You can’t restrict your way to an abundant life.

It’s a contradiction.

You can’t do it.

You can’t restrict your way to an abundant life.

You can’t go on a restrictive budget and feel expansive.

It’s not the fault of the budget.
Budgets can be great tools to help you make decisions about your life.

But if you think the budget is limiting you and making your life smaller, you will feel like you are in shackles.

If you feel like you are in shackles, you look for ways to NOT do things instead of ways to make your life bigger.
You will turn down chances to go do new things.
You will interact with people in a way that shuts down new opportunity.

Just the other day I went out to lunch with my mother and daughter, and I decided to just have a cup of coffee to save some money.
I had made the decision to go out for lunch, but I wasn’t spending from a place of abundance.
WELL, the order took a long time and our entire meal was comped.

If I had felt abundant and ordered a meal it would have been free.

But I wasn’t feeling abundant and abundance ran in the opposite direction.

This was not a one-time thing.
This kind of thing happens to me all the time when I have a scarcity mindset.
I miss out.

I have missed meeting the band.
And a free trip.
And invitations to parties.

If you think you are restricted you are the opposite of abundant.
You feel scarcity.

You have to feel abundant to create more abundance.

Try this:
Only spend money when it makes you feel more abundant to do so.
(This isn’t as often as you would think.)

Stop when you fill up your tank with gas and ask yourself, “Does this feel great? Am I thankful that I have a car and I have the money to fill it with gas to take me exactly where I want to go?”

If so, that’s an abundant spend.

Pause when you take that pair of Luis Vuitton shoes to the cash register. Does this purchase make you feel abundant? Or is there another emotion going on there?
Are you making a “fog” purchase?
Or are you trying to numb a hint of anxiety and these shoes give you that new shoe high?

Just make sure you are spending your money from a feeling of abundance.

Oh and… don’t hate yourself in the process.

When you go on a budget while hating yourself for your spending, hateful things happen.

Figure out how to love yourself and think thoughts that make you feel abundant.

Stop blaming budgets.

Stop blaming yourself.

The positive results will be inevitable.