You have to find a way to be all right with thriving because you are always going to want to thrive. The economy is moving forward in response to the desires of people. And depriving yourself of something does not make more money for someone else to spend. If there were not people who were purchasing things, then all of the people who are working at manufacturing and marketing them would have to find some other ways of making their living. There are so many people who innately want to thrive, who as soon as they begin thriving a little, begin imposing all of these exterior judgements about how much thriving is appropriate, “It’s appropriate to thrive that much, but not that much.” And you have to ask yourself, “At what point do I lose the balance of thriving?”
—Abraham
Excerpted from the workshop: Detroit, MI on September 27, 2003

 It is quite all right for you to want to be prosperous! Somehow we get indoctrinated in our childhood to think that when there are other folks who don’t have it very good, we shouldn’t be abundant. I think that the folks who taught us that also thought that we shouldn’t flaunt our prosperity if we were “fortunate” enough to have it. But, then if we feel we are hiding our prosperity, then there’s the sensation of guilt. See how it’s a no-win situation.

My advice, in the face of everything that we’ve learned as we grew up is to try to wipe out those beliefs (remember that a belief is just a thought you keep thinking over and over again) and replace them with beliefs that make more sense now.

• What is your definition of prosperity and abundance? When you hear those words what do you think? Write the answers down.
• At the top of a second piece of paper write down what you’ve been taught and what you’ve been thinking all your life about prosperity and abundance.
• Draw two columns on that same page. Label one column “pros”  and the second column “cons”.
• Fill in the two columns. It doesn’t matter how you phrase things because you’re the only one who’s going to see it. Often we don’t do something simple like this because of what I call “Fear of Critique”. In this case, we might be afraid that someone would think what we wrote was stupid or that things aren’t spelled correctly. Don’t worry about that because only you will ever see it.
• Now look at the two columns and decide if you want to keep your definitions or create new ones.
• If you want to create a new one, write it down below the list of pros and cons.

Now read your new definitions several times a day and keep reading them (it) until you begin to actually believe it.

Try that this week for me and let me know how it goes. Comment below.