The amount of money we allow ourselves to manifest is definitely a reflection of our own value-perception and worth. The more we recognize and own our own value, the more money we attract. But the ease (or not!) by which we attract that money is a reflection of our sense of deservingness.
There is a perception in our society that we “should” only receive abundance after passing through trials and hardship. Paying our dues, working hard, being the low man on the totem pole, working our way up, even gaining experience or going after a professional credential, are all symptoms of finding ourselves not deserving quite YET. Rags-to-riches stories abound. In every movie we see, we find the main character going through trials and tribulation before a happy ending.
The other day, I found myself asking my Guide team whether I would still find my work “challenging enough” if I took it into a particular direction. I caught myself in mid-question, stunned. Why would I want to be challenged in my work? I immediately corrected my intention towards ease and minimal effort … and was surprised by how odd that felt!
We’re highly conditioned to “earn” our abundance. Going through challenges and struggles on our path somehow gives us permission to step into our own deservingness. Making money easily and with minimal effort … well, that would just be wrong … right?
This makes receiving financial abundance for living our Divine gifts a bit tricky. Our Divine gifts are what come to us most easily! Serving others through our Divine gifts is most certainly the easiest “work” we could ever do. Our Divine gifts, after all, are perfectly natural to us!
And so we make it harder on ourselves … because we are conditioned to believe that, without hardship, we’re simply not deserving.
We may try to run our business in ways that are not authentic, or take jobs we hate for the sake of “gaining experience.” We may slug our way through an academic degree without enjoying a single minute of the experience. None of this has anything to do with putting our authentic Divine gifts forth into the world … but gosh, it sure makes us feel more deserving when we struggle!
Are you creating struggle just to feel deserving of abundance? Many of us do! Because making money and creating the life we want couldn’t possibly be easy … or could it?
Check in with yourself – is there something you feel you need to do, accomplish, or overcome before you can receive abundance? Or is it possible that you are perfectly deserving in this very moment of everything you want in your life?
Blessings,
Andrea
Filed under: Manifest Money • Releasing Limiting Beliefs
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LOVE this post Andrea – so fitting and perfectly timely – I’ve been thinking myself about the prevailing myth that our culture (Western culture) is built upon – that we must SUFFER in order to be redeemed – or alternatively that we must be SAVED in order to be redeemed – both messages are inherently loaded with the subliminal messaging that we – exactly as we are – are not good enough for the experience of Heaven. Enough of that!! I’m ready to manifest HEAVEN ON MOTHER EARTH right NOW!! Let’s do it TOGETHER!
Loving you….
Amethyst
Thanks, Amethyst! I don’t know if it’s just our culture … I think lots of spiritual traditions are built upon having to “earn” our spiritual advancement. I’m with you … enough! Heaven now!
Hi Andrea,
Reading this, in this moment couldn’t have come at a better time. I wholeheartedly agree with every word, and feel that it is really what I am addressing with myself at the moment. Yes I deserve, I deserve right now.
It really doesn’t have to be as hard as we think sometimes. I am now focused on what I love, only doing things I love everyday!
thank you
Blessings to you!
Namaste
Thank you, Brooke – so glad this resonates. YES, you deserve right now! And I’m with you on doing only what we love. So often, we try to fit ourselves into one box or another, only to find that we are creating suffering. And yet, when we allow ourselves to be exactly that – ourselves – abundance and fulfillment flow.
No doubt what you describe is me! Receiving just because it’s my divine birthright? What a bizarre idea, but one I’m willing to explore. Thanks Andrea for being so real.
Mary Kay, you made me chuckle … we’re BOTH charter members of the “limitless capacity for work club” … let’s resign!
You present a very provocative thought. To freely receive something great from the creator of the universe out of pure love just for being me would be a fantastic experience to feel. Growing up I was told the only way to get a head in life was to obtain a good education, work hard and to give without expecting to receive anything in return. I’ve done that and that is not how my life has worked out. It would be so wonderful to receive a blessing just for being me, not because I have paid my dues and now I deserve it. To be able to reprogram my instructed beliefs and free myself for this adventure is something I believe I could benefit from.
Terry – so start by treating yourself that way. Give yourself blessings, just for being you – no conditionality, nothing to prove, nothing to attain. Treat yourself as the gorgeous, deserving, precious Divine Being you are … and watch what happens!
