One of the things I really want in my life right now is “glitter” (codeword for “abundance”, which is codeword for “money”)
Being alive and being in this world, I have all the stuff around “glitter”.
One of the ways to work with your stuff around money is to write down your associations with it.
And with the people who have money.
Whenever I practice this, the thing that springs up the most is:
“There’s these people who have money and who are still unhappy. They are still discontented. They still think it’s not enough.
They are ungrateful”.“And I don’t want to be like them”.
Associations… also known as images
Working at the till
Saying to the customer I’m serving “it’s ok, I have money”. Customer saying to me “you have money? Then you can give me some”.
The customer is on a nice cushy job, on a nice wage. I’m on a zero hour contract on the minimum wage.
And she’s so “in her stuff” that she thinks she should have more money, and she says it to me.
She can’t see me, or my poverty, or my pain. She can’t see anything or anyone outside of “I-NEED-MORE”.
My own family (the extended bit)
They have more than we do. And it’s astonishing how we are all supposed to pretend that “we all have the same”.
All these anxiety in my family about not having “enough”, meaning “not having as much as them”.
And now I look at my own family, from the perspective of time and adulthood, and I wonder why on EARTH did we care so much.
Why couldn’t we see how much we had? I would do anything to have that much now. Really, it was enough.
When I first arrived in Europe
This sense of “these people have so, so much! And they don’t even know it. They are unaware, and ungrateful.”
Stop. Marvel. Be grateful
I don’t want to spend another second of my life caring about the fact that some people goodness knows where have “more than me”.
And I don’t want to spend another second of my life being so… “unaware”, so “unconscious”, so unable to feel compassion for other people.
Ingratitude, and its cousin “unawareness”. Not knowing how much you have, not being able to appreciate what you have translates into not being able to see other people’s pain because “you” and “your lack” are all you see.
How do I know all this?
Because that was me.
For the first 10 years of my life, I had a lot.
No, I wasn’t “wealthy”, but I did get a lot of toys. (yay toys!)
And I was never grateful. I kept wanting more.
And I was so… “unaware”. So “numb”, so “unconscious”. I couldn’t see other people. I had no compassion for anyone, including myself.
I was never “present”. I was never “here, feeling, this very moment”.
This is how the “spiritual truth” works
By being grateful for what you already have you instantly move closer to what you want because it will feel like it’s closer to where you are.
That’s one side of the equation.
The other side is that being grateful for what you already have puts you in the mood for working towards getting what you want.
Which means… being grateful for what you already have actively brings to you the things you want.
In more practical terms: gratitude brings in the moola
Wait, how does that work exactly?
We’re all afraid that if we are “contented with our lot”, then we will stay with this lot, foreverz.
This is based on the assumption that “we have to be miserable with our lives in order to get off our arses and change things around”.
As you can see, this kind of attitude is ever so slightly… “violent”.
Violence may work for some people. But if you’re on this website reading this, I’m guessing it hasn’t worked for you.
The alternative is kindness
When we practice being grateful with what we have, we send a couple of messages to our subconscious.
The first is “this thing feels nice, let’s get some more of it”.
Working towards getting what you want while feeling good is far more effective. Because, HEY, guess what! You are feeling “good”! That’s a good motivator, ya’ know.
The second message is “oh, so we already have this thing… and we are grateful with it… I guess it’s OK to have a bit more”.
It’s a strange thing to understand, but… when you are grateful with what you have you get a very real sense of “enough”.
There’s a downside in going around with this feeling in your head: “OMG, I NEED TO GET THIS THING! I HAVEN’T GOT ANY AND I NEED IT DESPERATELY!!!”
A small part in your subconscious may be thinking “no way are we going after this huge thing! It will take forever and ever to get, and we will kill ourselves in the process!”.
There’s a very real self-protection mechanism going on inside you that will try to stop you from going after something that will potentially kill you from overwork.
So you end up paralised. And making no money at all. For years.
Like me.
The proof is in the pudding: I have more money and general good things now that I’m practicing gratitude than when I panicked anxiously about how I didn’t have anything.
This stuff is really hard
It has taken me 3 years of practice to get to this point, so I’m not going to pretend that any of this is remotely easy. It’s not. It’s really really scary.
But if we can practice gratitude… if we can at the very least wish we could practice gratitude… Or notice how we absolutely can’t do it yet, and be kind to ourselves regardless.
Start where you are. Even if where you are is “I cannot do this right now”. It’s where you are. Acknowledge that.
Give yourself permission to not be ready yet if you are not ready yet to practice gratitude.
My tip for making this easier?
Start with nature.
The human world is a mess complicated. It’s easy to get caught up in “those people have something I want, damn them!”. And “why do I have less than those people? DAMN EVERYONE!”.
Nature is a life saver because it’s just there and doesn’t talk.
You can practice being grateful for the sky to be there, for the stars to be there, for the river to be there.
Even if it’s just a tiny pinprick of gratitude, it all helps.
Also, be prepared for tears. It’s ok to cry too.
Finding out that you have been ungrateful for all the good things in your life is really painful. Ouch.
And if you’re not ready to feel grateful or if you just don’t feel like it?
That’s ok too. Always respect where you are. And start there.
