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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  1 

 

 

Here are your SIX free bonuses accompanying your e-Book, Money Is My Friend.  

  

Emerging Entrepreneur Consulting 
Program   

http://www.phillaut.com/phil-laut-income-
results-of-clients.htm

   

If you liked Money Is My Friend, you’ll 
love my NEW book, Wealth without a Job 

http://www.phillaut.com/supermarket.htm#
wwoj

 

******************************************************************  
Phil Laut is a Charlotte-based author, teacher and business consultant. He is author of Money Is My Friend, a 
400,000 copy best seller published in 18 languages and dealing with the emotional aspects of earning, spending, 
saving and investing. He offers small business consulting focused on the emotional aspects of entrepreneurship, as 
well as courses throughout the world. For additional information, refer to 

http://www.phillaut.com

  

or phone 800-597-1923. 
Copyright © 2000 by Phil Laut All rights reserved.  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

Accepting Your Current Financial Situation 

 

by Phil Laut - Author of Money Is My Friend  

 

Background Information 
Disapproval and denial can never get you free.  
 
There is a Power in Preference. 
 
There is a very big difference between condemning your current situation and 
wanting something better as compared to accepting your current situation and 
preferring something different. 
 
The future is much more important than the past. You can't get a better past. Some 
people allow themselves to be held hostage by their past. This occurs because the 
past is not acceptable to them and they waste a great deal of energy struggling to 
justify the past, struggling to assign blame for the past, struggling to figure out the 
causes of the past.  
 
Denial (or suppression) is the enemy. Your mind thinks it is doing you a favor by 
keeping you unaware of the contents that it hides from you. Therefore it is 
important to understand there is nothing dangerous in your unconscious mind. At 
moments of extreme danger, your whole life flashes before you. I experienced this 
in the War, and so did a lot of other people. It is really a rush. 

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  2 

 
Acceptance Occurs in the Present Moment 
The present moment is your point of power where you have the choice to change 
your thinking, to create the future you deserve and to get free of the thinking that is 
the cause of your current situation.  
OK, let's get right into it. 
An essential element of making any change is the acknowledgment that the current 
situation could be improved. Room for improvement is the largest room in the 
world. For this reason, it is to your benefit to accept the current situation as OK 
and then have a burning preference for improvement. Express this burning 
preference for improvement with the massive action required to bring it about. 
Unwillingness to see it this way leads you to think that the desire for improvement 
only means that there is something wrong. Such perfectionism can keep you 
miserable. People with this way of thinking don't make changes until the situation 
becomes agony. 
Ask for help before you need it. Some people have a great deal of fear of 
dependency. For them the illusion of independence is more important than the 
actuality of success. A person with such psychological factors may be prevented 
from asking for help--even asking for the help that will set him free. This is 
because he wrongly perceives his request for help as a risk to the very minimal 
degree of independence that he experiences.  
Most of us are ambivalent about change. By this I mean that we want change but 
simultaneously we are afraid of it also.

  

 

In most of my work, I write about making changes, making progress, how to make 
the changes you want, how to change more quickly.  
 
Today I am going to talk about something different. Today's topic is your 
relationship with your current financial situation. Some of you I am sure are 
accustomed to five figure income months and others are struggling to get by. The 
comments today apply to you regardless of your situation. It is always to your 
benefit to accept your current reality as OK. It is always to your benefit to give up 
condemning or complaining about debts, expenses and other problems.  

 

Whatever your situation may be, it is to your benefit to accept responsibility for 
having created it. The idea that you created your financial situation--the idea that 
you are responsible for it--is not necessarily the Truth -the truth with a capital "T". 
Instead the idea that you are responsible is a perspective a point of view. It is a 
perspective that empowers you and makes it easier for you to make the changes 
you want.  

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  3 

 
In contrast, blaming your situation on outside forces enfeebles you in the following 
manner--if you think that some outside force is the cause of your current situation, 
then it becomes necessary for that outside force to change in order to have a 
different situation.  
 
Change Made Easier 
The easy dynamics of change are to accept the current situation as something you 
created and accept that it is OK the way it is. Then imagine a different situation --
one that you prefer--one that is a more accurate reflection of your current values. 
And then make a total commitment to bring that about. You bring that about by 
uncovering the psychological factors that have created your current situation and 
progressively changing your thinking to create the situation that you prefer. At the 
same time you put as much of your energy as possible into the accomplishment of 
your goal. This is referred to as massive action. Now massive action by itself is 
often not enough. Many of you have discovered that the expected, positive benefits 
of massive action can sometimes be sabotaged by unknown psychological factors 
that defy identification and confound analysis.  
 
But I do not want to jump over accepting your current situation as quickly as that. 
This is very important. Your current situation has been carefully (although perhaps 
unconsciously) crafted by you over a period of more than just a few years. As a 
reflection of your past thinking it is an excellent and highly accurate self-analytical 
tool. What I mean by this is that accepting your current situation implies 
acceptance of the thoughts that created it as well. By accepting these, your mind is 
far more likely to give up the denial and let you know what specific thoughts were 
responsible for creating the situation. This is important because you then can 
change them to create a situation that you prefer to the one you have.  
 
The Importance of Feelings  
In addition to thoughts, feelings matter also. Denial is associated with 
uncomfortable sensations. This is because, in at least an unconscious way, your 
body knows that your mind is creating a future problem with the denial, causing 
the experience of fear or perhaps only anxiety.  
Fear is very important to understand. [I am using fear as an example here. It serves 
as an example of any kind of emotion you consider negative, whether that be 
sadness, anxiety, anger, sadness, jealousy, envy, shame or guilt. Fear is my 
shorthand way of referring to any so-called "negative" emotion]  
 

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  4 

If you don't understand it, fear will ruin your life. If you do understand it, then you 
can use it to empower yourself to do whatever you want.  
 
In some cases, fear is accompanied by danger. (As was the case in Vietnam or 
when you drive on the freeway.) Most of the time fear is irrational. Fears like fear 
of rejection and fear of disapproval are examples of irrational fears where there is 
no danger. Fear is your friend. Fear is a good thing. It does three very good things: 
1. It heightens your senses--vision, hearing, --even makes you think quicker 
2. It provides an intense adrenaline rush whose pleasure boosts your life urge.  
3. It fills your body with strength so you can better deal with any challenge 
Any feeling is the natural response that your body has to any challenge. This is a 
normal response of all humans. The particular way that any feelings affects us 
depends on how you interpret the feeling, by what you think it means, by whether 
you are willing to accept it as OK or whether you choose to struggle to suppress or 
avoid it. Your body produces a similar emotional reaction whether the challenge is 
dangerous or not. The business challenges we face pose no danger. So, just let the 
fear be there, thank it and bless it for helping you. Say, "thank you fear for coming 
along when I need you most."  
Feelings have two components. First is the energy itself and second is your opinion 
about it. The essence of your opinion is whether you accept the energy and let it 
help you----- or whether you fight against it. If you refuse to accept the fear, BAD 
THINGS HAPPEN----- your energy is diverted to the struggle to suppress the fear. 
If you accept the fear then you can use the energy that is available IN the fear to 
accomplish something useful.  
Accepting the fear is very, very important. When you do this, you separate your 
intention and your feelings. This means that setbacks in the present and negative 
experiences from the past no longer need to weaken your intention. In this way, 
accepting the fear strengthens your intention and increases your productivity.  
 
