This time of year, where in the western hemisphere it’s darkest longest and we’re furthest from the sun, is one of slowness and reflection in many traditions, an opportunity to acknowledge the coming light and be mindfully prepared.

For me, I love the magic of seeing lights twinkling in the dark, and the slowness needed to have intentional time with people I care about. I find myself seeking to wrap up the year alongside my visioning, and wanting to integrate my desired state of being with my desired reality.

On one level, reality is a mess – the US empire has deregulated neutrality on a publicly-funded resource (the internet), and just deepened public debt by lowering taxes on the entities most able to pay tax in large amounts. Reports on deepening economic inequality keep coming in, and student debt is still growing. It is really easy to think exclusively heinous thoughts about money, power, greed, decimation, and to feel powerless.

And yet, to focus on powerlessness is not a solution. People are out right now doing amazing things powered by money. Cards Against Humanity just bought a section of the US/Mexico border and vowed to fight placing a wall on it. The State of NY and NYC both just announced they’ll cease purchasing investments with fossil fuels in their pension funds, representing tens of billions of dollars divested. Millions of individual donors are fueling nonprofits they care about this month with their dollars. People are using their money to share gifts with others for the purpose of making those people happy and feel thought of and cared about.

Our money is also a tool of resistance and one way we can access and share delight.

I believe it is the latter of these – our power and choice – which we must call into mind, especially this time of year. This is when we can create patterns that will bring us into the brighter months and years. And, our minds hold some very important keys.

In Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How it Affects our Lives, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir research the executive burden – thought tax, if you will – that occupies our minds when we experience scarcity of money, time, or companionship. Our noggins become great at holding onto details, and end up constantly processing, about the things we feel we lack. In exchange, we lose mental bandwith that would work on the things we want and would choose to apply our brain power to.

When I read this, I finally understood why affirmations and manifesting (I call it femmeifesting) creates power: it de-fuels the underlying processing. It actually diverts brain space from what I’m afraid of to what I wish to see and be. And when it does that? Then I literally have more energy available to make the change I want to see in the world.

Here’s where resistance gets personal and becomes part of a practice. I’ve brought (*and borrowed) several femmeifesting phrases into my life in the last few years:

Getting What I Want is Easy.

So Be it, See to It.*

I’m Ready For the Awesome Things That Are Coming.

I Find Money All Around Me.

So here, at the crest of the longest night, I’d like to invite you to think about what your personal resistance and money power statement looks like. It can be anything positive you like.

The gift I’d like to give you all is one where money has no negative control over your mind or life, and your place to start receiving that gift is by taking a few minutes to think about what you’ll start telling yourself in regards to power, money, and how you will access delight and resistance.