Four Ways You Are Stealing Your Own Peace Without Knowing It

I have a story I tell sometimes that gets the same reaction every single time. People ask me if I am crazy. It involves a $75 shirt, a register total that did not add up, and a decision that, looking back, taught me more about honesty than almost anything else in my life.

Asteya, the third Yama in the Yoga Sutras, is what got me thinking about that story and it completely changed how I define stealing.

Turns out there are four different ways we steal without realizing it, and most of them have nothing to do with a cash register. This episode gets into all four, drawing on Deborah Adele's book The Yamas and Niyamas, including the one that might be stealing your own peace right now.

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Transcript

Four Ways You Are Stealing Your Own Peace Without Knowing It | A Beautiful Fix

Today I wanna tell you a quick story, and every time I tell this story, people immediately ask me, "Are you crazy?" And I wonder if you will too

Welcome to A Beautiful Fix. I'm Tracy Hill. Each week we'll dive into the latest thought gem, recharging and reconnecting with what lights you up and makes you feel alive. Let's discover your next beautiful fix together.

Hey, real quick before we dive in, you're powerful, and sometimes you just need someone to remind you what's already in you. That's what human design does. It's the difference between guessing and knowing, so you can stop searching outside yourself and start trusting the answers within. I promise you they're there.

Grab your free chart at abeautifulfix.com, and when you're ready to go deeper, book a one-to-one session with me. All right. Let's get into the episode

So I've never stolen anything in my life. Not a candy bar as a kid, not a pen from an o- well, a pen from, from an office. I have to say I've never intentionally stole anything, 'cause I love pens, and I'm really bad with picking them up and just walking off with them.

So that one, it's, it's a possibility. But the point is That I can remember, I don't remember ever stealing anything, or so I thought. It turns out that there is an entire category of stealing that I didn't even know existed. And once you hear about these, I wonder if you're gonna join me in being guilty of each one.

So again, I've just... I don't know. I've just always taken a lot of pride in being an honest person, um, someone who doesn't steal, don't take things from others. Seems pretty straightforward, pretty basic. It's just always been a part of who I am, and, you know, I think it's the whole good girl thing. We've, we've talked about this.

But then I learned about Asteya. So Asteya is the third Yama, and it opened my eyes to kind of a whole new way of thinking about stealing that I hadn't really considered But first, let me tell you about this, this story. So I think I was about 17 years old, someplace around there, and I was gonna treat myself.

I was gonna take myself shopping. That was my thing. That was kind of my sport growing up. I worked hard, been working since I was 14, got my little paycheck, and I was like, "I'm going shopping." And while I was shopping, I found a shirt that was about $75, and $75 to a 17-year-old back, like, in the '80s, w- I'm gonna say it feels like s- something like a $200 shirt now.

It was just something I had never spent that much money on, like, um, a shirt before. But I thought, "You know what?" I did the whole L'Oreal thing, I'm worth it, and I was like, "I'm gonna do it." Well, it wasn't just that shirt. I think there was, like, maybe five or six items. So I was just thinking, "Oh, my gosh. How much is this gonna cost me?"

I was trying to just do the math in my head, but I convinced myself that I was doing it. And when I got through the checkout line and it came to the total, it was, like, 100 bucks. It was, like, 120, so- something like that, and I thought, "Oh. Oh, like, that's not bad at all." And if I'm being honest, deep down inside, I knew there was something wrong.

Like, there was no way. The shirt alone cost $75. You throw in some tax, there's no way my whole bill, including all those items, was that low. But something in me was like, "Okay, Trace, just don't say anything. Don't say anything. Like, let's, you know... I don't know. M- maybe there was a sale item or something." And so she rung me out and I left, and I just started feeling, like, guilty.

And I got out the store and I looked at my receipt, and the first thing, I just quickly scanned the receipt for that $75, and it wasn't there. The line item, the shirt, $75, was not on the receipt. And part of me thought, "Oh, my gosh. Tracey, she didn't charge you. Like, you lucked out. Oh, my gosh, you got that shirt that you wanted, that you were gonna treat yourself, for free."

And every other part of me was like, "This is not good. This is not good." I just... The guilt started to come over me, and I thought, I, I can't do it. I can't do it. So I walked right back into the store, and I walked back to the same, um, cashier, and I told her what happened. And she looked at me like I was crazy.

There was no, "Oh my God, thank you. Thank you so much." She literally looked like, "What is wrong with you?" And she quickly rung me up, and I walked out the store. And I thought, "I don't know if that was the reaction I was looking for, but okay, I did the right thing." And then later on, you know, I talked to my friends, and I told them the story, and they were like, "Are you crazy?"

Like, "Why would you do that?" Again, not the reaction I was hoping for. And throughout my life, I've told this story several times. I remember telling it to one of my bosses. I don't remember why, what we were discussing, but it came up, and so I told him the story. Again, I thought for sure my boss would have been like, oh, impressed.

Nope. In fact, he looked disgusted. He looked disappointed. I don't think he ever looked at me the same way after I told him that story. Like, just so much disappointment. Like, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Why would you do that? So clearly, I did not do this to get any kind of accolades or praise, 'cause I've, I've never gotten it.

But now that I'm older, I just look back and I realize that I just, I did it for me. There's no way... I would've paid a price. Just the guilt. Every time I wore that shirt, every time I saw that shirt, it would've come back to me. And, you know, I don't know. I, I like to think that I got some karma out of it. I, I mean, who knows?

