by Vienda | 25 Feb 2024 | General
“Your conclusion that there isn’t enough of something—whether it is enough land, or money, or clarity—stems from you learning, without meaning to, a vibration that holds you apart from what you want.” — Abraham Hicks
A few years ago I had a boyfriend who was the most frugal, ungenerous man I have ever met. He would always choose the cheapest options in the supermarket, suggest low-to-no-budget dates and if we did go to dinner he would meticulously calculate the total and then split it with me. Generally, he hesitated to offer any gesture that might cost him financially.
He was so cheap that everything we did felt small, suffocating and limited.
During the four years of our relationship, our financial situations shifted. I met him in the second year of my business when I was barely making enough to get by but by the end of the four years, I outearned him by almost double.
The difference between him and I was that I did the work.
her wealth — the live 5-week women’s money training — is starting soon. enrollments close on Sunday, February 25th. learn more and join here.
He had a ‘lack’ mentality. So he scrimped and calculated and pinched.
I was familiar with this type of thinking. I also had been brought up to believe that there is never enough. But I didn’t like the way it made me feel.
I wanted to feel expansive. Abundant. Free.
I wanted to feel like money was never going to stop me from living a good life.
The difference between having a lack mentality and an abundance mentality?
Perception.
Resulting in your life experience.
Perception is our belief in what is true.
Our experiences are the tangible results of what we believe.
Often, I hear or read conversations based on beliefs that there is not enough in the world:
- “There aren’t enough good jobs to go around.”
- “We are running out of natural resources. Water, oil…”
- “There’s not enough money for everyone to be wealthy.”
- “There isn’t enough food to feed all the people on the planet.”
- “The economy is on a constant downturn. No one can thrive with this.”
After years (and years and years) of studying human behaviour and psychology, I’ve come to understand one straightforward concept: whatever we believe, is true for us. Our beliefs dictate the experience we have of the world.
Here’s another perspective:
- It’s estimated that we have over 8 billion people in the world. As a small example, the world military expenditure is estimated at over 1,700 billion USD, to give you a tiny idea proportionally on how much money there is in the world. So yeah: There is more than enough money for everyone in the world. Our beautiful lesson to learn here is how to get into that stream of delightful money, by looking at our beliefs and deciding to change them.
- We all have different interests and passions. Some people love to write. Some people love to invent. Some people love to sing, to build, and some people love math. One person’s menial job is another person’s dream. This is not true for 100% of jobs, sure; but with eight billion very different people living on this planet, you’d be surprised at what different people enjoy, and consider a good job.
- We can all thrive, despite whatever the economy is supposedly doing. Some of the biggest, most successful brands and businesses came from a time when they were challenged. It’s those limitations that add fuel to genius and result in incredible success.
- Hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity. For the past two decades, global food production has increased faster than the global population growth rate. The world already produces more than 1½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That’s enough to feed 10 billion people, the population peak we expect by 2050.
- Or as Prof. Steve Horwitz says “There are economic reasons why we will never run out of many resources. In a free market system, prices signal scarcity. So as a resource becomes more scarce, it becomes more expensive, which incentivizes people to use less of it and develop new alternatives, or to find new reserves of that resource that were previously unknown or unprofitable. We have seen throughout history that the human mind’s ability to innovate, coupled with a free market economic system, is an unlimited resource that can overcome the limitations we perceive with natural resources.”
Let’s circle back to my ex-boyfriend. He was a middle-class man, with a helicopter licence and a passion for law enforcement and access to endless opportunities. But he had a deeply ingrained lack belief that stemmed from his childhood upbringing and father’s role modelling.
Although he could easily make more money than the average person, he still felt that he never had enough money to afford even the simplest of things.
The more lack he felt, the more life affirmed his belief that there was not enough money.
There’s a psychological term for this exact thing.
It’s called our reticular activating system.
It acts as the library of our belief system. These beliefs affect our perception of thoughts. Then our perceptions control how we feel about one subject. Or another.
His reticular activating system caused him to seek out experiences that support his belief that there isn’t enough.
And so suddenly he would be hit with a huge unexpected bill. Or make a critical decision in an investment, losing large sums of money. Or his well-paying job became redundant.
Because this is how the reticular activating system works.
