How is your viewpoint on life? Do you constantly feel there is not enough, or do you feel grateful for all that you have? There are basically two states of being in life – abundance and lack.
Abundance Thinking
If you are viewing your life abundantly, you will feel that there is enough of everything. You will feel the flow and synchronicity, everything slots in to place with nothing to worry about. Even if you find yourself in difficult circumstances, you feel calm and trust that you are supported in life and that all will somehow work out for the best. You are able to allow others to be whatever they are and don’t feel the need to control or manipulate them. You feel at peace with yourself and the world. You have a feeling that there is enough of everything, you lack nothing. You feel optimistic no matter what.
Lackful Thinking
If you are in a state of lack, you will feel quite the opposite – everything is a struggle, you feel worried and fearful that bad things will happen, you engage in ‘future thinking’, coming up with worst-case scenarios for everything you engage in, you may feel inner resistance to your life situation, or the thoughts you are having. You may be in a state of ‘victim mentality’ where you feel that bad things always ‘happen’ to you, everyone ‘does things’ to you and nothing good can come to you. You may display controlling, manipulative behaviour, trying to take control of people and outcomes so that you can feel better about your life. Judgement of yourself and others will rear it‘s head and you may find yourself uttering the following statements or something similar:
“Why am I so stupid“
“He did this to me”,
“She did that to me”,
“Everything always goes wrong for me”
“I know what you‘re like…”,
“Why do you always…?!“
“You should…”
“You shouldn’t…”
“I should…”
“I shouldn’t…”
These two states boil down to an even more simple and emotional expression:
Abundance = Love Lack = Fear
So, are you living in a loving, expansive state, freely giving of yourself to others with an attitude that there is enough to go around, or are you living a fearful life, there is not ‘enough’ of anything, so you have to clench it all to yourself living in a state of constant contraction and worry? Many people have been trained into this life, it is survival at it’s most basic, but it is a flawed premise – if we switched over to an abundant attitude, everyone would share with everyone else and everyone would have enough. With lack you shoot yourself in the foot – it’s OK, it just comes from being trained into feeling vulnerable and fearful.
My own personal gratitude board
So how can you switch states?
This will take a little work and a little time, but will be extremely worth it in the end. Here are 5 things you can do which will begin to make the shift:
Adopt the saying “Everything always works out for me”. Any time you find yourself telling the story of how bad your life is, stop that story and tell everyone “Everything always works out for me”. You probably won’t believe it yourself at first, but watch your life and see what begins to happen – you are setting your brain to reprogram itself, to search out positive memories instead of negative, to bring about positive life experiences, to look for abundance. Good things will start to happen the more you look for them.
Drop fearful ‘future thinking’. No-one can see into the future, you cannot predict how circumstances are going to play out for you, so don’t even go there. Thoughts are things, they hold power – what you focus on grows and guess what your life will be if all you hold are fearful, worst-scenario thoughts? Drop them like a hot potato right now!
Develop an ‘attitude of gratitude’. Grab a notebook and every night before bed, write a ‘Gratitude List’ of the day. Start with the words “Today I feel grateful for…” I know it sounds like a trite saying, but gratitude really does create your attitude. List out as many things as you can find in the day to feel grateful for, no matter how small. Even if you are in deep depression, just the fact you got up, breathed in and out and made it back to bed is a bonus! (This may sound extreme, but believe me, this has been on my list at some points in my life.) What this does after a while is to retrain your brain to look for the positive in your life, rather than the negative. It forms new neural pathways (more on those in another article) and will become easier the more you do it. If you find writing each night too much, go through your Gratitude list in your mind as you are getting ready to fall asleep. Can you imagine the positive effect it will have if you fall to sleep every night feeling thankful? It really does work wonders. You could also pin up by your bed things that make you feel happy – thank you cards, lovely photos of good times with friends and family, drawings from your children, anything that makes you feel positive. If these are what you see when you wake first thing in the morning, they will set you up for a good start to the day (see my own gratitude board in the image above).
Get into a state of Appreciation by sending out thank yous. Every time something works out for you in the day, no matter how minor, imagine the words ‘thank you’ flowing out of your head and off into the Universe. If you are religious you could send it off to God, if not you could send it out into nature, or to those around you that enabled the positive event to occur – it doesn’t really matter, you are just training your mind to find appreciation. Remember to thank yourself as well as others – if you make yourself a cup of tea ‘thank you’, run a lovely bath for yourself ‘thank you’ etc. Treat yourself as you would anyone else that you feel appreciation for.
Realise that you always have a choice and take responsibility for your life. When we are in a state of ‘Victim Mentality’ it can feel as though we don’t have a choice in our life circumstances, as though everything happens to us, other people do things to us, it feels extremely disempowering. I found this in my own life when my marriage was breaking up. I’d spend hours fuming over how my ex husband ‘did’ this to me and ‘that’ to me and how dare he ‘make’ me so unhappy. Then during a wonderful session with my Life Coach I had the realisation that I had made the choice to stay in an unhappy marriage and allow myself to be treated that way – I was responsible for my own life and happiness, not my ex husband. I could have left at any point, I just chose not to. I found this so empowering and could see that I had played the role of victim for many years, in a way it was easier than taking responsibility for myself and my feelings and actually doing something about it.
You may feel enthusiastic enough to try all of the above at once, but do make sure it is not going to be too much for you. Better to pick one or two and stick with them, then you can try out the others as you progress. Make sure you try these for at least a week, a month if you can. If you are ready to make a change, you may as well give it your best shot and the longer you do these, the better results you will see as your brain literally begins to reform itself.
Lastly, if you don’t end up making the shift, don’t worry – you have just not reached your point of readiness. In the years that I was stuck in a state of lack, I learned so much about myself and others and it eventually brought me to such a place of strength and enlightenment that I wouldn’t change those years if you paid me – they hold some of the most valuable life lessons I’ve ever had. And remember, even if you are broke, you have an abundance of debt, if you are sick, you have an abundance of illness – if you look you can find abundance in any given situation. Look for the lackful, ‘not-enoughness’ in your life – it will ultimately bring you the gift of abundance in some form or another.