I've been going through a lot of fear over the past week about money, the normal thing of earning it and making sure we have enough.
But I have a huge pull inside me to not do what I normally do and suddenly teach all hours under the sun to make that money, to then spend it on frivolities and be in the cycle again. I know my truth is that working hours and hours a day with no real grounding and no connection to nature is not healthy for me, I know that I need time to prepare quality food, get a good 10 hours sleep and walk my dogs amongst other things and I know that when I ignore this need I get ill, my ME and celiac flare up and then I end up having to cancel tons of sessions and I'm bac to square one.
So the battle to resist the sudden need to jump onto the system once more, restart all my sessions and feel less fearful about money against my own self care and ability to live my truth has been real this week.
And then last night I ran into someone on my dog walk and we talked for a while, he's a wise old man and has never wanted for anything but also has never expected anything, in his early years of marriage he used ot wander the lanes of the village sourcing sticks to light to fire to heat the water and house because they didn't have enough money to pay for heating, he foraged for food and for his whole life has refused to enter the system, trusting that all will be ok and being grateful what little he had. When you ask him now at the age of 89 he says he's had an easy life, he's been blessed with all he every needed.
He still works because he loves what he does and he has been comfortable in what he's had for the last 40 years with a successful career. He could have when his career started to take off in is 40s decided to follow the money, sell his small cottage and chase a bigger house for his family, he could have upgraded his car to something more flash and decided to wear expensive clothes, his career is one that if he had chosen to he could have been famous. But that never felt right, and if he'd have made those choices he would have constantly been chasing the money, worried about the making the next bills and making sure his work was at a good enough standard to keep the money coming in. But instead he stayed in his small cottage, driving a battered old car and sourcing logs from the lane to burn. This meant that he could work from a space of love and not fear, he could produce his work to whatever he felt was right and not because he needed others to approve it. And so he still loves his work today, he still does it daily even at the age of 89.
He told me his brother once said to him we have choices, we can either choose to chase the money to be able to consume more, or we choose to consume less.
This statement means so much and yet is so simple, we know that we consume far to much in this country, we know this because of the growing issue of waste, we're a throw away culture, and through this the damage we're doing to mother earth is huge. But we also consume things that aren't objects, our compulsion to buy coffee from a shop rather than make it ourselves is huge, it costs those shops 9p to make the coffee we pay £3 for. The experience of sitting and drinking it in a nice atmosphere is one thing but we still pay that same amount to drink it out of a paper cup whilst walking along the high street or sitting at our desks, its all these small things that we consume so easily without thought that causes us to have the fear and the need to chase the money.
And then there's the pressure, the ladder that we all should be climbing, to have bigger houses, smarter cars, more expensive holidays, to constantly be proving that we're chasing.
I totally realise there are bills that we need to pay and that cost us money that we have to earn, and I get there are people out there working their asses off to break even.
But what if the rest of us, the ones that have a comfortable life, yet are so stressed about it, that feel like they're going insane, that are getting ill because of it, what if we sat down and looked at our consumables and asked ourselves, actually how much money do I really need, and what do I really want from my life? Time to take walks, to connect to my family, to cook dinners rather than buy takeouts, to play with the children on the beach rather than pay for them to go to a club so you can work, to spend time connecting back.
A lot of this is free, a lot of this is available to us if we give ourselves time, so if you're fed up of being inside the system maybe take a leaf out of the wise old mans book and consume less so ultimately you can have more.
I needed to hear this last night, this has been my fear, slowing down, but after watching him, talking to him and knowing that I don't want a life that's full of flashy things, I just want a simple life, I now know I can work from a place of love and not from a place of fear. And once you can work from that space of love you never work another day in your life.
Its taken me many years to get here, many scary decisions, selling a business, down sizing our house, working on my own insecurities about self worth and what I value, and I'm still on that path, but I know that I'm on the right path, I don't want more stuff, I want less stuff and more time, time to speak to people like I did last night, time to connect.
Meg xxx
