Honesty circle was started simply as a place for us to begin to uncover the role of money in our lives. To find clarity to some of the poignant money struggles that we experience and to collectively make sense of the common struggles through identification with another person’s life. Our decisions represent the very things that we value. With each purchase decision, it reveals what we value, our actions determine our priorities and what is important to us.
We have come to realize that there is a significant difference between money as the problem and the choices that we make that impact the circumstances around us. We have come to see that money is not the problem to be blamed, rather it is our relationship to money - we take responsibility for our actions and put money in its place, so as to live lives that are filled with clarity, freedom, contentment and a deep sense of peace. By taking responsibility for our own actions, we seek to grow, in changing ourselves instead of assigning or passing on the blame to people, places and situations.
Here in honesty circle, we don't profess to have all the answers, nor seek to provide all the answers. We are not a counseling or therapy group, we are unaffiliated to any political organization. We are but a collective of people part of a movement that is larger than ourselves, who seek to ask questions that lead us to find small steps to become wiser stewards of our resources.
We honor the spirit of gratitude, putting it into practice, for being grateful is what moves us from a mindset of fear to trust, a place of scarcity to abundance. The definition of gratitude reflects a readiness to show appreciation for. The practice of gratitude enables us to focus on what we have as opposed to what we do not have. The practice of gratitude creates room within us to acknowledge that we are enough, in fact, more than enough. The state of being grateful allows us to appreciate that what we have, immaterial or material - is in fact more than enough. Shifting us from a state of scarcity to a state of abundance.
And the very abundance that we experience can be found in the 8 forms of capital: - Intellectual, experiential, spiritual, living, material, cultural, social and of course financial - reveals a fundamental picture on the role of money, in a rather complete perspective of all forms of capital that influences our lives. Financial capital reflects only one form of capital in our life.
We have come to attach various emotions, whether unconsciously or consciously through the narratives of our culture, environment and history. Fear, anxiety, worry, security, power, control, shame or pride, inevitably have been attached to this tool called money. We recognize that these emotions are often under the iceberg of the very conversations around money that we may have with our peers and loved ones. We have come to see that money is in itself not a bad thing, it is a tool and we can begin to unearth and peel away the layers of money to better understand ourselves and what can shift us to a state of abundance.
We focus on working on ourselves, through small steps, as language is the only tool that brings the unconscious to the conscious, we begin to practice a new language to money for ourselves, first and foremost. And with our peers, our loved ones, and family. We know that it is not about people, places or situations. If we want to change the world, build a positive relationship with people, things, money, and ourselves, we have to begin by changing ourselves.