If you don't accept the fear, then you give it the power to determine your behavior. 
Your feeling will trump your intellect. The trouble with this, as you probably 
already know, is that your feelings do not have your long term best interest at 
heart.  
The fear is present to help you. It is present to help you deal with the challenge. 
Bless your fear and it becomes excitement. Fear is about change. No fear, no 
change.  
Now, I realize that this is probably different than everything you have ever thought 
about fear. It may take a while to learn this new way of being.  
Make a sign. Put it next to your phone. "Fear is here to help me. God Bless you." 

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  5 

This is especially useful if you have one of those phones that seem to weigh 50 
pounds.  
Remember that because of denial, it may be just about impossible to identify your 
personal obstacles by looking in your mind. This is because of the denial and 
suppression that we all have in our mind and because of our mind's compulsive 
desire to be right. In some cases, you may be able to identify your own 
psychological obstacles to success with an unbiased examination of your behavior 
and results. Here is the usefulness of an experienced mentor or consultant. In my 
Emerging Entrepreneur Consulting, the first step that happens in your Free Initial 
Consultation is that I identify for you the precise psychological obstacles to your 
success and how to deal with them. It is essential that you have an understanding 
of these obstacles or limitations and how they function. Your path to excellence 
and success is through these obstacles--how could there be any other way--if your 
path to success were other than through the obstacles, then they wouldn't be 
obstacles.  
Summary and Conclusion 
For this reason, it is to your benefit to accept the current situation as OK and then 
have a burning preference for improvement. Express this burning preference for 
improvement with the massive action required to bring it about. 

 

Emerging Entrepreneur Consulting 
Program   

http://www.phillaut.com/phil-laut-income-
results-of-clients.htm

   

If you liked Money Is My Friend, you’ll 
love my NEW book, Wealth without a Job 

http://www.phillaut.com/supermarket.htm#
wwoj

 

******************************************************************  
Phil Laut is a Charlotte-based author, teacher and business consultant. He is author of Money Is My Friend, a 
400,000 copy best seller published in 18 languages and dealing with the emotional aspects of earning, spending, 
saving and investing. He offers small business consulting focused on the emotional aspects of entrepreneurship, as 
well as courses throughout the world. For additional information, refer to 

http://www.phillaut.com

  

or phone 800-597-1923. 
Copyright © 2000 by Phil Laut All rights reserved.  
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

Overcoming Your Objections to Wealth This is part I of a two part series.  

by Phil Laut - Author of Money Is My Friend  

"Objections to wealth? Are you crazy? Why would I object to wealth?" describes 
the common first reaction people have to this topic. "I work 25 hours per day, 8 
days per week, I listen to conference calls, read books, listen to tapes and attend 
seminars, and you are telling me I have objections to wealth?" 
We are not talking about consciously chosen objections, but rather unconscious 
objections that you probably don't know about.  

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  6 

Today there is a multi-trillion-dollar economy. If you earned a billion or two every 
year, no one would notice or complain. It stands to reason that objections exist or 
we would have more money already.  
Of course there is another possibility. Perhaps you blame your lack on a bad 
upbringing, bad luck, a God who hates you or something else. If you do any of 
these things, then these excuses represent, in fact, your unacknowledged 
objections.  
I doubt that anyone possesses all the objections I will be describing. Whatever your 
objections, it isn't necessary to overcome all of them to increase your income.  
These operate below the surface of your awareness and without your control. 
Without awareness, it's impossible to change them. Use the intensity of your 
emotional reaction to these descriptions to identify which objections you 
unconsciously employ.  
Denial (or suppression) is the enemy. Your mind thinks it is doing you a favor by 
keeping you unaware of the contents that it hides from you. Therefore it is 
important to understand there is nothing dangerous in your unconscious mind. At 
moments of extreme danger, your whole life flashes before you. I experienced this 
in the War, and so did a lot of other people. It is really a rush.  
This flash could be interpreted as your mind saying to you, "In this situation, there 
is no longer any reason to keep anything suppressed. So here is everything I know 
and everything I have experienced. Pick out anything you might find useful to save 
yourself in this emergency situation."  
Now, my intention with this talk is to help you reduce your own denial and 
suppression and provide you with access to memories and events currently locked 
in your unconscious standing in the way of increasing your wealth. It is OK to 
remember everything. Yes it is. Let yourself go deep on this.  
In some instances, it will be clear that these objections originated in your family. 
Others are so ingrained into the fabric of our society that the origin may be 
impossible to identify and some may come from your religious training.  
In the most general sense there are two reactions that children have to dysfunction. 
One is the escaper and the other is the fixer. By escape, I don't necessarily mean 
physical escape. Emotional escape counts, too. The fixer sees the pain of his family 
members and tries to fix those people, in hopes of receiving better treatment from 
them. In general males use the escape method and almost never the fixer method 
while females usually go for trying to fix it, although some go the escape route. 
Some people exhibit behavior of each.  
ESCAPE 
The person who is still on the escape route is like Harrison Ford's character in "The 
Fugitive". He can never relax, for he always fears apprehension, he doesn't 

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accomplish very much because avoiding capture is a full time job, he doesn't trust 
himself to make plans because he knows that any plan he may make is very likely 
to be disrupted by some outside force. He has a very high desire for freedom, but 
doesn't seem to have much of it. The key issue for this person is to realize that he 
has successfully escaped.  
There is a sense of resignation. When you feel this resignation, ask it to leave. Talk 
to it. Tell it doesn't belong here. Tell it you deserve better. This person feels like a 
chronic loser. The resignation (which is the opposite of the feeling of deserving) 
allows him to put up with the worst and while expecting the best. This person finds 
it difficult to imagine a victory greater than avoiding apprehension. When this 
feeling of resignation comes up, ask it to leave. Talk to it. Tell it you don't have 
time for it right now. Tell it it doesn't belong to you. Tell it you deserve better. This 
person's mental and emotional focus is on the past and what is negative. It is 
difficult for him to focus on the positive aspects of life right in front of him. This 
person may tend to blame others for his problems. The important challenge for the 
escape artist is to acknowledge that his escape has already occurred and he is free, 
and to become the designer of his own future.  
FIXER 
The fixer is really quite different. This person may view everyone as an authority 
figure, and also have problems with authority figures. This view of everyone as an 
authority figure means that everything that everyone else says, and everyone else 
does and everyone else wants is more important than what you say, do and want. 
Sometimes the fixer has success selling for others, but not for himself. The fixer 
has a hard time selling for himself because excessive empathy for the customer. 
This person gets his self-worth from other people and other people's opinions about 
him, which he magnifies in importance far beyond any reasonable proportion. This 
person sometimes has a hard time seeing that his parents would have treated him 
the same no matter what. There is often the lingering belief that childhood would 
have been better if you had been smarter, prettier or stronger. This psychological 
dynamic causes undue worry and concern about the opinions of others. Now that 
you are grown up you have the right to decide whether anything your parents think 
means anything. The fixer seems to be romantically attracted to escape artists. 
Freedom for this person comes from his designing his own identity.  
 
