ABUNDANCE. A word so quick to slip off the tongues of self-help gurus and metaphysicians everywhere that it is, abundant. Often it’s something that so many of us feel we live without that when they mention it our hearts do a little leap as if to say ‘Abundance? Yes, please!’

But then the bills keep coming, the stresses keep piling on and the time keeps running out, so that we’re often left wondering where the abundance is. Earlier this year I found that rather than my heart leaping to say ‘Yes, please!’, it had taken a turn for the worse and was spitting the word in bitter disappointment as lack kept slapping me in the face.

‘Abundance is everywhere, all around you!’ they’d exhort and I’d bite back, ‘Yeah, right! Easy for you to say!

I felt that abundance was a nice idea but it certainly wasn’t a living reality and the longer I held on to the idea of abundance the more the concept became a bitter pill.

But life unfolds doesn’t it? We never stay in the same place or the same state of mind and sometime in the spring life moved me on. It came in a simple sentence:

It really got me thinking. What if I had everything I needed but I never reached out and took it? What if life really was abundant after all and I just kept leaving the fruit to rot???

So I got the sense that it wasn’t that life wasn’t providing the fruit I needed but that I was letting it die on the vine. Now why on earth would I do something as silly as that? Well, it was because I couldn’t see it that is was there for the taking. I didn’t know I had any fruit! My thinking and my vision were focussed in the wrong place, on all the problems and all the lack, presuming that fruit was a future thing, and it made me blind to what life was really offering right now!

I keep a sketchbook, it’s a place where I plan my work life, document my normal life and journal out my thought and emotional life. Today’s image is a little painting I drew when I realised that seeing the abundance in your life is a matter of asking yourself the right questions. In the original drawing each of the fruit is labelled – I filled them in as I realised what I had been missing. It’s a little too private for me to share the words with you but I wanted to share the image because it hit me that life does actually offer these big fat juicy fruits. And the secret to reaping the harvest requires asking yourself some questions. Maybe grab yourself a journal right now and answer these questions for yourself and see if you can start to see the fruit that you had been missing?

1. What have you got in your hand? What do you already have that is abundant? What assets, resources and talents do you already possess? Are you maximising their potential?

2. What fruit is ready to be taken? What opportunities are in front of you that you haven’t acted upon yet? What would happen if you did?

3. What ideas do you have that if you did act upon them would result in fruit for the future? What have you got in mind to do that you keep putting off? Sometimes we don’t act because we can’t see how we can reach the end result and gather our harvest but rather like the invisible bridge of faith, often the next step doesn’t reveal itself until the first is taken. Just trust that life will reveal it along the way.

4. Who do you have in your life that loves you and would be willing to help you? Who is in your network that would jump on board if you only asked?

If you keep asking yourself these questions, I promise over time you will start to see the world differently, and then you’ll see the fruit where there were previously only trees! And when you can see it then having all you need is as easy as picking the fruit off the tree! 🙂

Love,