As we get ready for the New Year, it is common to set goals and resolutions for 2007. Yet, more importantly in getting ready for a New Year of growth and prosperity is to forgive yourself and others for past financial transgressions and mistakes. What is forgotten about when moving towards lofty goals is that past blame, hatred, anger, resentments, etc. will hold us back from reaching our goals.

How does forgiveness play a role? What we sometimes fail to understand is that an incident takes just a blink of an eye and then it is over. Someone may have cheated you, lied to you, or has done other things to you, yet the event itself is already in the past. We are the ones that carry it forward to today in regards to what we think it means about us.

For example, you may have not gotten a large raise or bonus from your boss last year. Thus, you feel unappreciated and may believe that you will never get ahead. Yet, you are going to give this job one last chance. You have your eyes set on a promotion that is set to open up later in the year and make your goal to get that promotion. A few months down the line you finish up an amazing project and pat yourself on the back. You wait and wait for your boss to congratulate you on the project, yet he never comes around. The feeling of being unappreciated from the snub for the raise comes back and you get angry at your boss. The next time he asks you for a favor, you answer back with an sarcastic attitude because you doubt that busting your butt will have any effect when he does not even recognize your work.

Note, the anger for not getting a raise is just boiling under the surface all year round ready to come out when you feel like a victim to your boss again. Your boss may actually have recognized all your hard work and was thinking about promoting you yet could not give you a raise due to his hands being tied and just forgot to say thank you for that project (you were never around when he went to your desk to say thank you). Yet, the sarcasm may have made him think twice about promoting you. Thus, our anger and resentments may have come back to bit you and thus should to be resolved to help you meet your goals.

You may think that this is a one-time situation that happens at work (and the boss is really a jerk). Yet, it can happen even on our budget goals:

For example, you may decide to save an extra $1,000 a year. In the past, something has always comes up that eats away at your savings. However, you are going to give this one last chance because saving up for an emergency fund is important. Even the statement (one last change) may sound angry due to the experience from the past on how life did you wrong. You find yourself moving towards your goal by saving $500 by mid-year. Then, you get in a little fender bender on the free way and need to pay a $500 deductible. I can imagine the words you would use when you got to pay the $500 deductible with the $500 in savings that you had worked so hard on. Yet, the bigger issue is that you just lost momentum to save and can’t get it back because this is how life always treats you (kicks you just as you get ahead). Thus, you give up your goal and spend any extra money that you get because what is the use saving it.

I hope you can see how anger and blame can sabotage your goals just as you are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The key is to release the anger and blame towards yourself and others (including life in general) and see that anger and blame aroused by how you reacted towards the event. In any one situation, someone may get angry while someone else may decide not to. The answer to meeting your goals instead of sabotaging it with blame is to decide how to react differently.

In the past, you may have gotten angry at your boss for not appreciating you. Yet, in reality, you are mad because a part of you did not appreciate yourself, first. As I told a client the other day, imagine if you had a Harvard education and someone calls you stupid. If you believe that you are not stupid, the words do not have any effect on you. Yet, if you believe it a little inside you, the words can make you angry at that person. It is important to note that you unconsciously believed at some level first.

What can you do to release the anger and blame? Forgiveness. Some people feel that forgiveness is giving the person permission to have done what they did. Yet, in reality, it only releases you from reliving the emotions (e.g., anger and frustration) from the event. So instead of helping others, you are helping yourself.

There are several forgiveness exercises including one that I wrote about earlier (click here). Other exercises include writing down what you want to forgive on a piece of paper and then burning the paper. Other exercises include writing down what and who you want to forgive every day for at least 7 days. Another exercise is about remembering that the incident is on a moment in time and that it is probably miniscule in the larger picture of life (especially if you believe in an after-life). Thus, it could be a statement like, I am a spiritual being and this event has no lasting impact on me.

Thus, as you start the New Year, take a few moments and think about what you want to forgive, so that it does not impact you in the current year.

As other bloggers are discussing their goals for 2007, I thought I would add my two cents to how to set financial goals. As a manager setting goals for employees in my prior career, I have some experience of what makes goals successful and why some goals fail. Looking back there are four key areas in goal setting that worked for me:

1) Make Goals Ambitious yet Attainable

I keep on hearing that goals should stretch a person, so they can be all that they can be and have all that they can have. I do not disagree with this; however I disagree with the word stretch. Many time people think that they need to sacrifice to reach these goals, in other words they have to do more with less. When they believe they are pushed too much, they are more likely to quit on the goal, especially at the first sign of failure. Goals are easier to attain when they seem more easily reachable not a stretch where they believe there is a possibility of failing.

