But what if you could turn the outrageousness of the bankrobbing suggestion into a catalyst for absolutely ethical client-building or job-finding strategies? Here’s one set of tips you could discover with quick brainstorming questions.

Why rob a bank?  Because that’s where the big money is right now.

Why not rob a bank?  Everyone’s property, health, comfort and safety matter to you.  Your conscience and self-respect matter to you.

What does it take to rob a bank:  Audacity.  Careful planning.  Reliable sidekicks.  Not worrying about what others think.

What lessons can you take from bankrobbers to meet your financial needs in a way that’s absolutely ethical?

The first thing, of course, is to turn around the answer of why not rob a bank, and consider, “how can I support others’ property, health, comfort and/or safety so much that people will be grateful to hand me money in exchange for my goods or services?”  That’s going to take some research and careful planning.  You can do that!

Next, turn the rest of the bank-robbing strategies above into ethical ones.

1.  Go where the biggest money is. Example:  even if you need money fast because the unemployment is running out, don’t depend solely on temp agencies, like everyone else does.  Create a great spiel and sell your own temporary services at a higher price than the agency would pay you, but less than clients would pay an agency.  It may take a lot of calls, but it’s worth it.

2. Be audacious, beginning with brainstorming. Most of us censor out our best ideas way before even one good one hits consciousness. “Playing bankrobber” for a few minutes may make you feel daring enough to relax that censor.  Just for fun, get wildly creative as  you practice your spiel or draft a cover letter. Then rein in the outrageousness a bit so you can find that right mix of creative and sensible, daring and dependable.

3.  Plan carefully. Learn the habits of your target employer or market.  Know what keeps them up at night, what saves them money or time.  Research where they hang out and how they like to get information.  Network to discover someone who knows someone who has a personal connection into the market or company you want to penetrate. If your potential customers don’t read flyers or even beautifully designed bulletin board notices, don’t waste your time or money on them.

4.  Get some reliable sidekicks who can help you network, stay on track, brainstorm ideas, commiserate and celebrate. I love the Hub www.the-hub.net, a rapidly growing international network of people who love to help others create sustainable, socially responsible businesses.  If it’s not in your town yet, see what else is, or create your own.  A woman I know just created a great new group by putting an ad on Craigslist. Six committed heads who bring their laptops along to brainstorming and support sessions really are better than one.

5.  Stop worrying so much what others think. After hearing Dizzy Dean’s comment that “it ain’t bragging if it’s true,” I ignore a lot of “Patty, stop making a spectacle of yourself” voices from childhood and focus on “what does the client really want?” Then, I consider, “what can I offer this potential client?”  One of my favorite gigs came from adding a paragraph to my cover letter that began, “If this were my dream job.” It listed not just how I might meet their listed needs, but also some of their anticipated needs that came from my own meditation about what it would be like to work for the client.

6.  Finally, have fun. Again, I am absolutely opposed to anything unethical.  Yet, I love a good, non-violent caper movie, like the classic “Topkapi,” starring starring Melin Mercouri, Peter Ustinov, Robert Morley and others who cleverly seek to steal a priceless emerald-loaded dagger.  If you put even 1/10 as much daring and creativity in your search for ethical, quick money as this gang of thieves put into their jewel heist, how might you discover a new path to money, both quick and long-term?

Got any examples in your life to share?  Got a specific problem you’d like others to brainstorm for you?  The comment box below awaits you.

As always, many blessings,

Pat McHenry Sullivan

If love is one of the most powerful forces for good in the universe, then loving money must also be a powerful force for good.

Consider just the loving aspects of patience and kindness. Loving a child with patience and kindness includes nurturing not just his creative spirit and self worth, but also her respect for the boundaries of others. Loving a friend or spouse means accepting their imperfections and helping to meet their needs with joy, but not allowing abuse from them.

When I truly love money, I can’t do un-loving things to it, like put it on a pedestal or demand that it make me feel better about myself. Nor can I allow it to hold me or my values in bondage.

