Rob Bancroft Archives

Money, it’s been my silent partner for years.

Avoidance, there’s another one who has been taking up space as a stow-away and not so quiet friend of mine.

Worth, yuck, yup, that one is here too, she lives in my shoe laces because then I can hear two voices. On one foot I hear awesomeness, I know it, I own it, I rock it, and I celebrate it. When that lace speaks I’m totally there holding hands and stepping forward, but then there’s the other shoe…

You see, it depends on the subject I’m lacing up.

Have you ever put skates on a kid? I’m a hockey mom and while my husband has been running the sports department in our house for the last decade, we’re now out-numbered with our third getting on the ice this year so I’m the one in his locker room doing my darndest to keep his ankles from rolling in. Let’s just say that I’m doing a better job with his alternate foot than I am with mine.

I totally wobble with my self-worth in certain areas, specifically my resource of which we all have three: Our time, our money and our energy. I’ve been on a self-avoidance spending tare for years.

That Money Thang is my latest journey through this thing called life because as I’m sure you’ve heard me say before (and I didn’t come up with it), we’re here for two reasons: to LOVE and to LEARN and isn’t it fortunate that the very things we need to learn also deliver us the self-love required to make a radical shift in the icky sticky stuckness of our life.

This week’s That Money Thang sees me celebrating because after eight years of procrastinating over two overstuffed bags of contacts and long over due follow-up to and from business dealings I’ve had, I poured seven hours into cleaning them up. It’s kinda shocking that eight years of hiding and tolerating which btw is a total of 70,080 hours can be tidied up in only seven. I realize that I may have been sleeping for 50% of those hours but let’s be honest about that too – that kind of procrastination does not generate deep slumber. My body did get cancer remember? Hmmm… right, an immune system shut down with invitation for disease to move in, how did lack of sleep not contribute to that?

Never again.

Procrastination = Worry = Sleepless nights = Recycled self-loathing = Empty self-worth = Panic = Procrastination = Worry = Sleepless nights = …disease.

Never again.

Here’s my jubilant walk with my pup as I celebrate rockin’ my own value, and yes that pun was totally intended.

Are you getting my drift here? This thing called self-worth and procrastination and stuffing it and and and… it’s all connected.

Do you want to feel more value in your life?

Maybe you want to join me and eleven others with a similar experience for Live Your Best Story, a weekend retreat nestled in an ecological sanctuary just twenty minutes away from Horseshoe Bay, West Vancouver.

Three times per year I host LYBS a weekend retreat on Bowen Island for those who want to do just that: LIVE their BEST Story. We spend 36 hours together listening to the story within you that wants to be known, loved and honoured.

Nothing can move from a rocky shore until a King (or Queen) Tide comes in, and that tide is you and your self-love.

If this sounds intriguing or delicious to you, why not send me a message below or at tina@liveyourbeststory.com and we’ll set up a free inquiry call to find out more.

I believe in you.

I know you have love inside of you.

xxT

TinaO is a Core Story Specialist, a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, and the workshop Live Your Best Story. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

Enough is Enough I said.

So this is where it all begins, or continues. I don’t know anymore. Oh mannnn my relationship with money is like a best selling romance novel – there’s hot and steamy sexy bits with page upon page of anticipation only to be dashed into sleepless nights and heartbreak in the end. It seems drama has kept me coming back for more every single time. How like a twenty-something I am, except I’m 45.

It’s not like I was raised with victim-ish helplessness around paying the bills. There was no yelling or tears or even deathly silence over our dinner table, but rather the clear unavoidable acceptance of just goin’ with the flow, accepting that what we have is all we need and bloody hell, we’ll survive just fine thanks. It’s those debilitating don’t ask don’t tell claws that have messed with my financial psyche. In our house both awesomely good and stupidly nasty surprises like: layoffs, dying cars, bad gambles and winning the legion meat draw happened, so our rag tag bunch of mis-matched sibling (eleven of us, some kids, some not), all pretty much learned not to invest in anything too deeply. Listen, our sandcastle got built up and kicked down daily in an exploding second. What’s to invest in? Why bother? It’s going to be all good right? It all finds its way? It all works out in the end…? Right?

Maybe.

So today, at 45yrs old, after growing up blue-collar broke, then saddled with theatre school student loan debt in my twenties, claiming bankruptcy after a failed marriage in my pre-thirties, making ‘gangsta’ big cash in my forties in the network marketing industry and now starting all over again after a career change, cancer and just plain craziness, it’s time to take on my money story. I think it’s probably a good idea to get that handled before I’m a half century old.

It’s time to step into my story as the main character instead of watching it unfold like a jaded audience member. Now there’s a frickin’ journey I have wished would just happen without me needing to be involved. Wouldn’t that be nice? Mmmmm imagine if financial freedom was as simple as picking a box full of donuts.

Apparently it doesn’t work like that.

So, here’s where it begins.

Champagne was needed.

If this speaks to you, follow along. I’ll be introducing you to my four financial avengers and support team in the weeks to come. They’ll be lifting my confused head out of my own ahemmmmm… you know what, for the next while.

They’re really cool. I think I’m going to buy them each an avenger cape with all the money I save over the next year. I’m sure they won’t let me be so frivolous.

You see, I have a big hairy audacious goal.

I want to buy a house in the Lower Mainland in the next two years. We have no savings, lots of debt, and a double income that adds up to just a single one – currently, but it looks like I’m going to change that. Remember that gangsta money I earned once before? Well, if I can do it once, I can do it again.

I think I just had to GIVE UP first. Clearly what I was doing wasn’t sustainable, and broken dreams cost more than unrealized ones.

So here’s to financial freedom. To what it really means, and not the lip service everyone seems to give it. I’ll write more about that later.

Come with…They say financial empowerment feels pretty good. I’m up for that.

xxT

TinaO is a writer, speaker and the founder of TinaOLife – a hub for all things worth living for, the workshop Live Your Best Story, and her coaching practice: Tall Poppy Living. She’s also a professional network marketer with a decade in the industry and with her Tall Poppy Living for Network Marketers Coaching Program, she teaches: selling isn’t slimey and marketing isn’t make-believe. You can be yourself and be successful in Direct Sales.

Tag: Rob Bancroft

That Money Thang #5 – VIDEO

That Money Thang #1 – Enough is Enough