This doesn’t only apply to finances. It applies to every area of life: Relationships, health, happiness. Everything you experience in life is affected by what you believe is true. (Your reticular activating system.) Your beliefs create your perceptions, and vice versa.
When you believe that there is not enough of what you want there won’t be. Because you can’t ask for something that you don’t believe exists, is possible, or is true for you.
You have to change the integral belief first, and foremost, and then start calling in what you want.
How?
It’s easy.
Start looking for and seeking out evidence to support the belief that you want. Find research that supports the sentiment there is more than enough…money, jobs, natural resources, etc.
In this way, you can break your lack mentality by choosing a new perception, a new stream of thoughts on any topic.
This is called reframing in psychology. it works the same way. When you start to believe something new, your reticular activating system starts to take effect and produce those beliefs as tangible, practical results and experiences in life.
I’d love to help you re-write the economic rules you have set for yourself.
Join me for her wealth, now. Spaces are limited.
It’s 100% up to you what you choose to believe. You get to design your life any way you want. If you want to believe in lack. Do it! May you have a powerful, positive change in the world through your beliefs. If you want to believe in abundance. Awesome! And may you have a fulfilling and enchanting positive impact on the world through your beliefs.
by Vienda | 30 Jan 2024 | General
The other day a friend and I met up for dinner and we talked a lot about financial independence and how important it is to be financially independent to feel well, to have good self-esteem, and to be able to make choices that benefit all.
Over several 4-bites-per-serve sized seafood mains that should have been tapas, shared out equally, and glasses of white wine from the vineyard we looked out on, we relished our momentary opulence.
Ultimately, we agreed, that what we all want is to feel secure, circulate wealth, enjoy our lives and do good.
The past six months have brought about some pretty drastic changes across the globe. Costs of living heightened, wages barely increased, some people lost jobs and it all felt kind of extreme and demeaning and unfair.
Just as we had come out from under a domino of disasters, did we need another reason to feel squeezed in our lives?
No.
But.
We get to do some really cool shit with money.
We get to live in homes with running water and heating or cooling respectively to our needs. We get to choose the foods that we like grown under the conditions of our preference. We get to go to places and see art under soft lighting or artists under spotlights sweating for their craft. We get to be those artists graciously demanding to be seen by paying for the tools required. We get to go places and have adventures and meet people who like the things we like. We get to walk down mostly safe streets and drive down mostly asphalted roads and buy steaming cups of coffee and bagels or doughnuts or little energy balls made of dates and coconut…
All those simple delights require some kind of exchange.
The exchange of currency.
Money.
Ultimately it’s an imperfect system. Like every other system in the world.
We can either feel resentment and bitterness around its deficiencies and cringe and complain about the day-to-day of our lives and the necessity to exist in this imperfect system to support ourselves. But that isn’t going to make life any better or easier.
Or…
We can accept that change is small and incremental. That change happens slowly and then eventually hopefully all at once. That what we can do, while we chip away at creating a better future, is learn how to play the current game.
On our terms. Our way.
As women, especially.
We need to learn how to play the game of money.
Whenever I speak to women about money three big stakes come up:
- Feeling WORTHY and able to hold on to/manage/be good custodians of larger sums of money
- Being able to ASK FOR and RECEIVE the amount of money they want/need/are worthy of, whether in a salary or in a business where they are selling products and services.
- How they FEEL about money, the two ends of the spectrum being either shying away from talking about and looking at your money/accounts — or being overly controlling, but either way feeling FEAR.
I took this conversation to Instagram and asked:
WHAT IS YOUR MOST SPECIFIC MONEY CHALLENGE YOU WOULD LIKE TO CHANGE?
There were many many many good answers but these were the most common:
Sitting on the edge of the ocean in the sand on the weekend I watch a little hermit crab scurry past on its 10 little legs moving sideways over tiny sand dunes. He stops. Hesitating many times. Circling me. Searching.
I see him find a shell. A tusk-shaped spiral a little bigger than his own. He turns it around. Waddles past several times. Looks inside. Stops, again.
A few moments later that little crab crawls out of his shell, naked and alone, without protection or a home. So vulnerable. Anything could happen.
He circles his old shell a few times. Stops. Then scurries to the new one and hides inside. Slowly, slowly those 10 little legs reappear. Sideways, he’s off again.
