My daughter is in her early twenties and living paycheck to paycheck trying to support herself and her little family. She and her partner make enough money to survive but making enough to give their son the kind of first Christmas they want him to have is a point of stress. If one of them gets sick and hours are missed, bills will need to be juggled. If too much work is missed, help is needed to get through to the next paycheck.

I remember that time in my own life. A time when there never seemed to be enough money to really have a life beyond work. A time when work threatened to consume life completely, leaving nothing left to enjoy. My daughter grew up watching me juggle bills and budget shop like a pro. It was hard and stressful, but being so good at it also gave me a sense of pride.

Now that I have learned more about the law of attraction and the way our world works, I wonder at the lessons that were instilled in my children. Will my little ones, who have seen me grow and prosper rather than juggle and budget, have an easier time prospering themselves than my older children? Is my daughter doomed to go through the same struggles I did before finding a stable and peaceful financial situation?

My hope is that it isn’t too late to pass down some of what I have learned to her and that she may not have to struggle quite so long as I did. Below are the five lessons I want most for my children (and everyone else) to learn about abundance.

1. Abundance is limitless. People are not either “haves” or have nots”. I used to believe some people were born to have good things and happy lives and some of us just were not. I was wrong. We are all born with all the abundance of the world available to us. The lives we live and the lessons we learn from the people around us as we grow up have taught us false limitations. We need to unlearn those limitations so they can’t hold us back.

2. Spend more time daydreaming. Imagining or daydreaming about good things and the happy lives we want to have is the most important skill we can have. Most of us were taught to stop daydreaming and pay attention to more academic pursuits. Those daydreams are where the most important work for attaining joy is done. That is how we plant the seeds of the abundance we are trying to grow.

3. Be mindful of your focus. When we focus on what we want we begin to attract it to us. The more we focus on it and align ourselves with it, the faster it will gain momentum and make its way to us. When we focus on the lack of having what we want, we attract more lack of what we want. Be careful of where your focus lies. Think of the things your want as if they already exist and vibrationally they will exist, and you will only have to wait for the physical manifestation of the vibration.

4. Be grateful for everything. Let your heart soak in gratitude for the things that are good in your life. Think about how thankful you are for those things and let the feeling swell in you and just soak in it. It is truly one of the best feelings there is. Give thanks for the lessons you learn from the things that are not good. Each lesson gets you closer to what you want. They teach you to better define your desires and what to avoid on your way to achieving them. Learn, give thanks, then let those things go and refocus on those good things. The more grateful you are, the more you will have to be grateful for.

5. Be present. Thinking of the past aligns us with things that have already happened instead of the things we are wanting to happen now. Thinking of the future causes anxiety over what we cannot control. Try to center yourself in the present as often as possible. Notice what is going on around you and inside you and in each moment, choose the thoughts and actions that make you feel better and not worse. Everything either feels a little better or a little worse. Try to keep choosing better in each moment and things will turn around to match your vibrations.

These five lessons have improved my life so much. They have brought me peace and security. There is no magical formula that will make us rich, but these lessons can make us appreciate the abundance in our lives, no matter how much there is or what form it takes, and can help us begin to manifest more abundance. They can take us from a poverty mind-set to an abundance mind-set and prepare us for success. This is what I want to teach my children.