I write this post today as much for myself as for you–although, I suppose, that’s the truth on most days. As the the wisdom of the sages goes, we teach what me most need to learn.

The lesson today: Don’t let money stand in the way of living fully. I say that humbly and with trepidation. What I want to do requires money. And my funds are low. And I am not wanting to tell anyone–not even myself–to spend money lightly or to get into debt (or deeper into debt).

However, two things I know. If I died tomorrow, I could not take my money with me and I would regret not having spent it on something meaningful to me.

I’ve been working on a manuscript based upon a course I offer, called The Living Fully Challenge. This year-long course is being made into a book. One of the first chapters is on finance. My editor, a friend of mine, and I thought of moving this farther back in the book, figuring that money issues are hard for people to deal with–especially right off the bat. In the end, we decided to leave that chapter first. Why? Most people use money as an excuse not to do the things they want to do.

Last night I was at a meeting of sacred activists. I was asked to answer the question, “What would you most regret not doing if you died tomorrow?” Not writing and publishing my many book ideas, I thought. And what is stopping me right now (and has stopped me before)? Money.

On my way home from the meeting I decided: I will write and publish the books. One way or another. I will. I will not let money stand in the way of me reaching my fullest potential and living my life fully.

There are so many ways to live our lives fully–even without spending a lot of money. Without going into great debt, which I don’t recommend, find a way to do what you want or were meant to do despite the thought that you can’t because you can’t afford to. Find a way to earn, borrow or raise the money. Scale down your budget. Get creative and think outside the box.

If your dream is to go to Hawaii for a week and you can’t afford to do so, get some travel brochures, create a treasure map or vision board, start planning and saving, and, in the meantime, go to the nearest beach for two days instead and visualize and pretend you are in Hawaii. (You can even make some drinks and place little umbrellas in them.) In my case, while I still need money for an editor (although the Living Fully Challenge is being edited by my friend in trade for me editing her book), I can, if need be, publish it as an e-book instead of a printed book, which saves on design and printing costs. If you’ve dreamed of climbing Mt. Everest, but you can’t afford the time or money for the trip, join a hiking or rock climbing club instead–and, again, start planning and saving. Or go hike some other mountain; there are plenty of worthy peaks. You get the idea.

The point is not to let money stand in the way of living our lives to the fullest extent. I realize that there are many things we can’t do that we want to do because they require money. But a change in mindset and some determination added to our passionate desire can go along way towards making our dreams come true and creating a fully lived life.

If you are interested in The Living Fully Challenge, the course is available here. The book will be out in one form or another later this year and will give the course a bit different form. Plus, it will include additional information, stories, etc.

Many people feel passionate about creating change in the world. They can do so in a variety of ways. However, many of them write books.

I know something about this since I am a writer and a professional editor and author advisor. I have dreams and aspirations of writing books that change people’s live. I help other people write books that they hope will change people’s lives as well or that will solve social issues or planetary problems.

My clients and I, as well as all such writers, are change agents using words as our tool to inspire others–our readers–to take action. In that way, our words have an enormous creative energy.

Do you have a desire to be a change agent? Do you have a desire to write a book that creates change on some level? If so, I’d like to share with you an interview I recently did with Michael Larsen and Elizabeth Pomada, co-directors of the San Francisco Writing for Change Conference (Nov. 13-14, 2010). Michael and Elizabeth, both authors and literary agents, talked with me at length about what it takes to write and publish books about change. Our conversation was packed with helpful information. I hope it will inspire you to keep writing your book–or to start your book–and to get it published. I hope it will push you to become be the change agent you were meant to be.

Maybe you’ll come join Michael, Elizabeth and me at the Change Conference. If you do, please look for me. I’ll be one of the volunteers.

To listen to the interview, please click here.

Here’s some info on the conference:
The Third San Francisco Writing for Change Conference: Writing to Make a Difference / November 13-14, Hilton Financial/Chinatown / www.sfwritingforchange.org / Keynoters: Million-copy selling authors Millman (Way of the Peaceful Warrior) and John Robbins (Diet for a New America)

Michael Larsen is a literary agent and consultant to nonfiction writers. Elizabeth Pomada represents narrative non-fiction (memoir), adult commercial and literary fiction, women’s fiction, romance, thrillers, and mysteries. They are co-directors of the San Francisco Writers Conference and the San Francisco Writing for Change Conference.

