Last week, I blazed through a book called The Velvet Rage by Alan Downs, and in it, he said to CHOOSE INNER PEACE ABOVE ALL ELSE, and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Downs said, “When trying to decide between two or more options in life, honestly assess which option is most likely to contribute to your own inner peace. Choose the option that holds the greatest promise of bringing you peace in the long term.”
Isn’t life great when we make choices to have inner peace?
Over the holiday, I took an emotional health break and unplugged like never before. I rested, relaxed, read, over-indulged, and was very social. Being so detached from the busyness of life, I felt anxious for the first time in forever and had to contemplate how to help myself with anxiety.
As I kept thinking about this concept of prioritizing inner peace above all else, it hit me that anxiety is a lack of inner peace.
I considered how to manage my anxiety and acknowledged I have an abundance mindset with robust and wide-ranging goals. While I’m truly impressed with what I’ve accomplished in 2023 and who I’ve become, David and I were aiming to decide on surrogacy by the end of the year, but there are still financial obstacles to work through, and we’re just not there yet. I was also hoping to be further along in my writing career, have made more progress on my book, and generate an additional income stream and neither of those three things ended up as expected. The more I thought about it, I realized I had anxiety because of the financial stress around my unmet goals and that I’d need to decide if they were truly important to me and make the changes required so my dreams could soon become my reality.
I don’t feel the least bit trapped because there are a plethora of business choices I can make to eradicate the financial stress, but for the past several months, I’ve been on a bit of a hamster wheel, and when we’re spinning a mile a minute, we can’t make accurate assessments and appropriately strategize. While on my break, I took time to create distance, conduct research, and make decisions about how to work through the financial stress strategically and not let it get in the way of my aspirations.
I excessively worry about money, and while I’m always working to improve it, I know that when I have the financial abundance to feel safe when giving myself what I need, I internally feel at peace. While we’re sorting through surrogacy, what I need most is not to have finances hold us back from something so important. I also need a big financial cushion while making this huge decision so we’re prepared for the future. Right now, I need not to be overly stressed in the present either because I don’t want to watch any more of my hair fall out or see my blood pressure through the roof again. These are things I need, and I also know I have the skills, confidence, and vulnerability to give myself what I need.