I personally don’t feel like I must “earn” or “deserve” it, BUT there is this very common idea that we grow and learn much more through negative learning experiences, that I am apparently buying into. So, if it were too easy, I would think that I am not growing much!
It’s also true that I find struggle heroic and romantic in some way. In movies and stories, the hero experiences tons of hardship and struggle until everything seems lost… and then in the third act he wins.
This pattern seems to be deeply anchored in collective consciousness. I mean, can you imagine a Hollywood movie where the hero just walks around peacefully doing what he’s naturally best at? 
Without drama, no story that sells.
Maybe it’s time for me to stop wanting to be a fast growing hero.
Wow, yummy stuff! This is also very timely for me as well. I’m with you guys… were are divine beings, let’s start acting like it! No suffering and struggling for me, thanks. I’ll take abundance in an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way
I wholeheartedly agree with what you said here “Our Divine gifts are what come to us most easily! Serving others through our Divine gifts is most certainly the easiest “work” we could ever do. Our Divine gifts, after all, are perfectly natural to us!”
However, I think the concepts of challenge and struggle deserve more than a passing glance and a throw under the bus. It’s worth contemplating if there is value to challenge and struggle. Since they exist, they must be good for something. (At least in my life philosophy, NOTHING is wasted.) I’ll get to the value of contrasts in a minute.
But what about why someone might actually *want* to be challenged or find their work “challenging enough”? I think there is merit in that, because through challenge and struggle is *how we grow*. It’s not the only way to grow, but it’s often the fastest, most interesting, and most stimulating.
Also, there are different flavors of challenge. I actually enjoy mental, physical and emotional short-term challenges. Shorter-term challenges are stimulating because they bring out creative thinking, are often quickly transformational, and are incredibly fulfilling to overcome. So maybe it isn’t that we want our work to always be challenging, but rather, we like the challenge-achievement cycle because it is *fulfilling*.
Long-term, perpetual challenge or outright struggle is a different story, perhaps, and its value lies in using it as a sign or guidepost. If things get too hard, unpleasant or painful, struggle is there to show us we’re meant to take another road. I think we agree that if doing your work is a *constant* struggle, it’s probably not the work you’re meant to be doing. But a little struggle? Certainly a catalyst for thinking out of the box or leaving one’s comfort zone, and certainly a lesson for persistence when persistence is needed.
If we were all born into a world where we were constantly guided and told to do only what comes naturally to us and makes us happy, we’d never have or need challenge or struggle. But since for 99% of us on this planet that is not the world, challenge and struggle exist to bring out our divine natures and steer us toward what feels natural and harmonious and is by virtue of that, easy to us.
Let’s not discount the value of contrast in shedding light and furthering growth. Every cloud just makes the sun behind it want to shine that much brighter. And make no mistake, no matter how high you or anyone has ascended to divinely-guided, easy work, a new cloud will drift in to take growth to the next level. (The life of the current Dalai Lama – good example) There’s always higher to grow.
Hi Karen – I think we can definitely choose challenge and struggle as a path of personal expansion. Like you, some people enjoy challenges! Which is fine. But we can easily get addicted to struggle and challenge – the ego loves the boost of overcoming, of triumph. And since what we focus on expands, we can end up creating our life through a series of challenges we must surmount. And again, there’s nothing wrong with that, if it works for us! After all, we get to create whatever reality we want!
Speaking of which … I think we ARE born into a world in which we’re constantly guided (from within!) and DO, after we reach adulthood, have the opportunity to do what comes naturally and is fulfilling. We can choose that. I choose that! There is NO “need” for challenge and struggle – it’s up to us create the path of evolution we want. And if we create a reality in which we need the clouds to appreciate the sun, well, then that’s true too. But I don’t think it’s a necessary part of growth.
It is, in the end, what we choose it to be … and everything we choose is “right” because we chose it! Isn’t it wonderful?
I grew up being taught that if I didn’t work hard, any resulting positives where not truly worthwhile. If I got an “A” in a class that was easy for me-it was brushed under the table for the “A” that I had to study for. Anything less was, “Why didn’t you get an “A”? Now, my teacher-my dad-just passed this week. His passing was in accordance with this life belief. He worked hard and had pain in his passing. What a HUGE lesson for me – cognitively. Now, I have to change.
Wow, Mary, what you wrote really struck a chord with me!
