Creating The Space To Receive

I have to admit it was a bit unnerving.

I’d never seen a message like it before. It was from my email provider telling me that my email account was full. I’d need to delete some emails in order to create space to receive any new emails. The message was all text, it’s lack of any visible corporate identity greatly added to my overall sense of skepticism about the authenticity of the message. But when I realized I could no longer download any new messages I knew something had actually happened. Maybe my account was hacked?

Nope.

I had, in fact, reached the maximum capacity of emails in my inbox.

I’ve never been good at managing my email accounts. I get lots of emails from sources both known and unknown, and it’s always been easier to simply ignore these intrusive emails instead of taking the time to delete them and unsubscribe from distribution lists I never even knew I was a part of. I guess my “ignore them” strategy wasn’t perfect. Over the years, this particular account had accumulated over 92,000 unread messages, which, apparently, leaves no room to download anything new.

After spending quite some time deleting several thousand unread messages, I was able to create enough space for new messages to be received.

Being disconnected from my email was quite uncomfortable. What if there were important messages I needed to receive? My discomfort was directly related to my habitually holding on to what didn’t serve me, which, in this case, created no room to receive.

Once I resolved my email issues, I began to wonder. Are there other areas in my life where holding on was inhibiting my ability to receive?

Perhaps the greatest inhibitor to our ability to receive life’s greatest blessings is embracing a mindset based upon our unworthiness to receive them. Holding on to a mindset based in lack and scarcity creates no space for the abundance we desire to be received. It’s in letting go of and deleting what we know no longer serves us that we make the room necessary for what is truly meant for us to finally find it’s home within us.

Fortunately, I’ve been far more diligent at managing my mindset than I have been at managing my email account. But my email issue served as an important reminder that mindsets, too, need to be consistently managed and cared for if we want to have the capacity and space to receive what we have been created to receive.

There is a life we instinctively know we were created to live.

Have you created the space to receive it?

Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash