Humility, Gratitude, and Love: An Attitude of Abundance
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Humbling myself into full acceptance of my humanity, cultivating gratitude for the full spectrum of emotions I experience, and loving the parts of myself I used to avoid have helped me cultivate an attitude of abundance.
I developed childhood beliefs centered around money being the root of all evil. Financial stress and pressure were a constant growing up. As an adult, I see how this has greatly impacted how my subconscious handles money. It’s always been a bit of a struggle to align with a consistent flow of income.
That’s one of the reasons why I started studying personal development and how the nervous system works with our subconscious to form barriers to prosperity based on past experiences and programming. Having implemented somatic practices into my routine, I can feel my nervous system acclimating to prosperity.
Money is one of many forms of compensation for putting energy and focused effort into the world. Establishing a healthy relationship with our power allows us to appreciate our energy and align with abundance in all areas of our lives.
When we avoid certain feelings, we often suppress or ignore them, leading to a lack of activation of the neural pathways associated with those emotions. By consciously embodying these feelings, we activate these neural pathways, which can change how our nervous system processes and responds to those emotions in the future.
The brain can reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life in response to learning, experience, and environmental factors. Engaging with avoided feelings stimulates neuroplasticity, which can create new neural pathways or strengthen existing ones, ultimately leading to rewiring the nervous system.
Embodying avoided feelings allows us to develop healthier ways of processing and regulating emotions. Instead of suppressing them, we can learn to acknowledge, accept, and work through these emotions. Over time, this can lead to a greater capacity to cope with challenging emotions.
With insight into our internal experiences, somatic embodiment provides heightened awareness. This can lead to a deeper understanding of the underlying causes of our emotions and behaviors, facilitating personal growth.
Avoidance of difficult emotions can contribute to chronic stress and nervous system dysregulation. Allowing ourselves to experience and process these emotions may reduce the physiological burden of avoidance, leading to a more balanced and resilient nervous system.
Embodying avoided feelings can positively change how we perceive, experience, and respond to emotions, ultimately promoting neural adaptation.
Ultimately, people desire to express core parts of themselves. However, you can’t reach full self-actualization unless your needs are met. What you pay attention to strengthens over time.
Self-sabotage can be a pattern for some people if they are terrified of progression and movement towards their deepest desires. A lack of safety, a lack of love, or a lack of belonging when you were a child can lead to you having a fear of death now.
We need to peel off these layers, feel the imprinting, and re-imprint with a sense of safety, love, and belonging.
Here are some ways I’ve engaged in the re-imprinting process:
Explored the felt sense in my body and observed the accompanying thought patterns
Identified triggers and used them as an opportunity to complete the stress response cycle. If the stress response cycle is incomplete due to an inability to fight or flee a dangerous situation, energy gets trapped in our bodies and needs to be released.
I accepted responsibility for my behaviors by recognizing the underlying emotions.
Partnered with my resistance to abundance, asking those parts of me what they need and inviting them to take on new roles in alignment with prosperity.
When you are about to feel something (e.g., desire) that your underlying coding has determined is not safe to experience, a deep, unconscious part of you will create resistance and throw up a wall so you avoid this experience.
If the coding is strong enough, you won’t even go there! If the coding softens and somewhat allows, you’ll feel avoidance and resistance.
When you re-code with love, safety, and belonging, you will soothe and heal your nervous system. The key is understanding the coding and investigating the underlying message that makes you afraid, angry, or resistant.
When you pay attention to love, safety, and belonging, you strengthen these experiences in your body and nervous system.
In a recent embodiment practice, I uncovered a layer of resistance to thriving. I felt resistance to thriving in my heart. By breathing into the triggered area of my body, I moved my awareness inward and asked what that part of me needed.
I discovered that my inner child felt afraid to thrive because she felt like she would be in trouble if she expressed her needs. After sitting in understanding and acceptance, I offered her a new place in the present moment. Rather than hiding in fear, I invited her to hide in love, which she accepted.
Over the next couple of months, my body changed as I put on weight, raising my body mass index to a normal range. I’d been severely underweight for over a year. This practice uncovered a layer of programming in my subconscious mind that was wired to sabotage any attempt at nurturing myself. I gave myself permission to thrive, eating when hungry rather than subtly punishing myself and ignoring hunger cues.
Making better choices is at the core of transformation. Power is about choice. Choices become your reality. Often, our experiences dictate our choices; they imprint on our primal brain and limbic system, programming our behavior.
This process of somatic embodiment allows us to take back our power and choose behaviors in alignment with abundance. It takes an attitude of humility to accept our primal nature, gratitude for the parts of ourselves that have fought so hard to help us survive, and unconditional self-love.