Redefining Abundance
I began my business backward. By the time I left corporate life, I already had a huge client lined up, a client who, if I worked only with them, would provide me almost the same income I was making by commuting to a desk every day.
Technically, I didn’t really have a maternity leave because I started my business before ODP was born. And I was fine with that. I am fine with that. My goal in starting my business is and was to do what I loved on my time and on my terms.
I stepped away from that big client last year, a few months before Bianca joined us. It was getting messy and political. There were too many cooks in the kitchen. It felt like time. I thought, Maybe I’ll actually have a little bit of a maternity leave. But, I—fortunately and unfortunately—have a brain that never stops moving, so just sitting still with a toddler running circles around me and an infant napping on my chest wasn’t enough to fuel me. I needed new projects and problems to solve and communities to grow and ideas to spark and chase after.
I also wanted more money.
I have always tied a big portion of my value to compensation. If i’m not getting paid “what I’m worth,” what’s the point of doing the work? Of slaving away and taking time away from this family I’ve grown and birthed? It has to be ROI-positive. And I have spent a lot of time thinking about that traditionally. Time = money, after all.
Earlier this year, I set a goal of a certain amount of income I’d be bringing in monthly. I worked toward it and was frustrated by the pandemic slowing me down—in many ways. I tried to think creatively in still achieving it, but it just kept getting blocked, to the point where I felt like I was working harder for less and less.
For my birthday, I was gifted a tarot reading with Calliope Tarot by my friend Emilie who owns a virtual assistant agency. We are each other’s woo woo friends. We love to talk human design, crystals, mediums, the whole nine. Emilie dabbles in tarot and sometimes pulls cards for me. I don’t have a great history with tarot (it’s always seemed too vague), but her pulls have been spot on.
Calliope was even better. I told her I’d been working toward a specific monthly income and she said, “Something’s off with that. Have you considered other ways of defining abundance?” I hadn’t. Not really, at least. I NEEDED MONEY. I WANTED MONEY. I WANT/NEED IT YESTERDAY. She told me about her past career as a film producer and moving into tarot and how she had to redefine her “worth,” just like I was. I’m no stranger to a daily gratitude practice, but this went beyond that. It’s an exercise in sitting down with what you have and reminding yourself of its abundance. It’s a reminder that the client I’m working with as a trade of service is providing me huge value, as I am for him. It was a reminder that if I’m focusing on the money I don’t have, even if I’m working toward it, I’m still living in a lack mentality. Reminding myself constantly of all I have that is good—a practice bigger than gratitude—brings me more abundance.
Just looking around me now, I can do this exercise:
I have an abundant amount of trees in front of me
I have an abundant amount of crumbs on the floor (aka a house and a roof etc etc)
I have an abundant amount of random ass baby things we don’t need (family joy, grandparents who spoil our children too much, and so on)
I have a lot of chairs at our table (so many humans in the world we love and want to cook for)
Even writing that now made my heart fill my chest a little bit more. And I, again, felt huge gratitude for what I have, instead of what I’m aiming for.
Someone reading this might say to me: You could reframe the monetary goal in terms of already having it, e.g. saying thank you for bringing me $XX amount of cash last month, but that’s not the point. I’ve been doing that. It’s the focusing on cash at all, no matter how I frame it, that’s been getting me in trouble. Feeling anxious about the cash, striving for the cash. My desperate need-to-prove-my-”worth” vibes aren’t a good look to the universe. They’re blocking my potential, and my contentedness.
I have lots of new ways I’m defining abundance in my life. How are you defining it in yours?
Image from Calliope Tarot