Arguments about Money  
Did your parents argue about money? Did those arguments end your parents' 
marriage? Was the divorce an extended war about money and the control it 
provided? Did one or both of your parents, after their divorce, complain to you 
about the behavior of the other related to money? 

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  8 

The answers to all of these questions do not have to be affirmative for you to be 
affected by your parents' arguments about money. The emotional logic in this case 
leads to conclusions such as: "Money causes arguments, therefore the way to have 
peace is to have no money" or something like, "Money hurts people and makes 
them unhappy, so the way to be happy is to have no money." 
Possibly you cave in early in any negotiation rather than deal with the stress. You 
are unable to stand up for yourself without losing your temper.  
 
Desire for Dependency  
A person who did not receive adequate love and guidance as a child may keep 
himself poor as a means of unconscious revenge toward the parents he believes 
failed him or as a way to maintain dependency in hopes of finally getting the 
missing love and guidance. This is a psychological pattern that I have observed 
with increasing prevalence over my years of individual consulting experience. It is 
quite common among sons raised by a single mother. As my personal view, it is 
arrogant to believe that one parent can do as good a job as two in bringing up a 
child. I've heard it said that a woman can do anything a man can do except thirty 
pushups and teach a boy to be a man.  
People with the desire to remain dependent often find a job they are dependent 
upon and stubbornly avoid even the investigation of an alternative method of 
income production. These people also suffer from misperceptions of themselves, 
seeing their own assets as liabilities.  
Fear of Corruption 
 
If you believe that money will corrupt you, you are corrupt already. Money cannot 
corrupt you. There are lots of popular sayings about this. "Money is the root of all 
evil." "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Money projects 
power. No question about that. However, from this it's a big leap of logic to state 
that money is the cause of the corruption. 
There are corrupt and degenerate poor people and corrupt and degenerate rich 
people. The only difference is that money enables rich degenerates to express 
themselves more fully.  
Your own business is a wonderful thing. It's your creation whereby you serve 
others by expressing those values that are most important to you. The more money 
you earn the more able you become to serve even more people by the expression of 
your important values, which is all money can do anyway. The idea that money 
will corrupt you assumes that money has the power to change your values. If 
money has that much power, then the values weren't very strong to begin with.  

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Fear of Loss 
You don't have to be a rich person to be paranoid about loss. Loss is tough to deal 
with for all of us. There are few experiences that match the power of a loss to make 
you feel like a victim. You did nothing wrong and still got hurt. No one has a 
desire to increase loss in his life, nevertheless loss seems to be a part of life, 
whether we accept this or not. The real issue is how you deal with the inevitability 
of loss. Every loss poses a challenge. The challenge is to continue your life without 
the person or object that has meant so much to you. Like all challenges, a loss 
creates additional energy, so that you can deal with it. This additional energy is 
experienced as intense emotions, most commonly sadness. Sadness isn't a sign of 
weakness, despite the unwillingness of most men to cry. Crying is more than the 
response to a loss. It's also nature's therapy that heals both the despair and the 
denial associated with loss. If you compulsively defend yourself against loss, this 
will prevent you from accumulating the things you want and, in the extreme, will 
leave you in the condition of "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," 
a deluded description of freedom by Janis Joplin, unfortunate heroin addict and 
suicide.  
 
Inherited Wealth 
Inheritances intensify the values of any family. In functional families, wealth 
serves to advance the important values of family members. In dysfunctional 
families the wealth serves to act out patterns related to control and lead to the 
association of money with affection. To the younger generation, the family wealth 
may appear to be so great that any money-earning endeavor seems futile. 
Additionally there is most often intense guilt about just the possibility of receiving 
this "blood money." 
 
Confusion about Receiving  
Judging by appearances, giving is an intentional act and receiving is an accident. 
For this reason, it's difficult for some people to take responsibility for receiving-to 
apprehend that receiving is a skill. Pre-verbal infants fulfill their desires by 
howling in complaint about their need. Grown-ups get what they want by asking 
for it and offering something in return. At the extreme, if you don’t ask for what 
you want, then your receiving will be limited to what others offer you.  
Shame has a circular, self-fulfilling logic of its own. Shame involves the belief that 
there is something wrong with you -- the unconscious belief that you have 
genetically transferred character defects you are helpless to correct. Such a 

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conclusion surely effects sense of worthiness. Thus, a person with a great deal of 
shame has difficulty receiving the good things in life.  
Even if you believe that it's better to give than receive, this does not make 
receiving wrong. Without receivers, givers would be out of business. Receiving is 
a skill--obviously some people are better at it than others. It's a skill that can be 
improved, but difficult to practice. When someone gives you or offers you 
something that you want, simply say "thank you" graciously.  
Your parents may have required you to respond with manufactured gratitude for 
the terrible Christmas tie from your dear aunt. That was then and this is now. As an 
adult, it's perfectly fine to politely say "No. Thank you", when you are offered 
something that you don't want. Knowing this, receiving does not necessarily 
obligate you to do something that you don't want to do. 
Rejection prevents receiving, too. When you were a child, all good things came 
from one place. Adulthood greatly increases the possible sources. So, it's no longer 
a big deal when someone says no. Look around for another source.  
It is time to stop holding your parents accountable for your life situation and 
affairs. Success is a choice that is up to you. Your results depend on your 
consciousness and nothing else. The present moment is your point of power. That 
past is over and cannot be changed except in how it affects you. To the extent you 
hold your parents accountable is the extent to which you give away your power to 
them still.  

 

Emerging Entrepreneur Consulting 
Program   

http://www.phillaut.com/phil-laut-income-
results-of-clients.htm

   

If you liked Money Is My Friend, you’ll 
love my NEW book, Wealth without a Job 

http://www.phillaut.com/supermarket.htm#
wwoj

 

******************************************************************  
Phil Laut is a Charlotte-based author, teacher and business consultant. He is author of Money Is My Friend, a 
400,000 copy best seller published in 18 languages and dealing with the emotional aspects of earning, spending, 
saving and investing. He offers small business consulting focused on the emotional aspects of entrepreneurship, as 
well as courses throughout the world. For additional information, refer to 

http://www.phillaut.com

  

or phone 800-597-1923. 
Copyright © 2000 by Phil Laut All rights reserved.  

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

Overcoming Your Objections to Wealth This is part II of a two part series.  

by Phil Laut - Author of Money Is My Friend  

"Objections to wealth? Are you crazy? Why would I object to wealth?" This 
describes the common first reaction people have to this topic. I work 25 hours per 
day, 8 days per week, I listen to conference calls, read books, listen to tapes and 
attend seminars, and you are telling me I have objections to wealth? 
We are not talking about consciously chosen objections, but rather unconscious 
objections that you may not know about.  

