When I was a child, my grandparents had a plaque hanging in their home that read: “When you pray for potatoes, have a hoe in your hand.” For many years, I took that to mean that if I wanted anything in life, I had to work for it. That interpretation fit perfectly with what I saw every day—my grandparents working from sunup to sundown on the farm, pouring their energy and their very lives into the land.
But when the farm economy collapsed in the 70s, all that work wasn’t enough. The farm was lost, and with it, a piece of our family and community’s foundation. Watching that happen etched something deep inside of me: the belief that money and success are scarce, and that even if you give your all, it can still all slip away in an instant.
As I shared last week, sitting still—simply being—does not come easily to me. Looking back, I can see why. That old plaque carried an introject (a belief we adopt without question, even if it isn’t true). For me, it whispered, “If you want anything, you’d better work yourself to the bone for it.” This belief is exactly the kind of limiting story that abundance mindset helps uncover and release.
Over the past year, I’ve been unraveling those limiting beliefs around money and success. Through support from some incredible coaches—both human and horse—I’ve begun to see things in a new light. What I’m learning is this: the “hoe” isn’t about backbreaking labor. It’s the energy I bring to my relationship with success and finances.
Today, reading the Source Message, I felt a clear affirmation—I can lay down that old hoe of exhaustion and scarcity. I can choose instead to trust, to bring energy rooted in worthiness, and to open myself to the abundance already present in the Universe. This is at the heart of abundance mindset —learning to shift the energy we bring into the world, so our work becomes lighter, more aligned, and more fruitful.
That doesn’t mean we sit back and wait for life to deliver everything on a silver platter. It does mean we don’t have to carry it all alone. With trust, flow, and belief in our own value, success comes in ways that don’t require us to break our backs.
So I’ll ask you: Is there a “hoe” you need to set down? Maybe it’s perfectionism, or the belief that you’re never doing enough, or the old story that success only comes through struggle.
Come stand in the round pen with the horses, and let’s see what hoe you might be ready to leave behind. Sometimes the most powerful step toward change is choosing to begin your own journey of abundance mindset.