I’ve been pondering 3 John 1:2 where the condition of your soul is linked with health and prosperity. “Prosper and be in health even (or in proportion to) as your soul prospers.” For years I assumed that was talking about spiritual prosperity and I sort of skipped right over the health/finances part. Sounds like a nice churchy blessing that rolled right off of me.
When someone told me that the prosper part of that was actually about money I was pretty skeptical. After all, there are many ways to be prosperous without having anything to do with money. So I looked it up. It actually says in Strong’s that the Greek word means “to succeed in business affairs.”
It’s also easy to dismiss that verse as merely greetings and salutations, which it is, along the lines of how we might write, “I hope this letter finds you well.” However, in my experience with my two businesses, I’m having a hard time dismissing this correlation between our soul, our health and our money.
What I have come to understand, is that the condition of our soul (that’s our mind, will and emotions) has a direct bearing on our physical health as well as our ability to be successful.
It’s not that God magically blesses you as a result of getting healed. It’s that you’re already blessed, but because of wounds, you let the blessing slip through your fingers.
When you’re wounded or operating out of trauma, you fail to recognize opportunities when they present themselves, you let fear make your decisions for you, and you may have some blocks that prevent you from receiving.
And if you feel undeserving or guilty, and you do manage to receive something, those negative feelings will make sure you get rid of the blessing as soon as you can.
Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of the unknown, fear of responsibility, being in the spotlight, fear of being held to a higher standard due to a leadership position or public scrutiny, or fear of what success might due to your relationships will all unconsciously work to sabotage your efforts. You might make progress and move forward despite fear, but it will never have the same effect as moving forward truly free.
This one thing, the pursuit of emotional healing, will pay dividends into your bank account, your destiny, your physical health and your relationships.
Limiting Beliefs
Limiting beliefs are things you may believe about yourself, or your situation that disempower, oppress, keep you stagnant, and encourage you to settle. You may even know better to believe these things, but head knowledge can never override a heart belief. Many times these become your belief system by trying to make sense of circumstances. Then you gather evidence to support that belief. We all do it.
These form when we go through a negative experience, and the enemy seeks to capitalize on our weakness by offering a coping strategy in the form of a lie. We can form these around areas of finance, identity, self-worth to name just a few.
The objective this week is to get into some of your current belief systems surrounding business, money, success and your own abilities and examine the fruit of such beliefs. Judge it by the fruit it's producing in your life. If a current belief is bearing bad fruit/no fruit, you need to know that it is not truth.
Over 90% of what goes on in our heads is happening at a subconscious level. That is where your core, or heart beliefs lie. Using your conscious mind to try and override something residing at a deeper level doesn't consistently work. It works as long as you have the energy to work at it.
You can believe anything you want to. You can get a belief in your heart and you'll find evidence to support that, and you'll omit evidence to the contrary. This level of faith can either work for or against you. We are going to make sure yours are working for you.
We are hard wired to move away from pain, and to a lessor extent, towards pleasure. That means if there is a threat of pain in moving into a new vision, we are going to have a hard time overcoming and moving forward, even though a possibility of pleasure is the dangling carrot.
We are going to do a little exercise in reprogramming our subconscious to identify pain with the limiting belief and pleasure to the new empowering belief to get the leverage to transition out of that. If you will go "all in" with this exercise, your subconscious mind will get a hold of it and you won't struggle anymore with trying to override negative feelings. Your subconscious will do the work for you.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions, you're gonna do some visualization and above all, feel the feelings. The better you can stir up and exaggerate your emotions, the better it works. Before you listen to the mp3, you need a block of time to get through the whole thing so I don't leave you in a negative place. You'll also want to be alone so you aren't self-conscious and holding back from really feeling.
This exercise is actually a Tony Robbins thing, and since then lots of people have put their own variations on it and made it theirs.
Before we get there, when you think about your vision, does anything negative come up? What do you think about yourself? What would stop you from reaching your vision? What about the world circumstances would stop you? What about "the way things are" would stop you? What about "the way you are" would stop you? By the way, beliefs never raise their hand up and say "hey, I'm just a belief!" They sell you the "this is just the way things are" story.
One of my limiting beliefs relating to business success was that if I truly were to practice good time management skills, my life would be void of spontaneity, regimented, I would feel like a machine, have no fun, no room for creativity, or anything or anyone, and I would hate it. Needless to say, that's not a very helpful belief. And I knew better, but it wasn't until I attached some pain to my belief that I was able to make a consistent change. My energy level even increased to support my new belief.
Let's look at some common limiting beliefs. The first being an inability to receive. Unworthiness and low self-esteem are common culprits behind an inability to receive good things. If you have self-esteem issues, you might consider getting some inner healing or flower essences to help out with that. Consider it a business investment. It's a barrier to success on its own.
But beyond that, sometimes people unconsciously sabotage themselves because of a belief that if they receive money, happiness or love, that they are greedy. Scarcity mentality implies that you having more, means that someone else has less. You might also have a belief that it is wrong to get money without hard work and sacrifice. You might also believe that if you accept a gift or help from someone, you will owe them. You might feel like receiving what you want is always followed by disappointment, if you get ahead, something will happen to take your money. You might be afraid of your ability to handle a large amount of money. You might feel like what you really want is shameful, or frivolous or impractical. Or that having more than what's needed to make ends meet is selfish and wrong. All of these beliefs will keep you from receiving and holding. The more you can receive, the more you can give. Giving cannot happen without you first receiving. This is true of both love and tangible things.
