Abundance Comes from Aligned Action

In May 2022, I sat alone in the bar of a fancy restaurant, listening to a friend play piano. This is a restaurant where, if you are well-off, you’ll naturally gravitate to it. If you don’t have a lot of money, you might just sit at the bar and listen to the pianist. As you enter the experience of this place, the bar is the first area you see, which includes a grand piano. If you happen to be someone sitting on the couch in the bar, wearing a bright blue dress against brown and mahogany color schemes — you tend to be one of the first sights any guest will naturally draw their eyes to upon entering the space (esp. if you have platinum hair).

Sticking out like a sore thumb really isn’t intentional but I think this is something that just comes with a life filled with isolated traumas you are working to balance out. It’s a subconscious wiring going on, but instead of having harmful experiences of isolation, you find a way to create positive ones. Because trauma comes with so much impact, you tend to stick out a lot and/or find you need a bigger audience and community to wash away the negative experiences you were dealt. A means of reversing time, or swinging the pendulum back in the direction you want it to go, so that you can finally get off the back and forth reactive swing. 

But the blue dress wasn’t what drew a billionaire toward me, inviting me to join him for dinner. It was my journal, and in his broken English pointed it out, encouraging me to come and also have my friend join. The restaurant though had policies around this and obviously if you’re dining alone, you’d only be at a two-top. This of course put me in a conflict, and while I do love spontaneous serendipity just as much as the next person, something in me said, “this is an opportunity that could lead to wealth — but it’s not your path.” It felt like I’d be ditching my friend also, and that’s just not something I’m keen on doing. 

So I politely declined this man who invited me to dinner, by writing a card provided by the staff and sent it to his table. And while he probably could have worked his billionaire-skilled negotiations to get a third chair at the table for my friend, or find a new table entirely, I listened to my intuition, and I stuck with my plan. There was an intention of what I came for, and while I was very interested and intrigued for the conversation we would have had, and I sometimes wonder what we would have talked about, it’s not an opportunity declined that I’m kicking myself about. 

Something that is difficult for individuals recovering from trauma to understand — is that you get to choose who gets access to your time, energy, personality — the blessing of you. It’s the power of choice and direction simply by creating, accepting or saying no to opportunities. The understanding that you are fully worthy in your autonomy alone. Giving of your time and energy and caregiving to others will not add to your worth if doing those things aren’t something you want to be doing, with and for those people. If they aren’t things you already enjoy. 

And that’s the trap so many of us fall into — people pleasing. Instead of choosing what we want, we prioritize other’s wants over our own. I think we do this because we’re too afraid of getting real-up close in the mirror with ourselves, because frankly, it’s intimate, where intimacy has been damaged and associated with negative experiences. So if we focus on pleasing others, we never have to look at the damage and pain that was inflicted on us. The cost of this though? You never get to know yourself. Where that’s the start of wisdom — knowing oneself. 

And just to clarify some things around this. People-pleasing is not the same as service. In fact they are two opposite ends of the spectrum of fulfilling someone’s request/wants/etc. People-pleasing is rooted in insecurity, the need to prove oneself — it’s a faulty foundation. Service though, is rooted in clarity, strong boundaries and alignment — it’s built on a firm foundation of, “This is who I am, what I can offer — if you don’t want or need it? That’s okay.” 

So I took the experience as a means of foreshadowing for my path unfolding. I was going to be self-made. Didn’t know how, didn’t know when, but I was going to stick to my values around owning your story and your life, because that’s where aligned action can actually manifest. If you can’t own who you are, what you’ve experienced, and be okay with being disliked, gossiped about, judged — you’re living in a state of people-pleasing. Low vibration, soul-sucking, and honestly, not at all fun. Why do you think they made a board-game called LIFE? Choose the game you want to play — that’s not about picking the “right” one, necessarily, it’s about picking the aligned one. 

So anytime that you may be faced with a scenario like this, you have power. And that word, I know can come with a lot of negative connotations, which is why it’s all the more important for you to understand how you do have power in your own life. Saying no, or yes, is a form of exercising your power. For me, any yes or no is a form of manifestation in my life. It’s in the now, in the present moment when you determine and build your path. When you choose to silence your desires or set them aside, that creates the result of the life you are living. When you choose to silence what you experienced which actually requires a community to throw off the weight? You’re also forming the results of the life you are living… and setting yourself standards for others to follow and join you in. 

Want to know the secret sauce? Grant yourself your desires in a way that moves everyone forward. If you’re doing nothing but setting the stage of what you expect your life to look like, declining someone’s ask simultaneously invites them to respect your boundaries, needs, wants. That’s how you create your life. Key word here: create. Cause if life’s a blank canvas, how do you want your art to look? Where do you want it to be shared, cherished, and marveled at? I know for me, it’s not in a place of darkness. It’s not hiding in a corner or in the closet.

When you step into this mind-space, stress and worry goes away. It becomes easier to just go for what you want, because you are the one driving the car. When your decisions are yours to make, which, they always are — you walk in power in determining your journey and your path. You walk in power of amplifying your voice. 

The only thing you have to do: take action. That starts with saying, “I’m going to…” While results do take time to show (marathon, not a sprint!), what you’ve done in saying your intention is set yourself in the direction to get off the reactive pendulum swing. In the direction you want to go. You’ve set yourself a standard and expectation to meet. 

So go — meet your life. 

-B