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  11 

Denial (or suppression) is the enemy. Your mind thinks it is doing you a favor by 
keeping you unaware of the contents that it hides from you. Therefore it is 
important to understand there is nothing dangerous in your unconscious mind. At 
moments of extreme danger, for example, your entire life flashes before you. I 
experienced this in the War, and so did a lot of other people. It is really a rush.  
This flash could be interpreted as your mind saying to you, "There is no reason to 
keep anything suppressed. So here is everything I know and everything I have 
experienced. Pick out anything you might find useful to save yourself in this 
emergency situation." The point is that it is safe to know everything in your mind.  
Now, my intention with this talk is to help you reduce your own denial and 
suppression and provide you with access to memories and events currently locked 
in your unconscious. These stand in the way of increasing your wealth. It is OK to 
remember everything. Yes it is. Let yourself go deep on this.  
Once again denial is the enemy. Denial of unresolved painful incidents result in 
erroneous conclusions--erroneous conclusions about yourself, your relation to 
others and about money. This is why I recommend the use of affirmations to 
eliminate the denial and to change this resulting conclusions. Denial is the enemy 
because you cannot change what you are not aware of.  
Today there is a multi-trillion-dollar economy. If you earned a billion or two every 
year, no one would notice or complain. It stands to reason that some objections 
exist or we would have more already.  
This is part 2 of a 2 part series about objections to wealth. In October I covered 
escape, fixer or caretaker, arguments about money, desire for dependency, fear of 
corruption, fear of loss, inherited wealth and confusion about receiving.  
This month I will discuss:  
Consumerism  
Envy 
Struggle and Procrastination 
Religious Guilt  
These are objections that operate below the surface of your awareness and without 
your control. Without awareness, it's impossible to change them. Use the intensity 
of your emotional reaction to these descriptions to identify which objections you 
unconsciously employ.  
In some cases, it will be clear that these objections originated in your family. The 
ones that came from your family are the result of 20,000 meals with people who 
did not have the right information about money. Other objections are so ingrained 
into the fabric of our society that their origin may be impossible to identify and 
some may come from your religious training.  

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Consumerism  
Consumerism involves the belief that money is for spending only. This is learned 
in childhood. Earning, spending, saving and investing describe all of the possible 
actions with money. You probably saw your parents in consumer mode many more 
times than you saw them at work (earning) or than you saw them saving or 
investing.  
If your parents gave you money, as a child, without teaching you about saving and 
investing, then it is easy to carry this consumerism mentality forward into 
adulthood. In our modern capitalistic society, there are people asking you to buy 
from them everywhere you go. Thus money without purpose is soon spent.  
For some, consumerism is like a progressive addiction, requiring that bigger and 
bigger things be bought, as though somehow the "stuff" will fill up some internal 
emptiness. The idea that money could be used to increase one's income is an alien 
concept.  
People with the consumerism mentality possess a strong unconscious loyalty to 
this way of thinking. In many cases I have worked with clients who begin to use 
the techniques I teach. Then as their income increases they create financial 
setbacks, most often $300-$400 automobile breakdowns. These mishaps eat up the 
increase in cash, until the person breaks free of the idea that money is only for 
spending. One time I had a client with consumerism mentality and a $750,000 
inheritance. For this person, car problems were not costly enough to eat into the 
income increases that were occurring. This person created a series of $10,000 
house problems, (electrical, plumbing and roofing) during successive months until 
the consumerism cleared up. The general reaction to the consumerism mentality is 
to (unconsciously) create lack of money with expenses that immediately consume 
any increases in income. In cases where the person receives windfalls from time to 
time, these are quickly spent to satisfy the pent up dem and that was generated 
while waiting for the windfall. I mention this to point out that sometime 
persistence is necessary in overcoming consumer mentality.  
The person immersed in consumerism consciousness needs to understand that 
money exists to express your purpose and that spending is just one way to use it. 
The person with the consumerism consciousness is unlikely to consider that money 
exists to increase one's income. The person with the consumerism consciousness 
thinks like this, "How am I going to make the cash and credit resources I have now 
last until the next pay day? The person with the income consciousness thinks, 
"How can I use the current cash and credit resources I have now to increase my 
income? 
Despite its popularity in our society, consumerism provides little satisfaction 
compared to the expression of your true purpose. There are many paths out of the 

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  13 

consumerism trap. They all involve practicing other ways to use money besides 
spending or they involve understanding that money exists to express your purpose 
and that consumerism and status seeking can only provide minimal satisfaction. 
The person with the consumer mentality must separate the thinking about and the 
actions of earning and spending. Pay your bills one day per month, not every day. 
Allow yourself to earn three times as much as you spend. Learn to live in simple 
abundance. Pay yourself first. Set aside a definite percentage each time you receive 
income into two or more saving accounts each with definite purposes. Do this even 
if some bills remain unpaid.  
Build a merchant mentality to replace the consumer mentality. A merchant 
mentality represents a viable alternative to consumerism. A merchant engages in 
financial transactions every day. You build a merchant mentality by starting a 
simple retail product business of your own and using it as the way to learn to sell 
and take charge of your income. A merchant knows that money is the fluid that 
makes his business flow and he uses it to invest in inventory and to create new 
customers. All of these activities are outside the awareness of consumerism.  
 
Envy 
Some people have more than you and others have less. This seems to be the nature 
of things. The important issue is your reaction to this reality. The Creator of things 
did not create Mercedes so that you could not have one. Conversely there may be 
lots of reasons that you do not have a Mercedes. One of these reasons however is 
not that someone else has one. Envy means that you begrudge (rather then rejoice 
about) the success of others.  
The major problem here is your underlying assumption that people will begrudge 
you your success if you ever get any, so there is a tendency to stay poor rather than 
risk the disapproval of the people around you. Wealth is not nearly as big a deal as 
people without it believe it to be. Here is a quote from Mark Cuban (owner of the 
Dallas Mavericks) "It (wealth) does not make it any easier to hit a jump shot or 
lose weight." Mark Cuban, founder of broadcast.com with a net worth of $1.7 
billion at the time.  
 
Religious Guilt 
You can believe in and practice whatever religion you prefer. For the purpose of 
this talk, the question regarding your religion is: Does it support and contribute to 
your long-term well-being and prosperity? Or does it make you feel guilty about 
the possibility of earning the income you want?  
People feel guilty for all sorts of reasons, some valid and others not. Guilt serves as 
the window to our conscience. The individual with no awareness of guilt is a 

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  14 

sociopath. When we violate an important moral principle, it is healthy to feel 
guilty. Guilt is the emotional messenger that tells us we have erred and require 
correction.  
However, sometimes we feel guilty without doing anything wrong. Manipulative 
people try to make us feel guilty as a way to control us. Appeals such as, "If you 
really loved me, then you would......." or "If you really cared, then you would 
contribute to this cause" are prominent examples. In extreme cases, poverty is 
perceived as the only proof of innocence.  
Sayings such as "Money is the root of all evil" can work to keep you poor forever 
if you believe them. Religious guilt has lots of power. By comparison, violating 
your parents' rules, can send you to bed without supper. Some religions believe that 
the punishment for violating religious rules is eternal suffering.  
 