What is your relationship with money? Is it something to be chased after with everything in you, or is it the root of all evil? An emotional attachment either way is not good. One leads to an unbalanced obsession and the other insures you'll stay in poverty. Money is essential but certainly not all the things we ascribe to it. See if any of these resonate for you. Did any of these things come out of your parents mouths? Sometimes those set in deeper than we imagine. Sometimes these are generational issues.
◦ Money doesn't grow on trees
◦ Money is the root of all evil
◦ Rich people are greedy
◦ Easier for the camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God
◦ It's more spiritual to be poor than rich
◦ Most rich people didn't come by their money honestly
◦ Getting rich takes too much work
◦ Having a lot of money is a big responsibility.
◦ Getting rich is a matter of luck or fate.
◦ Having money is not for people like me
◦ If I go after money, I won't have time for anything else
◦ To be rich, you have to take advantage of people
◦ If I get rich, everyone will want something/won't know who my friends are
◦ If I get rich, certain people won't approve of it, or me
◦ If I have a lot of money, it means someone else will have less
◦ Having money makes you greedy
◦ I'm not good at managing money
◦ If I get money, I'll just lose it
◦ This is not the right time for me to go for it
◦ Money is not important
◦ Money causes problems
◦ Trying to make money is hard
◦ People should only have as much as they need to live modestly
◦ Most of the good ideas/opportunities are gone
◦ I'm not smart enough
◦ I'm not educated
◦ I'm too young
◦ I'm too old
◦ I don't like selling
◦ I don't like managing money
◦ I don't need to manage money because I don't have enough to worry about
◦ Rich people aren't happy
◦ There's no sense earning more because I'll just pay more taxes
◦ Investments are for people with lots of money
◦ Investing is too risky
Whew! What a laundry list this is getting to be. Ok, let's keep digging. What kinds of fear do we have? Is there...
◦ Fear of failure
◦ Fear of success
◦ Fear of the unknown
◦ Fear of responsibility
◦ Fear of being in the spotlight
◦ Fear of being held to a higher standard due to public scrutiny
◦ Fear that success will cause relationship problems
Lack of boundaries is another success obstacle. Going for your vision is going to take time and energy. If you don't think you have that, it might be because you have set weak or non-existent boundaries where others are concerned. If you have trouble saying no, or feel like your time is being wasted, monopolized or that you're being taken advantage of, you need to stand some ground here. You're probably going to have to settle some things within yourself that will rise up and call you selfish.
Go ahead and be selfish. Selfish redefined for our purposes means building a reserve and taking excellent care of ourselves. Then you can be of service in a more sustainable and powerful way. You'll also be able to serve many in ways that only you are effective at. We need to be putting our energy where we can make a big impact, not getting sucked into church busy work or fund raising for causes that are not really aligned with core heart motives. Not serving just to serve. Next time you say yes, look at what you're saying no to by default. Is it worth it?
Here's the really hard part. You're going to have to figure out how to say no. "I don't have enough time" and "I don't have enough energy" are two areas where you will need to watch your mouth, especially if these are part of your limiting beliefs. There are great blow off lines, but your subconscious hears everything you say. You'll need to be upfront about why you can't bake 6 dozen cupcakes by tomorrow morning. Be unapologetically open and transparent: "That sounds like a good idea, but unfortunately I'm not going to do that right now. It just doesn't fit into my plans."
"No" is also a complete sentence, although most of us are uncomfortable leaving it at that.
While we're at it, "I can't afford it" is no longer viable either. Limited funds is a genuine issue, yes. But many times we say we can't afford it when the truth is, we could cut back elsewhere and reprioritze. If it's simply not where you want to spend money, don't say you can't afford it.
Can we just stop having excuses altogether? You also need to stop accepting your own excuses for why you're not playing a bigger game. Don't allow yourself any excuses and you'll make much better progress by taking obstacles head on and being fully in the game.
What excuses do you conveniently whip out in order to not move forward with your vision?
Can you pinpoint a deeper reason? Are you really going to allow that to stop you?
Breaking the Power of a Lie
If any of the above ring true to you, or if you flush some out in the worksheet, you'll need to repent of believing it. An example lie breaking prayer is as follows.
Father/Papa/God, I confess that I believed the lie that _____________. I repent of believing that lie and of all the damage it's done in my heart/life/career/relationships/etc. I ask for your forgiveness and healing. I bind and cast all entities involved with this lie to the feet of Jesus and I say that they may never return. By Jesus' power I erase the effects of that lie out of every part of me. I ask you Lord to come, as an All Consuming Fire and burn any deposits left behind, any seeds, implantations or any fruit. Please write the truth everywhere that lie was in my life. I receive all miracles of healing, provision, deliverance and freedom that you have for me. Thank you for being my true north, redirect my steps towards destiny and all of your promises for my life.
Essential Homework
1 The Lies I Buy Worksheet and continue to use Alice's collarbone technique and the negative emotion release technique as you find these areas of head trash.
2 Identify a self-sabotaging behavior you want to change. Think about your vision. Pick the biggest baddest behavior that would get in your way and go through the mp3. If you've come up with lots of them, see if you can boil it down to one simple underlying piece.
3 When you look at your vision, what are the things that stand in the way? Get real about any other internal or external hindrances you have or perceive having in the future, and come up with a plan in writing for overcoming. Share below.
Questions For God
1. What wrong beliefs am I overlooking? What's still hiding and holding me back?
2. Is there anything else I need to do at this time for my soul to prosper?
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