As I write this article, I am three weeks into my voyage through the Gene Keys’ Pearl Sequence (for the second time!).

Richard Rudd calls the Pearl Sequence “Unlocking Prosperity”. He says that it offers us a “new alternative to chasing success in our outer lives”, and that it “reveals the underlying simplicity of how to truly prosper in your life”.

Sounds pretty cool, right?! But a word of caution, if you are not familiar with the Gene Keys … this is not some woo woo manifesting course, where you can jump in and get rich. The Pearl Sequence is the harvest for all the work you do in the journey getting there.

The Pearl Sequence, for me, is about learning a new relationship to money, and to adopting a new attitude towards prosperity, and to redefining what I mean by “success”.

My Relationship to Money

My relationship to money has always been so full of fear. Poverty has been a reality in my life. It’s been the source of stress, anxiety, arguments. It has been a divisive force in relationships. There were times in my life where it felt like some sort of Grim Reaper, dogging my footsteps, waiting for me to lower my guard, so that it could cut me off at the knees and leave me flat on my face, flat broke, and flat out of options.

I lived most of my adult life terrified of the next thing breaking down, (the car, the washing machine, the water pump … these were constant sources of worry for me for decades).

I felt physically sick when bills came in.

I spent years counting pennies as I walked round the shops, buying essentials. The years of being a lone parent saw me doing whatever I had to do to put food on the table … working three jobs, cleaning other people’s houses, doing my neighbour’s ironing, literally anything to earn some cash in hand.

Lack of money turned me into a person I didn’t like.

Now though, my relationship is completely different!

I am not wealthy, but I have enough.

And It’s All About My Attitude

Prosperity is so many different things to me now.

I feel prosperous because I know what real love is now.

Prosperity is happiness. It is laughing and smiling every single day!

It is having enough money to pay the bills and indulge in my creative passions. It is having enough to support charities that touch my heart.

And it is not worrying about big expenses coming in, because I know I’ll always manage.

Prosperity is being able to do the inner work with Guides who inspire me, like Hayley Curtis and Richard Rudd.

But above all, prosperity is feeling safe … I know that I will wake up safe each day, and that I don’t need to be afraid.

I approach my life with an attitude of prosperity now, which has nothing to do with money.

This attitude of prosperity is what the Gene Keys have brought me. I feel more prosperous than I ever have in my whole life.

And yes, I do actually have more money than I’ve ever had before, but that’s not actually the point … the real prosperity lies in the richness of my inner life.

The real prosperity lies in all the love.

The real prosperity lies in me knowing I am enough, today, tomorrow, every day.

And in knowing I have always been enough.

The Key to Prosperity

Prosperity is an attitude,

    not a number in my bank balance.

For years, I lived in the converse attitude …

    lack, an oozing money wound at the heart of me.

It wasn’t just that I didn’t have enough money …

Lack permeated my whole being.

My life was a catalogue of lack

    devoid of purpose

    devoid of connection

    a barren battle field where every day

        was a struggle

     every day was a fight to survive.


I still remember that attitude,

    like a visceral sensation in my gut, in my mind …

    that miasma of fear and lack and insecurity.


Now, my attitude is one of prosperity.

I know I will always have enough

    because I AM enough.

I know I don’t have to worry,

    so long as I continue to be true to myself,

    so long as I hold onto the things that light me up …

        Creativity.

        Love.

        Connection.

        Safety.

These are the vessels of my prosperity.

Changing My Definition of Prosperity

The “world’s” definition of prosperity is all about the money, the wealth, the power, the control, the accumulation of possessions … houses, cars, STUFF! So much stuff is rammed down our throats every damn day … so much propaganda (on social media, on TV, in movies) telling us subliminally and overtly that we need more fucking stuff in order to be happy, fulfilled, successful.

I love this thing that Richard Rudd says in the Pearl Sequence …

“The Pearl Sequence doesn’t show you how to get rich. It shows you that you already are rich … the more you get that, the less the other one matters”. Richard Rudd

I feel this in my life.

