What I Learned About Life From a Pot of Soup

A note from peter@thewealthyattitude.com for Thursday December 4 2008

Welcome to this very fine early winter Thursday.

Well folks, four weeks from today we'll all be acknowledging that the New Year is firmly here. The question is going to be whether you'll be "celebrating" the start of another year, or looking for a place to go hide.

It is our conviction here at this desk that the New Year will be absolutely full of opportunities for those folks who bravely look upon the conditions as a chance to do, and be, better. Are you going to be one of them? We expect you will be! Buckle up, it's going to be a fun ride.

Our friend and contributor of this week's offerings is certainly someone who knows clearly that the ability to rise above prevailing exists in each and every one of us. Now that's worht celebrating early. Break out the bubbly.

Jan provides yet another great offering for this fine day.

What I Learned About Life From a Pot of Soup

by Jan Janzen

Every one of us has inherited specific traits or genetic coding from our ancestors. Genetic coding, inherited through our DNA from our parents, has a tremendous effect on your life, from your weight issues to your bank account. For example, the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and many of the other European countries have a very strong work ethic drilled into them at a DNA and cellular level. They need to work hard, and there’s an expectation of poverty and challenges.

They don’t really seem to believe, in their very core, that they will ever succeed financially. Life is hard, something bad will happen, war will break out, depression, economic hardship, famine, epidemics, and sickness are normal and death is always imminent. Life is a difficult struggle.

How exactly does your genetic coding affect what you get in life? Your subconscious mind will pull the most dominant file around every single thought you have. If famine, starvation or cruel slavery are an integral part of your genetic coding, then an overriding belief that something bad will happen will lead to you playing it safe, staying small, or never really exerting yourself.

We all have different ways of responding to our genetic coding. I personally made soup. My two freezers were full of soup. Every free moment I had on the weekend, I made soup. I would open my freezer, see all the soup stored in it, and feel safe and secure. One day I realized that I didn’t care what my savings account looked like, how much money I had to my name, or how many investments I had. I felt safe because I had soup in the freezer. Absolutely crazy but true!

My genetic coding is Russian. What does a good Russian woman always have on the stove? Good soup. The ruble may plummet, war may come, the government may be overthrown, but a bowl of soup – now that fixes everything! I released those beliefs and lost the fervent, panicky, obsessive need to make soup. It took me seven months of eating soup daily to go through all of my soup. What was fascinating was that as my soup stock dwindled, my bank account soared.

Genetic coding definitely plays a role in our views on money. Look at your own genetic coding and see what views around money your parents and grandparents (and so on) were raised in. It can definitely explain many reasons that you have issues around money. Perhaps you are embarrassed by any amount of it or you see it as a burden. Too much work, too much responsibility, too much to think about can be part of your genetic coding, or the belief that money is only for the aristocratic, the elite, the powerful or for an upper-class.

Most of us came from a hard-working lower to middle class background at a genetic coding level. Now we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, buying properties in exotic places and traveling the world and doing our business from a laptop. There is a very strong program that says, “And who the hell do you think you are – a rich person or something?” Can you hear the voice in the back of your head cutting you down, holding you back and keeping you small in your finances or some other area of your life?

If you are a woman, you carry the additional genetic coding that tells you your place is to support the man in your life, be the backbone of the family; be silent, submissive, subservient and hard-working. You do all the labor and the man will make money. Your primary role is to support the man and make sure that he looks good and is successful, which will in turn bring pride to you and to your family name. If this sounds like something out of an old history book, it’s not. This kind of genetic coding has shown up in my own life and in my client’s lives. It’s frighteningly real.

Women, you really need to let go of the belief that a man will look after you, that you don’t want to dirty your hands with money, it’s not up to you to look after yourself financially, it’s a man’s job, you can’t earn more money than your husband, father, or male partner, and that it is wrong, unspiritual, or not nice to earn money and lots of it. Those are real beliefs that you are holding onto at a subconscious level, and until you let them go, your financial success will always be limited and riddled with guilt.

Genetic coding also plays a role in weight issues because having some extra weight in many cultures is seen as a good thing necessary for survival. A woman who is too skinny would not be a good choice of mate as she wouldn’t be able to bear children easily or work hard on the farm and might even be an embarrassment to her husband because she would give the appearance of there not being enough food to fatten her up. With disease rampant, famines prevalent and life physically demanding, having extra weight was an important characteristic. There was also the cold. Fat insulates and helps keep you warm in the cold, harsh winters.

The problem with all of that genetic coding is that famine to date is not an issue where obesity is a problem, diseases like the bubonic plague no longer run rampant, and we sit on our butts most of the day at computers. We are a far cry today from working in the field from morning to night, hoeing, plowing and harvesting. And the last time I checked, there was central heating in most of the world where people are the fattest. So the genetic coding needs to be deleted because times have changed and the program that’s running is way out-of-date.

Genetic coding is a fascinating part of why we have what we do in our life. All the best intentions and goals for 2009 can be undone with just one strong genetic coding belief. Identify those beliefs and start to change them to beliefs that will empower you and set you up for an amazing new year!