As the year 2019 ends, and as 2020 brings a whole new decade upon us, I want to introduce you to a mental perspective I’ve adopted this year called Abundance Mindset. I’m also including 5 easy steps – inspired by our very own 5X Fam Member Hindzsight and the incredible artist MosaicEye – to implement Abundance Mindset into your life. My hope is that 2020 will be abundant for you!

Looking back at 2019, I find myself reflecting on the biggest wins, and simultaneously, the most painful losses in my life. Right in the middle of each of these contrasting experiences was not knowing how the end result of anything would turn out. There was constant uncertainty around the turn out for our first Himmat exhibit, to becoming General Manager of 5X Fest before the Festival, obstacles that came up while trying to finish my post-secondary degree. Also included in this package of worry was the uncertainty of my creative career, and very personal struggles where the lives of my nearest and dearest were on the line or lost too soon, and there was nothing I could do to keep them safe except hope and pray for them. I felt like there was a whole lot of discord with no definitive answer before me.

I’m sure you’ve felt this before, too, but, for a while, it seemed as if I had to pay a heavy trade off to genuinely experience the happy… yeh, I realized it was quite the opposite, where each traumatic experience came with a reminder of abundance and celebration, thanks to a major shift in my perspective to something called Abundance Mindset.

What it is

Abundance Mindset is a perspective of thinking that links your relationship with yourself with the external world: where you believe that there is more than enough in the world for you.

This also extends to focus on just your relationship with yourself, which can be a lot more challenging, of believing that you are more than enough, you have enough, and you are capable of more than enough to be successful… in fact, you have enough tools within you to multiply your success, growth and love for yourself and those around you.

Lauren Ash via MosaicEye on Instagram breaks it down even more:

Here are 5 easy ways to end your year and start a new decade with an Abundance Mindset:

1. Self-reflect constantly!

The easiest way to be the person you want to be is by making little changes and taking small steps each day to become who you envision yourself to be. This also requires a lot of self-reflection and identification: What do you want to achieve? What’s getting in the way of that? What are you afraid of? How can you implement changes in your life to achieve your goals?

The small steps turn into major changes. But, in order to do this, you must hold an honest relationship with yourself and create a safe space for self-reflection on who and where you currently are and what you want to change. This is no easy feat! But, trust yourself enough to know you harness conscious power within you to be whoever you want to be.

2. Practice gratitude

When you release expectations and replace them with gratitude, you’ll automatically release your focus from conditional love to love that is liberated and free. Simple things like stopping for 10 seconds and naming the things and people surrounding you that you are grateful for while you’re at a holiday party is a huge step to eradicating expectations and expressing gratitude.

Practicing gratitude also includes simple things like saying thank you when someone holds a door open for you or congratulating a friend on Instagram for an achievement that they shared. A little bit of gratitude goes a long way, helping you feel good about yourself and your relationships with others.

3. Eliminate space for negative self talk

I see you talking badly to yourself and about yourself. We all do it. In fact, we’ve kind of been conditioned by capitalist, patriarchal North American society to do so. Although it seems daunting, it’s really easy to dismantle this kind of mindset. Take another minute out of your day, every day, to tell yourself 3 things you like about yourself, or 3 things you can do that you’re proud of. Now, take another minute to ask yourself what 2 skills you’d like to develop on or make time for. Is it exercising more? Spending more time with yourself? Reading more? Resting more? Cutting back on alcohol? Whatever it may be, reflect on the small steps needed in order to achieve what you’re looking for.

Be careful with the words you choose to speak to yourself. Negative self-talk manifests itself outwardly to go from a negative mindset to an overall negative life. Catch yourself with your new, mad dope self-reflection skills and shift the negative self-talk to the positive.

For example: “I can’t do this” can easily be reworded to “I’m doing the best I can.”

Positive self-talk also makes space for you to identify things like asking for help when you need it, or shifting your priorities to meet your goals and deadlines.

4. Take Responsibility and Let Go

It’s human nature to ask the question “why?” A lot of times, when we want to make sense of distasteful things that have happened in our lives, assigning blame answers the why. But, sometimes things don’t have an answer and we need to accept that it just is what it is.

We aren’t victims, but rather, we are the creators of our own lives. We don’t have the power to control what happens to us, but we do have the power to control our reactions. It’s also okay if you slip up – old habits and mental patterns will resurface, often years later. The trick is to identify them and correct them when they come up. You have the capabilities within you to let go. In fact, only you have the power to in order to better your life. The end of the decade is a perfect symbol of letting go and now is your time to do so in order to create more space for good things to arrive in your life.

5. You best believe that blessings are on the way… in fact, they’ve already arrived

By implementing the belief that you are blessed and more blessings are on their way, you’re seizing positive power over the present moment and taking control of your own life. You’re a great person, and you deserve the best. So of course, you’re only going to get the best – the bad is just part of the balance of the universe, but everything is a lesson that eventually unlocks more blessings. Trust yourself and trust the universe. It will all work out. It has so far.

The key

Our friend Hindzsight says it best: nobody else can change your life. It has to be you. And you don’t have to wait until the new year to make changes in your life. We are gifted 365 days in the new year to make changes, but we also have 5 days until 2020 arrives. That means there are at least 5 opportunities to incorporate better changes in your life to help you be the person you want to be as 2020 hits us up.

A place to start

I know self-discovery and research can be overwhelming to start. To help, I’d like to introduce you to my absolute favourite creatives who touch on topics of abundance and growth:

Hindzsight – Is doing a video everyday on topics of self-growth. He’s so incredibly authentic to himself and it’s become an integral part of my daily routine to sit back and watch his wisdom. Listening to Hindz puts everything into perspective and I’m at ease as I continue with the rest of my day. It’s actually helped me become more productive and brought more to my 70 hour work weeks to become something more meaningful, efficient and doable long-term. Check him out on Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter because he’s onto something here.

MosaicEye/Chetna – Is a wonderful illustrator who breaks down topics of mental health geared toward self-love. Her illustrations on creating safe spaces, abundance, dismantling the colonized mindset and supporting one another fuel my inspiration for all of my upcoming projects. A must follow!

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May you have a wonderfully, magically abundant 2020!

xo,

j