We own a large paper shredder. For several weeks, it has not worked well. If I put in one piece of paper, the machine stopped before the paper was shredded, and the indicator light came on that the basket was full.

And so my husband and I tried to solve the problem. We cleaned every scrap of paper out of the shredder teeth. Oiled it. Consulted the manual, which was typical of so many technical manuals. It was no help at all.

Jim finally called the manufacturer to ask what to do. The woman in support told him that the machine has two glass sensors. All we needed to do was to use some alcohol and clean the sensors.

Sounds simple. The only problem was that we couldn’t find the sensors and the manual had no diagram.

Jim did most of the looking for the sensors by lying on his back, with his head inside the empty basket compartment, shining a flashlight upwards.

At this point, I need to tell you that my husband is a kind and gentle person, although he does seem to have his share of masculine reluctance to ask for directions. After much looking without success, he declared that the woman on the phone didn’t know what she was talking about.

Since I wasn’t the one lying on the floor, shining a flashlight upward to hunt for the elusive sensors, I suggested that it might help if he put the unit on its back on the floor, so that he could look from a different perspective, on the theory that the woman in technical support really did know something about the shredder that we didn’t know.

Jim didn’t immediately act on that suggestion. Instead he dismantled the top of the shredder, and analyzed the wiring. He determined that there were two wires going to opposite sides of the shredder, which seemed to indicate that there really was a sensor on each side of the machine.

And so, he laid himself down on his back again, with his head inside the basket compartment, and his flashlight over his head, and continued to shine his flashlight in a futile quest to find the sensors. After a while, I repeated my suggestion that it might be helpful to get a change in perspective, by laying the shredder on the floor on its back.

And so, Jim got up off the floor and together we put the offending shredder on its back. Now, Jim could shine his light down on the unit.

It only took a moment or two before he found the sensors. They are tiny circles of clear glass that blend into the black background. We cleaned them with alcohol, set the shredder on its feet again, plugged it in, and the machine now works perfectly.

There are several life lessons in this little story. It is first of all a story about perspective. If you are stuck, struggling, unable to solve a problem, a change in perspective can make all the difference.

The only real difference between the problem of a shredder with dirty sensors and the solution to the problem was a change in perspective.

And within this little story, there are other life lessons about not asking for help for a long time. Not believing the manufacturer’s representative who had every reason to know what was wrong with the machine.

Part of the fault has to lie with the manufacturer. How hard would it be to put a little diagram within the manual, noting the location of the sensors? How hard would it be to include a sentence or two explaining that sometimes the sensors need to be cleaned with alcohol? How hard would it be to put some sort of identifying marks within the shredder to mark the location of tiny glass sensors that blended into the black frame so well that they were incredibly difficult to see?

But the core issue is: If you need to find a solution to a problem you have not been able to solve, find a way to change your perspective.

By Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.

PS. I don’t usually tell stories on my husband, and so I read this story to Jim before posting it online. Jim is as good-natured as he is occasionally stubborn, and so he laughed and suggested that there is an additional life lesson in this story: “Listen to your wife.” Who am I to challenge such wisdom?

In my garage, I have some old filing cabinets. One entire cabinet is filled with manuscripts and partial manuscripts of books I started but never finished. It’s not yet a graveyard. It’s more a holding yard for ideas that I started but did not finish. That filing cabinet is a dubious testament to half-baked, unfinished tasks.

Again and again, I fell into the same trap. I started work on a book idea. Then I would have another book idea, or an idea to change the book I was working on. And so I would drop what I was doing and start another writing project. The result is that I didn’t stay with any single idea long enough to produce a publishable book.

In recent years, I have done much better and have kept myself focused long enough to complete several book manuscripts.

But I never completely forget those manuscripts out there. I trust myself as a writer enough to think that I have the makings of 8-10 solid books in that cabinet, at various stages of completion.

The fact is, an unfinished manuscript is not a book, and it doesn’t do anyone any good. It especially doesn’t do me any good.

And this is the real point I want to focus on here. What does it do to anyone to start projects and not finish them?

We can agree that there are many valid reasons why you might abandon a project after working on it for a while. Maybe the good idea was not such a good idea at all. Maybe it really is not workable. Maybe you realize that you don’t care about it so much after all.

