What do I mean by prosperity consciousness?

Prosperity consciousness refers to a state of mind where you believe that you deserve to have abundance and prosperity in your life.

In reality, many of us have unconscious beliefs that hold us back from a prosperity mindset. We may feel money and materialism are bad. Or we may think we’re flawed in some way, so we aren’t able to achieve the level of prosperity we’d like in our lives.

Bill Blatchford, who coaches dentists on how to increase their incomes, writes about the “deserve level” in his book, Blatchford Blueprints: The Art of Creating a Successful Practice:

A deserve level is an interesting psychological barrier that is so real, yet invisible. This deserve level influences your life, your decisions, and your life choices. There is an invisible floor and a ceiling which you’ve created for yourself. Whether you realize it or not, you have a floor under which you will not operate. We are [equally] as uncomfortable breaking through our ceiling — such as having more fun than we deserve, having others recognize us for being special, having more money than we planned.

Our deserve levels are invisible and only show themselves when we are nearing our floor or ceiling at the comfort level we have set. We will do anything we can to stay within that comfort zone.

I read this book many years ago and have come back to this section numerous times… because for a long time, I didn’t understand it. Yes, intellectually I did, but I couldn’t figure out how it worked in my life.

Until the year 2011. Those of you who know me or follow me know I set off to do a 100-day spiritual journey in the spring of 2011. Well – ha ha – that 100 days officially became a two-year journey as I worked to change *everything* in my life before I turned 50.

It was one of the most exhilarating and difficult things I’ve ever done. The hardest part was looking at and changing my core beliefs.

A Rocky Start to My 100-Day Spiritual Journey

This is where the floors and ceilings come in. Blatchford is absolutely correct when he says our floors and ceilings are “invisible.” I finally figured this out in 2012.

The previous year, my son had asked for two things: he wanted to go on a summer trip by bus across the U.S. with the national youth group organization, and he wanted to attend the organization’s weekend spring convention.

When he gave me the brochure for the bus trip, I took one look at the price, fainted, and then said, “Are you crazy?! I can’t afford that!” The spring convention, while much less expensive, was $350.

I flipped out about that one, too. “OMG! That is so much money!” I thought. I fretted and hemmed and hawed. I paid it, but not without a lot of anxiety.

But through the next year, things changed. Working through a lot of crap, I realized that I gravitated toward always buying the cheapest item on display because…well, for lots of reasons. Two of which are: I was a single mom and I was self-employed — and self-employed, single moms can’t afford nice things, right?

When I realized that, I ditched the labels and the negative mindset. Then I became a successful working mom. I also started buying nicer things, which in turn made me feel more successful.

That December, my son brought up the bus trip again. This time around, I didn’t say “no.” But I didn’t say yes, either.

I kept looking at the cost of the trip (or “the number” as I called it) — it scared me to death. When I told one of my friends about the trip, he said, “That is such an awesome thing. He has to go! You can do it. It’s just one or two extra projects in one month, right?”

Put in that perspective, I could see he was right. And that made all the difference.

So I signed up my son. The organization worked with me on a payment schedule, my son applied for scholarships, and I put him to work in my business to help pay for the trip.

But here’s the funny thing that happened. Signing him up for that trip and agreeing to pay for it made a huge change in my head. Suddenly, “the number” wasn’t so big anymore. And, when my son asked to go to the spring convention the following year, the $350 fee was just… a fee I knew I could easily pay.

At the time, my son laughed about this and said, “Wow, Mom, you sure have changed.”

In the instant he said that, I knew I had busted through a real ceiling that had been holding me back.

If you want to find your own invisible ceilings to prosperity consciousness, take a look at where you feel resistance, your language around money, time, health or relationships, or any projects that have been on the “back burner” for months or years.

Then, begin peeling back the layers. Be gentle with yourself. This process, while not difficult, can be uncomfortable as lots of “gunk” comes to the surface.

But the result — getting rid of the stuff that holds you back from prosperity — is so worth it.

4 Tips to Expand Your Prosperity Consciousness

These are four important lessons I’d like to share from my 100-day spiritual journey.

1. Live in the present

I learned that anything can and does happen, often in split seconds. I learned that we’re presented numerous opportunities and that the universe (God, source, whatever you want to call it) does give us what we want. But we’re often too busy living in the future or the past to notice or be grateful for it.

2. Think bigger

I started off with the mantra “think different” because I wanted to change my thought patterns. It took me almost until the end of my 100 days of soul-searching to learn that to think different, I needed to think bigger.

A woman I once interviewed for an e-book said, “Dianna, you need to stop using the word ‘little’ to describe what you do. Everything you do is huge.” This has been the hardest change for me to make over the years — but I’m getting there.

3. Ask for more

A lot of us tend to not ask too much from life.

We want our kids to be happy and healthy. If you don’t have kids, maybe you just want to make a certain amount of money (but not too much!). Maybe you just want a half hour to sit on the deck in the sun in peace and quiet.

That’s all good, but what would happen if you asked for much more than that? I learned what happens. You get it.

4. Trust in yourself

The few people I told about my soul-searching journey had one question for me, “Which program are you following?”

No program. Armed with blank notebooks and packages of pens, I simply kept a detailed account of what happened to me every single day. I asked myself lots and lots of questions. I searched out my values. I cried a lot.

In between all of that, I ate lots of good food and formed some really deep connections with people. And I learned that you don’t have to travel to an obscure place to have a spiritual experience or expand your prosperity consciousness.

I also learned that you don’t have to have a “guru” show you the way. The answers are all inside of you — you just have to tap into them.