Each week in The Wisdom of Change blog series, I share the original artwork and unpack the insights and meaning behind one of the 44 cards in The Wisdom of Change oracle deck.
This week’s card is 24 Abundance
The wisdom in this card was powerfully healing to land. At the time it came through for me I had enormous monthly credit card repayments, huge overheads, tiny children and a fledgeling business. My partner of 12 years had decided to leave, and I still didn’t know exactly what my niche was or who my ideal clients would be. It seemed that for such a prolonged period of time I took one step forward financially and ten steps back. Lack, debt, competition and uncertainty seemed to await me at every turn. It was an emotionally crippling experience to go through. I was feeling overwhelmed and under-resourced.
Then one day I was driving somewhere listening to one of my numerous self-help CDs that I had collected over the years. It was Joe Vitale talking about his time living rough if I recall correctly. He was talking about the power of gratitude. On one hand, it was nothing that I hadn’t heard before, but for whatever reason on that day, I was ready to connect with the message at a deeper level. We often can’t hear the one thing that will radically move us forward. We have to stumble across various versions of the same idea multiple times. Joe talked about a man he had spoken to who thought he had nothing to be grateful for. The man indeed had very little to his name, so he was encouraged to be thankful simply for the breath in his body and the little pencil and notebook that he was writing in. Like attracts like is the simple premise behind this idea. When we are grateful for what we have, we attract more of the same. Keep compounding this effect, no matter how meagre the starting point may seem, and it won’t be long before we can feel abundant.
The idea of being grateful for something as small as a stub of pencil resonated loudly with me. I remembered an idea that I not yet put into practice because I had labelled it too simplistic and twee; the concept of the ‘gratitude journal’. There was something about this man and his paper and pencil that guided me to go home and dig out an unused diary that I had idle on the shelf. I began a daily gratitude practice. To begin with, my gratitude was for things way simpler than my lofty business goals; the beauty of a flower I had noticed on one of my walks, my children’s cute smiley faces, being able to sit quietly with a cup of tea. It brought me the gift of presence in the moment and this reminded me of something else I had learned.
A coach of mine had once noticed my anxiety at my perceived lack of progress. More importantly, she had picked up on the stories I was telling myself about the doom that lay ahead for me if I failed to perform better. I told her of my poverty struck future self who felt ashamed for giving up a great career only to fail spectacularly at entrepreneurship. In my tale of woe, I was sat outside my house on a pile of my belongings. My house was for sale because I could no longer pay the mortgage. It was a pathetic image that took me to a place of gnawing anxiety, hopelessness and pain. I felt disempowered, unresourceful and wretched.
She indulged me. ‘OK Wendy let’s go there then’, she said. ‘Let’s go to the worst possible outcome and sit there a while to see what you need when you are there’. Surprised by this suggestion, I nonetheless took myself to my woeful vision sat on my belongings outside my former home, accusing voices ringing in my ears of how irresponsible I had been. ‘Are you there?’ She asked. ‘Yes’ I said. ‘What do you need?’ She queried; ‘right there sat on that suitcase, what do you need’? ‘A roof over my head for tonight I guess’, I said dejectedly. ‘No’, she said gently; what do you need right there in that very moment?’ I stopped and thought. ‘A cup of tea?’ I ventured, half-jokingly. ‘You need a cup of tea?’ she gently inquired. ‘Well, it would be nice’ I giggled. ‘Nice yes’, she said, ‘but what do you actually need just in this moment, sat on your suitcase?’ I paused. I thought of all the things that would be nice to have; a chat with a friend, lots of money in my account to bail me out, certainty for the future or at least a sense of where next….
And then it landed, a realisation that shifted my consciousness like a bolt of lightning; in that moment as I sat there in the depth of the reality of my worst possible fears, I needed nothing at all but the breath in my lungs. With that alone, I was still in the game. All my ideas, qualifications, experience, skills, desire, ambition and knowing were all mine to keep that no one could take away. I could start again. I could start again as many times as I needed to in fact. It wasn’t over, I wasn’t finished, I had simply tried something that hadn’t worked, that was all. I realised that no matter what, the truth is that I am abundant beyond my wildest dreams simply to be alive with the passion and purpose and desire that has led me to wherever I find myself. My worst-case scenario hadn’t even happened, but in that visualisation, I had found all the resource I needed from a place far less encouraging than my present reality. Abundance flooded my consciousness in a wave of realisation and a fizzing excitement and renewed hope for the future pulsed through me.
So please don’t be fooled by the idea that you don’t have enough. You are abundant beyond your wildest dreams and you are still in the game. There is enough. There is no competition for who you are. There is a limitless supply of good and nobody has beaten you to your share. My loving invitation for today is to focus on what you have already, (even if it is only the breath in your body!) and delight in what happens from this shift in perspective.
You are abundance and you’ve got this x
I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s connection to your inner wisdom.
As always, I’d love to hear your comments below.
If you’d like to learn more about The Wisdom of Change oracle deck you can find out more here.
If you'd like to find out more about a Wisdom of Change reading with Wendy please click here.