Michael is the author of the third editions of How to Write a Book Proposal and How to Get a Literary Agent, and coauthor of the second edition of Guerrilla Marketing for Writers: 100 Weapons for Selling Your Work. Elizabeth is the author of the ninth, 30th-anniversary edition of Fun Places to Go with Children in Northern California. Mike and Elizabeth coauthored the six books in the Painted Ladies series. Publishers Weekly chose the second book in the series, Daughters of Painted Ladies, as one of the best books of the year.

If you need help writing or editing your book or book proposal, feel free to contact me.

If you need literary representation for your book about change, contact Michael or Elizabeth at www.larsenpomada.com.

For any writers out there, I want to share some really fabulous news. (I know, I usually try to write something thought provoking or that teaches a principle of some sort, but today I just had to share!) I have managed to go from having no literary agent representing me to having two – well…actually three – representing me all at one time! Yahoo! Thank God! Baruch HaShem! And they’ll all be at the Book Expo America in New York at the beginning of June peddling my three current book projects. Can you believe it? I can hardly believe it myself! I am so very, very grateful to them for believing in me, my work and my projects. And they all tell me that they hope to bring me good news come the first week of June, and, God willing, they will.

So, I have found an agent to take on my Jewish celebrity cookbook project, which should have been in stores for the 2006 holiday season…but wasn’t. If you recall, that book had a publisher, but the book was returned to me so I could find a larger publishing house to take it on. Yesterday, I found the perfect agent to take on that job for me, and she feels confident that she will have success in doing so. Yeah! I’m grateful to the 90 celebrities who signed on to that project and offered me their time, support, stories, and recipes. If the book is successful, we will all help MAZON: A Jewish Response to World Hunger help others around the world.

And, as you already know, my other agent is shopping my candle lighting as a spiritual practice book. She has another agent in her firm also selling my book on boys in the dance world, which was inspired by my son’s dancing endeavors.

(Okay…don’t ask how I will write two books at once, handle anything thrown at my by the publisher of the cookbook – which is complete — and keep up with my client’s editing. I should be so lucky to have that problem.)

Shabbat is nearing quickly…and when I light the candles later this evening I will have so much for which to be grateful and I will celebrate my success by allowing myself to welcome in the Shechinah and to rest peacefully and joyfully in this sanctuary in time. As I work madly on trying to make the changes to the cookbook proposal my new agent requested, I will feel so filled with gratitude and with wonder at how the Universe works. I attribute my “success” not only to my diligence and perseverance, but the powerful energy of my intention and my knowing that I would, indeed, get these works published. I totally trusted…well, I had times of doubt, especially with the cookbook, but I would shrug that off and get back to work and back into a place of knowing it would work out.

Last week I resigned myself to approaching not only two new agents (on the suggestion of the last agent who had just turned down my cookbook project) and three small publishers (one the suggestion of my first agent and the person who brought the cookbook project to me in the first place. That said, when I actually sat myself down to write the letters and put the packages together, I did so with the intention of actually finding an agent. I changed my AOL password to reflect my desire to have an agent of a publisher for the manuscript by 6-07. Every time I typed in that password, I remembered my goal while at the same time I knew that as I had placed the parcels in the mailbox I had released the book and its outcome to a higher source. I had released it. I stopped thinking or worrying about it, except each time I typed in that password and affirmed that I would, indeed, have an agent or a publisher by June.

Now, I do this thing with the password all the time. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I think so much of what makes it successful comes down to my own attitude. How strong is my intention? Have I released whatever it is I want, thus creating space to receive my desire, or am I holding on to it and filling myself with worry and negative thoughts? Am I trusting that what is for my highest good and the highest good of the project and those concerned with it will come to pass? Am I offering gratitude to God for my desired outcome having become manifest even thought it actually hasn’t yet; in other words, am I trusting that it has manifest in the World Above and will, therefore, soon manifest in the World Below? Am I behaving “as if” what I want already exists in my life and feeling all the joy and fulfillment that would come with that experience?

If I can answer “yes” to these questions, my affirmation works well, because of all these other things I have done. And that’s the “secret” to manifesting what we want, isn’t it?

By the way, my new booklet, Abracadabra! The Kabbalah of Creation, 7 Mystical Steps to Manifesting Your Dreams and Desires will be available in July! It will talk about some of the tools I use to create what I want in my life, and today I realize more than ever how very powerful those tools truly are. If you’ve heard of the bestselling book and DVD The Secret, my booklet (which will one day be a book – mark my words!) puts the principles set forth in The Secret through a Jewish mystical lense. (You can preorder it now in my store.)

