25 Feb 2016
Creating True Prosperity by Shakti Gawain
The author in this book beautifully encapsulates some concepts that I have presented on before. For me, prosperity is a much wider concept than wealth. To prosper is to be thriving in all aspects of your life, including monetary but also health, relationships and experiences.
Defining prosperity - you can be really specific down to the dollar amount. You can also identify how it looks, feels, smells and tastes. Some describe it as a type of freedom from constraints that are caused be a current lack.
Then there is the language around financial wealth and money in general. Lack of satisfaction with one's financial position has more to do with mindset than financial measurement.
I have summarised and commented on some of the pertinent points made in this book.
A definition for prosperity:
Page 7 "Prosperity is the experience of having plenty of what we truly need and want in life, material and otherwise."
Then in order to experience prosperity, we must do three things:
- Discover what we truly need and want
- Develop the ability to bring those things into our lives
- Recognize, appreciate, and enjoy what we have
Step 1 involves identifying and articulating our individual values. This is the most vital step in working out what we truly need and want. The exercise of value elicitation can often yield surprising results. We sometimes believe that we have a particular value but we are not actually putting any energy into it.
Step 2 is about setting those goals in line with step 1. This is where you can measure your activities and results while keeping your values top of mind.
Step 3 is often overlooked as goals are reached. We so quickly tick them off and look for what is next. This where we can actually CELEBRATE. So how does it look, feel smell to achieve this step in your journey? Savouring the feeling of success, prosperity will enforce your ability to keep going.
Another powerful concept that I deal with every day. Our language around money very clearly demonstrates the relationship that we have with it.
Page 7 - If we think money has the power to bring us prosperity, we give away our personal power to money.
Page 8 - We fixate on money because we see it as the means to obtaining the things we really want. Often we forget that it is only the means, and it gradually becomes the goal.
Page 12 - The definition of financial prosperity: Having a relationship with money that supports and enhances our overall experience of prosperity.
Our relationship with money, is just another relationship. So how we speak about money may also be how we speak about time. I don't have enough time. Time is short. Where did the time go. Or there is plenty of time. Have you ever noticed?
Page 23 - Money is our mirror. Prosperity isn't caused by money, but it is an important aspect so we need to look at our relationship to money.
Page 24 - Money is a medium that we have chosen to represent our creative energy & it has little intrinsic value in itself.
Since money symbolizes energy, our financial affairs tend to reflect how our life energy is moving in other aspects of our lives as well.
Page 33 - Our relationship with money reflects how we feel about our power to affect the world.
There are even some interesting exercises to do, to test your see how you feel about power. This may be affecting your level of success in attaining and holding prosperity. Author.
The author also delves even further into our relationship with time. She contrasts the effect of time, depending on whether we are doing or being.
Prosperity of time and relationship to doing and being page 71
Page 73 - Being the realm of timelessness.
As we are able to integrate being energy into our lives in a healthy balance with doing energy, the problem of time begins to dissolve. Because we feel so fed and nourished by our experience of being, we naturally let go of much of our frantic pursuit of external success and even of interesting or exciting experiences.
Structure and Flow - how we handle our lives is also how we handle our money.
So this book does explore our relationships overall, including money, at a level that some may find uncomfortable, and others may not see the connection between prosperity and the need for self analysis and self development that this book requires. If you find this, I highly recommend still keeping an open mind, and focussing on the sections with provide the tools and ideas that you can implement. There are further exercises on self analysis without judgment.
Steps to true prosperity:
- Gratitude
- Awareness
- Healing
- Following your truth
- Creating a Vision
- Setting Goals
- Sharing your gifts