“I love that top. Where’s it from?”

“Thanks! I got it downtown, but…it was pretty expensive.”

“I haven’t really told my friends I hired you. I just feel weird about them knowing I can afford you.”

“Don’t tell her how much I spent though…” 

There are myriad ways we bungle the relationship we have with money, but one of the most perplexing has to be the need we feel to hide our abundance, to keep secret the fact that we’re able to treat ourselves to small luxuries, and to apologize to others when we recommend something that isn’t baseline budget.

I’m certain much of it can be chalked up to our fear of judgement–we’d rather not have others be able to analyze how and when and where we spend our dollars. In fact, we’d rather some people in our lives altogether not notice things like our new shoes, our haircuts, manicures, gym memberships, and so on, because their noticing will prompt an inquiry, which will force us having to reveal that we’ve spent money on such things; that we’ve been able to.

Why is this? Why do we so loathe our family and friends knowing we’re able to afford luxuries, or “extras”? Do we secretly think our own purchases irresponsible when viewed by the eyes of someone else? Do we care?

In our quest for genuine connection, I believe many of us choose to avoid the subject of money, altogether, because what we really fear is the separation it may cause between us and others.

Financial means is the great separator, just as the desire for wealth is, with little exception, the great equalizer. Knowing this, we think if we can just avoid disclosing the ways in which we’re able to treat ourselves, to pay for things and services that enable us to be our best selves, we can avoid the discomfort of having the people around us realize they may be on a separate level from us, and us from them.

As if that realization would somehow cause irreparable damage to the relationship.

Except, if you’re working hard, living with integrity, and paying your bills responsibility, and you’re left with money to spend in ways that uniquely fuel you, you are living a life of abundance. And that’s something we should never try to hide or feel bashful about others knowing.

After all, since there is more than enough for all of us, our success in no way limits the possible success of those around us. It may be the catalyst that ignites abundance for someone else. When we share it, that is, rather than shut up about it.

In fact, our concealing our abundance from others is, in a way, a kind of greediness in and of itself because it causes us to withhold from others. We withhold from the people who love us the joy they may feel at the knowledge that we’re prospering financially, and we withhold any possible inspiration such individuals may derive from our success.

We can’t know how our living our best lives, serving the world in the truest way for ourselves, and then spending our money in whatever life-giving ways we choose spreads abundance to others merely by serving as a model of what is possible. And, we can’t know what we rob from others by hiding or being embarrassed by our wealth.

Starting today, pledge to stop feeling guilty that you’re able to afford weekly manicures. If those manicures support you, in however small a way, enabling you to show up most fully for those around you, then they are a worthy expenditure.

Beginning now, consider your living your best, most abundant life–that allows you to best serve the world–your responsibility, accepted with an ever-grateful heart.

From today onwards, stop apologizing for what is rightly yours, for what you have rightly earned.

Some people reach a state of abundance before others. This is merely a fact of life. But just as you wouldn’t try your best to hide the news that you’re living in Colorado from your family in Oregon, neither should you try to keep secret your living in abundance.

You wouldn’t hide it and you wouldn’t flaunt it. You would Simply say it as it is.

Money is energy, like everything else. Which means you have to give it to get it and you have to let it flow with grace always in order to live a life of light, happiness and ease.