I’ve never seen a hermit crab change shells before. It reminds me of growth. And those terrifying moments of complete defenselessness, unprotected and alone. I find myself in that strangely vulnerable place again.
Being self-employed and responsible for 100% of my income I started thinking about all the ways this could all go wrong. Old habitual thought patterns arose.
Expansion is always preceded by contraction.
I find myself in this place, every time I take a leap and grow. First comes the inner struggle. Then comes the discomfort. Then the awareness and the willingness to change. Followed by results.
I’ve been doing this process every year or so since 2014. 10 years of educating myself about finances means I know a thing or two.
I’d like to share it all with you.
£100 EARLYBIRD PRICE UNTIL FEB 10th
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by Vienda | 6 Jun 2022 | General
A 5-week live-led prescriptive journey to move through the chaos of reinvention.
Renew is about becoming radically aligned with what gives you pleasure and makes you come alive.
Permission to be unconventional and break with the traditions and old habits in your life that are outdated.
Getting radical asking for and stating what you need and then going for it.
A process of teasing out what is most important for you.
And then living it.
Expect:
Expansion. Spirituality. Pragmatism. Relevance. Community. Connection. Change.
We want more because we are wanting. The longing comes from lacking something. The only way we know how to fill that wanting is through the means that our cultures and societies have offered us: new things, clothes, gadgets, relationships, experiences, and career successes.
Yet… we are still wanting. Still lacking. Still longing for something. Left not knowing how to fill ourselves up.
Renew is a chance to change that.
It’s a journey to uncover your soul’s deeper longings beyond the superficial nature of our day-to-day worlds and dive into a subterranean realm that connects mind body and heart at the level of life being lived through you.
Together we will be redefining what we want our lives to look like.
It’s going to be entirely unique and individual for each one of you.
You will be bridging the gap between fear and doing what you’re made for.
RENEW
Registration opens: Monday 6th June
Registration closes: Sunday 3rd July
We begin: Monday 4th July
4 live calls held on Tuesdays at 6 pm GMT
Europe: 7 pm CEST
Australia: 5 am AEDT
USA: 1 pm EST / 10 am PST
Delivery: 5-week journey
☽ Weekly live & recorded calls
☽ Multi-media course
☽ Online community
PRICE £150
limited spaces
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I know that across the past year you’ve watched me pull back, change, lose my voice, and lose my sense of identity and belonging in this world. I became quieter, cautious, anxious and forlorn in a way I have never experienced before. Much of the time felt like a passive, semi-conscious incubus. I felt so disconnected from the world and from myself.
I withdrew and found myself grieving everything. Anything could make me cry. It was so difficult to be a human being and exist in the world for a good portion of the past year. I wanted to feel better do better be a generous open-hearted human and friend and creative person but there was zero capacity or even availability within me to do so.
Then one day about a month ago… I was done with my own bullshit. I’d had enough. I decided it was time to reinvent and reset and renew myself. It’s something I’ve done many times before but never as intentionally as I am doing it now. I know that many of you are on a similar trajectory.
The past two years have left an aftershock reverberating through us. The stress of not really knowing what was happening and nothing making sense left most of us reeling and grappling with new coping habits.
Now we feel vulnerable, unsteady, stripped of our prior confidence and bravado. Not only in ourselves but in the world we live in. And yet… we know… It’s time. We are ready for reinvention. We have an opportunity to recreate ourselves and our lives based on a whole new set of rules and values. We’ve grown matured, wisened, become more compassionate, de-armoured, sat with our trauma and felt it all so deeply.
Renew is a 5-week live journey to recalibrate ourselves, realign and make new choices for the rest of our lives that actually live up to what we truly value and care about.
Orientation Week: Monday 4th to Sunday 10th of July
Meet your accountability partner; complete the prerequisite digital mini-course and groundwork and get to know your RENEW community.
SPACE — Live Call 1: Tuesday, July, 12th at 6 pm GMT
Your thoughts and emotions have to be in alignment to create real change.
Discover who you need to be and what you need to do to have the kind of life you actually want.
Know how to give yourself space and welcome silence to find the answers to live in integrity.
(And what that actually means.)
EDIT — Live Call 2: Tuesday, July, 19th at 6 pm GMT
What are you holding onto that’s taking up mental, emotional or physical space in your life and holding you back?
