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releasing debt

I’m in love…

This is a long love letter, grab a cup of tea and settle in for a few minutes.

Yes, it’s true, I am experiencing the beauty of new love. It’s tender, and a wee bit frightening. I’m not quite ready to share the details, and it feels way too soon after my last relationship but, I’m a lover. It’s my nature.

The truth is, now that my heart is open, I walk around feeling in love most of the time. Not just with humans, but with all of Life.

And, I’ve fallen in love with each and every one of you who has written to share the truth of your current reality and your vision for the future.

My guess is that if you haven’t written in, that I’d fall in love with you too, if you did. (And, please do — I read everything and I become evermore inspired to keep sharing, even when it feels like a stretch for me to do so.)

Your stories of where you are now and what you want to create in your life are inspiring me to serve more widely than I ever have before.

Thank you for sharing them with me.

If you desire to work with me in the future, it’s a good idea to write in, whether you are ready to get started now or you know it will be some time in the future because it allows me to begin to get to know you, which allows us to dive in deeper more quickly and support you with more precision right away when we do work together.

I have three things for you today:

1. You are likely investing your resources in ways that will not lead you to more of what you want in life — now, there’s help.

I’m writing this on my way to San Francisco (now Oakland due to flight delays into SFO this am) for a 24-hour trip to support the launch of what I am calling the most rational book I’ve ever read on how we can invest our resources in the new economy for true safety.

I’m investing the time, money and energy to be in San Francisco for the launch because I know that the investment in tribe-building that comes along with my trip will be worth it — and that’s part of what you’ll come to understand creates real security, once you read the book.

I recorded an interview with the authors, Bryan Franklin and Michael Ellsberg. Here’s where you can hear it.

Read the book and change the way you think about how you are investing your resources, forever.

Check out my personal Facebook profile for some pictures from the day and the event itself.

2. How to become free to be all of yourself.

One of the questions I get asked the most by people who write in is — how did you go from being an uptight legal expert on TV to becoming free to be all of you?

Check out the live Facebook video I recorded this past weekend — on the process of becoming free to be all of yourself — here.

All I want to do lately is share what I’ve learned so you can build your life and income with your eyes and heart way more open than mine were.

3. The support for creating the life and income you really, really, really, REALLY want – not the one “they” want for you.

It’s SO easy to get sucked into creating a life and income you don’t actually want.

The pull toward safety, security and fitting in is strong for most of us, so we find ourselves making choices and decisions that lead to more of what we don’t actually want.

We follow the “leader” (monkey see, monkey do style) only to discover we’ve created a life that doesn’t feel right, dependent on an income that keeps us trapped in that life.

And the pressure to save, save, save so we can retire comfortably later.

Fahgeddabout that. It’s time to wake up.

Please stop waiting for later, and take a step toward getting the support you need to step into the life that’s waiting for you.

Watch the recording of my New Year’s Eve Clarity Call and you’ll hear about and from other people just like you who have done it, stepped into a life of freedom, liberated.

And you’ll learn how you can have my support in doing just that.

I’ve revamped my own income model for 2016 and I’m done with big launches of my products, don’t want this business to be a million dollar business, and I’m narrowing in on who and how I serve until I’ve freed up more time in my other business.

I promised myself last year that I was not going to go down the road of big launches, competition-based models, and enrolling as many people as possible in a short period of time.

It’s a “successful” model that leaves me wanting to quit the business every time. Not sustainable for me and my life. And while I’m fairly good at it, I’ve been committed to discovering a new way.

Yet, this fall I hired a “launch manager” to help me build out my systems so that anyone can sign up for our programs at any time, so I can just focus on creating great new content, and I could feel myself getting pulled into the old model that I had sworn to myself I was not going to get caught up in again.

It’s so alluring.

Blindly, again and again, I built my income model based on what others were doing “successfully” — but each time, I would get to the finish line and find I had created something I didn’t want, based on conditioning I couldn’t see.

This time, fortunately, I was awake enough to understand the road I was heading down wasn’t going to lead me to where I really wanted to go, and if I didn’t make a hard right, I’d be right back in the same place I had ended up in time and again.

