Leanne Jacobs - Beautiful Money: The 4-Week Total Wealth Makeover

W HEN MY CLIENT Aubrey started the Beautiful Money program, she admitted she was stuck. I always pay my bills, she said when we first met, but barely. As an entrepreneur, Aubrey turned a profit but wasnt getting ahead financially. If anything, she was on the verge of falling behind. She worried about her account balances, her business, and her future almost every day.

Like many of us, Aubrey had bought into the idea that working as hard as possible is the only way to achieve success. If your business needs to make more money, then you need to put in more hours. You need to do more. So thats what Aubrey did. She spent more and more time at the office. She ignored how tired she felt. She became obsessed with her schedule, trying to maximize every minute of every day. She spent less time with her family, friends, even her fianc. But no matter how many hours she put in or how hard she worked, nothing seemed to help grow her business or make a difference in her bank accounts. Aubrey still got the same mediocre results. She knew that something had to give, but she wasnt sure what that something could be.

At some point in our lives, weve all felt like Aubrey. We know what its like to check our bank balances with dread or to lie in bed worrying about debt when we know we should be asleep. We know the true cost of giving up time with our loved ones, our weekends, our vacation days, and perhaps even our sanity in exchange for a paycheck. We all know what its like to hear people brag about being too busy, working long hours, or having to respond to e-mails in the evening. The message is clear: if were not consumed by work, then were probably not important enough at our job. If were not drowning in e-mails, were not going to get the promotion. And if we dont get the promotion, then we arent doing all we can for ourselves or for our families.

Its easy to see how our culture prioritizes success. We are trained from an early age to strive to have it allthe spouse, the house, the car, the clothes, the career, and the kids. But even when we do accomplish our goalsat work, at home, throughout our lives in generalwe dont find satisfaction in our achievements. We spend most of our time busy being busy, but what were actually doing is being busy just to be broke. Many people live a life of complete madness for a paycheck-to-paycheck existence. According to recent surveys cited by CBS MoneyWatch , approximately thirty-eight million families depend on their biweekly paycheck to survive. Even scarier is the fact that one in four of those families makes more than $100,000 annually.

The truth is that no matter how many zeros our paycheck contains, most of us are not only financially broke but spiritually and emotionally broke as well. When our goals just keep getting bigger and farther away, without any end in sight, we end up constantly chasing successuntil the day we find ourselves sitting in corner offices and big houses, feeling unhappy, broke, burned out, and unfulfilled.

I know. Ive been there.

During my twenties, I did what I was supposed to. I chased the dream. I was married, working at a flashy Fortune 500 company, and earning a substantial salary. From the outside, my life seemed completely on track. I was married to a wonderful, successful, and kind man. He was my best friend. We lived in a nice house in a good neighborhood. I had a prominent position at a popular, well-known pharmaceutical brand and was studying for my MBA so I could further my own career. In my spare time, I was a competitive athlete who spent hours each day in the gym, training to run marathons.

To everyone in my life, I appeared accomplished and successful. I was well on my way to having it all. But inside, I was suffocating in an invisible prison. I had a good relationship with my husband, but we were outgrowing it. I felt like I was wearing golden handcuffs. I spent all my salary on stuff, because I felt like my life was completely void of passion and fulfillment. I was always busy, and I never seemed to have enough time to do anything I actually liked to do. Constantly pressured to put in longer and longer hours at the office, I didnt have the mental space to take care of myself, to make healthy meals, or even to spend time with my husband, much less nurture our marriage.

After years of living this way, one morning I woke up feeling completely empty, disconnected, and burned out. I couldnt even name one thing I was passionate about. I wasnt just exhausted on a physical level but on a spiritual one too. I felt deflated. I was bringing home a six-figure income but still living paycheck to paycheck. I was spending all my time at work, school, and the gym, so I didnt have a hobby or much of a social life. Every day I was rushing somewhereto a meeting, to class, to the gym, to make a deadline. I felt like I was sprinting through my life. The tension in my body was constant; my fight-or-flight mechanism (I now understand) was always turned on because of the stress I made myself deal with on a daily basis. I barely slept. I lived off Diet Coke and protein bars. I would go to work at eight, stay until six, attend class four nights a week, go to a twenty-four-hour gym to get in an hour or two of cardio or marathon training, and then commute home sometime after midnight, only to drop into bed and do it all over again.