Turns out for me that was the only way I could really find abundance, and realise it's NOTHING to do with money.
My house needs renovation, it used to eat holes in me that I couldn't do it, and it's been needing work for more than a decade. $70K at least.
Our water cylinder needs replacing. Turns off by itself, we have to start it ourselves. (Oh dear, what a first world problem, so grateful we can do that, so many people without running water, never mind hot water).
I could go on but you get the picture. It's been more than a decade of limited income, limited thinking, fear, survival mentality, daring to bust out of living in the prison of work that didn't support me or allow me to shine, and failure, failure, failure.
I hated the word 'abundance'. In part because I felt so impoverished inside.
But also because of all the shiny gold showers of coins and pictures of money and say Yes this is coming to me now and all of the BS which is wrapped around abundance which I came to detest. Utterly. Hand me a barf bag.
It all felt like un-achieveable lies, stories I had to tell myself but could never believe and honestly didn't buy.
Wrapped around exploitation, manipulation, scarcity, creating fear so people would buy.
I hated it with a passion.
So it wasn't about abundance at all really, more about having the deep awareness of how I didn't and wouldn't and couldn't fit into the available business models. I tried. And failed. It broke my heart, not because I failed, but because I could see no way forward.
I said no, cut some crap, paid to get out of things that were so destructive to me. No and no and no and no.
Waited, recovering, in the void, in the I can't do this any more and what the hell do I really want to do and be anyway and I don't know but I'm never going to say yes again until I do.
Six months. Watching Ellie Frost of course, listening, absorbing, allowing new Being-ness to seed into my vibe. Then the day when she posted a Live about allowing everything to come to her with ease and grace and flow, and something shifted, profound. I remember, I wrote a comment:
"Everything I need and want and desire comes to me with ease and grace and flow. There, I said it."
And I did. And I kept saying it, in the face of my fear, in the face of my not knowing.
I kept standing and feeling into and exploring the embodiment of that space in myself.
It's got bigger and bigger and more and more powerful and the energy in there is like lava.
I entered the Make It Happen! Mastermind because I knew it was what I had been waiting for, even though it was an increase in my outgoings, before any increase coming in. I just knew it was right and it was my way forward.
I bought a smartphone because I needed one, didn't even notice most of the money came back a few days later when I sold some plants, somebody else noticed that.
Bought the SmileBox software so I can make the slideshows I've been wanting to do easily, quickly, for years, because I just realised that's what I needed to do.
Not spending huge amounts of money, that would be poor management, but I just did it.
Right now I haven't made a cent more than before, but inside I've become huge.
Money is a side effect and it's coming from the hugeness.
From the value that hugeness can and will deliver to people who are just waiting for me, the way I was waiting for Ellie.
And I have a huge abundance of life experience and skills to offer. I can't list them, it's too wide, just a box of goodies, and stuff comes out as needed.
If I can feel this abundant, still in the red, only staying afloat because I can draw on my inheritance in advance ... see, I provided for myself to make this transition, but for so long I rejected seeing this as abundance, I didn't want to use it, fought it ... then you can too.
No matter where you're at, I've listened to so many people tell the same story.
Find the hugeness in you. Do it, be it, refuse to do or be anything else. You'll find your flow, you'll live it, you'll find ways to monetise your brilliance, and then the money is a side effect of all the other abundance you hold in yourself and all the value you deliver to the world.
And yes, it was an utterly amazing sunset from my back yard steps in Newlands, Wellington, back in June 2015.