So, at the 11th hour, I changed up the plan. I said no to the big launch, the affiliates, the million dollar business, and remembered what’s most important to me.

Rather than strategizing my webinar to maximize sales, I read everything you wrote the night before and stayed up until 3:30a (it’s when I often do my best work) and created a presentation that spoke directly to what you actually need.

If you haven’t watched yet, you can still do so here.

I made the decision not to enroll as many people as possible, but to limit the offer to a container of just 50 people right now. A container me and my team can handle and serve well and deeply. And we are already half full.

It’s enough. There’s no need to go bigger right now.

What matters isn’t how many people I can enroll, it’s how many people I can love. And right now, I’ve got  room for 50 in my inner circle attention field.

For so many years, my eyes were blind and my heart was closed.

Awakening these parts of myself has been both painful and ever so rewarding.

Coming into true alignment with the life I am here to live, and creating the space to live in my heart and share from the overflow could have been faster, if my own clarity had come sooner.

Of course, it couldn’t come any sooner than it did. We are each in the evolution process of discovering what’s true and that means someone has to take the long, circuitous route there.

I sense that I am in your life to ease the process for you. You are ready to see with clear eyes and to feel with an open heart.

You long for guidance as you step onto the road less traveled and I offer an outstretched hand with the other on my heart, welcoming you.

Welcome.  And thank you for being on the journey with me.

With so much love today and everyday.

Ali

PS — for you skimmers, here’s the three things:

1. Buy the book the Last Safe Investment and  start re-allocating your resources today. Here’s my FB message about it and an interview I recorded with the authors.

2. Check out the live video I made on Facebook: how you can become free to be all of yourself.

3. Watch the recording of the New Year’s Clarity Call before it comes down for good.

Release the Shame of Too Much Debt, Bankruptcy, or Any “Poor” Money Choices (and be radically prepared for the New Economy)

For years, I protected my credit score at all costs because what I really wanted to protect was my image, my reputation and my “credit”.

Not just my access to credit, but the form of credit represented by credibility. Good will. Trust.debt

Back in the old days, when consciousness was low, the only measure of whether a man was trustworthy was whether he remained faithful to his wife and paid his debts.

If he did, you could trust him. If he didn’t, you could be sure he would try to rip you off, first chance he got.

And women? Well they were, de facto, not to be trusted. Women didn’t have credit or credibility.

I wouldn’t have fared well back in those days. I’m both an adulterer and failed to pay my debts. Plus, I’m a woman.

An unconscious, conditioned mind screams “Scoundrel!”

Of course it does. It has been passed on for generations, hard-wired into our neurology.

And if we want to survive the coming shortage of what we hold near and dear as the planet heats up to temperatures not seen by us or our ancestors… 

It’s time to break free of the old conditioning and find new measures of trust and credibility.

Our only hope for thrival (beyond survival) in the new economy that will fully emerge when droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes become ever more regular (and good food becomes even more hard to get) will be our ability to get along, knowing how to exchange based on actual value (rather than current false measures of worth), and the personal attitude and energy we bring to the collective.

I pretty much suck at all of this right now, and yet I’m way, way better than most.

The only thing that makes me better is that I sacrificed my credit (and some would say credibility) in favor of something far more valuable.

I learned to surrender, adapt and connect.

From the seat of a million dollar business superwoman, I couldn’t learn that. What I kept learning from that position was to separate myself more, suck as much as I could out of the collective to hoard in my own private bank accounts, and trust no one.

But I knew those lessons were lies. They hurt my insides. And I couldn’t perpetuate them a minute longer, even if it meant sacrificing everything I thought was important.

What I discovered is that there is a greater form of responsibility we have now, against which we would be well served to judge a man or woman’s credit and credibility, if we want to live and thrive in the new world we are creating.

What action are you taking to create more harmony, more sharing of resources and more goodwill in the lives of your immediate community?

How are you contributing to that which we will all need as the climate shifts beyond our control?

What skills are you learning (and passing on to your kids) that will ensure we can live, work and love in harmonious community?

How are you becoming more and more enjoyable to be around? More purposeful? More generous. More aligned and infused with true integrity, far beyond the immediate moment.  How are you BEing in the world?

