Have you ever examined your thought patterns and habits and gotten really curious about where they come from? I’ve recently become aware of one of my habits that comes from a scarcity mindset and I am now *consciously* shifting towards the opposite, abundance-based approach instead.
But let me back up and start at the beginning.
I was a weird child. I didn’t like chocolate and I could make my halloween candy last until Easter if not longer. My friends couldn’t understand it; their candy lasted maybe a week. It might have been partially because I didn’t have a sweet tooth or the fact that my dad became diabetic in my childhood and I became more aware of sugar, but the fact is… I would save things, and not just candy. I would find myself holding onto gift certificates for a really long time, almost to the point where they would expire.
I now recognize this pattern as coming from a place of scarcity: my thinking: “I better hold on to this {candy, gift certificate, bottle of wine, box of chocolates, special olive oil, whatever…} and save it for a special occasion because it may not easily come into my life again.” Woah! Talk about not sending the right message to the universe.
The other interesting thing about this discovery is that my feeling of needing to save and hold onto things was adding to the amount of clutter in my life. From what I’ve learned about feng shui (thanks Kate Northrup) clutter blocks the flow of abundance. When we hold onto things for a long time they become clutter both physically and mentally. Not only do they sometimes take up physical space, but we also need to use a small part of our brain to remember them and keep them on the back burner, until the time is ‘just right.’
Getting rid of clutter creates space for energy and abundance to flow.
So what am I doing differently now? What does abundance look like?
The chocolate that arrived in our stockings on Christmas got devoured in January. It looks like using up all the bath salts that I got for Christmas by the end of January, yeah! It means that I went and picked out some new lingerie and used up the gift certificate I got from my bestie (high five, bestie!). It means that we lit our new beeswax candles immediately after bringing them home a few weeks ago. It means that I am contacting the people who have offered me things (complimentary sessions, etc) and taking them up on their offer, with thanks!
My attitude now is that I might as well enjoy the nice things that have arrived in my life and show the universe that I appreciate them and trust there’s plenty more to come!