Feeling Rich, Feeling Poor, My Story Around Abundance

 

 

 

I see a lot of courses out there about how to create abundance in your life facilitated by well meaning teachers who have yet to create abundance in their own lives.

I am a firm believer that we teach what we need to learn and many times I myself have taught and facilitated around topics where I wasn't quite there yet, and I do believe I still had a lot to give, but when it comes to this topic of money and attracting abundance, I feel like there are so many layers to it that it would be really hard to get what you need from a teacher who has not worked through those blocks to some extent, to a major extent.

No I am not coming out with a new course lol at least not right now but I did just see something come across my feed and thought I'd share some of my own personal story around this.

Awhile back, perhaps a year or year and half ago, I sat in my mastermind group and "said I just want to be able to buy myself a coat if I need to." That's how tight things were. I live in one of the states with the highest cost of living, I am single and was primarily supporting myself from my paintings and classes. I made just enough to pay my bills. I never had savings, I never had really extra for something like a new winter coat. I felt poor, I felt like a victim, I felt like I could not get ahead and in my mind I had no idea how I could possibly create wealth or be comfortable financially. As a matter of perspective while I felt poor I live in a well sought after village, in a lovely apartment and so I really was not "poor" but that is never what's it's really about. It's about the feeling. If you feel poor, you will believe you are poor. If you are unable to take in all the ways you are rich you will consistently feel inadequate, not enough, and lacking in some way.

The roots of these feelings of "being poor" were strong. They were generational, stories around money not being available, stories around unworthiness, around having to watch money like a hawk, lest it go away, were rampant in my upbringing. There was also great anger around money and it was often used as a tool for power. It was doled out very carefully.

I grew up on welfare then as a young adult went to live in a luxury building with my Dad. It was all very confusing but this little taste of the "good life" helped me plant a seed for wanting more, it was the beginning of me realizing there was more.

In my adult years, money has come and gone in my life in large quantities about three times and each time I end up feeling poor again, unable to sustain the energy of abundance in my life. It was never about the money, it was about the energy of feeling rich and not being able to sustain that level of richness in my soul. I have gone from owning a half a million dollar house to declaring bankruptcy in my lifetime. That is my particular pattern with money, a pattern I have been examining for quite some time now.

I think we all have a pattern and it is often steeped in our beliefs and wounding around money. I also believe the pattern has some very important information about how we dance with money.

What I'm learning even as we speak is that I needed to feel poor, to feel those feelings, to trace them back, to sit in them, examine them and let them go on a consistent daily basis. I also realized that the things that make me feel the most rich in my life are intimate relationships with friends, working on projects, being creative, and noticing what I do have and embodying my gratitude daily.

There are some practical pieces like planning income ahead of time instead of flying by the seat of my pants every month which is what I did for years but mainly it is about the energy, and the healing of those stories we all still carry. I've also noticed that I carry that energy in other areas of my life as well..the "No I can't have that" belief transfers to so many other things and it is a practice of saying yes to what I want that helps to keep me focused on desire instead of lost in the wanting.

This is a rather simplified version of what I consistently work on to create more abundance in my life but I hope this small window into my own process is helpful to someone today.

I know this may seem deeply personal to make public, but if you know me, you know I wear my heart on my sleeve, you know I don't shy away from difficult conversations, and that I hope that by sharing I can help someone who may be going through similar struggles. I don't consider money a dirty word either. I believe talking about it helps to lift the veil of shame.