I AM rich.

I am rich in love, in care, in friendship.

I am rich in creativity and fun, in smiles and laughter.

I am rich in self-belief, and in self-love.

I am rich in trust.

I am rich in safety.

All of these things matter more than the numbers in my bank balance.

I am rich because I love myself and I love my life.

I am rich because I love what I do.

I am rich because I am the woman I was meant to be.

A Rich Inner World and a Mission to be a Joy Pipe Unblocker

I have this inner world that I’ve been excavating and growing and nurturing and tending to for the last two and a half years and it is my greatest natural resource. (Actually, I’ve been working on this inner world for nearly thirty years now, but the really tender work started when I found Hayley and the Gene Keys!)

I have this entire universe full of love and creativity and fun and laughter and friendship and understanding. And it’s right here, inside me. I don’t need to go looking in the external world for riches because I’ve got them all inside, and to be able to feel that in my body, to know that at such a deep level, and it not be a pipe dream and it not be a pie in the sky new age fluffy notion, but that it is an actual reality is just incredible, well, that my friend is true prosperity.

I mean it’s just fucking incredible to not be living a life where I am afraid of lack or measuring things by what I don’t have.

Now, my metrics for success have fundamentally shifted into how much I love. And man alive, do I fucking love!!! I love with a passion. I love myself. I love my husband. I love my friends.

I love the world I live in, and I love my life. And I love it all even though there is crap. Even though there is pain and suffering and sadness, I still love it all. And that’s a pretty amazing metric for success, to measure your prosperity by how much you love and how much you are loved in return. And joy … oh, I am so full of joy. Even when the fears come up, there’s also a bubbling up of joy. I have this little mental image of myself in overalls like a plumber with a big fucking wrench over my shoulder and a big fucking grin on my face and I am going around wrenching open people’s joy pipes to let the joy flood out. I mean, is there actually anything better than that in the whole world than to be someone whose Life’s Work is to bring joy? I mean, fuck riches, fuck wealth, fuck money. Give me joy every time.

The Heresy of the Pearl Sequence

While working with my Vocation sphere, Hayley spoke about the “heresy” of the Pearl sequence … to throw society’s definition of prosperity in the trash and usher in something much higher, much tastier, much healthier. Something that’s actually going to heal our world.

Prosperity is not about how much money I have; it’s about how much service I bring.

Prosperity is not about having lots of stuff; it’s about having love and fulfilment and joy, and sharing all that.

Prosperity is not about accumulation, it’s about flow … let money flow into and out of my life.

Prosperity is not about how much you get, but how much you give.

I never lose sight of the fact that working with my Pearl Sequence is an absolute privilege. The fact that I am doing this work is both a privilege and a duty. I have the time, the money, and the wherewithal to do this work, so I have to do it! I have to do it for all the women who can’t. For the women in abusive relationships. For the women in Afghanistan. For the women who are trafficked. For the women who are having their rights to their own bodies stripped away. For the oppressed women everywhere. It is my responsibility to take these gifts and opportunities I have and use them.

I can’t NOT do this work.

Defining Success in a Whole New Way

In the Gene Keys Vocation sphere, Richard talks about “Success as rising beyond the concept of success and failure.” Hayley talks of how that attitude “frees you to live from your Vocation”.

My Vocation Gift is Leadership. For me, this means my mission, my vocation in this life is to share my voice, to share my writing, to share the power and pleasure of doing the inner work. I have felt this truth growing in me over the last two and a half years of working with my Gene Keys, and I know this to be true now. For sure!

This is what I’m here for. But of course, in the old, patriarchal way of looking at things, there is pressure associated with sharing my voice … pressure that I put on myself to know that people are reading what I write, that people are being impacted. So, if it’s a Social Media post, then I want likes and comments. If it’s an article, I want the metrics to show that people have read it. Or at least, I used to!

But I have come to realise, this time around the Golden Path that that is all about a Shadow need of mine for external validation. It’s not really anything to do with success or failure.

What if I didn’t need any likes or comments? Fucking radical thought!!