But after you get past all of the valid reasons why you might abandon a project, you come to the relevant question. What if you abandoned a really good idea to chase after another idea, just because it was a new idea? What if chasing after the latest hot idea is the single most important obstacle to your success?

“There is nothing so fatal to character as half-finished tasks,”
David Lloyd George

As a guideline to success, nothing is more powerful than the simple decision to finish what you start. Completion enhances self-confidence and a sense of accomplishment.

Every creative process begins with an idea. But the competition of the process requires persistence, and perseverance, and a willingness to stay with the good idea to see it through to completion. These are character issues.

In contrast, think about the connection between character and half-finished tasks. How do you feel about yourself when you leave projects unfinished, to go on to the next new idea?

Doesn’t every unfinished task add up in some sort of internal ledger as a legacy of failure? Of not having what it takes to see a project through?  I certainly feel that way about my unfinished manuscripts. It’s not just about the manuscripts. It’s about me. I didn’t finish because I didn’t do what was required to finish.

The root meaning of the word “confidence” is “with trust.” When you are confident, you trust yourself.

What are the consequences of starting good ideas, but then never finishing, because you veer off course to start something else? What happens to your own confidence–your self-trust–when you repeatedly don’t finish what you start? It means you cannot even trust yourself to do what you say you will do.

Self-confidence means that you have faith in yourself to be able to do what you set out to do. How many times can you start something and then abandon it, without losing faith in your own ability to do what you tell yourself you will do?

In my latest book (which is completed but not yet online), I used the model of the hero’s journey to write about beliefs about money. The more I study the model of the hero’s journey, the more I realize how much the heroic journey is a powerful model for success.

The essential characteristic of a hero is that the hero perseveres to complete the task, when most people would quit. Heroes continue, no matter how hard it gets, in their quest to accomplish their goal.

And so, what is your equivalent of a filing cabinet with 8-10 unfinished books?  What have you started and not finished that takes a toll on your own self-confidence?  What task do you need to complete?  And what is the cost to your own character if you leave it undone?

By Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.

One of the fundamental functions of government is to control the money supply.

The more you understand how governments control the amount of money in the economic system, in a global economy, the better you can take control of your own personal economic system. 

Every nation has its own central bank. One of the functions of a central bank is to respond to current economic situations to either cool down or heat up the economy.

In the United States, the central bank is the Federal Reserve.

I’ll refer specifically to the Fed here,  but the function is the same in other central banks.

You might hear that the Fed is “pumping money” into the economy to calm fears of an economic panic. 

At other times, you will hear that the Fed will “drain money” from the system, to cool it down.  These are two more examples of “plumbing language” applied to money.

Although the news media use such language, they don’t explain how the Fed increases or decreases the amount of money.

First, let’s be clear what it does NOT mean.

The Fed does not pump more money into the system by printing more currency. 
Money is not equivalent to currency.

These days, most money is electronic data moving from account to account.

One of the ways that the Fed controls the amount of money in the economy is  by changing the reserve requirements of banks.

The Federal Reserve requires banks to keep on reserve 3-10% of the deposits,  and allows the banks to loan the rest.

If the Fed changes the required reserve, it controls the amount of money banks can loan. 

For example, with a 3% reserve,  if you deposit $1000 into your account, the bank has to keep only $30 on reserve.  It can loan the remaining $970.

With a 10% reserve, the bank must keep $100 on reserve, and can loan the remaining $900. So the higher the reserve requirement,  the less money the bank can loan.
The lower the reserve requirement,  the more money the bank can loan.

So even though the media talk about the Fed pumping more money into the economy,
in fact, the banks are doing the money-pumping,  because the Fed has changed the amount of money banks can loan out. 

So, one way that the Federal Reserve  can “pump money into” or “drain money out of” the system is by changing the reserve requirement.

I wrote this article as part of my FREE 52 Heart Of Money Insights series. This e-course consists of 52 insights about the essence of money. You will receive one insight by email each week about some specific aspect of money. Each insight is designed to transform your relationship to money from “money limits” to “no money limits.”

************

Find out how a real person went from desperation  to a life of freedom because of a simple, three-word formula.

