Mind Over Money?

Do you struggle with poverty consciousness?

In case you're not familiar with that term, let me explain. Poverty consciousness is a mindset in which you are constantly worried about money--not having enough, running out, not being able to pay your bills or get what you want. You make decisions, selections and purchases based on cost instead of what you really want or need. You deprive yoruself of luxuries because you can't help but focus on lack of money.

For example, if you've ever gone out to dinner and saw an entree that you really wanted, but ordered something else because what you wanted was too expensive, THAT was an example of poverty consciousness in action.

The truth is that we are surrounded by abundance, and there is plenty to go around.

But sometimes I forget that. Even after as long as I've been studying prosperity consciousness (the opposite of poverty consciousness), I still slip every now and then and get caught up in my old "stories."

Today the old limiting beliefs about money reared their ugly heads again as I battled mind over money.

Let me set the stage for you. After Hurricane Kartina, When we decided to pack up and move here to Colorado, we had a small window of opportunity. We basically came back as soon as we were allowed to return adn stay (about 5 weeks after the storm struck New Orleans) and we knew that with intermittent itnernet, we wouldn't really be able to work while we were there, so we watned the trip to be as short as possible. Plus, we wanted to get our house on the market as soon as possible, so there were time issues involved.

Therefore, my father-in-law and his wife, andmy sister in law came to new orlenas for about 3 days to help us pack. His wife was a frenetic packer--she had to be packing every single minute, she jsut couldn't sit idle or it would make her nuts. Therefore, she packed a lot of stuff that I didn't want, mainly because I didn't have hte time to go through it and throw out everything I didn't want. And tehre was no point having a garage sale in new orleans, with so fre people there, and many with no house to bring things home to. So it was pitch or pack, all the way.

We had professional movers pack the important stuff--china, fine crystal, framed art and photographs, and we (collectively) packed everything else.

In addition, we had to clean out my hubby's office and our garage, both of which were a mess. And I had been working on the garage for weeks, already had 2 garage sales, threw out bushels of stuff adn gave away more than some people even own. But there was still much to do.

Keep in mind that this move was decided abruptly, so it's not like I ahd weeks to go through evrything--literally 8 days was all we took to pack our entire house and its contents and to make all the repairs from teh storm damage. AND to meet with a realtor to get it listed, say goodbye to neighbors and family (friends were mostly still gone to their respective evacuation sites), etc. All this wtih a toddler and three cats in tow.

Anyway, now you've got me rambling. Back on topic.

In case you don't already know this, movers charge you based on 2 things: 1) distance and 2) weight. Since no one was avaiable in new orleans to give us an estimate, we had to ballpark it on the phone. If you were gone from your house for 5 weeks do you think you could list everyhing you have to maek an estimate for a move? If so, you're better than me--we forgot a lot of stuff.

The distance was dead-on, naturally, but the weight was WAY more than anticipated--about double. So instead of being a $4000 move, it's more like $8000. Yikes. Nobody said moving was cheap...

In the grand scheme of things, the additional $4000 is NOTHING. I don't know how much money you make in a year, but when I put it into perspective with what we make in a year, $4000 is pocket change. In our line of work, one sale can net us almost 3 times that much.

Yet....

As I unpack things today, I would unwrap something that someone else had packed for me, and realize that if I had packed it, I would have thrown that out. All day today, I kept finding myself getting irritated that I had paid movers to ship something I didn't even want.

Poverty consciousness.

It creeps in sometimes, doesn't it? After a few times, I realized I was doing it. As soon as I noticed it, it was easy to stop. But it kept coming, and coming, and coming. Instead of being grateful that my father-in-law and his wife both took off work to drive 6 hours each way to new orleans to help us pack when they both know damn well that we could have afforded to have movers pack all our stuff, AND they had to eat MREs or whatever limited fast food items were availble in our destryoed city of New Orleans...no, instead of being grateful that someone else cared enough about me to assist me when I require it, I was stuck in what-it-cost-me-to-have-this-crap-moved. Interesting.

So I had to sit down and ask myself why this keeps coming up. Otherwise, I am doomed to keep repeating the thoughts.

And my question for you today is this:

What area of your life keeps bringing repeated reminders of poverty consciousness? Are you willing to take the time to explore WHY that keeps coming up for you?