60-Day Financial Fitness Challenge: Day 23

Today’s task:

Trust in the process of life.

‘Confío en el proceso de la vida.’ I trust in the process of life.

This was an affirmation that I was given today, and I believe that it’s exactly what I needed to hear. Apparently there’s a lot more wisdom to my physical ailments than I realized, and I’m excited to share with you what I uncovered.

A lot of us out in the world deal with chronic pain. An injury occurred that never healed, a smaller pain started that got bigger and now never seems to stop. But what most of us don’t realize is that most physical manifestations of pain come from an emotional root.

I’ve been ignoring a pain in my foot from a stress fracture for almost four years. Here’s the interesting part – I never connected the dots between all of this tension I’ve been holding in my body as it relates to where I live, the pain that is in my foot, and the timing of when it happened until today.

When I first moved to Minnesota, I had the opportunity to work at the State Fair with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) as a student worker, basically manning their booth, helping them promote information related to their produce safety program, their pollinator program, and the MN Grown directory. I handed out seed packets, brochures, talked to people about farming, and that was about it. I had a blast.

I was eager as hell, of course, to work as many hours as I could before I started my first semester of graduate school. And I chose to wear shoes that I guess weren’t the best suited to be used for 10-hours at a time, 10 days in a row.

Cue stress fracture.

Almost four years later, I am still dealing with the pain in my foot that never healed. What I learned today is that when you have pain in your foot, it can relate to having issues with your direction in life. When you have a twisted ankle, it can relate to the emotions of anger or resistance. What are you resisting in life? Why are you not letting things flow? What would it look like if you did? Where would you go?

Before the question was even finished being asked, I already knew the answer.

Two things came up for me related to this:

1. Feeling like I’ve been very unsure about where I wanted to land geographically after graduate school until I traveled to Costa Rica
2. Feeling that having a foot with chronic pain has prevented me from doing certain physical activities that I would really enjoy. Or going for longer distances than I can at the moment. It’s the feeling of being held back – in life. Not just in what I can do physically.

What’s the big picture here?

I am holding back. I’m playing small. I’m listening too much to what I think others want to hear instead of following my own journey and path. And right now, what that means for me is taking a 180 with where I’m focusing my energies and putting them into something that will get me in the direction I REALLY want to go.

The fact that my stress fracture occurred during the first week that I moved to Minnesota, I believe now, was not a coincidence. The fact that my social circle has been kept extremely tight since I moved here also is not a coincidence. The fact that I just moved all of my belongings into a storage unit is not a coincidence. And the fact that my screensaver that I’ve had for at least six months on my laptop is a photo of the community I’ll be staying in while I’m in Costa Rica is no freakin’ coincidence.

I am exactly where I’m supposed to be right now. Feeling all of this tension, feeling like I don’t belong. Because I don’t. It’s time to move on. And I’m so excited and relieved at the same time!

I was telling a colleague, I feel like I wait for permission so often to follow my heart instead of just doing what I want. But today, I’ve decided that I’m giving myself permission to leave. To find the peace within my soul that I know is out there – because I’ve experienced it already. And I’m giving myself permission not to wait for the perfect moment. I’m just going to do it and not think twice. Because my overthinking has led to all of this resistance that I wasn’t even conscious of. I have this image of myself in my head right now running with full speed and the wind making my long hair trail behind me, a free spirit that’s being carried by forces of nature that are more powerful than be imagined.

This brings us back to the theme of today’s post: Trust in the process of life.

In our darkest moments, it’s so easy for us to wallow in the sorrow and pain, letting it take us over. We forget who we are, we question all of the fundamental pieces of our identity, we question our decisions, we enter into a fight-or-flight most within our nervous system, and then we have this lingering edge where we’re teetering. At any given moment, should we find ourselves in danger again, this panic sets in. It’s familiar. Racing heart, shortness of breath. 

There’s scientific evidence that the physical vibrations of fear and love cannot simultaneously exist. And I believe that the energy of trust is closer to that of love than of fear. 

So what does it look like to pull yourself out of fear and back into love once again? Give yourself permission to laugh and be present with those around you instead of on edge and waiting for the next thing to go wrong? Well, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, start with gratitude. What we haven’t talked about yet is the power of surrender – of letting go.

One of the best things that you can do for yourself as you head into the new year is to make a list of all the things you plan on releasing.

The reason is that by shedding yourself of what no longer serves you, you’re making room for what you want to come through – both energetically and on the physical levels. By writing this down, you’re 40% more likely to actually do it. So grab a pen and start writing. 🙂

Today’s financial task: Get all of my documents to my CPA to file my quarterly taxes.

You didn’t think we weren’t going to talk about money, did you?

This took me about two hours, between downloading the documents from my Stride app (where I keep track of expense receipts and mileage), making sure that expenses were accounted for from my business checking/savings accounts in my budget spreadsheet from August-December, and uploading all of that to the online portal of my CPA.

Like I mentioned at the beginning of the challenge, I want to be fully transparent and share the numbers with you, down to the last penny, in part to be completely real and honest with myself about where things stand, and also to help anyone else out there trying to understand what this actually looks like on the back end.

Here’s what I came up with as a short summary of several different spreadsheets where I kept track of my expenses this year:

	Revenue	Savings for Taxes	Income	Expenses	Profit	Deductions
August	$1,530.00	$535.50	$994.50	$1,069	-$74.25
September	$2,300.00	$805.00	$1,495.00	$1,060	$434.94
October	$4,904.85	$1,716.70	$3,188.15	$398	$2,789.99
November	$4,450.00	$1,557.50	$2,892.50	$144.79	$2,747.71
December	$3,631.00	$1,270.85	$2,360.15	$339.66	$2,020.49
Total	$16,815.85	$5,885.55	$10,930.30	$3,011	$7,918.88	$2,831.69

As you can see, August was a rough month getting started, because between what I made, then accounting for taxes, and how many expenses I had, I actually operated at a loss. And the reason that it wasn’t until December that I didn’t have to pull from savings to pay for my fixed expenses is that I’ve been super diligent about keeping my expenses down and November was a good month. 

When I look at these numbers, I must say I feel like everything that I just wrote about earlier in this post rings true. I’m playing too small! And I’m ready to have a 10K month. 

Yesterday, I wrote a check to myself, just for the fun of it, for 10,000, with the memo of “Mezclada contract deposit”, meaning that $10,000 would be 10% of the total contract amount. Now THAT, my friends, is thinking big.

I’m going to let the universe do what it does best and provide. In the meantime, I’ll be preparing all of the structures I need to be ready to receive those funds when they come in. 🙂

What does that look like for you? Where are you playing small? And where are you resisting where your heart wants you to go?

Cheers to your progress thus far. Keep it up!