What were you taught to see?
There I was, sitting in my car in the parking lot of the grocery store stressed over not having enough money to buy groceries. I was fighting back tears, calculating what I needed and how much I had to spend, and asking God for a miracle.
As I sat there, I noticed an employee bending over in front of my car. I realized that he was picking up $20 bills that were on the ground right in front of my car.
It was the most absurd moment. There I am sitting in my car praying for money and money is LITERALLY right in front of me, but I couldn’t see it. All I had to do was step out of my car, and it was there. But my level of awareness didn’t allow for that.
My awareness would not allow me to let that money into my life. The only thing I could see around me was lack. Limitation. Not enough-ness.
Sometimes God has to do something big and bold to get my attention. This was definitely one of those times — no mistaking this message.
The miracle I had been praying for was more money, but the miracle I really needed (the one I thankfully got) was the ability to see that my thinking was really the cause of my problem.
Lack of money was NOT my problem, no matter how much it felt like it was. My true problem was my inability to SEE the money and abundance that was already all around me.
I was looking for lack and problems, and guess what I saw? Lack and problems. As I paid attention to these things, they grew until they were all I could see.
In that moment, I realized that the money I was seeking was already here, I just had to learn to see it. The clients I was seeking were already here, I just had to learn to see them. The opportunities I was seeking were already here, I just had to learn to see them.
Maybe you’re a bit like I was. Maybe you learned it from your well-intentioned parents who were trying to keep you safe in the world.
Regardless of how you learned to see lack and limitation, when that becomes your dominant way of seeing the world, you can only allow lack and limitation in your life.
The pattern unfolds something like this:
- An event happens. (You lose a client)
- We give a meaning to it based on our beliefs about the world. (People don’t want to pay my fees.)
- We react based on that meaning. (I probably won’t get very many clients anyway, so I’m not going to advertise.)
- We create the results we most dread as a result of those actions. (See, I was right, nobody wants to pay my fees.)
As this cycle repeats itself, it gets stronger and stronger, creating neural pathways that set this as your “default”. Eventually, it DOES become your reality, as it did for me, sitting in my car without enough money to buy groceries.
How do you break this cycle?
First, you MUST believe that there is abundance around you, even if you can’t see it yet.
Second, you must train yourself to start to look for abundance and prosperity all day every day. You break the cycle by changing your thought patterns.
Once you begin to see the abundance already around you, you begin to expect it in your life. When you expect abundance, your eyes are open to all the possibilities and opportunities that already exist.