Thus, it is important to see yourself reaching the goals that are set. Goals can be ambitious. Yet do not see it as a stretch (with hard work and sacrifice), rather just taking a large step forward to where you want to be. I guess my issue is stretch sounds like a mid-evil torture experience while ambitious sounds like the race to the moon. Which would you rather participate in?

Also, setting stepping stones to attaining an ambitious goal makes attaining a goal easier. By seeing yourself making the milestones (or at least getting close), you refuel your batteries for making the rest of your goal. For example, if you want to save an additional $5,000 in a year set up milestone of $1,250 for each quarter.

2) Make Goals That Are Ease to Memorize

When I first took over as manager, I went over the goals. For many, there must have been at least 15 goals. When I asked the employees how they did, they rambled on about what they did but not about their goals. They had no idea what their goals where except a few who read them before our meeting.

Thus, the key is to have 3 to 5 goals that can be remembered at any time. This way how you live during the year can be in alignment with these goals rather than forgotten about a few weeks after creating them.

Note, goals can have several action steps. Thus, instead of lowering credit card interest rates and paying off 2 credit cards, you can have a single goal of improving your credit card debt by $5,000 this year and having it paid off in 3 years. Now, the action steps for this goal can be paying off 2 credit cards and calling credit card companies to lower rates. So what is the difference? Having an ambitious goal of reducing credit card debt in 3 years with a milestone goal of $5,000 this year can have many action steps, some of which you may not know about now. Thus, you may call the credit card company to lower rates and pay off 2 credit cards this year. Yet, instead of thinking you are done with your goals for the year, you may be able to find a 0% interest rate card to transfer some of your other card’s credit balances to this 0% card. Thus, have a few overall goals that cover several smaller action steps that may be added or changed during the year.

3) Make Goals Passionate

Really look at the goals and understand the reason for doing it. If you are doing a goal that someone else (e.g., your spouse) wants you to do yet you really do not want to, then the goal is usually forgotten about a month later. I found when I told my employees their goals were, they usually nodded their head and lost interest in what we were talking about. Thus, differentiate your goals between what you feel you should do and goals you want to do. Then re-look at the goals that you should do and to find out how it can benefit you. The more energy you have for reaching these goals, the easier it is to attain them. And on the flip side, do not arbitrarily set goals for you and your spouse if they do not buy into the goals you are setting.

4) Review Your Goals

It may sound obvious, yet usually forgotten about till year-end, especially when you do not feel that you are meeting them. Many financial bloggers are good at doing this by updating their net worth each month. Goals may not need to be reviewed that frequently yet you should wipe the dust off the goals and review them at least each quarter.

As Hanukkah ends, Christmas begins and Kwanza is just around the corner, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to look at some of the symbols of the holidays and what they mean to me. Please forgive me in advance if these symbols do not line up exactly with everyone’s beliefs. These are just some random thoughts as I see them from a prosperity perspective:

Hanukkah Candle – The story goes that there was just enough oil for one night, yet the candle burnt bright for eight days. From a prosperity consciousness, this symbolizes how sometimes we fear having enough. Yet, if we have faith, we will have enough to sustain ourselves for as long as we need it.

Star of Bethlehem – The star showed the way for the Wise Men to the baby Jesus. It is also a sign for hope (wishing upon a star). We usually think that darkness covers up our own light. Yet, it is really the light that shines brightly in the dark. So, do you downplay your ability and brilliance in dark times when you need some hope or do you let you light shine. For example, if you see companies as greedy, do you cover up whom you are in the corporate world to fit in (to keep your job) or do you bring love and kindness into the cold corporate environment. Prosperity comes when we bring hope to what seems like a bleak situation.

Santa Claus – The true spirit of giving. People sometimes give to get something in return. Yet, Santa Claus gives without the expectation of receiving anything back (except some milk and cookies). Giving works when there is no attachment to what we expect in return. I had a client who couldn’t understand why he gave so much and got nothing in return. When we give just because we want something back, we are coming from a place of lack. Per the law of attraction, if we believe we have lack, that is what we will attract. So give, for giving sake and not for what you will get in return.

