The Cornerstone:

            Like all women, there are times that I look at my financial situation and feel overwhelmed. I then have to remind myself that part of my programming occurred long before I was consciously aware of learning. In other words, my belief system about money and wealth was established before I was fully literate. I believe this is a common scenario to all people living in this culture, and perhaps every other.

I was born in San Francisco, as the oldest of six children and raised in the housing projects by a single, several-times divorced mother. When entering school, my sisters and I were the only blonds in our grammar school. As such, we found ourselves the targets of much undesirable attention. While living in that environment, I was able to watch the dynamic that occurred between males and females, parents and children, parents and parents, the rich and the poor. The atmosphere was violent, dirty, desperate, and exhausted. Hopelessness was the pervasive temperature in which we were raised.

However, I had several advantages whose importance I did not understand at the time. The first was an impoverished English professor grandmother who taught me to read at four. The second was the cultural arts program in the San Francisco public schools, which allowed all students to attend the symphony, ballet and the opera. This included all the museums, conservatories, observatories, and the Planetarium. The third was the high quality of standard education coupled with the special programs for gifted children in existence at the time. The fourth was the opportunity to live elbow to elbow with the rich. Although a poor kid from the slums, I was able to observe first-hand that there was a different way to approach life. Knowing I would not learn this solvent lifestyle from the people that surrounded me daily, I questioned at every turn adults and even older children that came from more solvent circumstances than mine. I soon came to realize that people were pretty much the same, had similar fears, confusions, and insecurities; but the thought patterns and behaviors of the two economic groups were incredibly different.

I noticed that the more affluent the person, the less they talked about money, and the more they talked about ideas. I also noticed that while the poor concerned themselves with their neighbors and gossip, more affluent individuals were concerned with city, state and national events and trends. I also experienced the generosity of each of these economic groups. We were the poor kids getting a donated jacket for Christmas from a more affluent household, and yet living in an environment where, sparse though it was, a dinner for five children could be stretched to accommodate the neighbor's additional four. Truth be told, circumstances were desperate enough that I weighed 64 pounds from age seven to age twelve. Not a desirable set of circumstances, however, those same circumstances motivated me at a survival level to learn what obviously my mother had not. What is that?

I reached the conclusion that each of us creates our own physical and financial reality that this world will in fact demonstrate back to us the materialization of our most closely held beliefs. I know from experience that a person who believes in scarcity, lack and limitation, will inevitably experience that reality  as life. Alternatively, people who hold that life is fraught with possibility, opportunity, and abundance, will experience an opulent and exciting reality. Therefore the difference between the two is not who you are, but what you know, and what caused you to believe it. There's a saying that goes, "You'll see it when you believe it," and paradoxical as it sounds, I deem this, rather than its reverse, to be the truth. I also know one other profound principle: humanity must be generous and must give in order to live. Although the giving and sharing might be prompted by different motivations, as long one has a crust to share, one is not broken.

          This would sound strange coming from someone who writes and speaks on the subject of wealth building.  However, understanding this completely has lead me to what I call The Prosperity Principle "You are prospered to the extent that and in the fashion that you prosper others".  Therefore if I put myself in a position to be more productive, provide more jobs, provide more housing, give more, I will be compensated at that level.  So what does this have to do with women in finance?  Just this, as a child in Sunday school I learned about a wise man who built his house on a rock and a foolish man who built his house on the sand.  And when the storms came, the house on the rock stood and the house on the sand was washed away.  In laying our financial foundations I believe in building on rock.  And The Prosperity Principle is the cornerstone.