Harvest the true abundance of living your inspired work

The fact is we all have bills to pay. At some point, most of us have made the choice to take on a job we don’t necessarily want for the reason of paying those bills. Sadly, we end up paying for them with our life. We sacrifice our vitality for the sake of eking out “a living”. We banish our dreams from our consciousness because it’s too painful to keep them alive. Meanwhile, we try to mollify our angst by telling ourselves we are doing the “responsible” thing even though inside, we are dying.

The root of our internal conflict comes from the part of us that is aware we are ignoring the call of our inner being. It is the job of our inner guidance to lead us to the fulfillment of that which we desire. If we persist in dismissing those gentle nudges from our soul, we create a bigger and bigger gap between where we are and where we want to be. The tension from being pulled apart by this ever-expanding chasm eventually becomes so intolerable that we resort to numbing or destructive behaviours to cope. At our most taut, we can snap from the pressure and collapse into a pit of despair without knowing how to get out.

Aside from prolonged malaise, there are other real “costs” to doing work solely for the money:

• Lack of confidence
• Lack of autonomy
• Loss of trust in ourselves
• Loss of trust in life
• Loss of passion
• Loss of joy
• Squandered time

The above paints a dreary picture, but painfully, all too often it is the harsh reality that many people endure throughout their working lives. While it is the case that we all want generous amounts of money flowing into our experience, we also want to be doing work that is meaningful, creative, and satisfying to our whole being. We want to be living our inspired work.

Inspired work provides an abundance of riches

If it seems too far-fetched that you can have it all – work that matters and mounds of money – then this is a great place to start uncovering any limiting beliefs or patterns that might be keeping you stuck in a job where you don’t want to be. Every person who courageously embarks on the journey of discovering, creating, and living their inspired work eventually comes to realize that work is not just a way to pay the bills, it is a boundless opportunity for opening themselves to receive all that is rightfully theirs.

We commonly equate the word “abundance” with “money”, however, in doing so we limit the richness that our work can offer. In addition to receiving money, there are many other elements of true abundance for us to experience:

Move through the world with self-assurance
Confidence comes from an inner knowing that who we were born as is correct. We gain self-assuredness by serving the world with our unique set of strengths, gifts, and talents. When we see that who we are has a profound impact, our belief in ourselves becomes unshakable, even in those temporary moments when we may falter.

Make decisions from a state of sovereignty
Even if you are working with others or for others, in your inspired work, you position yourself in such a way that the only actual person you answer to is yourself. So long as your choices are being made in alignment with your own truth, you are free.

Build self-trust through inspired action
Each time we make a promise to ourselves and then don’t follow through with action, we feel the betrayal. However, one of the reasons we don’t take action is that we make the steps too overreaching. Inspired actions are not monumental gestures, they are those tiny steps taken moment-by-moment, day-by-day in answer to our soul’s gentle nudges. Every time we answer the call, we rebuild trust.

Secure in the knowledge that we are seen and supported
One of the darkest thoughts we can entertain is the belief that we have been abandoned and are completely alone in the world. However, as we tune into our own inspiration and act on its behalf, we receive undeniable evidence that we are most definitely not alone. In fact, there are forces much greater than just our human self that exist purely to ensure that our lives can be enriched with any experience we desire.

Unbounded creative expression
We are born creators. If we neglect this aspect of who we are, life becomes bland and uninteresting. It is the tending to our creative ideas that ignites our passion. Our inspired work provides endless opportunities to plant those seeds and nourish them into real-world experiences. The beauty of the creative process is that the more we give to it, the surplus of energy and ideas it continues to generate.

Enlivened by a steady stream of life-giving energy
As we become open vessels of creation, we allow for natural life-force energy to flow through our being. This is what it is to be in joy. As we open more channels, we flow more energy, and the more joy we experience. It’s a winning combination.

Live in the copious state of full presence
When we continuously project ourselves into a not-yet-realized future, we have the nagging sense that we are missing the life we are here to live. The days become dry, repetitive. Time passes with no peak experiences to mark the occasions. In contrast, the path of living our inspired work is endless and there is no final destination to which we “arrive”, therefore, we stop waiting to achieve any outcome before we decide to enjoy ourselves. Instead, we revel in the plenitude that the adventurous journey provides us in every moment of every day.

...

As I opened with, we all have bills to pay. We also have the choice to answer the call of our inner being. The sweet irony is that when we do, we are no longer limited to the amount of money that can flow into our experience. At the end of the day, most jobs pay a pittance compared to the real abundance that is actually available to us. With our inspired work, we open multiple channels to receive all the riches our work has to offer – including money, meaning, and manna.