Thursday, January 20, 2011

The importance of being grateful.

Manifesting wealth is an interesting activity to me. I've got a troubled relationship with money. I'm sure this stems from hearing so much about how we couldn't afford things when I was young. What's funny is that while we didn't have a ton of money, we were probably just fine. I know we were never on public assistance, I don't remember once eating horrible cheap meat. I never ate ramen (unless I wanted to :)) We still went on vacations, albeit we had to go to places where my dad had a business convention so we could stay in the hotel for free. Had our attitude been one of thankfulness for what we did have, as opposed to concentrating on our lack of extras, my relationship with money might be very different.


People who believe that money should be in their lives somehow manage to allow it in no matter what.  Have you ever known someone who declared bankruptcy or had a business go under, yet they still seemed to live in a nice house? I know one family who filed bankruptcy and lost their house, only to move into another really nice house, but this time they lived in a neighborhood instead of on horse property. Even their "broke" house was better than mine!


I've been working really hard on changing my relationship with money. I have always been taught or perhaps just always felt, that longing for money is greedy, sad, and shallow.  I am realizing now that if I see myself as someone who is good with money and someone who deserves to have a lot of it, that's okay.


Working on manifesting wealth at this time in my life is extra challenging. My husband's career is very unstable, but he is passionate about it. I want to support him in his dream, and while we certainly haven't become rich, his jobs in this field have afforded us many other benefits- living in different parts of the country, meeting so many interesting and varied people, traveling and living all over the world.  Unfortunately, it is common for him to be between jobs, which is where we currently are.


I know that a big part of LOA is visualizing yourself having wealth and pretending and acting as though you have it. Really though, I cannot pretend we have the money for me to just go to the mall and buy some new shoes (one of my favorite things to do, by the way.) Going to the mall right now would cause me to have a lot of negative and stressful vibrations going out.  What I can do is use a combination of gratitude, hard work and faith that good things will come to me. I think that often times people are discouraged with the Law of Attraction because they will visualize and wish for things, yet those things do not manifest.  You know the old saying "God helps those who help themselves?" You can replace the word "God" with the phrase "law of attraction" and it still holds true.


Every day, throughout the day, I look  around me and say thank you for all the things I have that I enjoy.  I've been doing this so much that it's really become so easy to find things. While I was folding laundry the other night, without even blinking an eye, I noticed how many nice clothes my daughter has, and was thankful that she has such nice clothes. I have no need to shop for her right now. I REALLY hate folding clothes, so for me to find a way to be thankful for anything during this dreary task is quite a testament to my gratitude skills.  I've been thankful the grocery store had the kind of chips I like on sale, thankful for my ipad, thankful for my computer.


In the summer of 2009 I was working in my field (social work), and my job was terrible. I was so depressed. People were quitting, getting fired, I was in trouble for a decision I made about a child that I did not believe was wrong. At the time my husband didn't have a job, so I really couldn't quit without finding something else first. Every day in my gratitude journal (an iphone app) I listed my job as something I was thankful for. It actually made me depressed to be thankful for it, but I was trying my best to like my job. It was a mix of "if I say I love it, maybe I will", and true gratitude because we really needed that job.


Anyway- fast forward to December 2009, my husband gets a great job overseas, in March of 2010 I quit my job and was thrilled. Then, this last December comes and my good friend from work emails me that they've made changes to our unit, and it has been going really well and I should consider coming back and picking up some shifts when I come back to America (which I thought was going to be in March or April of this year.)  A few weeks later I'm home, and I have a job again (start February 1st!), doing the same thing, but this time it's better. I really believe it was my being thankful for  the job in the first place, and being thankful for what I have that made me able to go back to this job so easily. I'm super grateful to have this job without having to interview or anything. That is LOA for sure.

No comments:

Post a Comment