Hi Friend,

Last week’s Notes of Plenty had a litany of uncomfortable experiences I navigated on my recent trip to Egypt.

The trip pushed every “I want control” button I have, offering several solid chances a day to dance between surrendering to what is and activating my agency to shift my experience.

One thing just happened now on the flight home that I had to share because it made me giggle and is such a freaking metaphor for dissolving the lie of scarcity.

I had packed myself a little auxiliary toiletry bag for my flight to Egypt, feeling very proud of how organized I was.

It had the essentials like deodorant, floss, earplugs, travel mascara, and you know, just the little things that make a 12-hour flight slightly more bearable.

During my 4-hour hotel stay between connecting from Cairo to Aswan, I discovered I’d left said handy little pouch on the airplane.

Gah. Deodorant and floss. I couldn’t go 10 days without those.

The hotel sundries shop was closed when I left for my 4 a.m. flight. The airport had giant bottles of alcohol and perfume—but nothing helpful.

And the Egyptian version of a bodega was the only option before we boarded the barge-like sailboat, a dahabiya, that would be our home for 8 days. It had mountains of processed food and an aerosol deodorant that smelled like perfumed lighter fluid—which I wouldn’t have sprayed within 10 feet of my body—but no floss whatsoever.

My roommate was kind enough to let me use her deodorant for the whole trip (God bless generous humans), but besides bumming a flosser off her every couple of days, I did not achieve the level of dental hygiene that’s my standard on this trip.

I was just now rooting around in my purse, looking for an electrolyte pack to help assuage the jet lag, and came across an entire packet of flossers in a second auxiliary pouch (a backup to the backup, if you will) that was there the whole trip.

Lots of us tend to have a resource-awareness block, especially when we’re under a lot of stress and pressure.

When we’re working a ton of hours and not sleeping enough, we completely forget that our neighbor offered to take the kids for a few hours so we can nap on a Sunday afternoon.

When we’re launching a new business and the overhead is outpacing the revenue as we ramp up, we forget that our best friend from college launched a business with a nearly identical business model, and she’s just a quick phone call away for potentially game-changing and hard-won intel.

When the invoices are piling up and we’re freaked out that we’re not gonna have enough to pay them all, we completely space out about the cushion fund that our past self saved up years ago and tucked away in an online account for moments precisely like this one.

The entire trip to Egypt, I felt my lack of floss. (Not all day, every day, of course, but for sure after every meal and at bedtime.)

And it was in my purse the entire time.
There’s a process we do at my retreats and live events called Resource Mapping (if you’re coming to Relaxed Money Live, you’ll experience it IRL!)

It involves finding enough safety in your body so that your full mental capacity can come back online to become aware of the resources that you already have available to you.

The survival brain focuses on lack.
But when the body feels safe?
The brain can see abundance everywhere—and infinite opportunities to create more.

My trip to Egypt was in no way a vacation. It was more of an initiation. I was up against edges over and over again.

And thus, I wasn’t able to see the floss that was there the whole time.

What’s your version of floss that’s sitting right in your purse right now?

To figure it out, first, do something to signal safety to your body.

Try crossing your arms over your chest and tapping your shoulders on alternating sides, soothing rhythm.

Then ask yourself what’s one problem (financial or otherwise) that would make a big difference for you to have solved.

Next, ask yourself:

What’s a resource you need that’s actually available to you right now, or that you could access with an easy action step, such as a quick phone call or resetting a password to a program you already purchased that has a training that solves your exact problem right inside it?

This is a taste of Resource Mapping.

This is how we remember that we already have floss right in our purse.

Love,
Kate

P.S. If you’ve ever wondered how unhealed masculine patterns impact your relationship with money and leadership—this one’s for you.

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