3 Easy Steps to Homestead Abundance Today

Homestead abundance is the daily overflow of blessings that naturally comes from the homestead lifestyle.  Gardens overproduce zucchini even while they under produce in corn or cauliflower.  Chickens overproduce eggs in spring, and chicks in summer, but they under-produce in December when natural light is low unless you live in Australia.  The over-production in spring eggs means more eggs to gather and wash, and more cartons to clean.  While we are busy with the workload we may miss out on the joy, unless we plan for it.

Plan Abundance

1.  Plan abundance into your day.

The first 2 hours of your day are the most important.  When you get out of bed take time to smile – even if you have pain on rising – even if you dread waking up.  Smile.  Then choose wisely how you spend those first 2 hours.

Make your list for the day

Read your bible and pray, or participate in your personal ritual to set your daytime attitude

Then eat a good protein-rich breakfast

Plan at least 1 thing that gives you joy into your day and do it.

Speak Abundance

2.   Express your gratitude – journal your feelings about the abundance and joy that you experienced in the day, at the end of the day.  It’s a well-known phenomenon that what we think about and what we focus on will get more of.  If we focus on good things and joy, we will be more aware of the joy that comes to us every day.  Tell someone else about the thing that you did or experienced that gave you joy – your homestead abundance.  Post it on the Joybilee Farm Facebook Wall.  Blog about it.  Be thankful.  Gratitude will deepen your joy and multiply your abundance.

Share Abundance

3.  Share your abundance and increase your joy.  We all know enough to hide that extra zucchini on the back porch of our “friend” – hoping she won’t run away when she sees us coming.  But extra eggs, extra veggies, and extra books can all be shared with our friends.  Make more friends and share more joy.  If your abundance is intangible, you can still share it by talking about it or paying it forward.  The idea is to not keep it to yourself but to spread the joy.  Homestead abundance becomes infectious and as you share it with your tribe, others experience the abundance, too, and your abundance increases.

The place of abundance vs. the place of poverty

I want you to know that life is full of abundance.  There is no lack in the good things that God has in store of those who love Him.  There are more than enough good things, health, wealth, food, clothing, shelter, and happiness for every person on the planet to have enough.  God did not create you to struggle and be in want.  He gave the ultimate sacrifice of Himself so that you could live in abundance.  But too often we believe the world’s lies that God is mean and waiting to punish us and that’s why we are struggling.  You’ve heard the quip, “God cares more about our character than our comfort.”  It’s just so not true.  Don’t believe it another minute.  God cares about both.  Beating yourself up doesn’t create character, anyway.

The poverty mindset that can imprison you

Poverty and lack are a mindset that keeps you imprisoned.  The prison bars are made up of lies.  These lies come from family, teachers, religious spokesmen, and even television, and media – but they originate in Hell.  The lies say that you are nothing, you are nobody, and you will never amount to anything.  STOP!  It isn’t true.  It’s a lie.  If this is what’s inside your head, don’t believe it another minute.  Decide right now to stop believing the lies and start believing what God says about you.  He made you and he wrote the owner’s manual.

These lies are what used to be inside my head.  It didn’t matter how many bible verses I read to the contrary, or what my mentors said, there was always an exception in my case, at least in my mind.  Really, I kid you not.  And then I changed my mind.  I plugged my ears to the lies and I started believing what God said about me.  I believed what the Bible says…That I am loved, that I am accepted, that His plans for me are good and His plans for me are to prosper me and not to harm me, that He has a future and a hope in mind for me, that He is giving me abundant life.

Once I started telling myself that these things were true, I started looking for these things to be true.  When I believed the lie, the things in my life that would confirm that the lie was true, would jump out at me.  “I’m a bad mom.  Look, I just yelled at my kids again.  I hate myself.”  These lies would go through my head like a cassette tape on replay.  This is what I believed and I lived out my belief system.  But when I changed my mind and started telling myself that I was loved by God, and I was loved by my family.  That God had a plan and a purpose for me that only I could fulfill.  Things started to change.

When I picked myself and decided that I would do the thing that God created me to do, that’s when I started seeing the evidence that those things that I was choosing to believe, that I didn’t even really “feel,” were actually true.  And my feelings came into alignment.  Notice that I had to believe the truth even when I didn’t feel that it was true.  And then my feelings came along for the ride.  That’s what I mean by “change your mind.”

The lies hold people in a prison of poverty.  People behave in certain ways because they believe the lie, and then the consequences of that behaviour hold them in poverty.  For instance, if I believe I am a bad mom because I yell at my kids, I will feel depressed and exhausted.  Then when my kids misbehave, as kids will, I will yell at them again.  And again, I repeat the lie to myself, that I am a bad mom, and look the proof is I just yelled at my kids, again.  My behaviour keeps me in a position of poverty and I don’t realize the abundance of love, respect, and acceptance that is in my family.  I am sabotaging myself with my beliefs, which I react to with more of the same self-defeating behaviour.  And because I’m so exhausted beating myself up, I don’t have the energy to keep the house clean, to clip coupons, or think about ways to make money from home.  I don’t have the willpower to use my talents for the betterment of my household.  I’m too tired just holding the negative energy inside to think about changing my life for the better.  Do you do this, too?  There is a key to unlocking this door.

Change your mind to find an abundance

When I change my mind and believe the truth that God says about me —  I am loved, I am accepted in the beloved, He will help me, I start to look at my kids misbehaving in a different way.  I realize that they are misbehaving because I’ve spent the last hour on the phone and they want my attention for 5 minutes.  When I yell at them, they have my undivided attention.  What they really want is to sit with me and talk without having to compete with the phone.  I change my mind and I change my behaviour.  My feelings line up with my thoughts, and I gain time with my kids and richness in our relationship.

But I need more Money

Does it work with money?  Or is abundance limited to relationships?  It works with everything.  If I tell myself that I am here for a purpose and I have a job to do, then I will look for ways to work to be prosperous.  If I am a gardener, I will put aside time daily to weed the garden.  And in weeding the garden my plants will grow bigger.  I will catch bug infestations when they are still small and be able to deal with them before the plants are damaged, and I will water the plants on time.  My garden will prosper.

There’s an old saying, “The eye of the husbandman fattens the cattle.”

It means that as a shepherd or herdsman walks among his flock, he notices when something isn’t right, and he is able to give attention to the animal that might be getting pushed away from the feeder, or the lamb that might not be getting enough milk.  Conversely, the homesteader that spends his time in the house watching TV, won’t notice that the sheep have a tick infestation until the value of the fleece has disappeared.  The guy watching TV is telling himself how poor he is, and how he’s been raising sheep for decades and they never amount to much.  But the shepherd that’s walking among his sheep is keeping the value of the fleece, by attending to little problems before they become big problems.  When we believe that God is planning prosperity for us, we look for and do that work that will daily help us to get to that prosperity.  We plan the things that bring prosperity to our list.

It starts by changing your mind

It starts by changing your mind.  Believe what God says about you.  God has good plans for you and He is already working them out.  Do the actions that agree with what God says about you.  Practice the 3 easy steps to Homestead abundance daily – Plan abundance into your day, express your gratitude and share your abundance with someone else.  I promise that if you apply these 3 easy steps you will see more Homestead Abundance in your life and you will love the difference that changing your mind makes.

Your Turn:

What would you add to help others find greater abundance in their lives?  Leave a comment.

This is the Thrifty Thursday blog hop.  If you have a post about frugal, homestead living, feel free to add your link and don’t forget to link back to this post.  Thanks for joining in.