Having patience with money means no more investments or credit cards where I’m too busy to understand the terms. It means foregoing the heady excitement and sense of entitlement like I had in the 90′s when I watched my 401 (k)’s “worth” grow so fast, than I became enraged when it dropped to less than a 15% return, then lost money.

Loving money also means discerning the impact of my earning and spending, even when it costs more to support fair trade than to buy cheap stuff from companies that exploit the land or people. It means giving up the illusion that I am somehow more spiritual than those who have more money and admitting that underneath this illusion are some pretty unspiritual things like arrogance or fear. It means taking on more of the scary tasks of money-making, particularly marketing and selling, with patience and kindness.

And it means being patience and kind with all the parts of me that are not patient or kind around money, work and everything else– like the parts of me that are in a hurry to get this post done and the parts of me that resist doing it and the parts that are so into perfection that I can never get anything done.

Imagine loving money with patience and kindness as a personal and corporate strategy.

That’s actually happening way more than is reported, even when the words “patience” or “kindness” aren’t used. Many examples can be found in the spirit and work movement, the trends towards socially responsible businesses and investing, and the slow money movement.

Money itself is experiencing an extreme makeover through the conscious capitalism movement. Patricia Aburdene, author of Megatrends 2010: The Rise of Conscious Capitalism reported in the most recent edition of Enlighten Next Magazine  that half the Fortune 500 companies actually already practice at least a little conscious capitalism. She reports how these companies have turned away from “the worship of profits while ignoring the long-term costs of earning them” to business that “embraces all its stakeholders – investors, customers, communities, employees, and the environment.”

Profit is alive and well in conscious capitalism, and the bottom line of conscious capitalists benefit greatly from increased customer and employee loyalties. One of the things that’s needed for the benefits of conscious capitalism to become more popular is for it to be reported more and for a new standard helps us assess the material value of such values as compassion and long-term thinking.

That’s a subject we touched on here several months ago, in a call to let go our obsession with the latest burps of the Dow and instead focus on a more long-term Tao (meaning way or path to wisdom, among other things) that takes care of the immediate needs and the future, while leaving plenty of good things for generations to come.

What’s your vision for how your relationship with money could be transformed with patience and kindness?

What thoughts stir about the true love of money when you read and meditate on 1 Corinthians 13?

What other sacred texts from any faith, poetry or quotes inspire true love of money for you?

What practices help you truly love any aspect of your relationship to money?

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Many blessings, Pat McHenry Sullivan

This quote by George Eliot could inspire the perfect affirmative prayer for your life.  Some suggestions:

Now is the perfect time to reclaim an old dream.

Now is the perfect time to create true abundance.

Now is the perfect time to find new love.

Eliot’s quote so intrigued inspirational journalist B.J. Gallagher that she wrote It’s Never Too Late To Be What You Might Have Been (Viva Editions 2009) about people who have made dreams like this come true, no matter their age or initial financial situation.

In a recent interview by Adrienne Crew of LA Observed, Gallagher offers three skills that can help all of us live a life that matters:

1. Flexibility – to thrive in today’s wild world of information you must learn to dance on quicksand.
2. Resiliency – the ability to bounce back, recover from setbacks and disappointments, and navigate some really rocky, turbulent, psychic terrain.
3. Willingness and ability to learn – new skills, new habits, new kinds of coworkers, new technology, and much more.

Willingness to learn was key to my movement from a lonely single woman in Washington DC (a city internationally famous for its shortage of straight, single men) to meeting my soulmate John Sullivan when I was almost 40. Flexibility and resilience have been key to surviving many hard times in our almost 26-year marriage, particularly financial challenges.

Here, from BJ’s book, are my 3 tips for finding and keeping love after 40.  All apply to work and money as well as love:

1. Be true to yourself–that’s where you meet people from.
2. Have at least two or three people in your life who know the real you. They will help you see the goodness in yourself and call you on your bullsh*t.
3. Laugh a lot. If possible, choose in-laws [co-workers, clients, bosses, etc.] who laugh a lot.

What are your own keys to a rich life — even if others think it’s too late?  Please add your thoughts by clicking on the tiny word “comment” just below this post.

Blessings of integrity, purpose, great joy and lots of laughter.

