What if Money Was Like Air

**NOTE: I wrote this article before all this began, and I know it may seem more impossible than ever to imagine-into this, but that’s also what makes it a more powerful time than ever to do just that. There is so much fear circulating, and I want us to use our imaginations to project new and better possibilities with our relationship to money. In the words of John Lennon’s Imagine, “you may call me a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”...**

You may remember me writing an article a few months ago where I proposed the question: what if you could receive money in your business as easily as you receive your next breath?

So imagine my delight when I then, a few weeks later, heard Ken Honda (author of Happy Money) say that people tend to think of money as water, but the next level to that is when water evaporates into AIR. I loved that so much, because that is the way I think too, and that’s the way I’ve been writing about it for years, and I usually feel crazy for that, but in that moment I felt seen and understood.

So today, I want us to imagine this for a moment. Why? Because perception is a POWERFUL, powerful thing, that’s why. How we perceive money and our emotional connection to it affects our relationship with it and how it shows up in our lives and in our feels:

So what I want you to do is put on your imagination goggles with me for a moment, okay? Just like when you were little, you’re just going to take the lid off of “reality” and the “knowns” and the “hard facts” for a moment and you’re going to use your imagination, and here’s why:

We as humans ask ourselves a lot of disempowering questions. All day long every day we are asking ourselves disempowering questions like: “what if the worst thing happens?”, “what if I don’t make it?”,  “what if this never changes?”, “what if this really is as good as it gets for me?”, “what if I lose everything?”, etc. etc.

This is not your fault, you’ve been trained in this thinking all your life! We ALL have! It’s partly biology from when our species was only trying to survive. These days we have many, MANY more options than survival, but many of us still don’t believe they’re available to us. 

So a great trick to turn this around is to…
ASK EMPOWERING QUESTIONS.

To begin asking questions you actually want to get the answer to. Questions like: “what if it all turns out wonderful?”, “what if we thrive?”, “how good can it get?”, “how easy can this be?”, “what if I gain everything?”, “how much love and joy can I feel?”, etc. etc.

I want you to pause for a moment and FEEL the difference between those two sets of questions in your body. Feel how that FEELS to live in THOSE questions instead of living in the former questions. Those questions ignite possibility and wonder, curiosity and an entry-point into your natural hopeful and creative state. 

And isn’t that a place you’d rather live?

So today I have a question for you to sink into for yourself, and I also have some of my own answers from when I asked it of myself to share with you:

What would it be like to know money’s like air?

You may be familiar with the concept of picturing money like water, as a river, or an ocean perhaps. But as Ken pointed out, the next level of that is when it’s evaporated into air. When it is literally in, out and around all things. When it is that present and that effortless.

Below is part of my list, when I thought about my relationship to air, and what that same relationship would be like if it were money:

What it would feel like if money were like air:

• It feels empowering.
• It feels relaxed.
• It feels calm.
• It is trusting to the point of literally never having to worry about it.
• It is effortless.
• It is choices.
• It is wide open opportunity.
• It feels like love, like love you don’t have to do anything to “earn”. Just in and out, in and out.
• It’s just there for you.
• It’s a given.
• You can totally count on it.
• You can totally assume it.
• You are never separated from it.
• It is within you, and all around you, and always will be.
• It does not discriminate.
• It doesn’t matter who or what you are, it’s available to everything equally.
• It’s limitless in supply.
• It never runs out, it is continuously circulated and recycled, forever.
• It is available when you need it.
• It is IN, AROUND, and BETWEEN all things.
• It is effortlessly shared without anyone even having to think about it.
• It is there for you always, without having to “do” or “prove” anything at all.
• It doesn’t matter if you think it’s there for you or not, it is.
• It doesn’t withhold itself from you, ever. 
• It doesn’t care if you’re grateful enough or taking it for granted, it’s there with you anyway.
• It doesn’t need you to be any certain way, or any certain thing, it’s there.
• It has no particular demands of you, it is freely available to breathe in and breathe out.
• You don’t have to figure out how make it appear, it’s just there as you need it.
• Having it doesn’t prove anything about you, or your worth, it’s just there. 

So how about you? What things do you find? What would that feel like? Try to feel into it. I know for some of you, this might be a big stretch, and your mind may be fighting the concept tooth and nail, but I encourage you to try anyway.

Like I said, perception is a profoundly powerful thing. We have been raised to view money as scary. A scary monster that is not available to us and will abandon us, withhold from us and not be there for us when we need it. It’s like a really dysfunctional relationship we’re staying in because we think we have no better options. 

WE DO.

We do have better options. And the relationship will begin to change when our own perception shifts. When you think you’re living with a monster, you are. But when you see it’s just lovable old Grover, you’re free.

If your mind is saying: “Yah but that is NOT how money is, not at all, and it never will be.” — Ask, isn’t that the same as saying: “A loving supportive relationship is not possible for you, just stay in the dysfunctional one.”  or “Yah, that’s just the way women, people of color, LGBTQ, etc. get treated right now, that will never change, we just need to put up with the hate and dysfunction.”  or “oh, you’re sick? well we do have medicine for that, but don’t bother trying it, because it might not work and would be a waste of time.”

The way money currently is for us in this world is based on our perceptions and beliefs about it as human beings. It’s based on history. And how do you re-write history?? How do you re-write a new story? By changing the game from the ground up. By daring to believe something different.

It is literally true that money is all around us, between us and inside us. It is energy and form just like we are. It only has the power we give it. Because the truth is, we have the power and ARE the power.

Let’s take our power back, eh?

xo,
Sunni