Today, we no longer need to rely on false measures of credit and credibility, such as “did you pay back the bank?” or “did you earn your investors back many multiples of their investments?”… when there are far more important and meaningful measures.

Money, the giving and taking, the exchanging and saving, is no longer a reliable measure of what it means to be noble and good. Tweet this! 

Rather, I invite all of us, to step into a new level of awareness here.  Money is nothing other than the meaning we give it.  It’s the current method of societal exchange; it’s fungible, but not edible, and instead begin looking to other measures for how we determine the worth of a man or woman, including ourselves.

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Debt should be paid back, not because it’s the “responsible” thing to do or to preserve your credibility or credit-worthiness, when paying it back serves the world in a real and meaningful way.  If paying the debt back won’t serve the bigger picture, let it go, release it, and do the more responsible thing.

Debt, and all resources, should be leveraged, used and invested in what really matters, our personal well-being and self-reliance first, then in our community (ability to be with others, especially in stressful situations), our creativity (ability to make more than we take) and resourcefulness (ability to procure what’s necessary to accomplish one’s aims even, and especially, through non-traditional means).

Our quality of life now and our future both depend on it.

To The Edge and Back – How My Bankruptcy Helps You

I recently received an email from an annoyed and confused woman. She wanted to know what possible reason I could have for sharing the fact I am going through bankruptcy with you.

“No one cares,” she wrote.

I couldn’t disagree more.

I am a risk taker and a rule breaker. My purpose is to experience the outer perimeter of what is possible. I explore the places people are usually afraid of. I go out to the edges and survey the scenery. I check for land mines and wild cougars. I make sure the ground underneath my feet is stable. Once I have illuminated the terrain of the unknown, I invite others (you) to join me. Why bankruptcy?

I’ve come across a lot of people who used their debt, or lack of resources, as an excuse for why they can’t do what they really really want. You know how it goes: I can’t quit my job because I need to pay the mortgage, even though I hate going to work every day. I would start my own company but I’m barely breaking even as it is. I’ll do it later, when I’ve paid off my loans and my life is more stable.

This was the exact thing I was doing. I sold a service that I did not like providing, and was far less impactful than I knew I could be in the world, because I felt like I had to. I was driven by a perceived need to make enough money so I could pay off my debts.

And in order to get un-trapped I had to face my single biggest fear, and be willing to run out of money. I stopped doing everything I was doing for the money. I gave up my credit score and credit cards. I looked at the reality of my indebtedness.

I let my bank account get down to $29, and I had no credit cards to fall back on.And from the edge of bankruptcy this is what I have to report:

I’m too creative and too resourced to run out of money. Every time I’ve been on the brink of not being able to buy groceries something has come through. A tax refund check, or someone wanted to buy a product I wasn’t even marketing, or an old friend that owed me money decided to pay me back out of the blue. There were unexpected gifts at the most opportune times.

Once I switched from living in the fear of scarcity, I realized that I was in abundance.

And surprisingly enough, the hardest thing to let go of wasn’t the money but my identity as a million dollar business owner. I had to relinquish the idea that my self-worth, my value, is intrinsically connected to my bottom line. And some of my relationships that were based on this assumption have died.

Now, I am starting to create relationships based on who I really am, not how much money people think I have.

And, I have a lot more figuring out to do. I am constantly finding out ways my relationships with debt and money run my life.

My hope is that my willingness to drop my identity, to release my debt in favor of doing more in the world, will break the conditioning that tells us we have to put paying off our indebtedness before living the lives we are supposed to live. I hope it will inspire others to put the purpose of their lives before the payment of their debt and see the liberation of letting go of it all.

The whole reason for this surrender is finding out what it is I’m here to be. I could no longer use my debt as an excuse to not live my full potential.

Nicole Daedone says, “I come back again and again to my teacher saying to me that surrender is not offering myself to something that I perceive to be more powerful – that is capture. Surrender is offering myself to something I believe to be less than me. It is offering myself in the face of humanity. By the same token, it is always through the mundane, through what I perceive to be beneath me – like, I should not have to do that don’t you know who I am? – that the beauty creeps in.”

So here I am, surrendering to bankruptcy, to not having it all together, to going for what I believe in, messy challenges and all.