Pat McHenry Sullivan

I was blessed with parents who modeled spirit and work. Here’s what they taught me: Have a passion that suits your soul, and follow it. Exercise your integrity muscles regularly. Bring the formal faith you practice on Sunday morning to the work of Monday through Saturday. Find joy in the tasks of ordinary life, like pouring concrete for the back porch.

Stories and role models are key to passing on the wisdom of spirit and work. My parents showed me how their paid work as teachers was as much a source of prayer as a prayer itself and how the little pay they got for their work could be stretched creatively into a rich life. Dad twice demonstrated that no amount of money was worth cheating for. During the Great Depression, he said no to a high-paying but fraudulent job, when he desperately needed a job. Later, when I was a baby, he blew a whistle against an embezzling college president, which cost him that job and years of emotional pain. As I watched him deal with the impact of retaliation (in a time with almost no whistleblower protection or emotional support), I saw how he learned and grew from the experience.

To utilize my parents’ gifts, I’ve had to learn a lot, especially that spirit isn’t just for the big things like “what’s my calling?” or “how can I take on this huge ethical challenge with my boss?” Spirit is for every aspect of work, including the mundane and lowly jobs that ego hates. Bring spirit respectfully to work (including the work of looking for work) and wonderful things always happen. Burnout disappears as you get more creative with your challenges. You may even find that you end your workday with more energy than you had at the beginning, even if you have a job you don’t love! 

Now, helping others bring spirit to work is my work. I’ve been blessed to interview hundreds of people about how work can be filled with integrity, purpose and joy. An archive of columns in the archives of the San Francisco Chronicle is based on many of these interviews. World religions scholar Huston Smith granted an interview on the wisdom of all faiths for work. Workforce Management magazine assigned an article on how to bring all that wisdom into the workplace in a way that respects co-workers, employers, customers and everyone else who is affected by your work.

So why now is money being added to the equation of spirit + work? Actually, it’s impossible to separate them. Whenever you apply the wisdom of the spirit and work field (aka workplace spirituality, faith and work) to the work of earning money, you’re impacting money. Whenever you choose work that satisfies over work that pays better (or vice versa), you’re impacting money. Many of the tasks involved in business planning, especially marketing, sales and financial management, directly involve money.

Tough economic times call for direct focus on spirit and money. This blog began with an inspiration: what if for 30 days we all prayed about money, thought about it, shared reflections and wisdom with others? For several weeks I put out the fruits of my prayers, and some others came along with comments.

Then life intervened with all its challenges of trying to collect for work from clients whose cash flow turned from rosy to rotten between November and January, of finding new paying projects as one huge (and hugely satisfying) one is winding down, of attempting to work with unfamiliar technology that never is as simple as it’s touted to be. And as always, there are my perpetual companions: Doubt, Fear, Who Does She Think She Is? and Why Bother?

In the end, I bother because — even if I never get the technology and the search optimization technique down and no one finds this blog than the few I lead directly to it — I believe very strongly that spirit and work are meant to work together. Bring money to the mix, and we’ve got a powerful team to deal with what ails us and calls us to something better.

The more challenging the economy, the more we need the wisdom of spirit to anchor money in integrity, purpose and the capacity for joy. The more unknowns we face, the more we need spirit to show us how to discern when being clueless is exactly the right strategy and how to grieve as we walk through the darkness until we see the dim light of our own hearts and souls. The more we are tempted to fall back onto beliefs that it’s every person for herself, the more we need the wisdom of compassion and right livelihood

Please check out some of the earlier posts and join me in an adventure of reshaping our individual and group economies. Your comments and ideas are most welcome. And until I figure out how to tell you to get every new post sent to your mailbox if you wish, just keep coming back!

As always, a blessing. May you discover in the midst of your challenges just the wisdom you need to meet those challenges. May laughter ease your way and bring you marvelous new companions on your spirit, work and money journey.

Pat McHenry Sullivan

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You may never have taken formal, witnessed poverty vows as my husband John did at the age of 19 while he was in a Roman Catholic religious order, but it’s highly likely that you’ve taken some vows of poverty, intentional or otherwise.