Unity Cup (Kikombe Cha Umoja) – Signifies the strength of the family and community. When people think of prosperity, it is usually about making themselves prosperous. Yet, there is strength in numbers. By making others prosperous, we will become prosperous as well. Yet, when we look out for ourselves, it sets up a weak house that can easily crumble.

May your holiday season be joyful and may the New Year bring you new opportunities for prosperity.

In a comment to my article on “How a good opportunity be a snake oil salesman when the intent is to become rich”, LaserTroly wrote:

I completely agree with your view that just by the force of the energy we put into it, we often attracts what we don’t want.

Emotions so often become a spiral, feeding on themselves and getting stronger. Then when events in our lives reinforce them (when we get what we feared), we believe that those fears were right all along. Our worldview shifts, little by little, until we completely believe these ideas.

But how to get out of this trap?

How do you identify those thoughts and beliefs that are holding you back, when your entire framework for viewing the world seems so familiar, natural and right? How do you separate out the stuff that’s not working from the stuff that is? Then how do you go about changing your programming, given that you inadvertently developed this harmful belief system in the first place? What to embrace and how to do it?

For it to stick, you must really buy into the new belief system - just paying lip service to a set of principles won’t do the trick. How to effect such a deep and lasting change?

I always can count on LaserTroly to ask those deep questions that keep me thinking and are hard to answer easily in a blog article. Yet, here is my attempt to summarize it all:

But how to get out of this trap?

First, this is a personal issue that everyone is responsible for themselves. It is hard, if not impossible, to force someone to change when they believe what that they are on the right path. Second, there over 6 billion people on this earth, thus there are 6 billion paths that people can take to reach where they are meant (or want) to be.

The key for me is to have an open mind, not attached to anything. This allows to me look at other people’s point of view and see the merit behind their beliefs and thoughts. Yet, this is tough to do if we want to be right. If I believe that my way is the only way to enlightenment, then I have trapped myself into a fixed way of being, whether it is right or wrong.

For me, the light bulb went on in talking with a friend at work. I was angry and she gave told me that I could continue to look at the same insurmountable mountain or turn around and see the beautiful meadow. It was my choice. She said this at a point in my life where I was angry and stressed out and I finally said “There Has To Be a Better Way” which opened my eyes to different teachings.

How do you identify those thoughts and beliefs that are holding you back, when your entire framework for viewing the world seems so familiar, natural and right?

The key is to know how you want to live on this earth. For me, it is the same way that I want my son, who is 18 months, to live (peacefully, happily, joyfully and lovingly). Thus, every other emotion (anger, shame, guilt, fear, etc.) is not the way that I want to be because it blocks how I want to live. When these feelings (anger, shame, guilt, fear, etc.) come up, it can be a learning experience of identifying which thoughts and beliefs are not serving us and thus these thought patterns and beliefs should be looked at to see if we want to change them.

There is a catch also. For each emotion (peace, love, joy, happy, etc) that we want to live by, we need to see if it is real or not. I will define a non-real emotion as one where I need the situation to feel a certain way. To me this is more like an addiction. For example, I can feel good when I have a glass of wine occasionally. Yet, if I can not be happy without it, it is the start of an addiction. An addiction starts, where I may need just one glass to relive the periodic stress of the day in order to be happy and then turns into a situation where I need more of it and need it every day to feel good. The same is true for money. If I need a raise to feel good, it is only temporary (thus not real). A few months after the raise, I probably have forgotten about the raise and need another raise to feel good. Being happy with a raise is not real because it may be covering up a lack of self-worth where I need someone to give me more money to prove that I am good enough. Do not get me wrong, getting a raise is great. Yet, when we use it to feel good about ourselves, it is covering up the issue that we need to fix. The non-real aspect of this is that it only relieved the symptom (wanting) and did not solve the problem (possible self-wroth) only covered it up.

Then how do you go about changing your programming, given that you inadvertently developed this harmful belief system in the first place?

For me, I look at my beliefs and thoughts and see how they are not serving me. By looking at it, I can see how it works. Once I have looked at my beliefs (that create emotions that do not serve me), most of the work had already been done because I can see the trap and know how to get out of it. It is like getting trapped in a ditch. The first few times you get caught in the ditch, it may take a while to find your way out. Yet, once you are aware of the traps, you may slip back into the trap from time to time, yet you know the way out quickly. And, after awhile, you know how to avoid the trap all together. It all starts by looking at the trap and by knowing how it works.