Maybe the really good things that have happened in my life have been because I, I brought that shirt back. But anyway, the reason why I'm telling you this story is because up until now, you know, that's how I've always viewed the act of stealing. Just do not take what is not yours but then I learned about this yogic concept of Asteya, the third Yama.

And if you're curious about the first two, you can definitely go back and check out those episodes. But what is Asteya? So Asteya simply means non-stealing. So on the surface, it sounds exactly like what I just described. Do not take what belongs to someone else. I thought, "Great. Check. I can check that box off."

But Deborah Adele, in her book The Yamas and Niyamas, she breaks this down into four completely different categories of stealing, and that's what I wanted to share with you today because most of them have nothing to do with our traditional definition of this concept. So the first is stealing from others.

Again, it feels like what we've been talking about. Don't do it. But Deborah Adele writes that, "An outward focus leads us to compare ourselves to others and send our energy into their lives in unhealthy ways." So when we compare ourselves to someone else, we either come up feeling cheated or we come up feeling superior, and either way, we've stolen our own peace in the process.

We could also steal from them by one-upping their story. You know the person, you're excited, you're telling them your, your story, and they're like, "Oh yeah, I did that too, only my version's much better." Well, that's kind of a version of stealing from others. The second is stealing from the Earth. So Deborah Adele puts it this way.

Sh- you would not go to a friend's house for dinner, complain about the food, leave your trash lying around, and walk off with the candlesticks because you wanted them. And yet that is so often how we treat this world that we live in, right? So she asks us to imagine what would happen if every time we took something, we gave something back.

That's always been my understanding of indigenous people, of the Native Americans. I was always told that that's exactly what they did. Anything that they took from Mother Earth, they would give back The third is stealing from the future. So she writes that the excess in our bodies, our calendars, our closets, are all signs that we're living as if there is no tomorrow, and no one to live here after we are gone.

And I know my sons tell me all the time that, you know, my generation, the baby boomers, we've all ruined it. We just we've ruined it for them. We're, we're leaving them, you know, uh, a, a mess. And the fourth is stealing from ourselves. So Deborah Dell writes that, "In all the ways we impose an outside image of ourselves onto ourselves, we are stealing from the unfolding of our own uniqueness."

Let me read that again. "In all the ways we impose an outside image of ourselves onto ourselves, we are stealing from the unfolding of our own uniqueness." So every demand and expectation that we place on ourselves, it steals from our own enthusiasm. She goes further to say that self-sabotage, lack of belief in ourselves, low self-esteem, judgment, criticism, and demands for perfection are all forms of self-abuse, where we destroy the very essence of our own vitality.

I want you to just sit with that for a second with me. Self-abuse? That's a strong word, and I think she means it that way on purpose. It goes back to the first Yama that we talked about, Ahimsa. It's non-violence. You know, non-violence against ourselves. Hmm. I don't know. That just... All of those terms just really make me, me think, you know?

And I had to really sit with a lot of this, and when I thought about it, I thought, well, probably the-- one of the clearest ways that I steal from myself is breaking promises that I make to myself. Telling myself I'm going to do something and then just not doing it. A boundary that I've set, you know, breaking that or a workout Or, you know, having sometimes hard conversations that you just kinda keep rescheduling in your head.

Nobody else notices when this happens. There's just me deciding over and over that my own word does not need to count for very much. It's one of the worst things you can probably do is disappoint yourself, let yourself down, teach yourself that you are not gonna follow through on what you said that you s- on what you said you were going to do.

Here's the other one, stealing time, specifically other people's time. So every time you're late, you're stealing their time. It's something that I try to teach my sons all the time. One of the biggest life lessons I think I've learned is stop trying to be on time. Always add, you know, if it's near where you're going, add at least ten, 15 minutes.

If it's far, add an hour. You'll never regret it. You'll never regret it. You'll never get someplace early and think, "Ugh, well, that was a waste. I, I could've stayed..." The time will disappear. You will be so relaxed. It, it's just-- it's one of the, the best pieces of advice, one of my biggest life lessons that I think I've learned.

So Deborah Adele writes that asteya, what it's, what it's-- the point is, what it's asking us to do is to shift our focus from the other to ourselves. It asks us to get excited about the possibilities for our own life, so shift from the other to ourselves. Sadhguru says, "The only way out is in." There, there's definitely a pattern here, and this is, you know, kind of how this whole thing flips from being heavy to hopeful.

Stealing, in every form, it comes from a belief that there is just not enough, whether that's recognition or time or permission to just be who you are. Asteya is the practice of remembering that you already have enough, and so does everyone else, that you already are enough So my invitation to you, what I'd love for you to do this week is just think about how you might be stealing from others through comparison, from the earth through excess, from your future through living like today is the only day that matters, or from yourself through self-judgment or broken promises or shrinking down who you really are.

You don't have to fix all four. Just, just notice. Just notice one And then this is my favorite part of everything that Deborah Adele writes in this chapter. Practice being a forklift Be the kind of presence that lifts up everyone you come into contact with simply because they were near you

Practice giving something back

So thank you to everyone for being here. To that cashier from the '80s, no hard feelings. And until next time, keep getting high on life one beautiful fix at a time

Thanks for listening to A Beautiful Fix. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a quick review to help others find us. And if you'd like to share your own beautiful fix or join me as a guest, reach out anytime at tracy@abeautifulfix.com. Looking forward to next time