusing to eat. All she could see was the blue bowl she wanted – not the food that was in the purple bowl she had.

We’re like this sometimes. We focus intently on what we can’t have or what we wish we had and stubbornly refuse to enjoy what we have because it’s not exactly what we wanted (or what we see that someone else has.)

The person who led the giving spree came by our table afterwards feeling discouraged. “I didn’t get any gifts at the $5,000 level.”  Focused on what wasn’t received, he was disappointed.

When the need is great, we can easily slip into seeing only what is lacking. Step back for a minute. What is in your bowl?

Happy Monday!

This is our last post in the five week Time series. So far we have four tools for helping us know abundance in time:

Tool #1: Let the time we have be enough

Tool #2: Ability to shift our perception of time

Tool #3: Value the process as much as the goal

Tool #4: Give up (the illusion of) control

This week we head into the territory of Now, where everything takes place. Our thoughts, feelings, experiences and conversations, our planning for the future and our analysis of the past – our whole lives are lived here – in the Now.  Read more…

Happy Monday!

There is another guaranteed way to discover abundance in time: let go of trying to control what happens.

This is a hard one because our daily lives center around creating order to reach goals and to manage and respond to what is happening with our selves (body, mind, emotions), with each other (same list) and in our environments (natural, social, work, economic.)

Control is a tool that has served us our whole lives:

• Control is how we face the unknown.
• Control gives us a sense of security and assures us that we are in charge of everything that it is possible to be in charge of.
• Control is power to make things happen.
• Control is a way to get people to do what we want.
• Control helps us eliminate undesirable factors and predict and prepare for the future.
• Control enables us to manage what is happening – so that things don’t get out of control.

Control is such a useful behavior, why would we want to let go of it?

Because contrary to our belief – control actually limits our ability to freely live our lives, to creatively respond to what is happening and to relax, to be stress free, to know abundance in time. Read more…

Happy Monday!

There is never enough time.
If only I had more time.

Do you ever have these thoughts?

I know I do. My scarcity mentality always kicks in when it comes to Time. For some reason, there is never enough.

Especially when there’s so much to do…juggling a million and one priorities, rushing to get things done on time, pressured by endless to-do lists and we need to keep up with everything that is happening and there is always something else that needs to be done and…if only there were more Time.

In our fast-paced, multi-tasking, ultra-busy lives, how do we Know Abundance in Time?

This week’s post is the first in a five part series on Time.

Why spend so much time talking about time? Because our understanding of Time affects our relationship with every aspect of our lives – and in today’s world we live our lives by the clock. Read more…

Happy Monday!

How are you handling the grim economic news?

Fundraising can be a challenge in the best of times but now, with the focus of our attention on how bad the economy is and our anxiety about a continued downward spiral, the task of asking people to share what they have is even more daunting.

How can we live abundantly when we are faced daily with the reality of scarcity?

What is the best way to approach donor (and our own) fears about the economy?

We can take wisdom from a saying that has been part of the English language lexicon for at least 463 years, a phrase that reminds us we “can’t see the forest for the trees.” (Attributed to John Heywood, 1546.)

Seeing only the trees around us is natural of course because that is what is immediate, that is reality, as we know it. We have a vague understanding of “our” trees as part of a larger whole but we don’t have the vantage point to see the forest.

Even though we can’t see the forest, we know there is one because trees surround us.

Abundance and scarcity are like the forest and the trees. The reality of scarcity is relative to our vantage point in the trees and abundance is the forest we are in.

The latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, has a perfect example of the relative nature of scarcity.

In one scene, set in a Bolivian town, the camera focuses on a communal waterspout that is ever…so… slowly… trickling a few drops of water before stopping completely. The desperate crowds of people standing in line with their empty water buckets panic as they realize there is no more water. Frenzied shouting and fighting erupts on the street.

Meanwhile, in another scene, we see a subterranean cave full of water that has secretly been dammed by the villain of the movie. The dammed water gives the villain leverage to manipulate the Bolivian government and make large sums of money through control of the water supply for the entire country.

There is water, but the Bolivians on the street with their empty buckets are living the reality of no water.

We see this same relative scarcity all around us. If our bucket isn’t empty we fear that it will be. We hold tight to our buckets and watch as the waterspout drips…What is damming the water?