Struggle and Procrastination 
My late mother, God rest her soul, had a sign in her kitchen with a picture of an 
industrious beaver and the caption that said something like, "The world owes you a 
living, but you must work hard to collect it." This is the common idea that one 
must struggle to produce an income. This idea can be a significant obstacle to 
wealth. If you are already busy, then doubling your income by working twice as 
hard isn't an attractive possibility.  
Let's think about this for a moment. Some people earn $20,000 per year and others 
earn $200,000 per year or more. It's a physical impossibility for the high earner to 
work ten times harder. Hard work is required to increase your income, but not 
proportionately harder. Improving the quality of your thinking, learning to have 
your emotions support your purpose, increasing your willingness to receive and 
designing new and better ways to serve others are far more productive than 
increased struggle.  
In general, procrastination is caused by one kind of fear or another. For people who 
believe that more income requires more struggle, the tendency to procrastinate 
stems from the desire to avoid additional struggle.  
Each one of these objections functions to maintain an unconsciously defined 
comfort range about money. In other words, there is an unconsciously defined 
lower limit at which point you will take extreme action to improve your situation 
and an upper limit beyond which you would feel uncomfortable or nervous about 
having so much. Successfully dealing with the objections in your own mind 
empowers you to be more comfortable with wanting and having greater wealth.  

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  15 

 

Emerging Entrepreneur Consulting 
Program   

http://www.phillaut.com/phil-laut-income-
results-of-clients.htm

   

If you liked Money Is My Friend, you’ll 
love my NEW book, Wealth without a Job 

http://www.phillaut.com/supermarket.htm#
wwoj

 

******************************************************************  
Phil Laut is a Charlotte-based author, teacher and business consultant. He is author of Money Is My Friend, a 
400,000 copy best seller published in 18 languages and dealing with the emotional aspects of earning, spending, 
saving and investing. He offers small business consulting focused on the emotional aspects of entrepreneurship, as 
well as courses throughout the world. For additional information, refer to 

http://www.phillaut.com

  

or phone 800-597-1923. 
Copyright © 2000 by Phil Laut All rights reserved. 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  16 
 

How to Make Yourself Broke, Depressed and Upset

 

by Phil Laut - Author of Money Is My Friend  

Most writing about personal development (mine included) describes methods for 
increasing wealth, happiness and satisfaction. I am probably not the only one who 
wonders why everyone does not follow those simple guidelines that lead to a more 
satisfying life. I suppose it is because we are rebellious, don't want to change and 
want to be right. In 1964, I graduated (with honors, no less) the U.S. Coast Guard 
Academy, a military school where rebelliousness is not a prized quality. Yet, I still 
experience a rebellious streak in myself that those four years failed to suppress. 
Sometimes, I observe in others what seems to be a similar counterproductive 
rebelliousness.  
It is likely that everyone experiences periods of lack, depression and upset. There 
is a definite strategy that produces these unfavorable results. This issue of the 
Emerging Entrepreneur Newsletter describes counterproductive strategy in general 
terms, so that you may choose a different course and different results. As pointed 
out in previous editions of this Newsletter, awareness of your personal unconscious 
negative thinking is an extremely valuable resource because you can change what 
you know about and cannot change what you don't know about. 
Strategy 
The strategy for poverty, depression and upset is easy to remember because each 
component begins with the letter "P".  
1. Personally 
Take everything that happens personally. At the extreme, conclude that everything 
happens as an indictment of you. Assume that people who reject you have it in for 
you. See the world and the people in it as hostile or at least uncaring. Blame your 
condition on external circumstances. Blame reliably puts you at effect and renders 
you helpless. Compare yourself to others frequently and unfavorably. Complain 
about the people around you to anyone who listens and to some who don't. Rely on 
this complaining as a temporary respite from misery and as an opportunity to 
justify unhappiness or lack of accomplishment. Stay at work you don't like and 
expect the money to make up for the dissatisfaction. Assume it is your 
responsibility to fix things that are beyond your control, including the feelings of 
others. Avoid asking for what you want.  
2. Pervasive 
Allow the negative attitude created in Part 1 to pervade other areas of your life. For 
example, allow setbacks at work to affect your close relationships and allow upsets 
in your family to detract from your performance at work. Increase the 
pervasiveness even more by listening to country western music or rap, if you 

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  17 

prefer, so that your negative thinking gains rhyme and melody, thus becoming 
easier to remember. Then, seek re-inforcement of this thinking by associating with 
like-minded individuals who drain your energy and complain to you about their 
plight.  
3. Permanent 
Make all of this permanent by thinking it will never change. Or perhaps by 
thinking you are too old to change or that you will change after you have more 
education, a better job, get married, get divorced, have children, move to California 
or the children grow up. In your relationships, refuse to give the other person what 
you know they want until you get what you want from them.  
These three P's are an excellent strategy to follow, if you want to become broke, 
depressed and upset.  
The last step, (make your thinking permanent), is the topic I addressed with the 
Mental Flexibility Quiz in the December 2001 issue of the Newsletter, and 
reproduced here. Developing mental flexibility can be considered the opposite of, 
or the antidote for, the making conclusions permanent.  
Six Questions with TRUE or FALSE answers 
1.  The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. 
2.  The sun neither rises in the east nor sets in the west. This is an illusion caused 

by the rotation of the Earth on its axis. 

3.  One thousand dollars is a great deal of money. 
4.  One thousand dollars is a small amount of money. 
5.  Everything is the same 
6.  Everything is different.  
If your answers were six TRUE, then your grade is 100%, actually six FALSE 
would rate 100% also. The point being that truth or falsity is a function of 
perspective rather than content, meaning that that the quiz is intended to measure 
the mental flexibility required to shift perspective.  
Explanation of answers: 
1-2  That the Sun rises in the East and sets in the West is a fact provable to any 
sighted person with a reliable compass, but it is a completely useless (and even 
misleading) fact to a scientist calculating the proper trajectory of a space craft from 
Earth to Mars. For his or her calculations, the scientist needs the perspective of a 
stationary Sun with the planets revolving around it.  
3-4   $1000 is a great deal of money for a person shopping at the food market and 
very little for a person shopping at the Mercedes dealer. Not recognizing that both 
these statements are true could cause a person to overspend at the food market and 
be disappointed at the Mercedes dealer (or perhaps purchase a car beyond his 
means).  

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  18 

5-6  In order to function and communicate, we assume things to be the same that 

really are not. We accept two five-dollar bills in exchange for a ten, even 
though value is the only perspective in which they are identical. We use 
collective nouns such as Americans, women, men and so forth even though 
the members of these groups are vastly different from each other. We 
assume for convenience that some things are the same that really are 
different. Even two pennies are different from each other at the molecular 
level. But on the other hand, all matter at the sub-atomic level is composed 
of the same quarks and mesons and other particles that physicists know 
about, that are all the same. Whether things are considered that same or 
different is determined by perspective and not content.  

