Achieving financial serenity
The following is the first of a series of summaries of workshops I facilitated at Unity of Vancouver in 2002. This is the Coles Notes version, obviously, but if you’re looking for financial serenity in your life, you may find this offers easy access to the path.
Lesson 1: Prosperity begins with letting go of personal money myths to embrace a more powerful truth
Living the reality of abundance requires acknowledging the reality of abundance — and that acknowledgment requires the rejection of many almost universally accepted ‘truths’.
“There is not enough to go around.”
“Life is a struggle.”
“We must work hard (suffer) in order to get ahead.”
“If we don’t fight for and cling to what’s ours, we’ll lose it.”
While all of these statements are true when viewed from a superficial perspective, financial freedom requires that we embrace the concept of parallel truth. While poverty may be real, abundant wealth is just as real, and is available to us through the simple means of a shift in perception. The quality of our life is determined by our behaviour, and our behaviour is rooted in our beliefs.
“The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. ”
Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
To accomplish this shift in perception, and thus, a shift in “life-style,” we need only adopt a three-fold process:
1. Practice faith. Read inspirational books; visit www.beliefnet.com and do some of their wonderful ten-minute meditations; surround yourself with positive, creative people. James told us that “faith without works is dead:” it is also true that faith as a practice, rather than as a concept or ideal, will provide you with the confidence and courage to make creative changes in your life.
2. Apply the power of symbolism — it is the language that speaks directly to the unconscious mind. Rid your environment of anything that makes you feel impoverished, and surround yourself instead with symbols of luxury and prosperity, items and experiences that make you feel prosperous even if they may have no meaning for other people.
For example, get rid of tattered clothes and furnishings that you hate, even if it means wearing your one good outfit every day and living in nearly bare rooms. Not only will you rid your environment of poverty-symbols, you create a space, an invitation, for new and beautiful things. Don’t rush out with your Visa to replace the things you let go of. Instead, allow life to offer its gifts — and allow yourself to experience the natural, inevitable flow of abundance. Your job is to create space and then to accept with gratitude and delight.
3. Learn to live the art of gratitude. Without gratitude, wealth is wasted on us, and wealth goes only where it can be creative. Keep a daily gratitude journal, do gratitude meditations in which you affirm each and every thing you have to be grateful for today, get outside to experience the extraordinary abundance of nature, practice seeing the perfection in small moments and pleasures, and live gratitude by living “with an open hand,” acknowledging the many blessings in your life by sharing them with others.
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”
Melody Beatty