I’ve been thinking a lot about abundance and scarcity these days, and what kind of beliefs I have that may keep me in scarcity.
I was taught that having a prestigious job was the only way to achieve abundance and that work is not supposed to be fun or enjoyable.
Implicit in that was that passion and morality will inevitably take the backseat. I felt how my morals clashed with many jobs and I felt abused by a system that demanded so much for a college education that was basicallyrequired in order to work any of the jobs that I was taught can provide rven a basic level of abundance.
The was no real work ethic that involved an individual or alternative path. It was essentially submit or suffer. Dreams were silly things you were supposed to wake up from upon starting a career, or at least by 30 years old when it was time to have a family.
I came to Japan to trach English because I wanted to understand the workd better before I got stuck in the rat race and this was one of the few things which could convince my parents and myself might look good on a resume since many compNies do business in Japan and st the time there were so few non native speakers.
Really I was just buying time, looking for an out, an escape from the rat race. The lyrics of that Incubus song , which I haven’t heard in maybe 20 years float back into my mind telling this story, “Maybe if I look hard enough I could find a backdoor”.
I got comfortable and essentially did that for 5 years, but it never really felt like a back door out of the system, more like hiding in a closet or bathroom stall.
If I had any confidence or had any inkling that entrepreneurial endeavors were still within reach even in the 2000’s, I would have saved up to start a business, probably a cafe bar, and I would probably have all the things I always wanted, but i doubt I’d be as mentally or emotionally stable as I am today because there was so much extra baggage I needed yo work off.
I went the other way and slipped out of the machine, to drift around and experience freedom, but without any beloef that I could build anything.
This is becoming a bit more of a life story that I was intending. I wanted to talk about manifestation and what has prevented me from manifesting a steady income stream, but I guess these experiences are what I really need to dig into.
Money has never come to me from honest work. I don’t see it go to others for honest work. It feels like something that cones to devotion to the system and helping the system perpetuate itself.
I know it isn’t always like that and it CAN come from hard work for those who believe it can. But that believe is central.
It can also come to those who believe it can come suddenly for no reason at all, as with those who make the right trade by accident and end up 1000xing an investment they made as a joke. Early memecoin hype or wallstreetbets people who cashed out instead of gambling their winnings away. Early bitcoin investors who just held 3 cycles.
The most important thing is faith that it cane happen and then taking inspired action.
Manifestation comes from living a life in aignment with the things you desire. There are many roads there and perhaps new roads can be paved but you need to live a life that’s consistent and doesn’t push these things aeay, and you can’t be afraid of your own inspiration.
“Manifestation” doesn’t mean taking no action. It’s about clearing your mind of bullshit so your action is inspired and leads to positive outcome.
I’ve taken a lot of inspired action over the years but I don’t like to isolate myself from the world and the world is full of people with limitong beliefs that keep rubbing off on me.
The most detrimental two are the one I grew up with, that money is earned from devotion to systems of power, and the belief that most people in Japan have, that you need to work long and hard in order to deserve any kind of comfort.
忙しいはいいことです
“It’s good to be busy”
One of the worst things you can be in Japan, socially, is free. People may envy you, but they may also resent you and many people may think you don’t deserve anything you get.
That may be my own limiting belief about Japan that I need to re-examine, and so I will. And if I aways come to that conclusion, I will need to build a pocket for myself between cultures.
Japan is actually a country with great abundance built on Scarcity. People generally don’t have much self worth and so they believe they need to constantly prove themselves by sacrificing their freedom and appealing to people above them.
There is more freedom here than most places on earth but its considered noble to sacrifice that freedom by overworking a job that you have no control over.
But just because they don’t enjoy that freedom doesn’t mean I have to follow suit.
The safety, the fact that people don’t bother you unsoliticed, the interest people have in this place, the insane variety, and the extwnsive transportation system, these are all forms of abudnance.
Just as an example:
A scarcity mindset leads to most people taking short (2 day) busy holidays frequently, keeping the price of transportation and hotels perpetually high, and leading travel to be solely about checking the place off their list, something to tell their friends about and not really a chance for any meaningful experience.
This is not a unique phenomenon to Japan, but it’s strange to see a country so full of abundance can experience travel in such a limited way.
I could go on and on about this scarcity mindset and how much it limits us to live like we are poor even in areas of our life where we are rich, but I’d like to leave it at this with just one final takeaway meant for me, one thing to focus on that I found from writing this…
My bank account is nearly empty again, and I’m surrounded with all kinds of abduance. Rather than feeling like a victim of the world I realize there must be opportunities I am not seeing. I feel these missed oportuntiies aren’t about laziness and some of these opportunities realy arent for me.
There are these two beliefs I need to throw away because they are preventing me from manifesting the life I eant throguh my effort. One is that earning money means sacrficing my ideals and the other is that earning money means sacrificing everything else I want.
I know that neither of these are true but my experiencies have burned these beliefs deep into my subconsciousness so I think now I’ll try to make a list of times where I saw examples where this wasn’t true.
Just another day of untangling and becoming better
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