When You Feel Like You Have To Hustle For Worthiness

Allow yourself to stop hustling. Allow it to be okay to step away from that ceaseless, soul-sucking grind of proving yourself to others. Your own view of your worthiness is all that matters. Since the mantra of "worthiness comes from within!" is less than helpful, here's how you can truly feel the worth that you were born with. Removing the numbing layers and piercing wounds around your self-worth will show you that you are every bit as valuable today as you were when you arrived.

Step into yourself and ask when you first felt unworthy. Were you a child? Is some memory or age called up? Go with whatever pops to mind and travel back to that moment in time. Ask the parts of yourself that know how to do this to heal that wound. Ask that healing to travel from the moment the belief was formed all the way to the present, where you stand now. Feel this as it happens. When it reaches you here in the present, extend it into your future, a future where you truly feel your full, intrinsic worth.

Ask if there are any other spots in your life or childhood where you felt like you weren't enough, weren't worthy, weren't whole. Go back in and allow the parts of yourself that know how to do this to heal each one and extend it up the line of your life to the present and into the future.

Give yourself time to integrate. Give yourself time to notice that you are worth everything and there is nothing that can be held from you if you choose to reach for it.

Let yourself see that when you radiate worthiness from within, the outside world can't help but reflect it back to you. This is when the hustle becomes either obsolete or so joyful that you're eager to dive in.

If You Want Something New

If you want something new, ask for it. Don't ask some external authority for what you want. Ask yourself. Ask yourself what you truly desire, what you truly need now. Ask what your soul needs and what your life needs before you ask what your bank account needs. Ask what will bring you joy now. Even if that joy doesn't make any sense in the quote-unquote real world. Sometimes the joy of walking a friend's dog while they're stranded on the couch with the flu will take you into a new part of the city, where you meet just the right person. Sometimes going to the fancy grocery store with the best peaches will introduce you to some new idea that will lead you somewhere you couldn't have imagined.

Joy is like a breadcrumb trail toward what you truly, deeply desire. If you follow the small bits of joy, they will lead you somewhere so much greater, even if you don't understand the path. Especially if you don't understand the path.

Trust where true joy leads you. Trust that if you spend a weekend making something you're excited about rather than updating your resume, it really will help you on your job search. Trust that when you're taking care of yourself, you're also taking care of your loved ones. Trust that when you allow yourself to feel joy, other wonderful feeling things can't help but be drawn to you. Joy is magnetic. Joy will alchemize the world around you to begin providing you with what you need. 

So ask yourself again, what do you want now? What would you like to be fresh and new in your life? Feel how that might feel - feel the joy, the safety, the love, and the lift. Follow that feeling and trust that it's taking you precisely where you need to go.

When To Ignore Your To-Do List

When the blue sky calls. When love notes need writing. When summer sun beckons. When something else sounds like more fun. When your favorite person lights up your phone. When night is falling and eyes are drooping. When you know that you already have everything you need. When you realize, finally, that it's not about doing - it's about being. 

Listen To Your Body

What doesn't feel right is an opportunity for investigation. All too often, we don't listen to our feelings, our gut instincts, the sensations in our body. Sometimes those physical sensations are subtle - a slight pressure on the chest, a warmth in the belly, a tingle in the hands. Sometimes those physical sensations are a spiritual approximation of a mallet to the head. Sometimes it actually is a mallet to the head. (Try to avoid those.) But our feelings and sensations are information. Not information that tells you, "If it feels bad, don't do it." For that is not always the truth. Sometimes it feels bad because you have emotion or circumstances to process to move forward. Sometimes it feels bad because there is resistance that you must conquer before you can continue. Everything you feel is an opportunity to know yourself better, know yourself on a deeper level, to develop a new relationship with yourself.

For example, if you feel something pressing against your chest, give that feeling permission to leave. If it doesn't leave, ask it for its message. Allow yourself to hear the answer, whether it appears immediately or takes a bit of time.

Feelings and physical sensations are a way to glean information that can't quite penetrate the walls of our brain. Our brains can only repeat what they already know, so if new knowledge needs to find you, it won't always choose your brain as its best point of entry. Your brain may ignore something, but your body never can. 

Because Money Freak Outs Happen

What is money? How does it come to you? Money is just like everything else - a flow. We've assigned it great importance because in this world we've made money mean security. Money to most of us means a roof over our head, food in the fridge, and a sure future. But money is no different than anything else. Money begins in your mind. Money shows you the truth about yourself, about what you've made the flow of your life mean, where you are and aren't allowing yourself to receive.

Love flows to you when you let yourself feel love for what's around you. Peace flows to you when you decide it's okay to feel peace. Money flows to you when you've decided that you can allow yourself to have what you need, what you want, what you truly desire. Money heightens these lessons because we've attached so much importance and so much of our wellbeing on the amount of money we have. We choose the amount that makes us feel safe. Some feel safe with ten dollars, some feel safe with ten thousand or ten million dollars. It is arbitrary. Money is arbitrary.

Money is not our security or our savior. Money is only a means, a means to know ourselves better, a means to get what we want. But money is not the gatekeeper to love or security or freedom. We can have these things with or without money.

Money works best when we share something we value - our art, our time, our knowledge - and receive in return. Money is simply an idea, an idea that works best when it feels fun, when it feels like simply another way to accept in the flow. You send out, you accept back, in an infinitely looping figure eight.

Care for it, love it, share it, send it back into the world for things you love and value - that's when money can truly do its job. Money doesn't need to be a receptacle for our shame and our fear and our disappointment. It can be, if that's what you require to learn what you've decided to learn. But money can simply be another tool that allows you to play in the world.

No moral value or judgment is attached to money. Receiving what feels like a large amount of money for value you put into the world does not carry the weight of "good" or "bad" - it's simply the product of a decision you've made. But the decision can't simply be made on the surface. The decision of what you're worth must be made within your deepest, darkest depths. By accepting and loving those deep, dark depths you can integrate them into the wholeness of your life, your soul, and your experience. When you do not judge yourself or others, you will not judge money. When you do not judge money, you have removed enormous blocks to allowing yourself to have it.

Money is like love - it comes to you when you allow it, when you welcome it, when you prepare yourself for it. Preparing yourself for it does not need to take time, it does not need to be another barrier. Preparation is simply something you have previously assigned yourself.

If you don't have the money you think you need or want, rejoice. You have just been accepted into the PhD program of your choice and you are about to learn how to conquer the world. As you go through the process of learning how to accept and have the money you would like, trust that you won't be abandoned, you won't be left, you won't be assigned to suffer. Allow yourself to have what you need without money and trust that as you step forward, one step after another, you will learn all you need about money - that it was never about money and it was always about yourself.