Recently, we transitioned from the hot summer, to the crisp fall. Fall is the time of the year when squirrels gather nuts for the long and dark winter. It is also a good time for us humans to gather and store up some money before the upcoming holiday gift frenzy and a must-need Caribbean getaway to escape the bitter cold.
However, saving and storing money is easier said than done. Money is energy. And just like love, success and all of the other ‘sweet stuff’ in life that we are supposed to want and be able to bring in, we have difficulties. How many of you find yourself saying, “well, I want money, but I’m just not getting it!”. Or, “I seem to attract money, but as soon as I get it, it goes away.” Well, let me ask you strait out, “DO YOU REALLY WANT MONEY?” On the surface, you are rolling your eyes and saying “DUH”. However, if deep down, you really felt comfortable with it, you would have it. Believe me, when I started going over my money story and embedded beliefs, I felt like there is no way I wouldn’t want more of that green paper. However, the deeper I began to dig, I realized that I really wasn’t on par with receiving it. Having led many Family Constellation Therapy sessions (a powerful healing modality where we release entanglements from our ancestors), I have seen how many times we say, “show me the money” and often times, we can’t accept or attract it. In a nut-shell, we may be enmeshed in the fate of our ancestry. Many times, we follow them, which looks to us like self-sabotage. There is a lot to uncover with this issue, but the first thing you can do is to bring the patterns.
Ask yourself the following questions and journal the answers. I am positive you will notice some similarities between the fam and your current money situation!
1) What is my mom’s money story/history/belief?
2) What is my dad’s money story/history/belief?
3) Were any of my relatives/ancestry involved in loosing a huge amount of money?
4) Did any of my relatives/ancestry live in poverty, get their possessions taken away from them, etc (ie. the Jews in World War II, etc).
5) Did any of my relatives/ancestry achieve a large sum of money or property through a ‘bad’ means (ie. slavery or coercion)?
6) What is the money situation of my friends around me?
Often times, when answering these questions, we uncover hidden beliefs around money (ie. that it is evil, unattainable, etc.). The most common thing I see when doing the therapy is that people have so much love and loyalty towards their family (siblings, parents, etc) that they don’t want to surpass them or ‘show them up’ by making more money than them. They would feel like they were betraying the family, or that they aren’t ‘those’ types of people, so they play small. More importantly, we humans fear being the black sheep. Our family is our tribe and closely related to survival. It is imperative that the soul fit in with the tribe for protection (like a gang), and the soul often fears that if they are different than their tribe (ie. they are making a butt load of money and the family is scraping by on peanuts), that they will no longer ‘fit-in’ or be considered a part of the group. No amount of money will give someone the security of having a solid position within the tribe or family. If this is threatened, and being an outsider is a possible result, we see why it is so often a big risk to make a lot of money when it is not the family norm. I also see the same phenomenon exists between friends. Who wants a successful rich friend when the crew is commiserating around ramen noodles? This thought pattern can and does lead many to play it safe and make little or just enough money to get by on.
While these fears are certainly viable, it has also been in my experience that your ancestry and parents want the best for you. They want you to be successful. They learn and experience everything that they have to pass on to you to in turn, be better. It is the call of nature to keep the lineage going and to hand over the tools in hopes that the next of kin will have a better future. In fact, the ancestry feels frustrated if they have sacrificed a lot in their life (in some cases, their lives) and you have followed them into their fate instead of making your fate great. Do yourself and your ancestry a favor today–do not let their hard work pass in vain. Make your life great–in all areas of life. Play big and make them proud.