It would be easy to make people with fuller buckets than ours into the villains. But as soon as we start to point fingers we see them pointing back at ourselves. The game of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ can be played in so many different ways and who defines the rules?

Is the suffering of a family losing a home because of a bad mortgage deal, or someone laid off from a job, more or less than a child starving to death, or a family sick with cholera and no access to medicine? Even the poorest of countries has its have and have-nots, its affluent and destitute.

As fundraisers we constantly traverse the ever-shifting ground of the have/have not paradigm. Remembering that we “can’t see the forest for the trees” is a tool to help navigate the slippery road and recognize the scarcity mindset that we all share.

Who is not searching for something they think they need? Who is not protecting what they have?

Our inability to see the forest for the trees is damming the water. Abundance is around us and inside us. To see the forest, cultivate awareness of your inner abundance; know that everything you need you already have.

There are solutions to the challenges we face as a global community. Scarcity is a relative reality and not absolute. Reality is the forest and the trees.

Can we see both? Can we live with the knowledge of the forest while we care for the trees?

Happy Monday!

What transforms a dream into reality?

Do you think Martin Luther King Jr. believed his dream would come true? Do you think Barack Obama believed he would be president of the United States of America?

Some dreams seem impossible.

Like peace in the Middle East or an end to poverty, no more violence against women and girls or industry that helps instead of harms the planet. We are full of dreams.

Martin Luther King Jr. told us, “I have a dream today.”

Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Not someday. Today. I have a dream today.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama not only believed their dreams were possible. They knew their dreams were possible. Someday, for them was today.

What are your dreams? What dreams are you raising money for? Are you waiting for someday for them to come true?

Stop waiting. To transform a dream into reality, simply realize that what you dream already exists.

How can you live equality when you don’t see equality in the world around you? Look to yourself. You know you are equal. You know you are as fully human as every other person. You are living equality.

How can you know peace when war and conflict seem unending? Look to yourself. There is peace inside you. Find it. Know it. You are living peace.

When will there be justice? Look to yourself. You know compassion for the tortured, for the imprisoned, for the raped. You are living justice.

How can we heal the planet? Look to yourself. You have learned the impact of our way of life on Earth; you are changing habits and creating new ways of existing. You are living restoration.

When will poverty end? Look to yourself. You know it is only fate that differentiates you from another. You know the same breath of life moves through you and every living being. You know there is enough for everyone. Don’t hold on to what you have. You are living abundance.

How can we forgive when there is so much to forgive? Look to yourself. Let go of past hurts. Don’t just wipe the slate clean, get rid of the slate. You are living forgiveness.

When will we see change? Look to yourself. You know today is not the same as it was yesterday. You are living change.

When will your dreams come true? Look to yourself. Your dream is alive inside you. You are living your dream.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama lived the reality of their dreams long before they saw them reflected in the world around them. They worked to create in the world the reality they knew inside themselves. What they dreamed was possible because they were living the dream already.

Make your someday, today. Live the reality of your dream now.

Welcome to Know Abundance!

A new positive thinking blog for fundraisers – and anyone else looking to supplant scarcity mentality with abundant living.

Delivered fresh every Monday – just when you need a dose of positivity to get your fundraising act in gear.

Know Abundance is living and working from the awareness that there is nothing you need that you don’t already have.

This blog is for you if:

• you worry about how to raise money to support your organization
• you stress about how to get everything done
• you wonder how to manage donor (and your own) fears about economy

Posted every Monday, Know Abundance is:

• fundraising from plenty and gratitude
• positive thinking to help you navigate your work week
• perspective to widen your outlook beyond daily headlines

Know Abundance is a shared journey. I, like you, am learning to live and work in new ways. To shed the thought patterns and beliefs that keep us trapped in a never-ending scramble for time, money, resources, and market share. To embrace the mantra, “Everything I need I already have.”

I know how hard you are working to bring into reality your vision of a better world. Know Abundance is for you. The weekly posts offer tools to see your worry, stress and fears in a different light, to know abundance even in the midst of scarcity.

Coming up in January:

Jan. 12 – Why think positive?

Jan. 19 – Live Your Dreams Today

Jan. 26 – Scarcity as Reality is Relative

I welcome your comments, questions and participation as we learn together.