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Storytime
I love doing my taxes every year.
I’ve done my own taxes since I was 16 years old, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE doing them.
I know, I’m a goon. (Hobbit tells me so every day)
To me, tax time is a spring cleaning for my finances. And I get a little manic about it, like I do when I take everything out of the fridge and kitchen cabinets to deep clean and reorganize. There’s a deep satisfaction to that kind of squeaky clean.
Tax time is my deeply satisfying squeaky clean finance reset.
It’s also a mindful and intentional re-calibration of my root chakra.
When the taxes are done, and I have clarity about how I’m moving forward for the next year, everything else in my life feels that much more stable, structured, organized, clear, focused, aligned, and as a result, POSSIBLE.
When I was a teenager my Dad was doing the family taxes and made a side comment that the ideal tax situation is that you don’t have to pay in AND you don’t get a refund. That comment imprinted on me, even though I didn’t fully understand it at the time (why wouldn’t you want a REFUND???).
Year after year as I calculate my taxes, I always hope to reach that seemingly unattainable reality that the final number actually comes out to ZERO. I guess somewhere in my psyche and energy, the teenage girl in me believes that if I get my taxes to zero-out then I have achieve ultimate root chakra balance.
Last year ended up being a taxes 💩sh*t show. It was the ONLY time in my life that I didn’t get that squeaky clean happy goon taxes time grin. It was rough. We took several hits for things I didn’t anticipate and ended up owing more than triple what I had estimated. It was not pretty.
As a result, my relationship with money took a bit of a hit through most of 2023. Let’s just say that Money and me weren’t exactly on the best speaking terms for most of the year.
Before I sat down to calculate 2023 taxes, I had to make things right with money. We had to become friends again. So, I took put off taxes a few weeks later than usual, and I took that time to do all my mindful money practices (which I’ll highlight in the Practice/Homework section below).
It worked. Somehow in 2023 I got closer to reaching that magickal ZERO than ever.
As I hit the final submit button on TurboTax, I almost fell off the chair laughing as I imagined the IRS as the Better Off Dead newspaper boy. . .
Lesson
The Root Chakra lives at the base of your spine and controls the nerves that run down your legs into your feet. It is your body’s ability to stand solid, and thus your emotional capacity to stay grounded, feel safe, and be secure in every aspect of life.
Low Back Pain is the ultimate sign of root chakra imbalance. As is any physical issue with your legs and feet and overall body balance.
And when clients come to me with low-back pain, I always ask them first and foremost…
”What is your relationship with money??”
Low-Back Pain is almost always an indication of an imbalanced or unhealthy relationship with money. This is because in modern society, all of our basic needs for stability, security, structure, foundation, support, and safety come from 💶 MONEY.
(Last year around tax time, I was dealing with lots of low-back pain…that radiated all the way up my spine to my neck and head…every chakra was affected.)
We need money to provide ourselves with all our basic safety and security needs: food, water, shelter, home, health care, etc. etc. When we live in a scarcity consciousness, everything around us comes crumbling down in a world of anxiety.
Money anxiety is essentially an earthquake of financial feels.
I admit, I’m guilty of it too…worrying so much about money that it brings all the other things in my life into a disaster zone of shambles.
It’s a nasty cycle.
💰Something out of your control happens that takes a hit at your finances.
💰You see the numbers in your bank accounts drop, and you 😳 worry.
💰Your worry about money makes you hyper-fixate on money, which results in spending more money (can you say “retail therapy”?)
💰Your RAS (the reticular activation system in your brain) makes you hyper-fixate and be hyper-aware of all the scarcity…rather than seeing all the abundance and blessings around you.
💰Your Root Chakra gets more shaky because you feel the ground underneath you is less stable, less secure, and more scarce.
💰More things out of your control happen and take more hits on your finances.
I went through this cycle in the early months of 2024, all in anticipation of doing 2023 taxes. Here’s what happened to me.
💵 An exceptionally warm January day caused our attic to condensate and “rain”…resulting in a very expensive repair.
💵 We learned the attic repair isn’t covered by insurance.
💵 I freaked out.
💵 My back pain returned, but I didn’t feel like I could spend the money to pay my bodyworker, so I just dealt with it.
💵 I decided we both needed to get part-time jobs. We both started applying for work.
💵 I started looking through our expenses to see what services I could cancel. (hyper-fixating on scarcity)
💵 Our kitchen sink clogged (read that post from last week), resulting in another expensive repair.
Fortunately, I am focusing on writing these articles about MAGICK this month, and something in me shifted when I wrote about the MAGICK of WATER and FLOW last week. At which time, I hyper-fixated on fixing my relationship with money by doing my money practices (see Practice/Homework below), and I changed my tune.
Then I did my taxes.
Root Chakra MAGICK *Mischief* Managed.
Personalized Support
If you are experiencing abundance/scarcity issues this tax season and would like personalized support to help you reset your root chakra and your relationship with money, send me a message with the details of your scarcity challenges, and I’ll personally write you back with an action plan for coaching.
Homework/Practice
Below is a listing of the 5 Mindfulness MAGICK EARTH Practices I did (and continue to do) to reset and maintain a healthy and happy relationship with money, and to keep my root chakra balanced and aligned. This listing includes short demo videos!