Playing with the nuances that worthiness brings with it is something I have had to learn, for humility, much like arrogance, is acquired. Throughout my journey of expansion, it took me time to realize that as we learn to stand in our worth and be bold in our worthiness, we must also acquire the wisdom to know that, just because we deserve something, it doesn’t mean we are entitled to it.

While this is a lesson I have learned over the years, I’m unsure whether we are collectively standing still in our understanding of Worthiness and the desire to live a “Soft Life”—or at least a “Soft Era”—given the world’s current state.

This piece is about a consciousness of abundance, worthiness, and entitlement, and I argue why not all of us can live a Soft Life in the current structures we have.

An emerging consciousness: I am worthy and deserving

Can we talk about the consciousness shift that’s taking place? People are really moving from a scarcity and lack mindset to one of abundance and worthiness. And I love to see it. Many people practicing mantras and affirmations are rewiring their brains with positive affirmations such as, “I am worthy” and “I deserve”. There are even songs about this in several languages. One of my most recent favorite ones being Elena Rose’s “Me Lo Merezco”, meaning “I deserve it” in Spanish. She sings, “Good things come to me, and what’s meant for me is on its way to me because I deserve it.” How beautiful?!

I, too, am one of those people who started embracing a consciousness of abundance and worthiness as I unlearned and healed ways of thinking that were not conducive to the life I intend to live nor reflective of my inherent worthiness. It ranged from how I interact with people and the shit I was willing to put up with all the way to ways I go about my art and ambitions.

In my case, that looked like realizing that I have everything I need to prosper, remembering that I am worthy of love and all the good things I desire and dream about, believing that I am enough, and understanding that I do not need to follow traditional scripts of what being “successful” means; I leaned into my own power and embraced the fact that I got the ultimate authority to decide what the things that mean the most to me are.

It took me some years to fully embrace this new consciousness, but eventually I remembered that I am worthy and deserving. But it didn’t take long before I also felt entitled as I landed more and more into my softness. I had to learn that while worthiness is a birthright, entitlement is ego talk.

Let’s talk about entitlement

There are differences in the construction and understanding of the term “entitlement”. It comes from the word “entitle”, which means “to give someone the right to do or have something” (Cambridge Dictionary). Someone who is entitled has “a right to certain benefits or privileges” according to Cambridge Dictionary, and definitions of entitlement range from “the extent that a person has a right to something” to “the belief that one is inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.”

One of the definitions can be the product of (a set of) actions. For example: going to med school to become a doctor will give you in some cases the legal right (i.e., entitlement) to work at a hospital. But the degree of your access and responsibilities will be relative to your expertise.

That’s to say that in the material world, one can be entitled by merit (e.g., pursue an education to earn a degree that will give you the tools and knowledge to carry the title of a doctor) or other more seemingly arbitrary variables, like nationality. Think for example how some passports are more “powerful” than others, giving holders of the relatively more powerful passports the right to enter some territories that other people can’t.

Besides the privileges and entitlements we experience in the material world as it’s structured, there is also another form of entitlement that worries me—the entitlement that inspired this post. I see this entitlement as one rooted in the ego and its sense of importance. This entitlement comes close to the second definition of entitlement that I found on Cambridge Dictionary: the feeling that you have the right to do or have what you want without having to work for it or deserve it, just because of who you are.

Entitlement in relation to the ego

Writing about the ego in A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle notes that, “The ego wants to want more than it wants to have. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting. This is the psychological need for more, that is to say, more things to identify with. It is an addictive need, not an authentic one.”

Think about our constant desire for more. How many of us “don’t have any clothes” for an event? How many of us want the newest, as soon as it gets out? How many of us don’t feel satisfied with what is, and are always on the look for the next best thing? We keep striving for more and more and more. Even within the “spiritual community”, so many of us are obsessed with wanting—constantly “manifesting” something new, insatiably seeking for more.

There’s nothing wrong with having ambitions. But it’s important to know where our desires stem from.

There is a thin line between knowing your worth and feeling entitled to things as if Life owes you.

When the ego is a victim, it feels sorry for itself. It doesn’t feel like it deserves certain things. It lacks. It wants to have what it thinks that it cannot have. Conversely, when the ego is entitled, it’s essentially the opposite of a victim; it demands. It thinks the world revolves around it. It believes that it can get whatever it thinks it deserves. And when it doesn’t get what it wants in this state, the world is the problem.

I think if we are not mindful, the ego will find ways to make us feel like we are on top of the world in those moments, infusing us with what initially can feel like confidence to create our worlds according to our liking but soon becomes a poison to distance and differentiate ourselves from others.

This makes me think of when I was applying for PhD positions a few years ago. I went from feeling undeserving of a PhD to not only believing that I deserve to become Dr. Juneal Holder, but was entitled to the title because of my inflated sense of self. I more than once wrote that I was “the perfect candidate” for the positions I was applying for. Who the fuck thinks they’re perfect for a job that they haven’t done yet? I’ll tell you who: someone whose confidence has tipped into entitlement. It’s a fine line, because sometimes even genuine confidence can unknowingly cross into this territory.