This is where I am different than some prosperity teachings out there that say you only need to think positive thoughts to get what you want. When 80% to 90% of our thoughts are unconscious thoughts, changing only 10% to 20% of our conscious thoughts to be more prosperous is only creating a small wave against the larger tide of unconscious thoughts. For me, it makes more sense to observe the 80% to 90% of our unconscious thoughts, so I can change that pattern instead of just covering them up with conscious thoughts about prosperity. It does not solve the problem that generates our unconscious thoughts. Now, changing 10% to 20% of our thoughts sometimes can change the tide. Yet, many times, when our unconscious thoughts are so ingrained, these thoughts need to be detected and changed to change the tide. The key to uncovering our unconscious thoughts is to look at what happens in our lives (the outcomes).

There are three traps that a friend of mine (Greg Liber) teaches. It is hard to cover them all here, so you can hit the link and find out more about them.

1) Cycle of ExperienceThis is where we keep on experiencing the same things over and over again based on our beliefs. Our beliefs shape the way we see the world. So, it is our beliefs about who we are that can trap us.

Solutions: Change our beliefs that do not serve you or gather evidence to prove our old belief wrong

2) Cycle of ShameThis is where we feel that we are not good enough. Thus, we look outside ourselves to addictions (food, work, alcohol, etc.) to feel better. Yet, in the end those feelings of not being good enough come back stronger because we did not address them.

Solution: This is inner work of knowing who we are, in other words, what makes us magnificent

3) Drama CycleThis is where we feel like a victim of what happens in the outside world. Think about what sells these days, a good drama or a feel good movie? We become addicted to the drama so we can blame others for what is wrong.

Solution: The only solution is to know that you are creating the drama and want something else. Thus, you change your behavior that creates drama. If you insist on changing the world to solve the particular drama, this will only change the channel to a different drama.

How to effect such a deep and lasting change?

There is a saying, “The egos way starts off easy and gets hard. God’s way starts of hard and gets easy”. I have joked with some friends that the path to enlightenment is too hard because I need to keep on looking at myself and figure out what is not working.

When we look at the world to change to make us happy, we are really just temporarily getting rid of our anger, guilt, shame, etc. We get angry at others to make ourselves feel better by pointing the figure at them. It feels good for a short time (egos way, starts off easy). Yet, because the source of the anger, shame, guilt, etc. inside us has not changed, it just comes back in a different form (gets harder because the problem get bigger from being reinforced).

When we look within ourselves to change, it is hard at first because it is a constant process of what thoughts or beliefs are not serving us. It does take work. Yet, I find that it gets easier as I go further down this path because where I use to be angry or upset for days or weeks at a time when I first started this path, now my anger only lasts a few minutes or hours (sometimes a few days).

To keep it going, I surround myself with others who are on similar path to help encourage me and to use as a sounding board when I need to vent. In our discussions, they usually point out what I am overlooking to get myself back on the right path.

As a side note, my blogging may slow down over the next 3 to 6 months, as I put more time into two other projects (writing a book is one and the other I hope to announce in 3-4 months). This is in addition to watching my 18 month old son during the days which keeps me busy. Please be patient during this time, it will be worth the wait if things work out the way that they are starting to unfold.

I think that we all know the answer here. It is normally yes. However, we hear stories about college graduates working at a minimum wage jobs with no hope of paying off their school loans and moving back home after college due to the debt. Thus, is going to college really worth having student loans. There are three factors that need to be determined in answering this question:

• Cost of College

• Field of Employment

• Student’s Drive & Determination

The stories of the mountains of debt that college graduates are taking out for going to college just looks at the average cost of college. Yet, there is a vast difference between costs depending where the student goes. Tuition at an in-state college can be as little as $5,000 (typically around $10,000 to $13,000 with room and board included) while tuition to a private college can be $20,000 or more. At first glance, it appears that in-state college tuition can provide more bang for the buck. Yet, there are many factors that can go into this decision:

• Will going to a more prestigious school help in future employment?

• Does a private school offer a better education for certain fields?

• Does making connections in school help later in life (e.g., connection with other Harvard or Yale graduates)?

