It’s time to get real, come clean and tell the truth. If we are going to surpass our self-created limitations and notions of lack, scarcity and fear around money stuff, we have got to look our shame and secrets straight in the eye, thank them for informing us, getting us to here, and send them on their way. I have spent many years of my life out of integrity, when came to money and how I treated it. In the interest of transparency, I’ll share some. Oh boy, here goes…

• I once had a shopping addiction. I had a secret credit card that I racked up to $10,000, in one year. It was so out of control, I was using my empty bank account to pay the minimum balance of the secret credit card. The bank account was linked to the secret credit card, so I was using the credit card to PAY for the same credit card!
• Long before that, in 1997, I was arrested for shoplifting at Nordstrom. I had been shoplifting daily at an upper-scale mall for many months. My wardrobe was kick-ass. I was above and beyond suspicion, or so I told myself. One afternoon, shoplifting for my upcoming honeymoon wardrobe, I was busted leaving the store, with my toddler daughter in her stroller. Her stroller was loaded with stolen merchandise. Traumatic, rock-bottom, scared straight, try sitting in the back of a squad car with your baby on your lap. I haven’t shoplifted as much as a pack of gum since then.
• When I bounce a check because I hadn’t been taking care of business properly, I call my bank and ask them to credit me back the overdraft penalty fee, claiming it was simply an accounting error. I am extra sweet on the phone and they always comply.

While the first two confessions are far more dramatic, the last one is something I was doing up until this year. This is the year I have decided to completely breakthrough to the other side of abundance and plenty, and doing so requires me going totally straight.

Sure, I’m no longer shoplifting or racking up secret credit cards. Those days are long behind me. But this calling the bank and playing “airhead”, kissing their butts so that they refund me the $34.00… okay, once or twice is one thing, but when it becomes my “out” for my own fiscal irresponsibility… for me, that is not integrity. That is thinking I am above and beyond repercussion and penalties, the ones that other people have to pay. I humbly realized last week (it happened again) that the $34.00 penalty is there to keep me from bouncing checks. If I keep bouncing checks, I need to pay the penalty, just like anyone else. Taking my medicine.

Feels good, feels like truth, feels like alignment. And I have a feeling I will be much more cautious with my funds and writing checks this year, as a result.

Where or how have you been out of money integrity?

If you get too much change from a cashier, do you tell her?

When you buy things that “you’re not supposed to be buying” do you hide them from your husband, shoving the tags deep into the trash, pretending like you’ve had these new things all along?

Do you make up excuses for why you are above and beyond things like late charges and overdraft fees instead of taking responsibility for your actions?

Let’s tell the truth. Let’s come clean. Let’s release the shame and secrets that have been energetically holding us back from the transformative power of truth and transparency.

Got a confession? (Please? C’mon… I’m feeling kind of vulnerable here…)

Tweet