I have taken myself from being in receipt of welfare benefits aged 38 to having a thriving business that has allowed me to buy my first property, aged 53. 15 years of building a business and working hard through adverse economic conditions, adverse weather and my lack of business experience. But now here I am on a Monday morning writing this and I have 3 teams out building gardens. My business is in demand and I can hardly keep up with the new client enquiries. I have all the signs of the potential for even greater success if I steer my course wisely.
Why did it take me so long to manoeuvre myself into being economically viable enough for a mortgage? Back when I was a teen I knew I did not want a life (like my parent’s life as I saw it) of having material security at the expense of my love of adventure and exploration, of learning and discovery, so I went for a life of being a bit of a gypsy and traveller.
As I also loved learning and progressing and wanted to keep a foot in society and contribute in some way, I managed to get a pass amid all the fun in Landscape Architecture in my 20s. Then I had a child at 28, a surprise, but a very very welcome one. That took care of the next few years, I could just relax a enjoy being with him and I did. I had a poor ability to choose good partners so I did this without his dad. I did have huge support from my family, I am so very grateful for that.
So back to now where I am now experiencing relative success. Allowing this in to my life has been a challenge in itself. Why?
- Its new and unfamiliar to have money and I feel fear at times about it
- It has made me wealthier than some friends, and I have experienced losing a few of those , some adverse responses and find myself more alone now
- I am made aware of ambivalent judgements I have about wealthy people
- It has brought up self doubt and questions for me to look at, can I handle wealth without losing my important core values?
- It is a responsibility having money
- It makes for more choices, which negatively can be experienced as stress and positively as more freedom
- It has made me question what I really want
- Part of me identifies as being undeserving of wealth
So quite a wish mash of responses going on, and what I am doing is continue to row my boat regardless of the fears and doubts. I ma feeling anxious right now actually! But this is also very much exciting new territory, and essentially it is an act of self love to allow more material security into my life. And that is my main life theme at the moment.
Allowing myself to have more financial success is a way I can look after myself, an aspect of the relatively new theme of self compassion that I haven’t tried before. Up i=until now even in my business life I have yoyo’d between doing well and doing dismally poorly financially. I see now how I sabotaged my progress in this area.
Now I am more aware of the mechanism of self sabotage I can raise the upper limit of the abundance I allow into my life, and this goes not only for financial wealth but in joy and happiness and general wellbeing too.
What I have discovered is that my success needs to be compatible with my values. And some of my values did not appear to be compatible with wealthiness at first. This created some inner conflict of goals which I have to smooth out before I will allow more success in.
So I have had to do some digging into this to ensure that I honour these deeply held values that are important to me and that the new wealth I am learning to welcome in can in some way allow me to express these values more widely. (I did a core values test online, its free for the basic one, and I highly recommend it to clarify what your values are).
Learning to Rest with it All 