Heart driven success.
Creating your definition of abundance then living it.
and how you define living abundantly is entirely your choosing.
Your definition could include one or more elements of your life – your health, your wellbeing, particular possessions, finances, where you live. The things that are the very foundation for you to grow, create and share with the world.
Sounds all very simple, easy to follow – right? Abundance is my middle name I hear you say.
Or maybe not. Maybe abundance sounds great in theory but what about in reality?
You open your wallet, you look in your fridge, log in to your online banking and somehow things don’t feel so ‘abundant’ anymore.
So, in my experience, we can’t talk about abundance without first addressing its most common association – money.
When you break it down, money is just one tool that allows us to invest in our growth and our human evolution, through new experiences. If we are feeling less than abundant, then the decision to undertake a period of growth and transformation will be rife with debate.
Because money is not seen as a tool to open our eyes to greater possibility, or eye-opening experiences.
These new ‘eye-opening’ experiences could be further education, courses, working with coaches, a mastermind, therapists, attending workshops, walking over hot coals…which I’d much prefer to do than sit in a cave for 10 years and meditate – despite the cave being a route that requires minimal financial investment.
Would you agree that you freely invest in your growth? or is money the biggest factor in this decision? Designer dress or a session with a kinesiologist? Waaaaaay easier, and more comfortable to go designer – right? You’ve already got the university degree, that counts right?
There will be some women out there nodding their heads, because we LOVE learning.
But for many of the beautiful souls out there, investing in our growth, possibility and potential, is scary and requires stepping into the unknown.
There are no guarantees, nor do we obtain something physical in return that is evidence of our investment. Designer dresses are typically not included. Which is why we take the seemingly easier route.
Opt out.
Instead if we invested, we trusted, we persisted and we allowed passion and desire to fill our veins, the vision eventually becomes a reality.
And suddenly your direct association between abundance and the status of your bank account shifts dramatically.
I believe we need to get comfortable with investing in our growth for one key reason – if you don’t know what you don’t know – why that fear might be holding you back, then it makes sense to find someone that could shine a light on it.
Download your PDF here, brew a cup of tea and set aside 30mins to complete this powerful exercise.
Let’s go back to my original statement about defining abundance.
Perhaps your beautiful vision of abundance involves creating a business to be your own boss and serve others, or relocate out of the city so you can start a veggie patch and live off the land. Down the line, there will likely be some financial investment to get it off the ground. Stepping into this vision requires you to up skill or step into a new version of yourself with the support of a team or an accountability partner to get you over the line.
When we give excuses for not investing and not doing the work, we are in a state of resistance, and we deny ourselves the investment because of…money.
Or rather it’s not money itself but our beliefs, and our story about money that holds us back.
These beliefs create our identity. Which creates our behaviours and verbal excuses – how we spend, what we spend it on, what we say about money, or what we don’t say about money. And so the cycle continues.
To break the cycle, you need to first own your money story.
So what was my money story?
For a long time, my version of abundance was wrapped up in status. I probably lived the first 20-odd years of my life via a lens of comparison and material attainment. Some of this was conscious, some of this by default because of the way money is portrayed in Western society. This lens created some pretty interesting thoughts and behaviours around money, which were typically skewed towards lack and not enough therefore always striving for a bigger, flashier version of myself.
I can recall a number of times as a child that fed into this story – breaking down on the ski field in our old car, mum cleaning her friends houses when my parents separated or mum making our clothes as children.
But my lens distorted the really good stuff – what I didn’t see was that my parents chose worldly experience over shiny objects – we camped through Europe for 3 months as a teenager because they chose education and culture. They were rebellious and creative with money. Once I owned my story around money, the distorted lens was lost and instead I could really see what was possible with money when you exercised a little creativity.
I then set about defining abundance for myself based on my values and my vision for my life.
What allowed me to see clearly this new beautiful version of abundance – first choosing my personal growth over that designer dress. Choosing to be worthy of that bigger vision for my life instead of continuing the same old patterns.
On to today’s mini challenge…
I want you to feel empowered when it comes to your finances, your future and therefore all that potential that’s available to you.
To feel empowered, we first acknowledge where we are at right now and where we have come from with respect to money. This allows us to see where we might have been holding on to some funky thoughts and beliefs. We do this through a simple journalling exercise.
Download your PDF here, brew a cup of tea and set aside 30mins to complete this powerful exercise.
I would love to hear what came up for you in doing this exercise? what surprised you? what felt good? what things do you want to let go of?
