knowabundance.com

Happy Monday!

I used to think that I had to be something for my life to have meaning.

I used to think that I had to do something to earn my life.

Then I woke up to the fact that I am alive.

Sure, this sounds obvious, but I was so distracted by all my striving to be and to do that I totally overlooked this elementary truth.

Being alive is a new revelation every day.

That’s where the Know Abundance mantra, “Everything I need, I already have” comes from.

Our scarcity beliefs are most prevalent at this fundamental level of our relationship with life. Why is being alive not enough?

We constantly judge ourselves and each other based on standards (created by ?) that say we need to do more, we need to be more, than what we are.

I notice this underlying belief all the time in the women’s movement as we try to make a case for why women and girls should have equality with men. We say, “Invest in women and girls because it is better for society, for democracy, for the family, for the economy, for a future without extremism and violence…”

This might be true – in fact a lot of studies have been done to show that “investments in women yield large social and economic returns.”

But while this recognition of women and girls as vital and important is welcomed after years of marginalization, there is a subtle message that is also carried: we are not valued for being alive, only for what we can produce.

Why are the elderly and people with disabilities often seen and treated as “less than?”

A friend said to me last week, “I always thought the world would be better without me.”

In our striving to be something and to do something – we overlook the fact that each and every one of us is a unique expression of life. This is a given. We don’t have to do or to be anything.

We make up those requirements. That’s our story – added on after our birth. We tell each other and ourselves how we should look and behave, what kind of jobs we should have, how much money we should make and how things should be in our lives.

This week, let being alive be enough.