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Step 2: Being in the Present: Tracking Your Life Energy

What is one consistently true statement we can make about money that will allow us to be clear, masterful and powerful in our relationship with it?

Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for.

Our life energy is our allotment of time here on earth, the hours of precious life available to us. When we go to our jobs we are trading our life energy for money. You could even say that money equals our life energy. So, while money has no intrinsic reality, our life energy does -- at least to us. It's tangible, and it's finite. It is precious because it is limited and irretrievable and because our choices about how we use it express the meaning and purpose of our time here on earth. Money is something you consider valuable enough to spend easily a quarter of your allotted time here on earth getting, spending, worrying about, fantasising about or in some other way reacting to.

A: How much are you trading your life energy for? Establish the actual cost in time and money required to maintain your job, and compute your real hourly wage.

How:

• Deduct from your weekly income the costs of getting to and from work; the cost of the clothes you buy to wear at work; the extra cost of at-work meals; the amount spent to relax and wind down after the stress of a work day; job-related illness; and all other expenses associated with maintaining you on the job.
• Add to your work week the hours spent in preparing yourself for work, travel to and from work, the time taken to wind down at home after work, recreation need after work as a means of winding down, shopping to make you feel better since your job feels lousy, and all other hours linked with maintaining your job.
• Divide the new, reduced weekly dollar figure by the new, increased weekly hour figure; this is your real hourly wage.
• Individuals with variable incomes can get creative -- take monthly averages, a typical week, whatever works for you.

Most people look at this life-energy/earnings ratio in an unrealistic way: 'I can earn $440 a week, I work 40 hours a week, so I trade one hour of my life energy for $11.' It is not likely to be that simple. Think of all the monetary expenses that are directly associated with your job. In other words, if you didn't need that money-earning job, what time expenditures and monetary expenses would disappear from your life.

Why:

• This is a very basic, fundamental practice for any business -- and you are a business.
• You are in the business of selling the most precious resource in existence -- your life energy. You had better know how much you are selling it for.
• The number that results from this step -- your real hourly wage -- will become a vital ingredient in transforming your relationship with money.

Here are examples of the cost and hours someone might spend that are directly related to having a job:

• Travelling to and from work could cost $50 a week and take you 7.5 hours.
• Annual cost of clothing for work, divided by 50 weeks, $15 a week.
• Time per week dressing and preparing for work, 1.5 hours.
• Cost of work related meals, coffee breaks, lunches, $20 a week.
• Time per week of meals and breaks at work, 5 hours.
• Many people arrive home tired and drained, it takes many people about an hour a day to relax after they get home, so per week, 5 hours.

In addition, there is the cost of escape entertainment, job related illness as well as vacations to recover from work.

Here's an example showing the effect of work related expenses on an ordinary 40 hour / $440 week.

This chart shows how a 40 hour working week can actually take up 70 hours of one's time. And also how a wage of $440 can be reduced by work related expenses of$160 to leave only $280 for 70 hours of work related time or $4 an hour or $1 every 15 minutes.

So now you can understand that other than work related expenses, every dollar spent can represent 15 minutes of life energy for the person in this example.

So far we have established that money equals life energy, and we have learned to compute just how many hours of life energy we exchange for each dollar. Now we need to become conscious of the movement of that form of energy called money in every moment of our lives -- we need to keep track of our income by keeping a Daily Money Log.

Religions, ancient and modern, and the personal growth workshops of the human potential movement all have techniques for training the mind to be here now, 'in the moment'. These techniques take many forms and include such seemingly diverse techniques as counting breaths, keeping the attention on each incoming or outgoing breath, repeating a phrase over and over again in order to focus the wandering mind.

To this list we add another discipline to sharpen awareness -- one that is indispensable to the financial program and perhaps more easily accepted by our grounded, materialistic Western mentality that some of the more 'esoteric' practices. Instead of watching your breath, you watch your money. This practice is simple:

Keep track of every cent that comes into or goes out of your life.

How:

• Devise a record-keeping system that works for you (such as a pocket sized memo book). Record daily expenditures accurately. Record all income.

Why:

• Because it's the best way to become conscious of how much money actually comes and goes in your life as opposed to how you think it comes and goes. Your commitment to clearing up your relationship with money is really tested here. In most of us there is a penchant for giving ourselves leeway and latitude. One of the keys to success in this program (and in life) is a shift in attitude from one of laxity and leeway to one of accuracy, precision and impeccability.

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