Religious poverty vows are prayed over, even blessed. They aren’t a commitment to being homeless, starving or dressing in rags. They are a vow to simplicity, and an everyday willingness not to be attached to money or the things it could buy. The intent is to free members of any concerns about earning, saving or investing money (unless they are taking on financial roles on behalf of the community) so they are free to focus fully on spiritual life.

What a contrast religious vows are to the get-rich quick, greedy or otherwise definitely non-spiritual vows that drive so many novels, movies, and financial strategy! Often such vows lead to spiritual, emotional and/or financial impoverishment, as definitely was the case with many players in the subprime mortgage meltdown and other disasters.

My favorite example is Scarlett O’Hara, the self-centered heroine of Gone with the Wind, who during the Civil War became responsible for the survival of her family, home and even three former slaves, plus her rival and rival’s baby. After learning that the Yankees (or as they say where I grew up, damnyankees) have either destroyed or stolen anything edible except some dried-up turnips, Scarlet raises her fist in the air and pronounces, “As God is my witness, I will never go hungry again . . . not me or any of my kin.”

Now that could be a noble vow, but Scarlett adds the commitment to do whatever she deems necessary, including lie, cheat, steal or kill. Though she does become wealthy, she can’t really enjoy it due to the unintentional spiritual and emotional poverty vows which were a by-product of both conscious and unconscious faults like fear, greed, and spite.

Here’s how Scarlett’s unintentional poverty vows might be expressed: I insist on having what I think I want, no matter who is hurt in the process, including my own heart. I will base my business and spending decisions not just on sound business or financial information, but also on such desires as making others pea-green with envy; keeping myself from realizing how much I really love Rhett, not Ashley; and running from the fears that have caused nightmares since I was a child and a lot of grief ever since.

It’s not easy undoing poverty vows. Undoing poverty vows after years in a committed religious order may require years of learning how to make a living, and perhaps becoming totally re-trained. After all, there aren’t a whole lot of job descriptions calling for people who are adept at contemplation and fluent in Latin or Gregorian chant!

Undoing unintentional poverty vows can be even harder. Therapy and coaching can help uncover them; so can reflection on what’s not working around money in your life and considering, “What might I have been thinking when I developed this unfruitful way of dealing with money?”

Here are some unconscious poverty vows to consider:

• I vow not to learn about money and how to handle it well.
• I base my financial decisions on shame, fear, or ___________.
• I choose to base my financial and business planning on hopes and dreams that I have not carefully considered.
• I choose to trust blindly without giving my financial or business dealings the careful consideration I owe myself and others. (The legal term is “due diligence.”)

What about you? Do any of the above vows sound familiar?

And what’s your true abundance vow when you turn around your poverty vows, either conscious or unintentional, then look into your soul for guidance?

My favorite true abundance vow begins with gratitude for all the gifts I’ve gained from being married to a man who brought his financial challenges and gifts to our marriage. The challenges are nobody’s business but our own, but the gifts include these: Not once have I ever known John to act greedy or mean about money. Instead, his habit of simplicity helps pull me off my high horse and enjoy the moment more. He looks so carefully at any gift that in the process, I see more in the gift. His appreciation is so contagious that I seem to gain more in the giving than he gets in receiving it.

In creating a true abundance vow, I also had to deal with what I’ve learned from my own collection of often-contradictory unintentional poverty vows, like my childhood dreams of wowing everyone who had ever put me down with the huge emerald and flashy sports car I would someday have, mixed with a longtime habit of dreaming big, doing little. And then there are the usual suspects like shame or “I don’t really deserve it.”

Here’s my current true abundance vow. May it inspire you to create your own:

I vow to treat money as an exchange of energy that I use wisely, to the betterment of myself and others. I vow to live simply and richly, basing my financial decisions on a combination of in-the-world research, prayer, and a lot of careful discernment. In this journey of earning and using money more wisely, I give thanks for all the challenges and the beings on this earth who have helped me learn from them.

As always, I hope you enjoy this challenge.

Come back real soon with your thoughts and inspiration,
Pat McHenry Sullivan