What if I simply sent my writing out into the æther with the absolute trust that the right person would read it at the right time?

That would free me from that need for validation.

And the true success is then measured by the fact that I wrote at all; that I was brave enough to take my inner most words and put them out there.

My success is measured by me showing up.

That’s it.

Then I am just living from my Vocation. Then I am doing the thing my heart calls me to do … write my truth, share my truth, send my voice out and let it fall on whose ever ears need to hear it that day.

Doing the inner work is my mission; sharing it is the afterglow!

Doing the Inner Work IS My Prosperity

I am now, as I write, nearly ten months into a year-long Gene Keys group container … Devoted, a glorious deep dive into my Golden Path with Hayley Curtis and 12 other incredible women from around the world. How prosperous to have the privilege to work at this depth for a whole year with such an amazing guide, and in the company of such women.

This is prosperity.

To have this opportunity.

To soak in all this goodness. To receive this guidance and wisdom.

To walk this path in the company of others.

I have carved out the time to do hours and hours of work on myself every week.

I have attended every call and sucked the marrow out of the course, answering every prompt in the workbooks and every question posed in our Voxer spaces.

I know this is prosperity, but it is also a privilege, so I have squandered none of it.

The Golden Path asks three important questions …

What is essential to me?

Love.

My husband.

Friendship.

Connection.

Doing the inner work.

Being in nature.

Joy.

Laughter.

Creativity.

Safety.

What do I want to spend the lion’s share of my precious time doing?

Loving.

Doing the inner work.

Writing.

Being creative.

Sharing my voice.

Telling my stories.

Being in nature.

What is the greatest service I can offer the whole?

Love.

Truth.

My voice.

The inner work.

Showing people pathways into themselves.

Giving people a way to see that they are always worthy.

Did you notice that “love” shows up in all three of my answers?!

Prosperity Is Simply The Result Of Living From Your Purpose

I have so much love and so much joy in me, that it can’t help but pour out in service. My heart may be vast and full of love and having all that love inside me may be the best feeling ever, but oh my god! I can’t keep it all inside! I have to let it all pour out. I have to do something with it. I have to let it all pour out in service, in creativity. The website. My writing. All of it. I have to just let it all flow out of me because who knows who will be touched by it? Who knows who might be helped? This is what I am here to do. To serve. To give. To send love out into the world. This IS my service.

If you are living your highest service, if you are living and breathing your natural self into your work in the world, then there is no more prosperous feeling, for you are doing what you were born to do. That is fulfilment. That is peace and joy and happiness. You know you are doing what you were destined to do, being who you were born to be. You are being exactly who you’re meant to be and there can be nothing more prosperous.

You fit perfectly into the perfect life for you.

You’ve travelled the perfect path to bring you to this point of highest service.

That is worth more than any amount of money.

That is your life itself being the richest tapestry, that is your love flowing freely.

That is you being your natural self.

And oh, the relief in that, the peace in that, the joy of being you.

That’s true prosperity. To feel fulfilled. To feel as if you are doing what you were born to do. To feel you were born to love and spread joy, and then to be doing that. Isn’t that true prosperity?

My higher purpose is to do this work and share my voice. If I do that, then I will be happy and content AND fulfilled; surely that is true prosperity?!

To be doing what your heart and soul call you to do, that is prosperity, no matter how much money you have.

To do what you love, that is prosperity.

And in doing what you love, if you are serving the whole, then that is true prosperity.

I suppose it comes down to the age-old question of would you rather be happy or rich?? Happy wins every time, because happy IS rich!

Look out for Episode 12 of Conversations With A Couple Of Crones, where we talk about this new definition of prosperity, which the Gene Keys have brought into our lives.

You may have noticed that there is a fair bit of repetition in this article … I say the same things more than once, in slightly different ways. I did contemplate cutting it down, but then I realised that this is what the Gene Keys journey is like … I have to keep repeating things so that I keep remembering them. So maybe it’s not such a big issue that there’s quite a lot of repetition in this article after all.