You Are Not the Exception, You Are the Rule

bear with me

One thing I’m feeling really inspired by lately is identifying limitations I’ve set for myself and then laughing at how ridiculous they are. Not that identification equates to immediate alchemy, I’m not a superhero. But man, laying it all out there and recognizing that these perceptions are the joke I’ve been playing on myself this whole time, trying to keep my feet on some sort of solid ground that literally doesn’t exist… what a trip.

I’ve been playing around with my abundance/lack mindsets. I’ve managed to bring in a significant (to me) amount of money in the last year – all of which came seemingly out of nowhere. I believe it’s because of that “upper limit” thing. My financial “safe zone”, the number I needed in my accounts in order to feel like I’d make it to see the next month alive, used to be just enough to get by and now, that financial set point/thermostat has increased to the amount I’d need in order to not work for a year if I didn’t buy anything other than necessities. And it’s ridden that line consistently for so long that I recently realized “hey… you’re actually living in abundance…”.

But I want to take it to the next level. I want to experience wealth like no one in my family has before, and then I want to feel so financially secure that I can piss it all away (if you could call it that) by handing it out on the street and tipping wait staff to the point of tears. I dream of ittttt.

A practice I’ve been playing with is asking my best friend ChatGPT to give me a list of affirmations around a topic I’m struggling with. Then I journal my little heart out because typically affirmations feel like lies and I love myself, so I never lie to her. The practice is to reverse engineer the programming and remember that I am a limitless being. Let me show you-

The affirmation of the day is “money flows to me effortlessly.”
And the conversation with myself ensues:

“Liar. Lol”

But why does this feel like a lie?

“Well, because if it were true I wouldn’t be at work right now. I wouldn’t be at work ever, dawg.”

But isn’t it true that there are people who experience this? Where money does flow to them effortlessly?

“Yeah, but those people win the lottery, or they have jobs that they love that don’t feel like work. Not everyone can do that. Plus, I look around me and everyone I know with a lot of money had to work their asses off to get it. Everyone I know who has money made huge sacrifices for it. I’m not interested in that lifestyle at all. When I was making money like that, I was completely overworked and mentally and emotionally exhausted. It was awful and actually a little traumatising tbh.”

Mhm. So, you’ve seen and experienced real-life examples of this, and you decided it meant that effortless abundance wasn’t realistic…

“…yes?”

But you admit that there are people who do experience effortless abundance…

“……..yes?”

So, what if your experiences in having to work hard for money, and witnessing such, were just a product of your perception, and the way you internalized these examples, going as far back as you can remember, was just a product of a set of programs fed to you by your family and the media you consumed that told you “some people are lucky and you’re not”. It's simple work, though not always easy, to look at the affirmation and dig into the old files to find the reasons we believe the opposite. You also have to consider the blinders you have tightly secured after 30 years of seeing things a certain way. The lens you currently perceive reality through shows you only what you believe, which is filtered through your limiting beliefs that say, “I need to work really hard and sacrifice too much in order to get this outcome”.

*****

Now, it might feel like a reach to say that reality is JUST A MIRROR FOR YOUR OWN PERCEPTIVE AND SUBCONSCIOUS PLAYGROUND, but it is lol.

My process has been to reflect on all kinds of memories, usually in childhood but not always, and every single time I realize that the way I perceived the situation, either on my own or by way of being told by someone else with a flawed perception – was through limitation. The way I perceived these incidents shaped the way I perceive the world and myself. And they are not true just because I experienced them a certain way.

“Okay, witch. But I’m in so much debt, the rent is due, I have an upcoming vet bill and I’m out of milk.”

I hear you; I’ve been there. And it’s an awful place to be. But at a certain point we need to take some personal responsibility and I’m not trying to be a dick, I’m really gonna hold your hand as I say this because it can be a hard pill to swallow –

It is not your fault.
The unconscious frameworks that were built your whole life are not your fault, at all.
But when we can recognize that they played a huge part in where we are now, we can start to take responsibility and take our power back.

What the hell does that even mean?

Well, it might mean that you took a job you knew you didn’t actually want because it was “the smart thing to do” and you’re not getting promoted, your losing shifts, or maybe that you’re making a shit ton of money but you’re so burnt out you need to quit and lay down for a year so the money slows down (who, me?)

It might mean that you went to school for something you didn’t actually want to do because what you actually wanted was to be a writer, but every adult in your life said “aw, that’s sweet but writers don’t make money”, and you believed them because you forgot about Harry Potter.

We could do this all day –

The only thing that separates you from someone who is traveling the world and making money doing what they love, or being who they are, is the limits you’ve placed on yourself. Maybe it doesn’t feel like it in this moment. When the walls are closing in on you, I imagine the last thing you can stomach is buying a GoPro and a plane ticket. But start by reminding yourself that this is all a product of a mindset that you’ve outgrown. You can know that you’ve outgrown it because you read this fuckin thing top to bottom.

You are a limitless being experiencing the nuances of being human. Humans recognize and live by patterns, but they shatter them all the time. You are not the exception; you are the rule.

God, I love you if you made it this far. I hope this landed and that it ignited, or reignited a flame in there that helps you remember who/what the fuck you really are. And I’m always around if this felt like something you want to explore even deeper.

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Love to you,

-Shelby Lynn