 

Emerging Entrepreneur Consulting 
Program   

http://www.phillaut.com/phil-laut-income-
results-of-clients.htm

   

If you liked Money Is My Friend, you’ll 
love my NEW book, Wealth without a Job 

http://www.phillaut.com/supermarket.htm#
wwoj

 

******************************************************************  
Phil Laut is a Charlotte-based author, teacher and business consultant. He is author of Money Is My Friend, a 
400,000 copy best seller published in 18 languages and dealing with the emotional aspects of earning, spending, 
saving and investing. He offers small business consulting focused on the emotional aspects of entrepreneurship, as 
well as courses throughout the world. For additional information, refer to 

http://www.phillaut.com

  

or phone 800-597-1923. 
Copyright © 2000 by Phil Laut All rights reserved.  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 
 

Common Problems with Planning  

by Phil Laut - Author of Money Is My Friend 

Plans are important. You could say that your current situation is the result of many 
plans you chose in the past, both consciously and unconsciously. Typically the 
unconsciously chosen plans cause those results that are less than pleasant. Here we 
will be making conscious plans to accomplish goals that are expressions of true 
purpose.  
A goal without a plan is a dream that won't come true. Sure, dreams sometimes 
come true all by themselves, but mostly this occurs in the movies. In real life, a 
goal is most often accomplished by carefully planning it out and then following the 
plan, adjusting for new information and unanticipated events as they occur. Having 
your planned activities laid out all the way to the fruition of your goal aids you in 
focusing on the task at hand because the recording of the plan frees you from 
having to remember all the steps to come.  
Planning is easy because you have a natural ability to do it. Feelings are an 
increase in physical energy in response to a challenge. Your body automatically 
provides the energy you need to deal with any challenge. In a similar manner, a 
plan results from the natural increase in mental energy in response to a challenge. 

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  19 

Whenever you are confronted with a challenging problem, your mind naturally 
begins to figure out and evaluate various solutions. For example, if you are driving 
to work and a tire goes flat, your mind immediately begins to make a plan to 
minimize the lateness of your arrival. You may consider abandoning the car and 
taking a taxi, changing the tire yourself, or telephoning for a repair service to help 
you. None of these alternatives is perfect. Each results in different disadvantages. 
There is no ideal solution. The best choice depends on your personal values about 
punctuality and money, as well as the resources available to you.  
Detailed plans are not required even for complicated tasks if you have done them 
before. The first time you give a formal dinner party for ten guests, you would 
want to plan it out in detail and write it down to ensure you remembered 
everything. After a few successful dinner parties, the detailed plan would no longer 
be necessary. At this point your plan might consist only of a guest list and a menu. 
A detailed plan is required to accomplish any significant goal that is new to you. 
The bigger the project the more you need a plan. The more people involved, the 
more you need a plan. The length of a plan depends on the complexity of the job. 
The plan of the Apollo Project to send men to the Moon and return them safely 
filled many, many thick books. First, write your goal once again in the present 
tense with a definite date. The challenge of the plan is to create a map or a path 
from where you are now to the destination you desire. The most common 
difficulties people have with planning are:  
7.  Fear  
8.  Fear  
9.  Fear  
10. Fear  
11. Fear  
12. Fear  
13. Too much focus on numbers  
14. Inadequate access to creativity  
15. Time Focus too short  
16. Plan out of harmony with true purpose 
Explanation about the problems people have with planning:  
1-6 Fear 
Planning is scary. It's about the future, so you should expect fear to be a prominent 
emotion. This is normal. Fears are always about the unknown future. You may 
have intense emotions about events in your personal history, but those emotions 
are probably sadness or resentment. The events are over. Our fears are about things 
that haven't happened yet. Remember the fear is there to help you deal with the 
challenge. Don't avoid it. Let it help you by accepting it as normal.  

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  20 

7. Too much focus on numbers. 
In many instances, if you ask a business manager for their plan, you will be 
presented with an EXCEL(r) spreadsheet that lays out anticipated receipts and 
expenditures. Unfortunately this does not qualify as a plan, because it cannot serve 
as a guide to action. The spreadsheet is a budget only. Now a budget is a good 
thing to have, but it is not a plan. A budget can measure the progress of a plan's 
execution, but by itself does not serve as a guide to the sequential action required 
for success. A plan does that. Clearly an understanding of the numbers is an 
important part of a plan, but more is required for success. 
8. Inadequate access to creativity 
A plan is about the future. The logical, analytical function of your mind is poorly 
equipped to deal with the future. This is because the future doesn't exist yet and the 
analytical portion of your mind is suited for analyzing the cause and effect of what 
already exists. The creative function of your mind is best equipped for dealing with 
the future. If you try to "figure out" your plan you will inevitably become "stuck." 
When the participants in my seminar make their plan, I tell them it is very easy to 
know when you are stuck. You gaze off into the middle distance, most often 
glassy-eyed and slack jawed, awaiting some form of inspiration to come along to 
guide you. "Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen," I tell them. Instead 
put your creativity to work immediately.  

Creativity is not just for Artists and Writers 

Most people grossly underestimate the power of their own creativity, because it 
was squashed so strongly in school. I suggest you make a list of twenty items every 
day. Set a timer for two minutes. Write as fast as you can, without regard to 
spelling, grammar or quality of ideas. Write WHATEVER comes to mind. 
After completing the list each day, circle the most practical items.. 
What you are doing here is akin to taking your creativity to the gym for a tone up. 
The idea(s) that will actually produce the money for you may appear on one of 
your lists. It is also possible that it will come to you while you are doing something 
else. This will be the result of your increased creativity. . 
Try using these topics to make lists that can help you.  

•  20 early steps in my plan  

•  20 people who could help me  

•  20 people who have done something similar before  

•  20 places I could look for information  
•  20 ways I could avoid the next step altogether  

•  20 things I know could never work 

Making such lists enables you to access the creative function of your mind and 
then call upon your analytical function to evaluate the alternatives.  

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  21 

9. Time focus too short 
If you have always relied on a job for income, it is possible you possess consumer 
mentality related to your personal business and money. Consumer mentality asks, 
"how can I make my current cash and credit resources last until the next 
paycheck?" In a business of your own, an investor mentality is required. This asks, 
"How can I most effectively use my current cash and credit resources to increase 
my income?" Asking the second question stretches your time horizon beyond the 
short term to the further distant future where your plans will bear fruit.  
10. Plan out of harmony with true purpose 
We are motivated by values. Values are abstract characteristics or ideals that each 
of us deems worthy for their own sake. We don't have the same values as each 
other and sometimes our own values conflict. Purpose is an objective statement of 
how we intend to express values in our life. A purpose is timeless--it is about 
expression, not accomplishment. A goal on the other hand exists in time, having a 
beginning, a middle and an end. Satisfaction results from a consciously chosen 
purpose derived from your chosen ways of expressing your important values by 
carrying out goals and plans that express the purpose you chose.  
 
