Women, Wisdom and Work
I have often heard coaches and healers who are struggling with getting paid for doing the work they love say: It is never about the money (as if to rationalize the despair of unrequited reciprocity). While that statement is actually true at higher orders of thinking, even in the most practical of considerations, we could also own the truth of this: It is always about the money. We are spiritual beings expressing into a physical reality through tissue. As such, we can create anything we put our minds to, yet the conversations about money that we could be having are both avoided and denied, so deep is the abyss of our fear of feeling ostracized because we have it… or because we don’t.
Who ever knew that the conversation of money could be so hard… especially for women. We all want it, life is easier with it, yet we tell ourselves that it is not important (even though it is). We have learned well the when, where, what, how and who can have it… all of it through the lens of our own family systems history. We model long-held and intergenerational beliefs, values, attitudes and strategies out of our conscious awareness. We have rules about these things AND we have created vows about these things… all to ensure our sense of safety and fitting in. In other words, Don’t rock the boat you are in!
Truth is, having conversations about money and how we do it, brings up humiliation and shame if we don’t have it and humiliation and shame if we do have it. In either case, we have learned well (as children) to default to hiding what we have and what we want - which ultimately means hiding ourselves - so that we can feel safe and accepted by others. Our family ‘rules’ about money include who is allowed and who is not. Unconscious modelling is how we have learned what is OK and what is not OK at home (and at work), what we can ask for, what we can take, what we can receive, what we can expect and what we deserve. That intergenerational programming is how we continue to create patterns of scarcity, underpinned by the fears we carry of not being, doing and having enough. We tell ourselves that we are living lives of abundance, silently defined more by consumption (to fill up what’s missing that truly brings joy to life) and far less by creation. We lie to ourselves. As such, we worry that we’ll be found out as the imposters we have come to believe we are. We live in paradox; as long as nobody knows ‘this’ about me, I will be OK.
Yeah, it is a hard way to live. But, we have been taught that working hard is what counts, that proving ourselves will bring us the rewards we desire, that we’ll be ‘better’ people for it. Somehow hard work has become a less acutely expressed synonym for the real truth we know, yet deny, that struggle is expected in order to feel valued. Strategically, we become hyper-achievers to prove to others that we count. But, god help the person who does not notice our effort with even the most basic appreciation. Resentment festers and inflames, only to turn us against ourselves with guilt for feeling the way we do. We also learn to avoid attempting anything that could possibly invite failure, so we won’t have to risk more humiliation and shame. We spend a lot of time being really busy, accomplishing little of what is really meaningful to us in creating the lives we say we want. Procrastination becomes the strategy of choice. The genius of procrastinating is that it keeps us feeling safe; however, at the same time, it keeps us captive to the fear of really showing up for ourselves.
Been there, done all of that! I know what I know! I’ve spent a lifetime in the trenches, so to speak, of self-employment. Not always easy and sometimes scary as hell. AND, I have lived through the worst and the very best of it all. And I continue to discover great meaning in the creative process that self-employment is.
So, I have created a new, transformational program for any woman who is willing to own the deeply inherent wisdom she carries that is uniquely her, as her own great work, even in the presence of current day confusion and uncertainty. Awareness creates clarity and insight; each of these invite a different choice.
Why the focus on the money conversation to leverage transformation in our lives? Simply because the energy of it streams into and through our spiritual, mental, emotional and physical bodies… pretty much 24/7. Like it or not, it’s presence can be relentlessly all consuming of our lives and our work (our intention for being here in the first place), unless we honour and live a change in perspective. For that, we need to get real with the lies we tell ourselves, daily, so that we don’t have to own the truth of our fear. I really do believe that we can move from scarcity thinking (consumption to fill up what’s missing) to abundance thinking (creativity that brings prosperity along with it). Given the changes going on in the world at large with income disparity, personal resourcefulness and resilience are essential to how we choose to move forward with joy.
So I hope that you’ll join me. I invite you to read more about the program here.
Thank you for reading.
Sheila