Let’s take a look at one of the primary blockages to experiencing true and lasting prosperity for all humans: a repetitive story of poverty and scarcity that we replay in our heads, versus one of abundance and prosperity. Most of us know what scarcity feels like, and most of us also know the good, spacious feeling of having enough (even if it’s only been for brief moments).
The trick is not to allow habits to get us stuck in scarcity. We compare ourselves to others; we judge other people for having money; we get stuck in dark loops and don’t know how to get out. We stay stuck when we use scarcity language: “I want that, but I can’t have it. I can’t go there. I can’t do that. I can’t learn that. I can’t be that.” If we habitually deny ourselves experiences because we automatically assume we don’t have money for them, we live a life of being played by money. Money does not deserve to have that much power over you and your life enjoyment. Can we agree on that?
Now before you say, “But Jolie! It’s not just a ‘story’ of scarcity. It’s real for me. The rent is due, and I am stressed. I can’t just ‘mindset’ my way to prosperity around this.” Girl, I get it. I really do know what it’s like to feel the crippling fear of not being able to pay bills and the gut-wrenching sadness of having to deny yourself the things you desire. Let me tell you, more scarcity and fear is not the path to the freedom you desire. When scarcity increases, it’s very challenging to think creatively for solutions. My invitation here is to bring awareness to automatic behaviors and responses. To breathe a moment of space between stimulus and response, between opening an unexpected bill and feeling panic. The secret of true prosperity is being able to generate it as a feeling even before you can manifest it as a physical reality. I know this practice can feel hard. But you are so much more powerful and capable than you give yourself credit for.
Maybe for you, it’s not an issue of generating enough money to pay your bills. Maybe you’ve found your path of a lucrative life and/or ample support from others. Maybe the next-level prosperity upgrade is to relax in your body, trust your money, give yourself the freedom to spend money on yourself. Or, on the opposite side of the spectrum, maybe your challenge is to love yourself enough to save for the future. No matter where you are right now, the way out is to become more aware of the repetitive story in your head around scarcity and to consciously choose a narrative of prosperity.
So many women I’ve worked with over the years have a story around their age. “I’m thirty. I should have ___________ by now.” Or, “I’m forty. I should have had this.” Whether we’re twenty-five, or sixty, or seventy, or eighty, this idea in our heads of what we thought each age was going to be like often revolves around money.
Begin noticing your language around money. Do you say things like these? “Real estate is so expensive these days!” “I could never afford a nice car!” “I wish I could wear things like that.” “I’ll never be able to make my rent this month!” “I can’t pay these bills! Life is so expensive!” Think about what you call in when you say or even think these things.
Then there is the heavy, burdensome subject of debt. Many people can’t bear to look closely at their debt because it’s too terrifying. I remember being like that — not wanting to know my credit card balances, feeling guilty about owing money, believing I had the poverty gene and couldn’t do anything about it, thinking nothing would ever change and it was just who I was, who I would always be, who my family had always been.
None of that is true. None of it! There’s always a new future and a different path available to you, if you choose.
Any thought, sensation, or emotion that makes you feel bad, contracted, or heavy when you think about money is keeping you stuck. Look back through your life. Ask yourself when you started feeling this way about money. What belief about money that’s no longer serving you are you ready to release? It might be something that helped you survive at some point, but you don’t need it anymore. It’s time to modernize, to clean up your thoughts, and to look with clear eyes at what is actually available to you — which is everything.
Shame and guilt are among the lowest vibrational frequencies in the human experience, right above death. If we think of death as a flat line, shame and guilt are low, slow, barely discernible vibrations. It’s not about good and bad. It’s about what makes you vibrate high and what makes you vibrate low. Shame and guilt make you feel bad about yourself, that you’re inherently wrong as a person. They keep you locked into scarcity. If you aren’t enough, then how can you ever have enough?
Of course, the systems in place are meant to keep you in debt, forever compounding interest and compounding shame. Plenty of people profit from the debt-shame paradigm. If you’re in debt, big or small, have you ever asked yourself how it happened? Look at student loans. It’s fucking crazy what kind of interest rates institutions get for student loans. I see my friends feeling crushed under student loan debt and filled with shame and guilt. They think they did this to themselves and they are bad, but the truth is that it’s not entirely their fault.
Our monetary system has a history of preying upon vulnerable people. Look what happened in 2008: people were given mortgages that they weren’t qualified for, until the whole house of cards collapsed. It takes conscious effort to say, “I’m not going to get stuck in feeling guilt and shame about this. I trust that I am where I need to be right now. I trust in my ability to creatively problem-solve and find a way out.”
Another low-vibrational feeling is jealousy, which is believing you can’t have what somebody else has. Jealousy has an obsessive, hoarding energy around it. Yet another one is doubt, when you believe that something isn’t even possible for you. Insecurity means you feel like you are on shaky ground. Anxiety and fear, denial and anger — they all influence the flow of energy toward or away from you.
Instead of saying things like “I want that, but I can’t have it,” think, “I could totally have it. I don’t choose it right now, but I can choose it whenever I want to.” This is you taking back your choice.
Excerpted from the book from Empowered, Sexy, and Free. Copyright ©2022 by Jolie Dawn. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.
