Sometimes our souls are made for luxury when our external circumstances don’t allow the conventional high end vacations, massive house and dedicated butler. But why do we crave these things in the first place? What are we really trying to achieve? Are we trying to feel “enough” or is our main focus to prove to other people that we are better than them? If we need to feel like we are enough, working toward luxury can be a helpful tool, but please know that you are already enough. If our intention is to put other people down and feel bigger than other people…luxury will not help us. If we are competing with other people, we will always feel small. We will always feel insecure, because true power never has to compete.

The fact is, human beings chase feelings. The feeling of opulence, of lavish bounty, of safety, being taken care of, releasing stress, of ease, security, peace, freedom and enjoyment. And that’s often really what we want when we say we need more money or higher end experiences. Taking a $60, 000 vacation would a be waste indeed if throughout it, we carried overwhelming stress, panic, and felt the lash of scarcity keenly at every turn. So when we say we want luxury, we really are looking for the feelings associated with luxury. And that can be available to everyone, regardless of what our wallets tell us. And indeed the fast track to a fuller bank account is to reset our mindsets first. If we can think it we can begin to breathe it into fruition. But learning to feel luxury in the moment is the first step.

So how do we bring that feeling of luxury into our lives? To make this user friendly, let’s discuss concrete things we can do and why they work.

1. Clean your room. No, I wasn’t hired by your mama to nag you in her absence. The psychological fact is that when we live in a neater space, it gives us a sense of higher clarity. When we walk into a high end resort bedroom, we aren’t greeted by garbage cans full to spilling over, or hair stuck to the bathroom sink. We walk into a beautiful space and immediately feel special for being in that space. And the act of cleaning our rooms, or whatever space we can claim as ours, can be turned from drudgery to a sense of self care. Think “I love myself, so I deserve to take care of myself. I am special, so I deserve to live in a beautiful space.” Bonus points for adding a little something extra – soft relaxing music or a scent that invokes a feeling of bliss.
2. Imagine you were a billionaire. What would you do differently right now? How would you treat your dearest family members or friends that you love? Would you be kinder to them? Less judgmental? Would you speak to them more softly? For five minutes, pretend you are a billionaire. Walk around in a billionaire’s skin. You have no financial worries. No one can hold you down. No one’s judgement really matters. How do you carry yourself? How do you enter a room? Do tiny details stress you out or can you brush it off? Stepping into who you want to be is the first step of becoming that person. And while it may not change the circumstances around us, for those few minutes, we can feel the ease and security of abundance. When we wire our brains to embody our higher selves we subconsciously open our lives to receive the next steps to uplevel.
3. Touch grass and breathe. Celebrities and hot shot investors spend extraordinary amounts of money to go on safaris, relax on a beach and bask in the sunset of gorgeous landscapes. They feel the grass or the sand under their feet, close their eyes and take a long, relaxing sigh, feeling special, abundant, and free. If they can recharge by closing their eyes and taking a deep slow breath, why can’t we? Find a quiet place in a public park, lean against a tree, close your eyes and breathe deeply and voila! For all practical purposes you are having the exact same tangible experience that costs many people a year’s worth of income.
4. Stretch. A good massage can cost upwards of hundreds of dollars, and they feel magnificent, but what do they actually do for your overall wellness? A large part of the benefit is to help us feel more relaxed and to forget our worries. The human body carries trauma, emotional pain, stress, fear and anxiety – often in places like the jaw, face and hips. The reason we feel lighter after a massage is in part because the muscles have released those emotions, but we can release those tight muscles ourselves by stretching them. If we haven’t stretched before, there is a plethora of free apps and videos that can help us target problem areas and release tension throughout the body. FitOn is a great free app, for example, and one that I use for stretching and yoga. Sit quietly, take a deep breath, and think about something that causes you stress. Feel where in your body you feel the tightest when you consider these things. That is where your body stores negative emotions and experiences. Make that the focus of your stretching session.

We don’t do this as placebos or to give ourselves a false sense of achievement and leave us back where we started. The fact is that the first step to living an upscale, luxurious life is to prep mind and body to step into full opulence in reality. When we become that high end person, from head to toe, heart and soul, we become more in line with achievement. We self sabotage less, we cultivate courage and presence of mind to ask for what we want and accept it. Engaging in instantaneous luxury is not only a feel good moment to improve a bad day, it’s the first step to living the full experience.