Let’s take the PhD positions I applied for as examples: who’s to say that I was actually the perfect person for these positions? I wasn’t, otherwise I would’ve gotten a job as a PhD researcher. I’m so glad I didn’t get those jobs I felt so entitled to, for not getting them brought me to these words today.

Not getting what you want will remind you to be humble. I wasn’t entitled to anything. That seemingly competitive environment taught me that as brilliant as I am, life doesn’t owe me shit.

Soft Life privilege entitlement

Much like I discussed the meanings that the word “entitlement” can have and how they become contextually relevant, I think it’s important to also explain what I mean with living a “Soft Life” or the general understanding of things feeling “soft”.

Everybody has their own definitions and ways of understanding what “soft” means when we talk about our lives or a phase of our lives. As far as I’m concerned, “soft” is the opposite of “hard”. If people want a “soft life”, this implies that the norm is that life, as it is, can be perceived as “hard” and people are deciding to step into what they deem as the opposite of this “hard” life.

Going back to a few paragraphs earlier discussing the material world, it’s a shit show: many people work very hard for little money, wealth distribution is royally fucked up and disproportionate, and inequity is visible in almost all areas of social reality.

Average folks are tired of this and are realizing that they no longer want to live a “hard life.” As an alternative, people are adopting softness in their lives.

Softness looks different on each of us. I could write a whole post on the phenomenon of “Soft Life” alone and how it stretches in our daily habits (and may just do that as an extension of this post), but in its essence, living a Soft Life feels less brutal; more allowing, more trusting, more doing things that bring us joy, less sacrificing our happiness, less forcing things to happen, less the way things are traditionally known to be in the material world.

Tapping into softness to take care of your well being can sound like, “I no longer want to work 5 days per week even though I will earn financially less” or being in a space where you can afford to have faith (for example: “I’m trusting that things will work out with this uncertainty—even as I don’t really know how.”). Embracing a “Soft” energy, those who choose softness truly believe (sometimes delusionally) that things are always working for their good, and they force nothing to happen. We understand that we must not chase, for we are vibrational beings, but we pursue our intentions wholeheartedly as we align our actions.

I think a common misconception is that people living a soft life or in their soft era don’t want to work or shouldn’t work; that we passively sit and curate our lives like we’re playing a video game.

While this is wildly inaccurate (for me and the people I know who live in this energy), I will share that when you’re in a soft space, you no longer want to swim against the stream. And sooner or later you will realize that you don’t have to.

And here is where things can get tricky: The world tells you must do X so you can get Y. But for whatever reason, you try something else and find out that you can still get Y without doing X. And it works out. And it works out again. And again. All this starts reinforcing a consciousness and mindset in a material world that was not structured nor designed for such an expansive way of living.

Here is where delusion meets reality: not everyone can afford to have the (soft) life they intend in the world as it is because the material world is an unequal playing field as it is.

Individual success doesn’t reflect social inequities. To find the flaws in the assumption that we all can live a soft life and be successful in worldly terms, we must look at what makes one unsuccessful (in worldly terms). And here I must go back to something noted earlier: privilege and opportunities.

We are oftentimes unaware of all the privileges we already have while on the pursuit of more privilege.

In the material world, the variables that influence our unique set of privileges that make us entitled to (that is, granting us the “right to something”) meet at different intersections depending on the occasion. Intersectionality as an analytical framework to make sense of experiences of discrimination or privilege has been widely studied. There are several intersecting social elements that play a role in our lived experiences and the degree of privilege we get. It’s no surprise that there are hierarchies in society that affect our chances.

This means that, in some situations we are more privileged and entitled than others. So while all of us want softness, not all of us can get it in the world as it is. This is an ugly truth central to the notion of soft life. The fact that you are reading or listening to this post speaks of your privilege.

Did you know that still almost 30% of the world doesn’t even have internet access? Don’t get me even started with clean water access. So softness, as we know it in our privileged bubbles will continue to be an ambition very far to reach for those struggling to make ends meet.

As an example: a single mother of two working full time, earning minimum wage cannot afford to say, “I will work less because I want some softness in my life” without consequences, nor can she “manifest” her way out of her life circumstances just by thinking positive thoughts. It didn’t work for my mom. She can want it, and she’s certainly worth it, but the material world is not structured for this lifestyle for her.

I just used an example of a single mother. But there are millions of intersecting elements that make a soft life very easy for some while practically impossible for others.

With this said, I want us to reflect on our privilege and how sometimes we can be so full of hubris in our sense of worth, with our egos so inflated, that we completely take for granted that we are very privileged to be even talking about a soft life.

So, to conclude and to answer the question this piece posed: can all of us live a soft life?

No. We cannot. Those of us who can are very privileged to do so. Please remember this next time you talk about your soft era or your soft life. Next time you talk about your next manifestations, remember that there are people unable to manifest like you do because all they can do is survive. Next time you feel entitled to the good things in life, remember that life doesn’t owe you. And while at it, look around you who you can support in making their lives easier from your unique, privileged position. Because for every one of us who can afford to work a day less to enjoy more ease, there are millions scraping to eat. Remember this.

With love,
Jun 🤍