So, I will move through today gladly putting my energy into the last thing I personally can do to sell my Jewish celebrity cookbook – finishing the proposal. Then I will again release the project – this time to my new agent as well as to my God. May the perfect publisher take on the book.

Ken yehe ratzon. May it be God’s will.

Shabbat shalom!

I’m not so sure I have anything “Jewish” to say today, but I’m way overdue to post a blog and I could use to vent anyway. I’m stuck in Limbo Land, or, as my best friend Karen likes to call it, the “Don’t Knows.” I guess you could say I’m suffering from the Don’t Knows while living in Limbo Land.

I busted my you-know-what to get my book proposal done by my own deadline. I didn’t want to feel the whoosh of the deadline as it passed by, so I did what it took to get the document off my desk and onto an agent’s desk almost exactly a month ago. Then I revamped my cookbook proposal and sent it off to another agent. And now I’m sitting around waiting to hear…I’d like to say I’m twiddling my thumbs, but it’s not like I’m doing nothing. I check my e-mail boxes often. I deal with “stuff.” I’m in my office all day. Yet, not a lot is getting accomplished.

I could really use some paying work – a book to edit, some magazine article or essay assignments that pay quickly, a column for a newspaper – yet, I’m reticent to take on a big job right now. If – or, let me correct myself – when the agent(s) call to tell me they love my book ideas and want to take me on, I want to be ready to move forward immediately. I don’t want to have to say, “Well, that’s great, but I can’t get started until I finish this project.”

Waiting has caused me to lose momentum. Without such a big deadline hanging over my head, I seem to be so much less motivated and so much less able to get anything done – even the small things like posting an ad at local colleges for an unpaid publicity/marketing intern (Know anyone interested in the job?), writing my overdue newsletter, sending out queries for Passover (Yes…already.) or ordering herbal supplements.

I’ll have to ask Karen, who is writing a book on Don’t Knows, if lethargy and lack of motivation are symptomatic of the Don’t Knows. The agent asked me if, after turning in a proposal, I suffer from “post partum depression” or if I just go on to the next project. I replied, “A little of both,” but I’d have to change that comment if asked again. “Definitely post partum depression,” I’d reply, “with a huge dose of self doubt and lethargy.”

What’s the cure? I know what Karen, also a life coach, would tell me. I know what I’d say to someone if they asked me: “Start work on something else. Or get caught up in getting all the stuff done that you didn’t do while you were focused on the proposal.” In other words: Don’t just sit there; do something. I’ll have to take my own advice.

On top of my work Don’t Knows, I have a pet Don’t Know. My dog has lost 15 pounds and is lethargic (Is this contagious?) and won’t eat (Well, I definitely don’t have that problem…). She’s on an antibiotic that doesn’t seem to be working. The vet said she had a bladder infection. Obviously there is something more serious wrong with her. She has to have a test run on Thursday to see if she has liver disease or some other ailment. I’m, of course, afraid that the test will show something really bad….and…Well, we won’t go there. (My mother already tried to take me to the worst-case scenario, and I really laid into her. You know me, always wanting to think positively, to visualize and feel the outcome I want to create.) In any case, I’m in limbo land with the dog, struggling with the Don’t Knows of her health condition.

So, what’s a results-oriented girl to do? What yesterday’s Kabbalah card told me to do. (I draw a card from the deck each day and then read what it is telling me to do.) I drew the letter “yud,” which served as a call to action. I didn’t take much yesterday, but I have already put myself out there today proposing a column to an e-zine. I’m getting my blog written. I signed someone up to my “preorder list” for my new book. I agreed to speak at a local church, and I will write that ad and send it out to a few schools before the end of the day. Plus, I did make an appointment for the dog to go to the vet for that test on Thursday.

Baby steps. That’s what you have to take when you are moving through Limbo Land while suffering from the Don’t Knows. You have to keep that goal in mind and just keep moving towards it.

And, when you get a little off course – lost in the e-mail box or in front of the refrigerator – you “trim tab.” That’s the term used by aviators. They say airplanes are off course 99% of the time. The pilots continually trim tab, or put their aircraft back on course. In this way the end up at their final destination, zooming down the runway and coming to a dead stop at the airport terminal.

I’ve been off course, I think, for the last week and a half. Time to trim tab. Time to set a course for my goal – out of Limbo Land and towards a published book or two – and to begin navigating towards that goal once again.

Anyone want to come along? Don’t know? No problem. Just climb aboard, and I’ll take you to my destination (and yours) — Certainty! Let’s take off…one step at a time.