It's inevitable that we'd get around to this, right? Throughout the blog lovin' book tour we've been talking about our passions and what makes us unique, we've set intentions and sorted out how to best take care of ourselves, we've even redefined what it means to be successful. And of course, at some point, we do need to finance all of this fabulousness. Yeah, about that...
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| Illustration by the lovely Jessica Swift. |
Two of the books I'm reading right now (both of which I've talked about on this blog: You Are a Badass (Sincero) and The Happiness Project (Rubin)) have chapters dedicated explicitly to money and our relationship with it. I just so happened to reach both of those chapters in the last week or so and have been absorbing the ideas like a sponge. I also received an eNewsletter from Your Courageous Life in which Kate Swoboda made a video discussing her concept of radical abundance. Weird coincidence that all of this information happened to come to me all at once? I doubt it. Hashtag manifesting intentions.
So Rubin is a hardcore pragmatist. She breaks down all the stats and research around money and happiness. She also shares the concept of spending out, which is directly related to abundance. Finding a blog post she wrote about spending out triggered my "I'm wearing pink lace panties" post earlier this year. It's an interesting evolution of the concept to also see it represented in her money chapter. The purpose of spending out is not to drain your checking account, which is sort of what it sounds like initially, but it's actually to avoid hoarding / holding on to stuff with a mindset of fear and scarcity. The goal is to keep the energy of money fluid and flowing in your life. Trust that you'll have what you need (and more) and you'll be able to provide it for yourself consistently. There's no need to be afraid and hold on to anything. Spend out. There's more where that came from.
Though she doesn't use the term "spending out" in her book, Sincero does open her money chapter with a story of buying a new car, one that was a bit aspirational for her income at the time. She says that the purchase "was about no longer being the kind of person who takes what she can get, and finally becoming the kind of person who creates exactly what she wants." Her point is not to max yourself out in debt because deep down you believe you're meant to be the kind of person who drives a vintage Aston Martin on a babysitter's salary. Her point was about changing your frequency so that you can attract to you a new version of your life. The car was her magnet, and it was also her motivation to hit the pavement and round up more cash. In her words:
"When you up-level your idea of what's possible, and decide to really go for it, you open yourself up to the means to accomplish it as well." {tweet it}
You open yourself up to the means to accomplish it. Sort of scary, huh? It takes me a second to settle into that and trust it. I know it's true, spiritually and emotionally, but it's in direct conflict with the overbearing cultural paradigm that you should be working hard within The System so that it can reward you with incremental promotions and an eventual gold watch. Sincero's dialogue around money is all about "expanding your beliefs about what is available to you in all areas of your life." Money is energy, just like everything else. It's not evil. It's not good. It's a tool. If you want more of it to accomplish the dreams you've laid out for yourself, then you need your energy to operate at a frequency that will attract the types of opportunities and moolah you need in order to get it done.
She writes that when you're "operating at a high frequency, with no resistance to it, and take the right action, you can manifest the money you desire." It's a total paradigm shift and it's tough for me. To once again use terms I explained in my declaration of success post, this concept of manifesting money is a very nurturing parent track of love total abundance mindset. And a bit hippie woo woo, let's be honest about that. The paradigm with which it conflicts is the strict father track of fear scarcity mindset. Switching gears from one to the other is not an easy thing to do. To get us there, Sincero lays out five rules of wealth consciousness:
RULE ONE: Come from a place of abundance, not lack {tweet it}
See above. And more or less every blog post I've put out this year. This is the absolute foundation of all of this.
RULE TWO: Get clear on where you're at {tweet it}
She suggests a free-write journal exercise to unpack all of the burdens and baggage and cultural crap we pile on to money. She believes that if you don't have the money you want, "you definitely have some crazy." We have to sort it out and name it before we can get over it.
RULE THREE: Get clear on where you desire to be {tweet it}
Be brutally honest about what kind of life you really want and what kind of experiences will make you really happy. The Universe responds to details. She wastes no time calling us out: "Pretending you don't want more than you already have because you can't afford it, or feel guilty and pretentious for wanting it, that's called being a weenie."
RULE FOUR: Raise your frequency {tweet it}
Energetically align yourself with the life you want. Act as if. Saying you want to be a photographer and only touching your camera once every six months is low-frequency. Saying you want to be a photographer and making photographs every single day, good or bad, to share or not to share, is high-frequency. Saying you want to somehow get paid to make photographs every day is the highest of frequencies.
RULE FIVE: Stay in shape {tweet it}
She suggests reading wealth consciousness books, articles, journals, whatever you need to do to understand money and keep the energy around money fresh and flowing.
With all of this in mind, as far as my own declaration goes, I have some work to do around the idea of money. I need to let go of all the baggage I've imposed on money and accept it for what it is: A tool. Wanting it doesn't make me greedy and getting (a lot of) it doesn't make me a douchebag. My new mantra is all about owning exactly what kind of life I want to live, appreciating money as the energy to help me do it, and trusting that it will flow in and out of my life as needed.
Love and benjamins,
me
The Fine Print: The Declaration of You will be published by North Light Craft Books this summer, giving readers the permission they’ve craved to step passionately into their lives, to discover how they and their gifts are unique, and to uncover what they are meant to do!
