Love Your Work & Make More Money

Unleash Your 8 Truths to Connect with the Work You Are Meant to Do

Jenny Krengel

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781683508076
• eBook ISBN: 9781683508083
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Love Your Work and Make More Money helps women learn to love what they do and buy their freedom.

Do the words you can't speak at the office come out as private anguish?
Are your work days filled with mixed messages from your leaders?
Do you find yourself staying, despite long hours and unreasonable demands?
Are you only there because it is the "responsible" thing to do?

The truth is that you can make conscious choices about your career. And create a work life that is fun, fulfilling, financially rewarding, and gives both your soul and your voice the freedom to express themselves. Jenny Krengel worked her way from $16,000 a year as a college drop-out receptionist to a highly-paid sales rep in the high-tech industry. Then, single and 31 years old, she started over again, leaving a beloved six-figure job to finish her college degree. Jenny was ready to have the life she wanted for herself. Keeping a positive mindset, trusting herself, honing her skills, and leaning on others, Jenny has refocused on her heart work: to educate and inspire women to live into their potential as happy, confident contributors in this modern workforce that needs their lights to shine. Love Your Work and Make More Money teaches women how to be FEARLESS, have integrity in their job, feel like they matter, help their customers, and buy their freedom!

TRUTH # 1: FIX YOUR BELIEFS

“Tell yourself a better story. Then believe it.”

– Jenny Krengel

Category A: Being Aware

The Undeniable Power of Belief Systems

The first time I remember getting in my head with self-doubt, and being completely confused about “what was wrong with me” was when I was about 16 years old. My boyfriend “Charlie” consistently lied to me and cheated on me. He would be fun, charming, and kind when it was just us together and with his family, then in front of our peers, he would act like I didn’t exist. Okay, so I was not capable at the time of the best choices, but I would ask myself, “What did I do? What is wrong with me? Why would he do that?” But I never had the guts to ask him those questions. And why did I stay?

I was told growing up, “Children are to be seen, not heard.” My parents’ generation were the masters of sweeping everything under the rug. If you don’t talk about the problem, or the weakness, “Presto! It does not exist!” The David Blaine style of parenting.

I was also told I needed to behave a certain way, wear certain clothes, and be the way others wanted me to be because I might embarrass my mom in front of her family.

For the first 17 years of my life, I was routinely shown that daily life, money, and relationships are a struggle. Nightly fighting between my parents on the other side of the thin wall required a box fan to whir away the worry. To this day I still have white noise going strong on my bedside.

And guess what I created throughout my 20s and into my early 30s?

Silent struggle.

What does silent struggle look like? Never speaking up for myself. Consistently feeling like something was wrong with me, and feeling completely out of alignment.

It feels like being a muzzled dog on a retractable leash. “Come here… no go away…come back… okay you can wander… But don’t open your mouth and bark… someone might think you are a b***.”

It is exhausting and draining.

For some reason I did not believe I was worthy of better treatment. But along with the silent struggle, I also knew that I was loved, and that my parents did their best with what they learned, and that their intentions were good. They told me I was loved, and I gained special skills from the chaos. As I got older, making sense of it gave me understanding, acceptance, and gratitude.

As far back as I can remember, I had this fearless fire in my belly to do stuff. I would try almost anything that might be considered fun because if I saw it was possible, I believed I could do it, too. I have an older brother who is 17 months older than I, and I remember always looking up to him and wanting to keep up with him in athletics and whatever mischief he was up to. He and my dad called me, “Me too”!

TRUTH #1 FIX YOUR BELIEFS

What is a Belief?

Beliefs are the survival system for our life’s journey, and the core of every decision we make. Some decisions are conscious, and some are unconscious. When we keep repeating the same patterns, and live the definition of insanity by doing the same thing over and over without different results, most likely it is our beliefs that we have to blame. Our beliefs put us on the hamster wheel and drive us to exhaustion. Our beliefs also help us find the most incredible job we could have ever imagined. Our beliefs can help us soar, and they can tank us.

Beliefs are everything we have learned in our lives to cope and survive. They are how we have wired our brains over years of repeated behaviors, and they are rules we have learned either from our childhood, from experience, or by making interesting assumptions that may or may not be true.

I am not a neuroscientist, but I have studied the subject, read countless books, and have had some formal education on the topic. People and behaviors fascinate me, so I guess that is why I chose a degree in psychology. Psychology attempts to continually answer the question “Why?” when it comes to behaviors and mental health.

We can be happiest in life when we focus on our own “why” and understand why we believe what we believe, then question those beliefs. Adopt the beliefs that are working, and discard those that are not.

It is never our job to try to figure out someone else, how they can change, and what their motivation or belief system is. We can guess, but I do believe the definition of self-torture is this:

Wishing anything other than yourself will change.