Do a full life edit: How you dress, how you do your hair, your identity, who you spend time with your social media and digital relationships. Keep breaking down what doesn’t work so we can build something better.
AWAKEN — Live Call 3: Tuesday, July, 26rd at 6 pm GMT
Your invitation to your reinvention. An awakening of a part of you that has laid dormant or repressed for too long and to integrate your edits. Discover your life’s WHY and write a life statement to live in alignment with.
Have important meaningful hard conversations.
Generate hope for your future.
EXPAND — Live Call 4: Tuesday, August, 2nd at 6 pm GMT
Explore the integral steps that lead you into a brand new life.
Renewal is quiet, diligent work.
Q&A.
EARLY BIRD PRICE £100
(Full price from Friday 17th June: £150)
limited spaces
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by Vienda | 27 May 2022 | General, Psychology + Soul
“How can I find my purpose?”
I’ve been there. I spent endless hours searching, wondering, and “not knowing.” I wanted to discover my purpose so badly. I would journal, walk, think, vent, meditate, ruminate, and stress about it. On multiple occasions, I literally burst into tears of frustration.
Then one day… I realized that you don’t “discover” your purpose. You don’t “uncover” it. You don’t “find” it. You pick something that is meaningful to you and you do it. There’s no reason for you to be contemplating the cosmic significance of your life while sitting on your couch all day eating Doritos. Rather, you should be getting off your ass and discovering what feels important to you.
I don’t believe that people are looking for their purpose in life… As much as they are looking to find meaning and the feeling of aliveness in their life.
We revisit this question “what is my purpose” several times across our lives as we change and our priorities change. Perhaps we begin by thinking of our purpose as our way to MAKE money. But ‘purpose’ is actually so much more than that.
In this masterclass, I take you through the 4 step process that will help you finally answer this continuous and timeless question.
- Find your unique flavour and essence.
- See your purpose right in front of you.
- Promise yourself to a project.
- Commit to your purpose.
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by Vienda | 18 May 2022 | General
There is a thick, sweet mist that hangs out in the early morning hours, heavy with the promise of heat ahead waking me up the past few days. The syrupy sensation rouses a concealed part of my brain remembering lives lived in hot, tropical climates from a small island in Fiji with only natives for 2 months, to university in FNQ in Australia to Thailand and Bali in Asia, to Goa and Kerala in India, to the jungles in Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Mexico.
For the past 10 days while recovering from this strange sickness I have been on a wildly psychedelic nostalgic carousel ride trying desperately to recall at what point I disconnected from my inner wildness. It was a compromise I had to make to function in the world in a way that lines up with the fragmented structures and rules that make up our society. I feel like I can’t trust my own mind as I reminisce on a life that was etched into the fleeting momentariness of life with idyllic pleasure sidelining the challenges of never really knowing where I was going next or how I was going to make the money to exist in a world that requires currency.
I love making money. It’s a fun, creative, expansive pursuit for me. Learning to handle my finances, value myself and my work, and grow to a certain level of affluence has been such a gift for me. It is one of the ways I have reparented myself. By meeting my own practical needs. Yet I resent the way our survival is based on a system of exchange that is designed to care for so few. I recently invested in a course on money to grow my knowledge and wealth but led with the question of how we can approach the pursuit of wealth and the comforts, choices and freedoms that it brings with the integrity that we can do so in a way that is inclusive and can ultimately uplift everyone. Sadly, our educator gave the same answer I have heard over and over again. Either you make the system work for you or let the system override you. In short, there is no alternative. This is what we have to work within the here and now.
Not having the energy nor the capacity to “do” much the past 2 weeks, I have immersed myself in a world of documentaries. ‘The Velvet Queen‘ is the most exquisite and breathtaking nature documentary I have ever seen in my entire life, further deepening my recent yearning to reconnect with my inner wildness and go live immersed in nature again for a while. ‘Fools & Dreamers‘ tells the incredible story of how degraded gorse-infested farmland has been regenerated back into beautiful New Zealand native forest over 30 years. ‘The Earthing Movie‘ brings science to meet the indigenous knowledge of why we need to interact with our lands skin-to-earth. ‘A Simpler Way‘ follows a group of people exploring building and living in a community in the hinterland of Australia. ‘The Art of Life‘ filmed in Hawaii is a documentary about the art of living outside of conventions, in deep integrity with one’s essence. There’s a theme here. Can you see it? It’s part of the reinvention I am attempting to access in myself, which is less about becoming, but rather returning to my truest essence in a way that is not isolated from nature.
