Are you ready to receive what you asked for?

“Ask for what you want and be prepared to receive it.”  Maya Angelou

 

So does this sound familiar? You asked for something, prayed for it, cried for it, even. Maybe you are at the point of feeling jaded and giving up on that thing. Whether it be longing for love, friendship, money, family, etc., we can all relate to wanting something so badly that it consumes our thoughts for a time. Regardless of what that thing is, have you stopped and asked yourself whether you are truly ready to receive that thing? I’m sure you are thinking, duh, of course I am ready to receive it. But no really, are you truly ready to receive it? What I mean by this is, if the love you prayed for, the money, the family, the friend, etc. showed up today, are you ready to accept that person or thing and nurture it? Another way of thinking about it is, have you done the work required for you to do better with that person or thing this time around?

 

Let’s use money as an example. Money or specifically, more money, is something most of us dream about acquiring. How many of us have included a financial planner or wealth manager in that dream? More importantly, how many of us have looked at our finances to identify the habits you have that are detrimental to your financial goals? Have you done the deep dive into your money management habits? Not just the obvious surface spending habits, like I need to stop buying Starbucks coffee every day. I mean the real uncomfortable assessment of what are my beliefs about money that are affecting my ability to become financially stable. No, I am not picking on you. Rather we all have subconscious money beliefs that we are not even aware of. Did you see your parents struggle to make ends meet and you associate money with struggle? Or did you hear statements like, you can’t take it with you, so you might as well spend it now? Did you grow up in a household that relied heavily on credit? Whatever, your money beliefs are and wherever they can from, you need to face them head on and work to change the limiting beliefs.

 

“What if everything you are going through is preparing you for what you asked for?” - Unknown

 

According to the National Endowment for Financial Education, 70% of people who win the lottery or get a large windfall, end up broke within a few years. This is attributed to several reasons that can be boiled down to not having done the work to prepare themselves to receive what they asked for. Here are a few reasons these “lucky” people go broke:

• They did not know how to manage modest sums of money prior to acquiring the larger sum.
• They felt obligated to give large sums of money to friends and family.
• They did not seek out the assistance of financial planners and attorneys.
• They felt invincible and believed that the sum of money was too large to ever run out.
• They spent the money on depreciating assets like cars, vacations, and expensive gifts.
• Even if they invested the money, they did not do their due diligence to ensure the investments were sound.

 

So why did I go into that much detail about money, well because we have all wished for more money but I guarantee, we haven’t all figured out how to handle more money better than the current sums we have in our possession.

 

Another example most of us can relate to is love. We often hope and pray for the perfect mate. The one who will come and sweep us off or feet or be the ying to our yang. But I ask you this, when he or she shows up, will we a)recognize them; b)know how to treat them; and c)be healthy enough to sustain the relationship? Arguably, we spend so much time praying, wishing, and hoping for the person to show up, we have neglected to do the work necessary to receive them. After a bad breakup we pray for the right person to come into our lives. Similarly, after being single for a while, we begin to pray for that special someone. Does this sound familiar? Well, like the discussion about money above, have you done the work? Have you unpacked why your other relationships didn’t work? Yeah, yeah… I am POSITIVE that the other person was 100% at fault… Ok now that we got that out of the way, what did you do to contribute to the failure of your past relationships? Often times this is a hard question to answer because all we see is the pain the other person caused us. But here is where doing the work is so important. Because the relationship consisted of two people, then arguably two people are at fault for its demise.

 

So let me give you an extreme example that will prove my point. Let’s say you were in a physically abusive relationship. Your partner hurt you over and over. Of course, they are to blame for the end of the relationship and not you. Well, being ready for that new love you prayed for has nothing to do with who was to blame. What I am asking you to do here is determine what you can learn about yourself from that relationship that will put you on the path of being the best version of yourself for the next person. So going back to the example of physical abuse, in this instance you would need to ask yourself some tough questions about why you allowed someone to treat you that way in the first place. Honestly answering this question may result in you identifying that you have low self-esteem or self-confidence. Additionally, it may result in your identifying that your definition of love is skewed and you need to do the work required to redefine love for yourself.

 

“What we are waiting for is not as important as what happens to us as we are waiting. Trust the process.” - Mandy Hale

 

I have shared my biggest heartbreak with you all. So let me continue to be transparent and share where I am now. So I worked on me. I looked deep into myself for answers about why my past relationships didn’t work and I honestly didn’t like the answers I found within. Specifically, I learned that I didn’t make them earn my trust, it was given without question. I know this seems like a good thing, but when you ignore the signs of someone violating that trust, it is no longer a positive. Additionally, I learned that I didn’t know how to allow another person to love me. I had a script in my head of how it should be and felt panicked when it deviated from the script, even a little bit. I also realized that to get the love I wanted, I must also be willing to give it unconditionally. Though there were other revelations, these are the three biggest ones.

 

“All things are ready, if our minds be so.”  - William Shakespeare

 

So let’s cut to me meeting a man that is genuinely kind, thoughtful, and just as ambitious. I wish this is where I told you that all my introspection prepared me to recognize and accept him in my life and everything has gone smoothly since our first meeting. Unfortunately, it seems as though I still have work to do. This man is a godsend because he understands where I have been and wants to show me that not all men cause pain and that there can be love after love after all. (Shout out to all my Celine Dion fans!) So, though I did the work, I am finding that the work continues. I have to fight my old ways to allow myself to truly accept him being the answer to my prayers.

 

“Even seasonal situations can bring with them lessons that last a lifetime. If the love doesn’t last, it will prepare you for the one that will.”  - Mandy Hale

 

So I ask again… are you ready to receive what you asked for? I am. I will continue to do the work to ensure that I do not block the very thing I prayed for.