Hey there fellow Scurvy Elephant. 🐘
No that isn’t a typo, it’s a term coined by Wayne Dyer, fellow Hay House Author, and an amazing mentor who has had a significant impact on my journey to understanding what a wealthy life is and how to live it.
Specifically Wayne’s teaching influenced the aspect of understanding myself in relation to the world, the role money plays in my wellbeing, my sense of worthiness and the role our beliefs, thoughts, perceptions and intentions play in creating the life we get to live.
On money Wayne said…
Money is neither god nor devil,
but a form of energy.
Like love or fear,
it can serve you or bind you,
depending upon how you manage it.
By clarifying your goals
and using your gifts,
you can make good money, doing what you enjoy,
while serving the highest calling of your soul.
Using money wisely, and well, you share your material and spiritual wealth with the world.
Wayne Dyer ended his earth journey on Saturday 29 August 2015 and I was doing a live radio show on Hay House radio the following Monday.
Instead of doing the segment I had planned I instead opened the lines to listeners to share what they had learned from Wayne.
It was an extraordinary outpouring of love and thanks for his life and teachings and I shared some of my Wayne Dyer Money Lessons.
In this video I share with you the four money lessons I learned from Wayne
About that Scurvy Elephant…
Being a scurvy elephant is one of the pillars of Wayne's philosophy. He tells the story of how as a kid he went back to his foster home one day and told his foster mum that he had overheard his teacher telling the principal that he was a scurvy elephant.
Rather perplexed she phoned the school the next day and asked the principal what that meant. To which he replied - Wayne always gets it wrong - she didn’t call him a scurvy elephant, she called him a disturbing element.
I love that and I have fully embraced being a scurvy elephant too. I want to disturb the status quo of poverty and scarcity and greed and low self-worth based consumption being the norm.
I got to meet Wayne in London 2004 and asked him about being a scurvy elephant..
Wayne said to me..
“Scurvy elephant, that’s the term I’ve used for as long as I can remember,…
… There are some people who have a sense of who they are and what they are going to be and they really are, very early in their life, independent of the good opinion of other people. I was one of these people.”
I didn’t grow up with the same sense of certainty as to who I was, but I was (and still am) a Scurvy Elephant and since you’re here reading this I have a sneaky suspicion you’re a scurvy elephant too.
If I wasn’t a scurvy elephant, I’d still be trapped in the work hard for money world waiting to really live my wealthy life sometime in the future when……
If you want to create wealth for yourself and those you love and really get to experience your own wealthy life - you’ve got to be a disturbing element.
You’ve have to go against “conventional wisdom” and break out of following the herd.
Here are the four money lessons I learned from Wayne
Lesson #1: Money and Our Relationship With The World
In the context of personal growth, money is more than a means of exchange or ready cash. Although most of us have experienced periods of financial scarcity, our relationship to money reflects our relationship to energy and service and spirit, our ability to function in society, our openness to pleasure and abundance, our reality check.
Money mirrors the quality of our interactions with other people,
our ability to receive and to give.
Money represents survival, security, safety, shelter, food, family, livelihood.
More complex, it turns out, than just balancing your cheque (check for our US Wealth Chefs ;)) book.
Lesson #2: Money As The Foundation For A Spiritual Life
Spiritual life begins on the ground and
money forms a foundation on which to build it.
Shivapuri Baba, an Indian Saint and yogi who walked around the world on a pilgrimage when he was nearly 120 years old, was once asked about the best way to begin a spiritual life.
He advised, "first build a foundation—manage your money."
He had acquired a small bag of gems in his younger years, through hard work and simple living; he drew upon these gems as needed.
Lesson #3: Money and Integrating It In Everyday Life To Free You
Most of us have money concerns of one kind or another—striving to make more, or make do with less—learning to live simply, comfortably, spiritually.
Money also dominates a significant amount of our thoughts.
Poor people may be forced to think about money a lot of the time, related to food, shelter, subsistence, survival and fear of never having it.
Rich people may also think about money a lot of the time, related to status, travel, freedom, influence, options and fear of losing it.
But dealing with your money and integrating it into your everyday life should not depend upon either having loads of it or declaring vows of poverty.
Rather, it is about creating stability and sufficiency—a balanced flow of monetary energy through your life.
Great money leadership and having management systems liberates you from survival issues, so that money concerns no longer occupy your mind or monopolise your attention.
When money flows in, you allocate it to your different pots in a matter-of-fact way knowing where it needs to go so it can serve you now and in the future. By following your Wealth Pie Money Management Recipe you know that that is how the money flowing through your life will do the best.
You pay bills gladly, knowing that you’re exchanging your money for things you’ve received value from and that your money helps to support other people who in turn provide services for you and others. If something breaks, you get it fixed without further concern.
Managing your money with consciousness frees us from cycles of scarcity, and liberates our attention so it can ascend to higher levels of awareness and experience. This is what a wealthy life is about.
Lesson #4: Money and Being Worthy
This is a biggie!
We must honour our worthiness in order to receive what we want.
In our society we are conditioned to believe that we are not worthy, and that it is even selfish to want to be able to attract things into our lives. We shouldn’t want things and we should be satisfied with nothing.
Furthermore, we don’t deserve whatever we would like to have in our lives because we think we have been bad, we feel insufficient or not enough, or somebody else has convinced us that we’re not worthy.
Feeling unworthy is like putting a huge obstacle into the God force,
into the life force which is everywhere.
A huge obstacle in your wealth flow.
This force is unlimited. It is always moving and always flowing.
The ancient Hawaiians, the Kahunas, (yes - the one of the big balls ;)) , used the metaphor of the flow of a running stream to represent the divine force.
So when you put a great big obstacle (your feeling of unworthiness), in front of a running stream, it’s not like it’s going to stop the flow of the divine force. The divine force will just go around your unworthiness and flow someplace else.
That’s exactly what happens when you decide you really would like to create wealth, but simultaneously you’re saying, “I’m really not worth it,” “I’m really not good enough,” or “I’ve been bad,” or “I’m a sinner.”
The force will not work with you. It just doesn’t work with that which doesn’t think that it deserves it.
We have to overcome our societal conditioning which says we are unworthy.
There is a universal intelligence that we call Life or God or the Universe or Soul or Spirit or Consciousness or Nature, and it is everywhere and in all things.
There is no place that LIFE is not.
What we have to do is figure out a way to reconnect to our Source, rather than seeing ourselves as separate from it.
Almost all of our conditioning has told us that we can’t have what we truly want. We believe we can’t attract to ourselves what we want because we think we are separate from LIFE.
But if we see ourselves as connected to the universe, then we can attract anything we want into our lives.
“The greatest feat in your wealthy life journey is to
fully separate money and your sense of worth.
Ann Wilson
There is nothing you need to do, say,
have, be - to be worthy - you just are.”
Ann Wilson
There is no amount of money or things you can have that can make you worthy, nor is there any amount you can give to make you worthy - there is no correlation.
You just are worthy.
Your net worth will never come close to what your worth is - but the paradox is - the more you recognise your intrinsic worth the faster your self worth will expand and with it the greater your wealthy life experience will be.
Here’s celebrating you and your enoughness.
With huge love
Ann