In these deep inner quests, I have discovered renewed gratitude for my work. The fact that I get to take several thousand people (and growing) on journeys of my philosophical musings and discoveries. The fact that my healing becomes your healing. The fact that I can teach and share what I come to understand and learn on my life journey… is such a magnificent and delightful pleasure.
My focus this year has been The Mentor Training. Alongside that, I am developing and updating some of my shorter courses. ‘Affluent’ and ‘Her Way’ will get a turn in the sunshine again this year, both run live. I am working on a new one ‘Renew’ — on how to carry yourself through a season of becoming (as I am right now) alongside bridging the gap between fear and creating/doing what you’re called to — after your enthusiastic response to my questions last time.
I am also thrilled to reveal that two new private client spaces are opening up starting in June. There’s more information about mentoring with me 1:1 here and if you’re ready to immerse yourself in your own inner journey press reply to this email and we can explore the next steps together.
These past few weeks I am dreaming up a way to take all I have created professionally over the past 8-10 years and see if I can integrate it into a way of life that is made up of days lived mostly outside barefoot, connected to the Earth, in a place or places that allow me to revel in the wilder parts of my nature. The parts of me that spent most of my twenties chasing festivals due to the simple way of life and community those events offered me. The parts of me that were teased for taking my shoes off as soon as I could from younger than 3 years old. The part of me that remembers an ancient remembering of who I am and where I truly belong.
Let’s see, where that takes me, and us. Thank you for being here.
Love,
Vienda xo
P.S. Thank you, for all your enthusiastic responses to all of my questions in my last email. There was an emphatic ‘yes’ for both the Renew idea, as well as potentially adding a subscription option to my writing, so I can take you deeper down the rabbit hole with me. A writer whom I admire and also happens to be one of my readers, Emily, suggested I include journaling prompts or even guided journaling practice with the paid version of my emails so I have been sitting with this idea and allowing it to formulate itself further. I had to postpone all my dates due to my health but look forward to seeing where this adventure takes me and will report back promptly with funny and embarrassing insights.
by Vienda | 13 May 2022 | General
It began like this.
I get back into bed. And shake and shake. It’s too much. I can’t stop.
The C-test shows negative.
On the third evening, the fever breaks. But during those feverish days and nights, something new emerges inside me — a powerful force asking me to reclaim my life. I had become complacent. I know it. Not in the basics like exercise and sleep and work, but in the subtler, more nuanced parts of life. The webbing that holds it all together.
I felt a strong calling, unlike any I felt before. It was visceral and palpable. Two words kept rising up.
More.
And less.
More of what makes life worth living.
And less of drains viscous life force from me.
After decades of living on the sidelines of modern society, only dipping in when and as I needed to, the past two years I had submerged myself in it entirely and as a result of having learned to barriers to protect me from the bombardment of information on how to have a morning routine, what 11-step beauty routine to follow, and that women’s empowerment is all about making more money I had lost myself.
On the fourth evening, I delete my emails from my phone, mute everyone on Instagram and promise myself not to return to the space until I am anchored in the purest, rawest version of myself.
The next morning I wake early and lay in bed listening to the birds sing. I meditate. I feed my cat. I strip the bed and put it in the wash but have to lay down right after as it takes all the energy out of me. After 4 days in bed with fever and shakes my body is weak.
I am remembering how to let my body be a prayer. It is teaching me how to be slow, still and present again.
Vienda xx
P.S. Over the next few weeks/months I am taking myself through a personal renewal. An intentional restoration of mind, body, heart and soul. A returning home of sorts. I’m going to note down the process. Would you be interested in me teaching it to you? Because no one is alone in this world — and seeking support can be a beautiful thing.
P.P.S. I’ve started dating again. Well, in theory. I’m going on 3 dates with 3 different men as soon as my body is strong enough to walk the 400 metres to the closest cafe again.
P.P.P.S. If I started writing a secret monthly £3 subscription with 2-3 emails per month — where I can write and say all the things that I don’t otherwise — would you pay?