Life is meaningless without purpose. In other words, it has no meaning but the 
meaning we choose. If one's purpose is unconsciously chosen from childhood, then 
satisfaction is impossible, regardless of external appearances of success, because 
you are living out what someone else told you to do or rebelling against this. You 
can choose and declare any purpose that suits you.  
It is impossible to get very excited about expressing your inherited purpose. You 
didn't choose it, so the amount of satisfaction it can deliver is severely limited. 
Purpose, values, goal and plans function in a hierarchy like a chain of command or 
an organizational chart. An excellent way to describe your declaration of your true 
purpose is to say that your true purpose is a statement of how you intend to express 
your most important values. Then each goal becomes a specific expression of your 
purpose and each plan a method to accomplish that goal. The hierarchical chart 
looks like this:  

Values 

Purpose 

Goals 

Plans 

Dealing with Time  
Any plan is similar to a schedule. It establishes priorities about time. Most parents 
decide time issues for their children. My mother fed me on a schedule given her by 
the pediatrician. It was always a rush. She shoveled in the food faster than I wanted 

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it. Then later when I mastered the spoon, she told me that I ate too fast. (I know, 
tough childhood.) I concluded that other people make the decisions about time and 
speed, that they do so in an inconsistent manner, and that my preferences about 
time and speed were less important. You do not need an experience like this to 
convince you that other people are in charge of time. Most parents put their 
children to bed when the parents are tired. In school, other people determined the 
schedule; determined how many years we must attend to reach graduation. Military 
training, of course, takes this to an extreme. At a job, your employer determines 
your work schedule, time-off and vacations. Perhaps you influence the schedule a 
little, but this is probably not an adult-adult negotiation.  
To succeed with planning, it may be necessary to place yourself in charge of time.  
 

Emerging Entrepreneur Consulting 
Program   

http://www.phillaut.com/phil-laut-income-
results-of-clients.htm

   

If you liked Money Is My Friend, you’ll 
love my NEW book, Wealth without a Job 

http://www.phillaut.com/supermarket.htm#
wwoj

 

******************************************************************  
Phil Laut is a Charlotte-based author, teacher and business consultant. He is author of Money Is My Friend, a 
400,000 copy best seller published in 18 languages and dealing with the emotional aspects of earning, spending, 
saving and investing. He offers small business consulting focused on the emotional aspects of entrepreneurship, as 
well as courses throughout the world. For additional information, refer to 

http://www.phillaut.com

  

or phone 800-597-1923. 
Copyright © 2000 by Phil Laut All rights reserved. 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

Unresolved Guilt May be Affecting your Financial Life in Unknown Ways 

by Phil Laut - Author of Money Is My Friend 

 
Why this topic? 
Some readers may be surprised to find such a topic in a financial newsletter. For 
more than 25 years I have had a consulting practice and seminar business aiding 
thousands of individuals move toward the income they want from work they love. 
Parental and societal training unintentionally leads most people to accept the 
income that is offered from work they tolerate. A significant percentage of the 
people I have worked with have broken free of past conditioning by successfully 
dealing with unresolved guilt from various sources.  
 
Steps for Positive Change  
As you probably know, it is unreasonable to expect these issues to clear up 
overnight. I like to point out that the unconscious patterns of behavior and thinking 
acting to limit your income without your awareness were imparted over an 
extended period during 20,000 meals with people who had the wrong information 
about money.  

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  23 

I lay out a simple three-step method for positive change. It's the triple A program 
of Awareness, Acceptance and Action. 
Awareness-It is impossible to change what you do not know about. In order to 
increase awareness, denial, suppression and in some cases, arrogance, must be 
overcome.  
Acceptance-Disapproval makes any accomplishment more difficult. Accepting any 
situation, as well as yourself in it facilitates change. In many cases, expectations 
and self-condemnation need to be overcome.  
Action Problems are more like cheese than wine, i.e. they do not improve with age. 
Very little positive change occurs without effective action. Dreaming alone will 
not make it so.  
In relation to this article, it is my intention that you increase your Awareness of 
how unresolved guilt may be affecting your financial life and through this to allow 
you to obtain a greater degree of self-acceptance.  
Hopefully everything in this article does not apply to you, so it is probably a good 
idea to look upon these comments in the perspective of "If the shoe fits, wear it."  
 
What is Guilt? 
The definition of guilt that makes the most sense is that guilt is self-punishment in 
a universe perceived to be unsafe. This means if you did something wrong in an 
unsafe universe, it would seem a good idea to punish yourself first in an attempt to 
beat the much bigger and stronger universe to the punch. Thus guilt is in fact its 
own punishment. Additionally, guilt is less selective than you may believe. Guilt 
about some issue completely unrelated to money could be limiting your financial 
success without your awareness.  
Forgiveness (which means giving up the claim of retribution, including retribution 
against yourself) frees you from the hold of the past. There is also the possibility 
that failing to resolve guilt for unacceptable behavior in the past could motivate 
you to repeat it in order to justify it.  
 
How guilt may be affecting you 
Unresolved guilt could be affecting your financial life by: 

•  Lowering your deserve quotient  

•  Stopping you from asking for what you want.  

•  Stopping you from knowing what you want.  

•  Stopping you from taking those risks that would get you what you want.  

•  Causing you to say "Yes" when saying "No" is much more to your benefit.  

•  Causing you to attract people who drain your energy and money with no 

hope of benefit to you, resulting in justified resentment on your part. Such a 

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dynamic may tend to cause you to view your success as the result of good 
luck and the failure of others as the result of bad luck.  

•  People stealing from you.  

•  Inexplicable losses of money.  

•  In other ways by making decisions for you.  

 
No one would want to be completely free of guilt 
If you were to behave in manner outside of your own morality, you would feel 
guilty. This sort of guilt is healthy. Healthy guilt provides a window to our 
conscience. I believe it is natural to feel guilty for breaking agreements, 
intentionally deceiving others, telling lies and the like. Anticipation of such guilt 
actually aids us in avoiding destructive behavior. A person without such a sense of 
guilt finds himself without a moral compass as has been demonstrated by recent 
events with famous politicians, professional athletes and others. Complete lack of 
awareness of guilt turns renders a person psychopathic.  
 
In fact, the origin of the unresolved guilt is far less important that being aware of it 
and changing it. Nevertheless, I will describe some of its possible sources.  
Societal Guilt about money  
Parental guilt  
Guilt about sex 
Religious guilt 
Survivor's guilt. 
 
Societal Guilt about money 
Guilt about money and its backlash, which we could refer to as class envy or 
resentment about rich people, is so intense in our society that any sort of 
reasonable discussion about public policy related to taxation is just about 
impossible. The income gap between the highest earning and lowest earning 
segments of the population steadily increases and the promise of middle class 
financial security is rapidly becoming a fantasy. Here I am referring to the typical 
middle class dream of home ownership, sending kids to college and saving for a 
comfortable retirement. I you feel guilty about becoming rich then you will tend to 
avoid or fail at those steps that will make you rich, in order to avoid the discomfort 
of the associated guilt. Conversely if you resent rich people, you will tend to avoid 
riches, so as to avoid the possibility of receiving the same resentment that you now 
project on to rich people. There may be many reasons that you cannot afford a 
Rolls Royce. The fact that someone else has one is no t one of these reasons.  

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  25 

Parental guilt  
Personal and societal expectations regarding parenthood are unreasonably high. 
Parenthood is one of the toughest jobs in the world, for which there is little useful 
training. Unfortunately the only training most people receive at this is from their 
own parents. Although you have the ability to influence others, you do not control 
them, including your children. You probably made lots of mistakes of commission 
and omission in raising your children. If you did the best job possible and your 
children turned out below your expectations, this is OK. You probably did all you 
could and further self-punishment serves no one.  
 
