One of my first yoga teachers, an eccentric, electric and most certainly authentic man, bestowed upon me one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned when he said, “yoga is 99% percent off the mat!” His unorthodox approach always seemed to resonate with me in such powerfully simplistic ways. He inspired my conscious vision of living life to my fullest potential during the time I’ve been given. Since those humble and auspicious beginnings as a yoga practitioner, I have gone on to carve out my own ideas as my yogic journey has evolved over the years. I believe we are here not just to be who we are; we are here to be more of who we are. What I’ve discovered is that when we say ‘yes’ to achieving our fullest financial potential, we are also saying ‘yes’ to achieving our fullest life potential. Prior to my yoga practice, I not only left my spiritual evolution in the dark, I left many other areas of my life in the dark as well. One of the biggest areas I neglected was my relationship with money: how I earned it, spent it, saved it, invested it, and ultimately gave it away. I have since come to understand that how we do one thing is how we do everything. When I unconsciously chose to leave my relationship with money in the dark, I unconsciously chose to leave all the other foundational areas of my life in the dark, or at least heavily shadowed. My lack of both financial education and wealth consciousness reflected on my spiritual life, my health, family, friends, and especially my sense of personal and professional autonomy. What I was not taught and what I did not understand – prior to yoga, prior to consciously choosing to be more of who I am, and prior to choosing to live into my fullest financial potential, and thus life’s potential – was that the pursuit of money is a spiritual journey. I have since learned that we each have our own specific programming for financial results. I like to call it our financial comfort zones. Not sure what yours is? Just take a look at your results and relationship to money today. Much of our money programming is inherited from the cultural lenses we grew up with, derived both from what our parents said and did with money and from the sum of our own experiences. In order to effectively upgrade my own money programming, I began by acknowledging that I was my biggest challenge – that how I perceived wealth, creating income, money management and my financial potential had to change. In effect, my money programming was a three on a scale of ten. I believe when the student is ready the teacher appears. How do you know if you are ready? You take action in spite of your fear because you have reached a place in your own evolution where your old results with money are no longer acceptable. Once you arrive at this place you have begun to adopt a critical habit that many wealthy and successful people seem to share. It is the ‘W.I.T.’ (whatever it takes) approach, a 100% commitment to realizing your fullest financial potential, and thus fullest life’s potential. Money reflects your innermost values and has the power to reveal you. Money is also about choices. The more money you have, the more positive choices you have. True financial wealth is a place of security and abundance, where you are financially free to stop working for a living and start living for your work – your life’s work. Once we begin taking consistent action to educate ourselves on how to create a wealthy and successful financial life and commit to implement those teachings, every foundational area of our lives will be affected in powerfully positive ways. In my case, my conscious, self-motivated movement toward financial empowerment has truly been the most profound part of my spiritual evolution. It has taught me that the more we have, the more we have to give. By choosing to say ‘yes’ to being my fullest financial potential, and thus my fullest life’s potential, I am offering myself the opportunity to be of utmost service to others. I believe that the wealthy and successful individuals walking among us today have consciously created this reality for themselves by letting go of the fear of losing what they have. What these people have discovered is that the power to create wealth and success is within them and they know they could recreate their wealth if they had to. These individuals recreate new wealth as they live from a perspective in which they no longer ask “what can I get?” but rather “what can I give?” Gratefully, today, I hold this intention for all others and myself. Having been financially reckless a good portion of my life and now, today, financially prosperous, it’s a heck of a lot more fun to be prosperous! What are you choosing for yourself today? You also might like this practice makes perfect: what yoga can teach you about managing your money