Aligning your purpose with your finances
Your purpose defines who you are. When you understand your values in life, you focus on the things that are important to you. Finances are an integral part of our circle of life (The Ora Circle) so it’s incredibly beneficial to evaluate whether your finances are in line with your beliefs or if they are holding you back from what you truly desire. By aligning your finances with your values, you ensure that every financial decision you make benefits you and helps to achieve your goals. It enables you to take charge of your future.
“While the words “security” - and the experience of having it - can mean different things to different people, the fear of losing it can create the same universal fear and blockage within us all, the fear of pursuing the unknown or something different than what we have.”
- Anastasiya Dubrovina
A fear of financial instability can hold us back from pursuing our dreams. “What if I fail?...What if I don’t make enough money?...What if I have no customers?” These are valid arguments but they can be detrimental to your money mindset and actions. This fear of losing what we have or not having enough can keep people stuck in cushy situations where they are earning a comfortable amount but feel unhappy because they aren’t doing what they want to do i.e. they aren’t fulfilling their purpose. We can however live a life according to our dreams and also feel financially stable. According to Business Coach & Consultant Anastasiya Dubrovina, we can do this by creating compassion for ourselves, understanding our financial needs and tracking our expenditures.
Connecting with money
Take some time to explore your relationship with money. If you feel unsatisfied or insecure in your current financial situation, try to figure out why. Don’t be harsh on yourself, simply look into what is causing you this insecurity, what is it enabling and when was the last time you felt financially safe. From there, you can dive deep into your needs around money and your financial desires. How would you like to live if you had more money and what would you need in order to feel safe and fulfilled? Gain financial clarity around the situation.
When you have a clear indication of how you would like to live, it can help you decipher how you are currently living and what you can change. This is where budgeting and tracking your spendings is important. Where you spend your money is a clear indicator of what you prioritise in your day-to-day life. Before you take a look at your outgoings, ask yourself what is bringing you joy. As you start to review your spending, think of the items that don’t bring you joy. Can they be eliminated or replaced with something that makes you happier? For example, if you aren’t rich in time, maybe you could replace a redundant monthly subscription with healthy meal prepping or home cooking. Time is such an important concept that we tend to undervalue. Looking into how much you are trading your life energy for can help you realise if you are on the right track to meeting your goals. What is your life energy worth to you and what are you getting from your job in return for the energy you put in? Track your outgoings and income every month to help you spend consciously and with more intention. After all, when your spending and goals are aligned, you can experience financial integrity which makes you feel good.
Purpose + desires
Determining your purpose will guide the direction you take in life. This may take a bit of soul searching but once you have defined your purpose, your understanding of life and the decisions you make going forward become transparent. Each of us has a calling and when we figure out what that is it fills us with a sense of purpose and connects us to our authentic being. We become inspired to take risks and live in alignment with our purpose. If you don’t already know what your calling is, take some pen to paper. Determine what you value and write it down. What do your goals and values look like? Write those down too. Formulate a purpose statement in one sentence that describes what you do and why you want to achieve it. In Anastasiya’s 7 Step Blueprint, she suggests 3 directions you can take when searching for your purpose:
Work with your talents and passion.
Work with your pain, wisdom and compassion gained from an experience.
Work with what is at hand.
When you have determined your purpose statement, put it out into the world so that you can create the impact you desire. Don’t underestimate the power of writing things down and making an action plan. Anastasiya is a firm believer that once you write down your idea and put a date on it, it then becomes your goal. You will focus all your intention on it and work towards making it a reality.
To get Anastasiya’s 7 Step Blueprint for overcoming financial insecurity, you can watch her online session for Ora Collective. Anastasiya goes into great detail about how to align your values with your finances as well as budgeting, expenditure tracking, mindful transparency, compassion and action plans. Watch it here.