What is that song in your head?

What is the song in your head?

I was reading a book called “The Soul of Money”. In it, the author describes a state of sufficiency as an ideal state of relating to money and material possessions. Sufficiency is when we have what we need, no more and no less.

She was/is in fundraising for a world hunger non-profit. So she spent time in the poorest communities of the world..and also the wealthiest.

What she learned is that people with too much money (and we’re talking huge excess here) were often unhappy. Especially if they were all about working and accumulating more.

People with less often delighted in things that we take for granted. Like clean water and food on the table.

Those that lived a life of sufficiency, always having what they needed, not more and not less, were happier.

She goes much deeper than this, obviously and I truly do recommend the book for everyone because, ya know, we ALL use money.

While reading her book, I had a pretty big A HA moment when it came to my own experience of “not enoughism” and how that translated into my daily experiences.

From the perspective of the studio, I have a business degree. Specifically, an accounting degree. As I was growing up in corporate world, the ideal for small businesses was to have a month of operating expenses in the bank at any particular time.

This “guideline” haunted me for so many years. As many small business owners, I often struggled to pay myself a living wage. But to accumulate? Holy shit. That felt like the holy grail.

And because of my patterns and conditioning, my lack of ability to achieve an accumulation of cash in that quantity activated my internal “not enoughism”.

My internal dialog about money used phrases like “it’s not enough”, “you are a failure”, “this is embarrassing”.

I was not talking to myself like my best friend; the voice was more like an abusive basketball coach.

So what experience did that perpetual negative self dialog specifically regarding money give to me?

Never feeling like I have enough. Which was a miserable feeling.

I can pinpoint the time in my life this dialog was active. And probably, so can quite a few other people.

It is truly painful to feel “not enough”. Whether that relates to your bank account or your self worth.

The actual phrase that woke me up was “why is this so hard”. It was my contra mantra, echoing in my mind like a song I heard on the radio that morning.

My constant internal question “why is this so hard” created a life experience that felt hard.

My subconscious belief and dialog on not having enough resulted in the feeling of not having enough - even though I had everything I had ever wanted. Literally. I was wanting for nothing.

Waking up to the fact that these thoughts were simply programmed, neurological impulses didn’t make them go away. But it did take away all their power.

How did this programming happen?
As a teenager I did have an abusive basketball coach who was impossible to please.
“You can do better, Alyssa” was something I was told as a child by my father (who i’m sure heard it from his).

When we can wake up to the fact that our thoughts are just energetic impulses programmed from our experiences in life (good and bad) - our experience in life can begin to change.

So we begin to become aware of these thoughts and as we become aware of the thoughts, we become more aware of the space in between the thoughts.

This creates a space in the mind for gratitude to begin to shine it’s light.

The knowing that everything is as it should be right her and right now begins to take root.

And that is EVERYTHING.