Noticing the everythingness
Walking the path from scarcity to abundance.
Dear Kula Diaries,
A question arrived in the Kula Diaries Vault last week that needed its own post, because I knew that I couldn’t do it justice in my normal AMA column. The question? Here it is:
So, today I’m going to talk about something that I never imagined I’d ever feel comfortable talking about: abundance. About a decade ago, if you had even mentioned the word ‘abundance’ to me… I probably would have laughed at you. ‘Abundance’ was a word for woo-woo people who liked crystals and meditating… it was not a word for realistic people like me. And then, one day, something happened. I looked around at my life and saw where being ‘realistic’ had gotten me… and realized that it had left me in a constant state of anxiety, nervousness and lack. I still remember the exact day when I said, out loud while driving my railroad police car, “There has to be another way.”
And, I’m happy to report: there is.
But, let’s start at the beginning, because it is very important for you to know that I was not always a person who believed in or felt the infinite abundance of the universe…. and if I’m being honest, sometimes I still don’t… but I’m getting better at it. I lived most of my life feeling the exact opposite of abundant. I lived in a state of constant fear about my financial situation… and while I’ve always been privileged enough that I’ve never experienced actual poverty, I have had many instances of feeling panicked and stressed about money. In my lowest moment, I was paying for one loan with another loan… while simultaneously eating stolen bananas and cold cans of kidney beans for almost every meal. If somebody had told me that I needed to, ‘feel abundant’, I probably would have thrown a stolen banana at their head.
When I started Kula Cloth, I had to confront my fears about scarcity and lack on a daily basis. When I left my job, my yearly salary went from $80,000 per year to zero dollars per year. Quickly, I spent every penny of my savings on trying to figure out how to ‘do something’ with this idea that I had… and I even spent some negative pennies too… thousands of them. The panic and overwhelm and fear that I felt during those moments was intense — but I had been throwing myself into learning about the concept of abundance… and while I wasn’t there quite yet… I was open to the idea of it.
I’m sharing these stories to let you know that we all start somewhere — and that if you are struggling financially and/or if you have a complicated relationship with money — that’s OK. I will never tell anybody who is in a place of absolute despair that they, ‘just need to feel abundant.’ I want you to imagine that the process of moving from scarcity to abundance is a gentle progression — not a giant leap. It’s a sloping hill with a manageable altitude gain… not a sheer cliff. This is a journey that you can complete at your own pace, and in a way that feels good to you — so if you aren’t ‘there’ yet, that’s OK. Just know that we all start somewhere… and that it does get better.
It’s very easy for other people to see me now — 6 years into running an outdoor gear company— and have a gut reaction such as, “Well… abundance is easy for you to talk about, Anastasia… you’ve got Kula Cloth”, or, “Of course you can feel abundance… you get to dance around and ride on your motorcycle all the time and eat pizza… must be nice!”. And I want you to know … very importantly… that the feeling of abundance came first. I found the feeling of abundance and then the ideas arrived… I found the feeling… and then the opportunities surfaced… I found the feeling… and then, I started riding my motorcycle and dancing. It was not the other way around. I also want to be very clear that I do not live in a state of abundant bliss at all times — I am a very normal human being, and my own journey from a place of scarcity is something that I intentionally and proactively navigate on a daily basis.
We all have a very personal and different relationship to money and/or the concept of abundance. As a child, the things that I learned about money were:
money doesn’t grow on trees
you have to work hard for money
large amounts of money are rare
you shouldn’t spend anything, because then you’ll run out of money
money is very limited
Talking about money can be very triggering for people — so, again, go gently on yourself (even while reading what I write). If you notice strong feelings coming up for you (like annoyance, frustration or anger) — pay attention to those, because they are important clues. Just know that wherever you are right now… it’s good. You don’t need to be anywhere different, and I hope that by the end of this piece, you’ll be feeling a tiny bit more abundant about who you are.
To start this discussion, I’m going to share an important concept, which will set the stage for a large part of this discussion: abundance and money are not the same thing.
Money is a possible effect of feeling abundant, but it is absolutely not abundance itself. Which means that if you do not feel abundant in your heart… no amount of money will ever give you the feeling of relief that you are seeking. The entire process of discovering abundance in your life begins by going within yourself — not by needing ‘a bunch’ of something in order to feel better.
I’m going to talk about money for a moment, because it’s really important to start thinking about it a bit differently. With a new understanding of money… the talk about abundance is going to make a lot more sense. When I first started learning about the concept of abundance, I had to re-learn how I thought about money, because I believed (incorrectly) that they were the same thing. I didn’t understand how it was possible to feel abundant without money. For most of my life, I thought that money was this very real thing that had a tangible existence. For me, money was often associated with stress, lack and fear. When I decided to shift my state of being, I needed to start seeing it in a new way. I had to learn and accept that money was… in very simple terms… energy. If this seems a bit far-fetched … don’t worry, it did to me too.