Guilt about sex 
Most Americans are crazy about sex. I mean crazy in both meanings of crazy. By 
Americans, I refer to the residents of the Western Hemisphere. Societal views 
about sex outside the Western Hemisphere are quite different. Our opinions and 
feelings about sex are the result of intense and extremely mixed messages. Sex is 
over-glamorized by the popular media and condemned by people who are uptight 
about it. Some people are so judgmental about sex that they demand that the 
Government enact laws so that their personal moral views are forced on society as 
a whole. My personal view is that legal prohibitions of sexual activity among 
consenting adults, provided it does not hurt anyone or involve children, are 
counterproductive. Everyone has the right to his own views, but not the right to 
impose them on others who are of no concern. It is common for people to make 
agreements with their sexual partners to forego sexual activity outside the 
relationship in order to foster commitment and trust. Breaking such agreements 
most often results in the ruin of the relationship.  
 
Religious Guilt Detrimental to Earning the Income You Want from Work you 
love.  
Thankfully we have freedom of religion here. You can have whatever religious 
beliefs you like. The issue I address is how religious beliefs affect your finances. 
No matter what church you belong to, there are rich people who are members. It is 
OK for you to be one of these. There is a religious model of life that says that we 
separate from God at birth and remain so until death. From this erroneous 
assumption comes the conclusion that the purpose of life is to earn a reunion with 
God at some unknown time in the future. Such a reunion is supposedly conditional 
upon your adherence to an often elaborate system of dualistic and arbitrary 
morality. This morality often includes the idea that money is evil.  
If you believe that money will corrupt you, you are corrupt already. Money cannot 
corrupt you. There are lots of popular sayings about this. "Money is the root of all 

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  26 

evil." "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Money projects 
power. No question about that. However, from this it's a big leap of logic to state 
that money is the cause of the corruption. 
There are corrupt and degenerate poor people and corrupt and degenerate rich 
people. The only difference is that money enables rich degenerates to express 
themselves more fully.  
Your own business is a wonderful thing. It's your creation whereby you serve 
others by expressing those values that are most important to you. The more money 
you earn the more able you become to serve even more people by the expression of 
your important values, which is all money can do anyway. The idea that money 
will corrupt you assumes that money has the power to change your values. If 
money has that much power, then the values weren't very strong in the first place.  
Religion that keeps you poor borders on medieval superstition. It is time you were 
free of this. This model produces struggle and lack. Unity with the Source of 
Sources can only aid in your prosperity. Another way to say this is that the Creator 
of the universe did not create Mercedes automobiles so that you could not have 
one.  
 
Survivor's guilt  
Survivor's guilt is the result of a natural, but erroneous conclusion made by the 
survivors of catastrophic events. It based on the erroneous conclusion that there is 
some relationship between the fact that the victims died and the survivor's did not. 
Survivor's of air crashes, wartime combat, the Nazi holocaust, as well as other man 
made and natural disasters experience survivor's guilt to some degree.  
From my personal experience, I grew up in a small town in New Jersey (pop. 
7,000). Ten people from my town went to Vietnam and I was the only one to come 
back. Many of casualties were people I knew. During the process of my recovery 
from the War experience I sought therapy about the survivor's guilt. I saw that the 
solution was the realization that those people were dead and I was alive and those 
two things had nothing to do with each other.  
It is my belief that survivor's guilt is the primary component in Post Traumatic 
Stress Disorder (PTSD). One characteristic all sufferers from PTSD have in 
common is that they survived while others did not. The survivor's guilt tends to 
keep the PTSD in place far longer and far more severely than need be, because the 
guilt makes the events more painful to talk about and leads the sufferer to think he 
SHOULD feel bad. Additionally the sufferer from survivor's guilt has a tendency 
to seek validation as, at least, a temporary relief from the guilt. Thus the mature 
Private Ryan in "Saving Private Ryan" asks his wife to tell him that he has led a 
good life.  

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  27 

 
Conclusion 
The effort of suppressing guilt only increases its power. If the information in this 
article uncovers an incident where you hurt someone (intentionally or not) an 
apology is quite likely to free you from the guilt.  
 
In other instances, the following affirmations can aid in increasing your awareness 
of guilt feelings so that they may be accepted and cease to bother you. The basic 
affirmation on this subject is:  
I forgive myself for allowing guilt to make decisions and hold me back. Now I use 
self-acceptance and massive action to lead straight to my goal.  
 
Others of use are: 
Affirmations: 
 
God is my Father. 
I am free of those religious views that in the past kept me poor. I step forward to 
claim all the good that God has for me.  
I am not my past. I am a child of God. 
I now possess the foresight to think through my behavior to its ultimate results. 
 
Affirmation: (about survivor's guilt) 
 
I am alive and they are dead and these two things have nothing to do with each 
other. 

Information about the printable Money Is 
My Friend e-Book

  

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******************************************************************  
Phil Laut is a Charlotte-based author, teacher and business consultant. He is author of Money Is My Friend, a 
400,000 copy best seller published in 18 languages and dealing with the emotional aspects of earning, spending, 
saving and investing. He offers small business consulting focused on the emotional aspects of entrepreneurship, as 
well as courses throughout the world. For additional information, refer to 

http://www.phillaut.com

  

or 

http://www.pavlovpublishing.com

 

or phone 800-597-1923. 
Copyright © 2001 by Phil Laut. All rights reserved.  
 

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  28 
 

EMERGING ENTREPRENEUR CONSULTING 

 

On Line info 

 

http://www.phillaut.com/phil-laut-income-results-of-clients.htm

 

The consulting program is different from the book you just read because it is personalized to you-

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Top performers in all fields use excellent coaches. Who's yours? 

Don’t repeat these common financial mistakes: 

1.  Accept the income offered for work you only tolerate 
2.  Shrink your dreams to fit your paycheck 
3.  Over-payment of taxes 
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5.  Struggle and juggle external factors to make ends meet  
6.  Belief that money can solve your financial problems 
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About the Consulting Work 

This work combines psychology and finance in a way not available anywhere else. You will quickly get to 
the bottom of any emotional issues that have sabotaged your progress and change these permanently; 
results not usually available even from many years of psychoanalytical or personal growth work. These 
empower you to generate the income you deserve.  

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Money Is My Friend-eBook by Phil Laut   Bonus Material                                           page  29 
 

Emerging Entrepreneur Consulting Program  

 
Consulting clients come from a wide range of ethnic, educational, financial and professional backgrounds, 
including: 

•  a Registered Investment Advisor in Florida 

•  an Internet entrepreneur in Massachusetts 

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•  an IT executive in New Jersey 

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Initial Consultation Is Free 

Initial consultation is free and its benefits are priceless. 

It is easy to get started right away

On-line Info 

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Ask for the confidential questionnaire that pinpoints the psychological obstacles that slow your progress 
and provides a prescription to lead you to your desires. 

800-597-1923 

 

e-mail: 

plaut@mba1970.hbs.edu