The formula is so simple that you can start using it today to create your life of freedom. 

http://nomoneylimits.com/thefreedomequation
 
For Your Abundant Success,
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Author of No Money Limits For Real Estate Investors
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www.NoMoneyLimits.com

The United States Federal Reserve (The Fed) is in the news because it has just lowered the interest rate by half a percent. 

This change has made stock market investors happy and given hope to people with expensive adjustable rate mortgages. 

The real question is how much this rate change will affect the current economic situation. 

What is most important to understand is that the interest rate change does not apply directly to your credit cards, auto loan, or mortgage. 

The Federal Reserve has several ways to control the amount of money in the economic system. The one that gets the most media attention involves interest rate changes. 

You will see all kinds of speculation about what the Federal Reserve will do before such meetings, which affects the stock market. You will also hear media reports about how changes in the interest rates will affect interest rates for consumer items, such as mortgages and credit cards.

Despite this kind of media attention, the interest rate changes do not directly affect consumers.

When the Fed announces a change in interest rate,it does not affect your credit card interest rate directly. It refers to the interest rate the Fed charges commercial banks to borrow money from the Federal banks. 

Anything related to the Federal Reserve is complicated. On the topic of interest rate changes, there are two basic complications. The first concerns the type of bank and the second concerns the discount rate.

First, there are several types of banks,including:

• Federal Banks, which are part of the Federal Reserve System.
• Commercial banks were originally set up to serve businesses.
• “Thrifts” are banks, such as savings banks  and credit unions, set up to
  meet the needs of people not served by the commercial banks.

Now, most commercial banks offer service to everyone, but the distinction
is important to keep in mind.

(There are other types of banks, but these are the ones that affect most of us most directly.)

Second: The second complication concerns the discount rate. Even the language is a bit confusing because the “interest rate” is also referred to as the “discount rate,” because the interest rate is discounted in relationship to short-term market interest rates.

The Federal Reserve Banks offer three discount programs to commercial banks: primary credit, secondary credit, and seasonal credit, each with its own interest rate.

The type of interest rate change that gets all of the media attention is when the Fed changes the discount rate for primary credit. This concerns loans from the Federal banks to commercial banks with good credit. These are very short term loans, usually overnight.

Whenever the Fed changes the discount rate, it does so to either make it more or less profitable for the commercial banks to borrow money from the Fed to make loans.

The two critical points to remember are:
  1. The Federal Reserve system exists to control  the amount of money in the system
  2. The banks exist to make money by loaning money  to their borrowers.

If the Fed makes money more expensive for the banks to borrow, the commercial banks cannot make as much profit on loans it makes to its customers.

When the Fed makes money cheaper for the banks to borrow, the commercial banks are more willing to loan money to its customers.

This is why the change in interest rate matters to all of us. It increases or decreases the amount of money available for banks to loan, which increases or decreases the amount of money in economic system.  These changes affect the speed by  which money is increased or decreased. 

Ultimately, a change in the Fed interest rate might affect the interest rates on your credit cards and adjustable mortgage, but it is not a direct result. If your interest rate goes down on your credit card, it because the banks decided to lower the rate, not because the Federal Reserve changed its interest rate.

I wrote this article as part of  my FREE 52 Heart Of Money Insights series.  This e-course consists of 52 insights about the essence of money. You will receive one insight by email each week about some specific aspect of money. Each insight is designed to transform your relationship to money from “money limits” to “no money limits.”

************

Find out how a real person went from desperation to a life of freedom because of a simple,  three-word formula.

The formula is so simple that you can start using it today to create your life of freedom. 

http://nomoneylimits.com/thefreedomequation
 

This was the purpose of weekly articles in the “Abundantly Alive Now! Newsletter” which I wrote for two and half years. The blog is simply a change of format from the newsletter. 

Why change format? 

First of all, it is easier to post to a blog than to add articles to a website.

And second, a blog is interactive. As a reader, you are welcome to add comments to articles, which you could not do with an article on a website. 

For your “Abundantly Alive Now! Life,

Kalinda

Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.

PS.

All of the “Abundantly Alive Now! Newsletter” articles are available in the archive

http://abundantlyalivenow.com/AANN-archive.htm