To understand this concept a little bit more clearly, I’m going to use one of my favorite examples: art. Just imagine, for a moment, that somehow Michelangelo has time travelled to 2024, and that he has been paired with me in an experimental art exhibition. We are both placed in the exact same room and we are both given the exact same tools: a can of purple paint, a paint brush, a canvas, and a black sharpie marker. We are also given the exact same instructions: paint the canvas purple and sign your name in the lower right hand corner. After exchanging pleasantries and telling him how much I appreciated seeing the Sistine Chapel (and deciding not to tell him that it was a lot smaller than I thought it was going to be), we get started. We both paint our canvases purple, and before we sign them — we compare them. They are, in fact, identical. Maybe the brushstrokes aren’t exactly the same, but we have essentially painted two of the exact same purple canvas.
At the end of the experiment, we take our sharpies and sign our names in the bottom righthand corner of the paintings. An art collector arrives within the hour to take the paintings away. Michelangelo’s painting receives a certificate of authenticity and it is rushed to Sotheby’s auction house in an armored truck, where it is auctioned off for over $45 million dollars — the time travel really added to the value of the painting, because an authentic 2024 Michelangelo is relatively rare. My painting, however… even though it was the exact same painting… ended up being given to the only person who really saw any actual value in it… my mom (no offense mom). So, what was the difference? If the paintings were exactly the same… why is it that Michelangelo’s painting sold for $45 million dollars and mine ended up in my mom’s closet? The answer is simple: the energy of who we are as artists. Michelangelo is arguably one of the most famous artists in the history of the cosmos — and it doesn’t matter if he paints a canvas purple. The energy of his art is limitless and infinite and our world has placed a very high value on anything that he has touched. Whereas, even though my purple canvas painting skills might be supreme — my energy as an artist is, as of yet, relatively undeveloped. Therefore, the number of people who are willing to pay anything for my purple canvas are…well… limited.
If money were simply a fixed thing — then, arguably, our purple canvases’ would have the exact same monetary value … but, obviously, they don’t. There is not one person on the planet who would say that my purple canvas should be ‘worth as much’ as Michelangelo’s. The money that somebody is willing to spend on the purple canvas has nothing to do with the ‘actual value’ of the physical product itself — it has to do with the intangible energy of everything that Michelangelo represents as an artist.
So, with this very basic primer on the general concept of money as energy… let’s review the feeling of lack or scarcity. When I am feeling lack or scarcity … how does it feel? For me, it feels restrictive and fearful — it feels like a sense of panic. It feels uneasy and unsettling. If I’m in a place of lack, I feel worried and frantic — like I need to do a bunch of stuff in order to ‘fix’ things. Being in a place of lack makes me feel scrambled… from a place of believing that there is not enough in the world. It’s a terrifying feeling that shuts down my creativity and closes me off to the infiniteness of anything at all. If I attempt to ‘create’ something from a place of fear — invariably, it flops on its face, because it is coming from a place of trying to force something so that I can get something else. It feels disingenuous to my own heart. It feels unnatural. It feels like I’m swimming upstream in a river… while obstacles are floating downstream at me. It feels like nothing is going my way. It makes me feel lost and confused and hopeless. It feels like I’m trying really hard to make something happen.
It goes without saying that scarcity is a low energy feeling. How do you know? Because, to be blunt, it feels awful. There is absolutely nothing that feels good about it at all. Being in a place of scarcity is not fun. If you are there right now, for whatever reason, please know that you are doing nothing wrong. Again, this is a gentle process of moving yourself in a new direction —you are not being asked to shift or change anything overnight. The first step in moving from a place of scarcity to a place of abundance is the belief that it is possible. That’s it — simply find a feeling of openness in your heart that it is possible to experience this shift in your life. Unfortunately, most people attach the feeling of abundance to ‘getting things’ — which is conditional abundance. We say, “I’ll feel abundant once I have a better job”, or, “I’ll feel abundant once I win the lottery.” As a result of this conditional abundance — we are unintentionally noticing the lack of those things in our current life situation, which perpetuates the feeling of scarcity.
So — how do you make the shift?
If you are not in a good feeling place right now — the best spot to start is with your breathing. Simply being in this moment right now… and noticing the abundance of life that exists within you. Feel the air coming in and out of your body… see if you can sense the beating of your heart… can you feel the energy radiating from you? When I had my near death experience in 2017, I was not in a place in my life where I felt abundant — I was very fearful and I lived in a constant state of panic and doubt. After that incident, everything changed for me — I remember closing my eyes and placing my hand on my heart for the first time and having the thought, I’m alive! How was it that I had never noticed this before? How was it that something so obvious had gone unnoticed? How was it that I had spent so much of my life focused on all of the things that needed to be fixed? Suddenly, as I sat with my eyes closed and my hand on my heart — I felt something that had been there all long. At the time, I called it, ‘the everythingness of everything’. I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant — but I knew that it felt like love, and hopefulness, and peace. I spent time every single day finding that feeling and allowing myself to bask in it — and, as I did that, the conditions of my life began to change too.