Part of it is to understand how the cost/benefit ratio works. For each, $10,000 of debt, the annual payment for a 30-year loan at 6.5% interest rate is $766. Based on 35% tax rate, this would require a college graduate to earn an extra $1,200 a year before taxes to payoff the debt (ignoring the tax deduction for student loan interest). Thus, if college student spends $50,000 for a 4-year in-state college tuition, the break even point from an investment perspective is if his salary (with a college degree) is $6,000 or more than he would have received without the degree (note, $6,000 = $1,200 X $50,000 / $10,000). This would be a good investment based the statistics that a college graduate earns $14,000 more than a high school graduate for workers age 25 to 34 and increasing to $23,000 more for workers between age 45 to 54 according to the US Census Bureau. Thus, even though the cost of college is going up, having a college education still appears to provide a good return for the investment to a limit.

This investment may not pay off depending on the circumstances. For example, if you want to be a local school teacher and are deciding to go to an in-state college or an Ivy League college (without scholarships), the extra $80,000 to $100,000 in tuition may not even get the teacher an extra $5,000 in pay (let alone $10,000 or more needed to break even) if your school district bases salaries on tenure and not where the teacher went to school. An Ivy League degree may get a teacher a higher paying job in a private school or help him become Principle down the line; however, the extra cost may not be worth the benefit in a public school system. However, if a college graduate wants to work on Wall Street, the Ivy League degree may put him in good position to get a top-notch Wall Street job where a superior educational background may provide a higher starting salary.

Yet, an Ivy League degree will not make or break a student either. According to a Wall Street Journal article, Ivy League schools only account for 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs. In addition, there are currently more Fortune 500 CEOs from University of Wisconsin than Harvard University. Part of this could be from the size of the schools. Yet, the point is that not being able to afford an elite college education (Ivy League versus in-State University) does not doom a college graduate to a life of middle management either.

This is because what a college graduate does with a college education is more important than the piece of paper itself. Over the years, I have heard people complaining about that their college degree is useless. This is true if they are trying to rest on the laurels of a college degree. A college degree is a piece of the building block to future success. Yet, it really does not do more than get you in the door of a company to show them what you can do. Determination, desire and ability will take you the rest of the way. When I was a manager, I rather hire someone who was passionate about what they were doing and determined to show what he could do than someone who had an impressive educational background that was just looking for a higher salary.

And, not having a college education does not mean you are doomed to a life of poverty either. A friend of mine is passionate about what he does for a living. He started what he does now as a hobby at the age of 8. That hobby lead him to be a highly sought after media consultant even without a college degree. He did not finish college because he was too busy working as a consultant. As I said in Why Aren’t You Rich? It May Be Your Beliefs, a college degree just gets you in the door. What you do with the opportunity will have more of an impact on your future than the piece of paper has.

Thus before going into debt for a college education, ask the following questions:

• Am I passionate about what I want to do?

If that passion is not there, you will have a harder time sizing the opportunity that a college degree provides.

• What is the cost involved in the schools that I want to attend?

Some feel that children should get their education where ever they want to go because a college degree is such a good investment that costs should not be a factor. Yet, an investment is only as good as the actual invstement into it. Having a $100,000 school loan is going to be a burden if a student’s desire is to work in a $25,000 social work position. Yet, a $100,000 school loan is small potatoes if the student’s passion is to be a doctor or lawyer.

• Is there a way that I can try on my profession before going to school (or at least before graduation)?

A friend’s son is taking a year long paramedic program to see how it will be like working in the health care environment. He figured before spending 8 years in medical school and going $100,000 or more into debt, he wants to see what it is like to be doctor by being a paramedic first. In addition, the higher pay for a paramedic versus a fast food employee also helps with his bills.

Sometimes it is impossible for a student to try a profession (e.g., actually perform surgery), yet they can ask to shadow someone in their potential field for a few days during their summer vacation. I remember our Pediatrician having a high school student shadow her during one of our visits. People want to help students get ahead. In addition, making contacts early on can also lead to an intern position later in college.

Lastly, more and more universities are setting up free on-line recordings of their courses. Thus a high school student can listen into some of these courses to make sure that a particular major is what they want to pursue before deciding on their major.

There are no guarantees that even after all this homework that a student may not change their minds on what they want to do with their lives when they grow up. A friend of mine became a lawyer, only to realize a few years after staying home with her daughter that she doesn’t want to go back to the legal profession. Change happens. Yet, the more investigating done upfront, the better prepared a student is in making an informed decision in investing in their future.