In school I was very brilliant, always the best in my class, but I didn’t do it intentionally, it just came so easily to me that I got those good grades whether I wanted it or not. The other kids in the family got rewarded for good grades, but I never was (my mom said she would be ruined in no time if she did). Just like with you, my achievements were brushed under the table or even made fun of because of being too easy. Somehow I learned that “what is easy does not count”.
Plus I was very ashamed of it being so easy for me. Others had to work hard and were not half as successful.
I guess I still have this to some degree inside me. Thank you very much for bringing this to my awareness! Time to heal it.
Love.
It might be that we are not deserving because we don’t meet our challenges. We refuse to struggle and demand to be comfortable. We are in denial about most everything. We may have traded our sense of responsibility for feel-good affirmations, but in the physical world, that doesn’t deal with the reality that exists here.
It’s not a comforting idea, but that is the point.
It’s an interesting point, Frank. There are certainly lots and lots of people “out there” who don’t meet their responsibilities and just go with whatever feels best in the moment. But the people I tend to attract to this blog and newsletter are WORKING on their spiritual path … many of them have invested years and years and countless hours, much introspection and have made brave leaps of faith to raise their consciousness and create a life that reflects their Divinity. I know that’s perhaps not true for the majority of the population – so I’m really talking more to the type of readers I tend to attract!
Hey Andrea thanks for your response. I do agree the natural state of existence is that we are constantly guided from within, however, it seems to me there is little or no emphasis in the modern world to teach or trust that. If only the norm was to teach children to listen to and trust their inner wisdom rather than to just conform. Well, that\’s why there are more and more of us trying to shed light and get that message out, so I do have hope. Still, for many it is unknown.
And thanks for your caution about the addictive potential of struggle and challenge. We can easily go unconscious and forget that as adults we can choose how we want things to go. I think for most, brought up as a product of their conditioning toward not listening to or trusting inner guidance, overcoming the struggle mentality is a huge mindset shift. For those raised that way, they need to stay aware, vigilant and conscious and with practice, it becomes easier to choose the path of evolution that is easier vs. harder.
You\’re right, we each create our own reality and in the end, even if we choose to create one filled with struggle and challenge, I guess it serves us as we need it to (nothing is wasted) even if only to show us how unnecessary challenge and struggle is! Your assertion that challenge and struggle – although it exists because we create it – is not *necessary* has taken my thinking to a new level. Working on a blog post about it, stay tuned – it will link back to this post.
Amen, Andrea! Just the other day I was pushing myself to create my own website. In the past I was a computer programmer. Surely, I can do my own website. But energetically I felt so unhealthy and off. Then I realized I was in that place of suffering to deserve, which actually was a place where I was NOT expressing my Divine gifts. Thanks for your message. So helpful.
Andrea thank you for this, it’s very helpful. I’ve been noticing how i tend to think i need to spend time on something to be able to earn from it or put in loads of effort to deserve money. Think all this comes from a lack mentality and thay i have to deserve the money more than other before i have it. So now i’m focusing on remembering this is an infinite universe with infinite resources and yes even infinite money … if i can get my mind to accept it. thanks for your pointers.
Thanks for your words Andrea. It has taken me along time to get over my childhood conditioning that I must “earn” my success.
Like Rosine, I also learned that “what was easy didn’t count”. So I neglected my gifts and talents for many years, because they were too easy! (Ridiculous I know…)
I’ve also felt guilt sometimes that my life was “better” than others, or that I had “so much” compared to other people….I would LOVE to get over this feeling…
Still working on this stuff!! Any wisdom you have to share is appreciated. I just want to live my life.
Kara
H Andrea
In the past I valued everything . I have recently learned to share. I have also learned everything has a diferent value to each of us. Something I think is worth a milion dollars is only worth hundreds to someone else . It is in the perception that shift can take place. It is in giving up that I have found peace. I no longer struggle and it is wonderful.
Abundance and achievement can grow and grow. In letting go I have reached such prosperity. I have foudnd my inner wisdom. Reached that place where I know I can. It is invaluable.
Thank you for your genuineness and openess
My appreciation is beyond meassure
Ilona
I’ve never understood others’ need to be “challenged” constantly. I’ve always wanted a job that is full of ease, flow and joy. Quiet and calm, not frantically busy. Thank you for this article Andrea, it helps me understand a bit about society’s need to be “challenged” and want to “work hard” (which has never appealed to me).