I want to make a small note about the feeling of guilt that can also arise while contemplating the idea of abundance. For instance: is it selfish for me to want to cultivate this feeling while there are so many other people suffering in the world? I already spoke about this topic, with specific respect to joy (you can read that here), but I want to offer the same, general advice: when you make a conscious decision to focus on the abundance of all things… you are not taking anything from anybody else. Instead, through your decision to cultivate that energy, you are actually placing yourself in a position where you will ultimately be able to make MORE of a difference. How do I know? Well, in my place of living in lack — I didn’t contribute much to anything, except my own sense of fear about the world. As I’ve moved into a place of abundance, I’ve been able to use what I do to give back to others in a way that never would have been possible without this mindset shift. I am doing this because I want to contribute to the greater good. I want to increase the feeling of abundance and love for all humans - not just me.
As you start your journey towards this new way of living… see if you can let go of the idea of abundance as a ‘thing’ — and rather, understand that it is a feeling. As we divorce ourselves from the idea that money = abundance… we can start to discover that abundance is something so far beyond money… and, most importantly, it is a feeling that can be felt right now. So, what is it? Quite simply, it is the incomprehensible, virtually indescribable energy and fullness of life. This might seem a bit vague, so I’ll try to describe what abundance feels like to me… and how I can tell that I’m finding a feeling of abundance from within my heart:
Abundance is the feeling that I feel when I dance outside in the dark and it doesn’t matter if anybody is watching. It is the feeling that I feel when I play my violin in the wilderness — like the whole universe is holding its breath and waiting to see what happens next. It is the feeling of creativity… a feeling of being in the flow. It’s the feeling that I get when I lie in bed at night and look out my window and see the stars. It’s the feeling I get when I eat my breakfast in the morning while having deep gratitude for delicious food that nourishes my body. It is the feeling of laughing with my husband. It is the feeling of walking in the dark in the wind and the rain and spinning around with my face turned towards the sky… just to see what it feels like. It is the feeling of being totally present to all of the sensations of life. It is the feeling of possibility — a feeling of openness that anything is possible. It is a feeling of letting go… a feeling of relaxing… a feeling of ease and peace. It is the feeling that I get when I close my eyes and notice that I am breathing… and that my heart is beating. It is a deep feeling of love — a connectedness to all things, and a complete trust that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. It is the feeling of floating downstream in the current of life… and believing that life will find a way to remind me of the truth of who I am.
A few years ago, Rose and I played our music in the mountains on my birthday. Very often when we perform our alpine serenades, we like to improvise in the moment. The challenges of playing music with wind and bugs make it more difficult and cumbersome to use sheet music. On this particular day, we ended up playing an improv that has stuck with me for a long time — because I know how I felt in the moment that we played it. I’ll share that video now — and I hope that you will listen to it (maybe with your eyes closed if that feels good)… and see if you can find a tiny feeling of something stirring within you. It’s a subtle — intangible thing that feels like connection… and gratitude… and love. I hope you can feel it… after everything I’ve written here today, this is the closest I can get to describing the nature of true abundance… something that, perhaps, only music can appropriately describe.
The newness of life In each breath it is there It lives in your heart And in notes in the air Each moment isn’t ‘then’ And not ‘what will be’ It’s always right now Close your eyes and you’ll see The magic you seek You don’t need to find It lives within you It’s always inside.
Next week (or maybe the week after… depending on my inspiration), I’ll be sharing more about this topic… but in a little bit more of a ‘tangible’ way… including some reading recommendations and resources, as well as concrete information about what to do with this new concept of abundance in your life. For now, the most important thing that you can take with you today is this: abundance is the feeling of love and of life itself that lives within you, not outside of you. It is not dependent on any thing… it is a part of who you are, and it is this knowing that will ultimately guide you on your journey away from a place of scarcity. From a human being who lived for a very long time in a place of scarcity — I want you to know that this is possible and that there is so much joy in finding the vastness within your own heart. It is also a constant practice, because some of our beliefs around these concepts are very deeply rooted in our psyche. Be patient with yourself and be kind — as a truly infinite being of life, you deserve all of that … and more.
I’ll end with a poem that I wrote about abundance (and subsequently turned into a little postcard that we sometimes use here Kula HQ).
Thank you all so much for being here — I am wishing you a sense of joy and wonder as you approach your day and life today… and all days.
A wonderful post - I loved the art example! And this is probably one of the most visceral sentences you’ve written: “If somebody had told me that I needed to, ‘feel abundant’, I probably would have thrown a stolen banana at their head.”