Money Motivation

There is an incredibly uplifting energy present at sunrise each day. The first rays of light cresting the horizon bring the forest alive, as creatures of all shapes and sizes sing their morning song. Greeting the Sun each day fills me with vitality and lightness as beams of love warm my face. It’s nice to know that Earth has got my back though – those same love beams would fry me out in space.

Shifting Focus

I have been pretty quiet on the blog front lately, due to my extensive focus on obtaining some pieces of paper; working a tedious and repetitive job for money to fuel my dream to write a book. Certainly there is a time in life for such work – it is a great feeling to learn and master a new skill. Time away from doing what you love also provides important perspective and a feeling of gratitude for the moments when you are in alignment with your passions. However, when our work no longer ignites excitement or calls on our deeper gifts, resistances arise. We procrastinate, show up late, do the bare minimum, and as I am learning now, indulge in addictions and escapes after finishing such draining work.

Our passions energize and get us excited for the day. I often find myself choosing to not acknowledge just how excited one can be about life in order to accept unfulfilling choices I make, settling for less than what I truly love to create. How is it I can focus eight full hours of my precious life every day to meaningless work, and when it comes time to do what I truly love I can’t seem to find the motivation and instead ‘tune out’ with movies?

On the Off Track

Despite a lack of excitement I am learning valuable lessons, with more to come as I am still involved with the work. This time has given me a chance to really feel into the motivating forces behind what causes a person to devote all of their life energy to the service of the master of the symbols we call money. I have reflected for many hours on what I am doing with my time, why I am making the choices I am, and whether my actions are in alignment with my beliefs and values. Doing something simply “for the money” is not enough for me anymore, especially if I feel my soul rebelling. Even though I dive for deeper motivations than a paycheque, I can’t help but notice the power I give the symbols of money to pull me off of my true inspiration.

I can fully empathize with the statistically described ‘average person’ who watches hours of TV, eats something microwavable for dinner, and slumps in a chair all night completely drained from a day of unfulfilling work. Society labels such people as lazy and unmotivated, lacking any will power. These negative labels are then internalized as limiting self-talk, adding to the downward cycle of guilt and escape. In reality, your will power is constantly exerted while you are at work, suppressing your heart’s desires to keep you focused on something that further drains your total being.

This avoidance of our calling takes tremendous discipline and energetic exertion, yet we have ignored for so long that we forget  we are doing it at all. And after a full day of draining work we feel  deserving of a reward for our efforts and indulge in further disconnection through shopping, food, drugs, television, or any other consumptive pattern we have linked to ‘reward incentive’. There is a distinction between the depletion felt after a day of unfulfilling work and the drain felt after a day of hard, satisfying work; I am speaking to the former. Following a day’s suppression of our spontaneous heart’s inspiration , our inner drive has gone quiet when we are finally free to create.

Listening to Inspiration

Writing this blog is the first spontaneous inspiration I have followed in weeks. I have created along the way, however most of it has felt forced. I was ignoring my impulses to create in favour for the work, and when I finally sat down to create I would experience blocks to my flow. Noticing my lack of motivation I would then desire to ‘check out’ and throw on a movie. My days would start energized along a positively balanced path, I would plow through the work I needed to, and then I would crash and burn in the evening. How do I break such a limiting pattern?

I recognize the need to be where I am right now. I release resistance and accept my present situation as some part of me wants to be here, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I am choosing how to use my time, all the time. I choose to devote time each day to create what I love so that I can sleep soundly. I choose to listen to my heart’s excitement in this moment. I release limiting self-talk that says I am lazy or uninspired. I know that when giving my gifts I am living from love and creating the more beautiful world we know to be possible.

Can we move beyond the need for unfulfilling work, both individually and collectively, and reach a state where we no longer submit to our fears but instead choose from love?

Stay inspired <3

Skye