Trailer Park to Main Street: Questions to Build Your Prosperity Mindset

As we make choices in our lives, one of the choices we often make unconsciously is that of our financial standing. We take money and make it a separate aspect of our life, not an integrated one. If you listen to what the media tells us, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. What do you believe about prosperity in your life experience? How did your upbringing and how you relate to it create the prosperity and abundance level you enjoy in your life now?

What is the first thing you think of when you hear the words “trailer park”? For many people, trailer park brings up images of a place where poor people live. Often, when I ask that question I hear the comment, “Oh, trailer park trash.” If I were to tell you I grew up in a trailer park, would that change your perception of a person from a trailer park?

Prosperity can be a misunderstood concept often relegated to that of only money. As a woman who has done a lot of work around money and prosperity, I like this definition, “Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just money or things. Poverty is a way of living and thinking, not just a lack of money or things.” Eric Butterworth

I share my experience growing up as a “trailer park” person now as a frame of reference for my readers to learn from. You see most of my adult life I would have told you, “I am a trailer park girl.” The meaning of this role could vary from feeling sorry for myself and using this as an excuse to live small to that of a badge of honor. It was my lack of prosperity thinking. Then one day I realized that the, “I am” of being a trailer park girl is very different than that of having the experience of being a trailer park girl.

When you consciously separate your identity from the experience, you open willingness for a new choice.

What is your benchmark for prosperity? What do you say you are? Finish this statement. I am ________. If this word is positive, keep it. If the first word that comes to your mind is negative, maybe consider a new choice. (This magazine is called Choices, after all.) I am having the experience of ________ I want to have _____ experience.

When you consciously separate your identity from the experience of prosperity, you open willingness for a new choice.

What is it you consciously want to prosper in your world, relationships, money, and health? Here are a few questions you can ask to shift from a hardship mindset to a prosperous one.

• What do I believe now about the current prosperity experience I am choosing?
• What am I asking for around my prosperity?
• What am I willing to receive as prosperity in my life?

Even as an adult, I continue to work with my conscious abundance mindset. I look back on my life as a trailer park kid and know what I believed about that has shifted over the years, I’ve asked for new levels of prosperity in my business and had to be willing to receive abundance in new ways.

This fall make a conscious choice to expand your definition of prosperity. Be willing to invite a new experience of money, relationships and learning into your life. The power is in the questions you ask. Listen with your courageous heart to the answers that come from within.

This year I made the choice to flourish, to consciously prosper, to use my experience as a trailer park girl as a powerful catalyst to empower others and myself to have a prosperous way of living. If I can, you can, too.

This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2017 issue of CHOICES Magazine