I also enjoy abundance. I like to have a stack of pretty napkins to use during dinner. I like to have a wide choice of clothes. I like to have a lot of vegetables in the fridge. I love to have plans to look forward to. Abundance!
Recently though I experienced abundance as a wall. This was abundance in a time of drought.
It’s a tough economic world out there and as a result over the past six months my job has changed from high workload and impossible deadlines to… well… just being dead without the lines. Everything was put on hold and we were moved around a bit and then it was very, very, quiet. I’m lucky to have a job at all.
One can always make the most of quiet times as there’s usually stuff you never have time to do. One by one I picked off all the old, overdue and low priority tasks until eventually there was one big tidy-up task left. I was saving this task for when I really needed it, for when there was really nothing else to do. I was hoarding this task. I was stock piling it. It was comforting to know that I had that task to fall back on. I feared that beyond that task there was nothing.
Eventually I did the big tidy-up and beyond that wall of abundance there was, indeed, nothing much.
That wall of abundance really made me think. I regularly feel over booked, over-tired, overwhelmed and I must admit it did make me wonder if that way of living is just another wall of abundance. If there is always something coming up you never have to look beyond the next event.
It’s very comforting to build yourself walls of abundance and abundance can bring great joy and peace to your life. You are spared from much worry if you have more than enough.
But if you keep building those walls higher and higher… well it might not be good for you. According to Marie Kondo, when people stock pile things it actually increases the fear of running out, even though they could never run out for months, maybe even years. They want more and more! It takes up so much space! Space in the home and space in the brain.
If you have built yourself a wall of abundance in some area of your life make sure you can still see over it. Don’t miss out on what could be on the other side. It can be scary to step past the wall… scary but worthwhile.
It’s a few weeks since I climbed over that wall and some new work has come strolling my way. Abundance always returns, eventually.
Are you stockpiling something? Food? Exercise? Books? Projects? Friends and acquaintances? Parties?
Imagine it’s not there anymore, that big thing.
How would that make you feel?
Kim
Co-founder, The Clean Sheet