This attitude was how I found peace during the last election cycle. We will all drive ourselves crazy trying to understand where someone else is coming from. So like the funny Buddha photo I see on Instagram:

Types of Beliefs:

As mentioned in the previous chapter, there are two types of Beliefs: living beliefs, and disabling beliefs. The disabling beliefs hold us back, and living beliefs are those that let us fly. Beliefs are first adopted from our family of origin (work ethic, money, religion, politics, love, acceptance, etc.), then over our lifetime we filter, refine, and change, based on how the belief system is serving us. Key to note: a belief is just something we have learned or adopted, so understanding how beliefs serve us is critical to being mindfully aware in Truth #1.

In this process, we have to brain-dump every belief we can think of before we can start figuring out how to sort them out into types (laundry exercise!).

Examples of some my beliefs—not sorted—(many of these I learned from my family of origin):

1. Plan your work; work your plan

2. *See no evil; speak no evil; hear no evil

3. Don’t talk; don’t trust; don’t feel

4. *All things in moderation

5. Chaos is to be expected, so create it if it is not present

6. Treat others as you wish to be treated

7. Money comes and goes

Out of this entire list of some of my beliefs, which ones serve me well? Only two. The ones that I consider living beliefs are number 1 and number 6. The two with the asterisks may seem innocent enough on the surface, but the way in which I learned them is to always be in denial (we don’t see things, we don’t hear things, and we don’t say anything). The general intention of the saying is good, but that is not how it was taught to me.

The other asterisk, “all things in moderation,” is well intentioned, but I’ve always felt like I had to keep a lid on things. If I felt the urge to experience something and get excited and be my free spirit, I would hear that belief. Don’t be too much this… don’t be too much that…all things in moderation. Don’t be a spectacle. Don’t really be yourself if it is too much for someone to handle.

Once you get rid of some old beliefs that are not serving you, and adopt new ones, amazing things will start happening for your peace of mind.

Let’s Talk Money:

This one is fun. How about this belief: money is the root of all evil, or you can’t buy happiness, or money can’t make you happy. Oh, my. Are you ready to unpack? Do you buy any or all of these beliefs? If you do, you probably should put the book down now and continue to stay in your place of struggle and want.

What did you learn from your family of origin about money? Did you learn:

• To be dependent

• To be risk averse

• To be too risky

• To be chaotic, inconsistent

I want to be clear on this again: The only time in my career trajectory where I was focused on making money was to pull myself above the poverty line.

Money is a tool to help others, money is a gift to educate, and money funds experiences. Until you get a grip on the true meaning of money, you will struggle. I promise.

We get what we expect, people. I have my own issues and relationship with money that I face almost every day.

What we learn about money we learn first from a very young age. Here are some of my old beliefs about money:

1. Money comes and goes

2. Money is always there

3. Money is everywhere; if other people have it, so can I

4. Be thrifty, because saving is the right thing to do because my husband says it is

5. I learned that I should save money, but that means I live later. I want to live now

6. I am not worried about money

7. Work can be a struggle, but when I struggle I make money

8. I feel guilty making more money than other people

There can be “good” and “bad” found in every one of these. I had to ask myself the question: How well were my beliefs serving me as an employee and as a wife?

I have adopted one single belief about money, and it is serving me better than my wildest dreams! I will share my single belief about money when we get to the chapter on purpose.

Weeding the Garden:

I came up with this term when I realized how much stress I can strip back when I got in touch with my belief system. I was driving down the road and pictured a rose garden that was blooming. And when I saw the rose garden, there were no weeds, no bugs, nothing prohibiting the growth of the beautiful and fragrant flowers. So I asked myself, “Jenny, what or who are the weeds in your life? How can we eliminate the power they have been having over your growth?”

“Weed your garden and plant promises.”

– Jenny Krengel

Being process oriented, I tried out a process and it worked. This was a highly personal exercise for me, and it was the first step in my process. What makes the process even better is that it was validated by a researcher at the University of Texas who was highlighted in the book by Brene Brown, Daring Greatly. This...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• HOW BEING FEARLESS SAVED ME
• THE 8 TRUTHS YOU MUST KNOW
• TRUTH # 1: FIX YOUR BELIEFS
• TRUTH # 2: EMBODY YOUR VALUES
• TRUTH # 3: ASSIGN YOUR VISION
• TRUTH # 4: REINFORCE PURPOSE
• TRUTH #5 LIVE THE COMMITMENT
• TRUTH #6 ESTABLISH CRITERIA
• TRUTH # 7: SEEK DIFFERENTIATORS
• TRUTH # 8: SEND IN THE NEGOTIATOR
• Conclusion
• Special Thanks to You
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author