If you seek financial well-being for yourself, you must praise it, wherever you see it. – Esther Hicks

When you observe financial well-being in others, especially very lavish well-being, do you sometimes condemn it? If you do so, you’re simultaneously condemning your own well-being.

This doesn’t mean you need to praise those aspects that don’t resonate with you, but don’t waste your energy on condemning them. Instead, turn your attention to the aspects you can appreciate, and this will soon attract more well-being into your life.

Notice that if you desire greater abundance while thinking negatively towards those who already have it, you’re putting out conflicting intentions — I want more abundance; I hate excessive abundance — which means you cannot and will not progress. You’ll merely continue to manifest lack.

Think of someone who enjoys a degree of abundance that bothers you on some level. Perhaps imagine a wealthy corporate CEO that got paid what you feel is excessive compensation, even as their company lost money. Imagine this CEO spending that money lavishly — fancy cars, expensive vacations, a huge mansion, a staff of servants. Now look for a seed of appreciation within that imagery, and expand it.

Do you find it difficult to appreciate someone in this situation? If so, then approach it from a different perspective. Imagine that someone who lives on less than $1 per day and who doesn’t have access to clean water and reliable meals is doing this same exercise, and she has selected you as her example of lavish living. Your lifestyle seems incredibly abundant to her, far beyond anything she’s known during her life and seemingly unattainable for her. Would you expect her to judge you harshly for having what she does not? Would you have her condemn you as a heartless and greedy bastard? How would you like her to feel about you?

Now return to the original exercise. Put yourself in the place of that CEO. To you this lifestyle feels normal, not lavish or excessive. As you see it, so many others are living in lack and scarcity. You know you can’t help them by joining them in lack. You can be generous with them of course, and you do so to the degree it feels good, but you don’t want to give so much that it disempowers them, do you? Instead you would rather inspire others to create their own happiness, assisting them where you can but being careful not to rob them of their own creative power.

People do not want to see you in lack, but they cannot rob you of your power either — that is something you must learn to develop. Do not fight against the abundance you desire, especially when you see it in someone else. Instead, think of relating to this more abundant person as you would want someone in greater scarcity to relate to you — as an example of hope and potential, not a perfect or flawless example, but an example nonetheless.