@bnt on Money #1: The Essence of Abundance

bnt (53)in #life • 8 years ago (edited)

Abundance

Hi guys! This is my first ever post and I'm super eager to share it with all of my fellow steemians. All feedback is welcome, appreciated and WILL be upvoted!

The concept of abundance is foreign to a lot of people. In fact, I'd say it's foreign to most people. Sure, the dictionary definition is simple enough to understand, but having an actual understanding of abundance is not something you see every day and certainly not in most people.

Due to evolutionary circumstances, we have been conditioned to think in short-term, scarcity-based terms. Back in the day (285 million years ago, give or take,) if you didn't consume the resources that you had access to (which were few to begin with) you could potentially die. This footprint has been present in our brains, specifically on top of our spines, since those days. It's what some pundits call the "lizard brain."

However, this kind of mentality is no longer relevant to our day-to-day lives. Specially not if we want to become wealthy. We want to exchange that scarcity-based mindset for one based in abundance.

I've come to believe that abundance is the answer to most of our prerogatives. If you had abundant financial resources, abundant health, abundant time or abundant relationships, I'd be willing to bet that your problems in those areas would diminish significantly if not disappear altogether.

But even so, abundance-based mindsets are the exception, not the norm. Then again, so is being wealthy, so maybe they have something to do with each other? I definitely think so. However much clarity and alleviation abundance can bring to most of our problems, I think the reason it's so rare it's because it's so counter-intuitive. In other words, it doesn't seem biologically natural for us to engage in it, so we ignore it.

But if everything we've thought about and done so far has led us to where we are, and where we are is not where we want to be, maybe a course of action could prove beneficial.

My way of coming into abundance is to assume it and act towards it. Assume that you'll have abundance in whatever area of your life you'd like it to be present in. I'm being completely serious here, you need to be confident, positive and 100% sure that you're going to have that abundance in that are of your life very soon. That's the first step.

The second step is to figure out how that abundance is going to materialize into your life. The more specific you make your vision, the higher the chances it'll come to fruition. Specificity is the best friend of accomplishment. Visualize, plan and realize. It's as simple as that.

This deceptively simple plan is exactly how I've realized any and all abundances I've wanted in my life. Each step is very important and needs to be given its time and place within this overall mindset, so please don't lose sight of that fact.

Even though I don't consider there are any real limits to abundance, one has to learn to manage it once it becomes real. Mismanagement is the bane of all abundances' existence. In simple terms, just because you can squander your abundance away doesn't mean you should. It sounds stupidly simple, I realize that, but there's no shortage of people who have mismanaged one or several forms of abundance, only to have it taken away from them.

After you pave the road for your financial abundance and you get to the destination, it could feel quite strange to if you've never experienced it before. Your first instincts may tell you to engage in lavish buying sprees or do something equally wasteful with it. Please ignore those instincts or you'll be back to square one sooner than you can possibly imagine.

Instead, you should let the responsible part of you take over. Basically this means increasing your expenditures as minimally as possible and they should already be substantially below what you earn or can afford. Instead of disposing of the money because you feel weird, the real solution is to just be grateful and move on. That's it. Be thankful to whatever entity you believe is responsible for your coming into financial abundance (could even be yourself) and appreciate the effort that it took you to get here.

Now, I'm asking you minimize the impact on your expenses because that will enable you to do a couple of things. First, you will be able to realize that your needs haven't changed much from what they were when you got started. This means that your net worth will be able to properly expand without you getting in your own way.

Second, you will allow time for reality to set in about your new situation. This might seem odd at first, but everybody needs some time to adjust, specially if it's the first time you experience financial abundance.

The third and last benefit is that you will come to appreciate and hopefully be thankful for the freedoms that you can now afford. It's not necessary that you take them as they come, but knowing that you can easily afford something that previously seemed unattainable can be extremely liberating.

I realize that you probably think I'm getting a little bit too "New Age" or positive thinking here, but it's actually the opposite. I've never met someone who is grateful for what they have and who doesn't know what to do with the object/person/event. Gratitude brings protection, certainty of purpose and added enjoyment to whatever it's being applied to. This is specially true for money and if you are genuinely grateful for what you have, you're also giving yourself permission to get more with no remorse or guilt. Those feelings can't occupy the same space as gratefulness.

There is enough money in the world, let alone available to you, that you don't have to worry about the physical or actual existence of financial abundance. It is absolutely real, you just need to provide enough value to this world to get what's rightfully yours. So go ahead, assume abundance, materialize it, be thankful for it and enjoy it for the rest of your life!