Hello again.
The final week of May — and I want to begin simply: thank you for being here, in whatever way you’ve shown up to this month. Whether you’ve followed every week or found your way here today, I’m glad you’re reading.
An abundance mindset practice, as I work with it, doesn’t look the way most people expect. It doesn’t start with bold financial declarations or the confident claiming of what you deserve. It starts much smaller — and much more honestly — than that. It starts with noticing where you’ve been closing, and practising, gently, what it means to open.
This week’s focus: small acts, and the skill of receiving
Abundance as a practice begins in the ordinary.
It begins in the small, repeated choices that signal something to the part of you that has been keeping track: I am worth tending to. What I need matters. There is enough here for me too. These aren’t grand gestures. They’re the kind of choices that seem almost too small to matter — and that, over time, add up to a genuinely different relationship with yourself.
It might be choosing the thing that genuinely nourishes rather than the quickest available option when you’re depleted. Letting yourself rest before you crash rather than after. Asking for support instead of pushing through alone. Spending an hour on something that has no output except that it gives something back to you.
And alongside those outward small acts sits something perhaps more challenging: the practice of receiving.
For a lot of people — particularly those who have spent years being the ones who give, support, fix, and hold things together — receiving is genuinely difficult. Not because they don’t want connection or care. But because something in the way they were shaped equated needing with weakness, asking with burdening, and accepting with owing.
The result is a particular kind of generosity that flows easily in one direction only. Giving, yes. Contributing, always. Being there for others, without question. But letting care actually land in return? Letting a compliment arrive without immediately deflecting it? Accepting help without turning it into another opportunity to give something back? That’s where the discomfort lives.
And that discomfort is information. It tells you something about where the belief in your own worth has its limit.
Receiving is a skill. Practising it — really letting something in, fully, without minimising or deflecting or immediately evening the score — is one of the most honest acts of self-worth available. Because it requires you to believe, at least for a moment, that you are worth receiving.
A client’s experience — Helen’s story
Helen came to me describing an exhaustion she couldn’t quite account for. Her life was full — good relationships, work she cared about, people who valued her. But something was chronically depleting rather than replenishing.
As we worked together, a pattern became clear: Helen was extraordinarily good at giving. What she couldn’t do was receive. Compliments were deflected with practiced ease. Offers of help were kindly declined. Care that came her way was quickly redirected outward again.
The generosity was genuine. But it had an unexamined limit: it never included herself.
When we started practising receiving — slowly, with attention to what came up in the body — she described something she hadn’t expected. Not just discomfort. A very specific kind of grief. For all the times something had been offered and she hadn’t let herself take it. For the care that had been available and she hadn’t been able to use.
That grief was the beginning of something opening.
This week’s challenge: small acts and genuine receiving
The final challenge of the month — two simple threads.
Identify one small act of abundance you can offer yourself this week. Not a grand gesture — something specific, real, and achievable. Something that signals to yourself that your needs and your wellbeing are worth attending to. Then do it, and notice what comes up when you do.
Choose one moment this week to practise genuine receiving. It might be a compliment — and the practice is to say thank you without immediately qualifying it or giving something back. It might be an offer of help — and the practice is to accept it fully. It might simply be letting something good that happens today actually land, rather than moving past it quickly to what comes next.
Notice with gentle curiosity what comes up when you try to receive. Discomfort, guilt, a pull to deflect or reciprocate immediately — all of this is information about where the limit on self-worth is sitting.
Notice with gentle appreciation what you have been tending this month. Not the insights you haven’t had, or the shifts that haven’t arrived yet — what has actually moved, even slightly.
Be honest about what you’re carrying forward. Not as a resolution — just as clarity. What do you want to keep practising? What question from this month is still sitting with you?
Let May be enough.
Seasonal wisdom — autumn completing itself
Late May on the Sunshine Coast, and autumn is doing its final, unhurried work. The mornings are genuinely cool now, the evenings drawing in. The season hasn’t quite handed over to winter yet — but it’s close, and there’s a particular quality to these last autumn days that feels like completion rather than transition.
That’s a beautiful image for what this month has been about. Not reaching further, not always striving for more — but attending, honestly and warmly, to what’s already here. To what’s already yours.
The abundance that starts inside doesn’t look like acquisition. It looks like this: autumn light through a window, something warm in your hands, a quiet settled feeling that today is enough — and so, quietly, are you.
June brings a new theme — the inner critic, where it came from, and what becomes possible when it’s met with something other than agreement or resistance. The groundwork from this month — particularly any softening in how you hold your own worth — will matter in that territory.
Join the Journey
This week’s final posts on abundance mindset practice can be found on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn over the coming days.
And if something this month has stirred something worth exploring more deeply — in a real conversation, with proper space and support — I’d love to hear from you.
To the end of a meaningful month — well done.
With warmth,
Gemma-Lee Harvey
About the Author:
Gemma-Lee Harvey is a Holistic Counsellor and Lifestyle Coach based on Australia’s Sunshine Coast. With a diverse background spanning psychology, business, counselling, and coaching, she creates a nurturing space for exploring one’s full potential. Her gentle yet practical approach kindles the transformative spirit within, guiding individuals through life’s challenges as they rise through empowerment.
Contact:
🌐 www.phynixbydesign.com.au
☎ 07 5493 6742
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Opening hearts & facilitating transformations since 2017
Phynix By Design ~ Life Reignited