Love and Career: The two areas in my life where it seems I am on a never-ending journey. Ah! The beauty of the human condition: We never get there. We are all striving. We are all growing. But, how is it that in some areas in our life we can be joyfully tolling our soil, while another area feels like swimming in a serious swamp of suffering? Why does growth in some areas excite us, while in others seeing the gap between where we are and where we want to be, feels like crossing the Grand Canyon? The suffering I’m talking about stems from a psychological phenomenon called Cognitive Dissonance, that is not unlike creating a Grand Canyon in your mind. It is the discomfort we experience when we perceive an unmanageable gap between where we are and where we want to be. Now, not everyone that wants to be better in a given area in his or her life is suffering. So what gives?
A Girl Called Desire
Lets pretend my name is Desire. If you were a builder, and I (Desire) asked you to build me a house, you would gladly do so. You have the know-how. You have the Tools. You can give a home to your Desire. But, if you are an accountant and I ask you to build me a house, you would freak out. You would feel ill equipped to fulfill your Desire. You feel like you aren’t qualified. Like your hands are tied. In fact, you are sure Desire is going to leave you for that hott builder down the street. What a cruel mistress she is!
I often feel like my dreams and desires call me to do things that I feel ill equipped to do. I feel scared; I feel stuck; I feel like I don’t see a way. But Desire is not a cruel mistress; she is a benevolent force. In fact, she would not give you a Dream if you did not have the Tools to fulfill it. Our Dreams are highly individualized. They spring fourth from the fertile soil of our life experience, our preferences, and our gifts. They are a wondrous extrapolation of who you are right now: You to the nth degree. You are already qualified to reach your Dreams, because your dreams are born of your very own potential. They are not put there by anyone but you.
[Tweet “”You are qualified to reach your dreams because they are born of your very own potential“”]The Fine Line Between Desire and Despair
Why is it that so many of us suffer when we look forward to what/how/who we want to be? Why does it hurt so much to think about what we want? Why is Desire so often accompanied by longing, dread or even pain instead of joy and excitement? Why do we end up flinching away from our Desires as if we put our hand on a hot coal? Why avoidance, and dawdling, and excuses? Well, it is because we don’t really believe we can reach our dreams. Not Really. And why do we feel like this? If the Law Of Attraction asserts that we are MEANT to have what we want, then where is our stuff? The answer, in short, is Worthiness.
Not feeling Worthy is like not having the tools or the know-how to build that house for our Desire. It makes us feel inadequate, ill prepared, and ‘less than up to the task’. In fact, it can be summed up as feeling ‘less than’ in general. And what’s more, so many people do not recognize where their feelings of not being worthy are holding them back. The whole Self-Help world is abuzz with this idea of Limiting Beliefs, yet they are like Gremlins that live in the attic and steal our shoes: we do not see them, only the absence of what we want in our lives. Moreover, those of us with confidence and good self-esteem think we are immune to the Gremlins. Trust me, we are not. So how do you find your Gremlins? Easy: where in life do you have a hard time getting what you want?
Gremlins a.k.a Limiting Beliefs
Limiting Beliefs are the thoughts/beliefs that result from an underlying feeling of unworthiness. Limiting Beliefs have been best described to me by coach, Melody Fletcher, as “Search Filters” that filter out what we want from our reality. For example: If you have a limiting belief that you aren’t as smart, qualified, hard-working or otherwise worthy of success, then you will keep manifesting limited success in your reality because you will turn down opportunities you think you can’t handle, or will accept less money because you don’t know your worth. So, the easiest way to see your limiting beliefs is to see what comes into your reality. Another way to test whether a belief is limiting or not is to ask yourself a simple question: “Does it feel good?” Does it feel good to believe that all good-looking guys are A-holes? Does it feel good to believe that you don’t have what it takes to have your dream career? Do you like the belief that the world is unfair? Do you jump for joy when you imagine that you better stay where you are because won’t find anything better?
The Buddha said: “Just as we can know the ocean because it always tastes of salt, we can recognize enlightenment because it will always taste of freedom.” I live my life by this principle: If it doesn’t feel good/right/like freedom, then it must not be right; it must not be the Truth; it must not be moving me closer to my ideal life. I believe that how we feel is our Inner Compass we are born with, that lets us know if we are pointing toward or away from our Destiny. Whether you want to call it Higher Self/ Soul/Holy Ghost/Destiny or anything else, I believe that our inner guidance steers us toward Our Truth through the sweetness of joy, peace and love. If we are not feeling those things, we must be heading away from Truth, our Destiny, and our Dream Life.
Manifesting: Pointing Your Feelings Toward True North
How we feel is EVERYTHING in manifesting. Imagine that every morning the Universe delivers all the shoes you can ask for to your front door. But, before you are even awake, those little Gremlins climb down from the attic and steal them all! You open your front door wearing your fuzzy robe, see nothing, and think: “I knew it! Another day of not getting what I want. The Universe didn’t deliver!” The problem isn’t the Universe, because the Law of Attraction really is just an Automated Delivery Service. The problem is that the Gremlins of unworthiness are robbing you of what you want before you can lay your hands on it! That’s what happens when the thought “I want to be a famous writer” is directly followed by “Yeah right, fat chance that will ever happen!” You. Just. Got. Robbed. Sometimes it happens so quickly we don’t even know what hit us. We think our thoughts, our limiting beliefs, our excuses, are reality. It really is the economy. We really do need more schooling before we can do that thing we want to do. Yes, other people can follow their dreams, but we really do have a legitimate reason why we can’t. Those are Gremlins stealing your shoes.
How Does It Feel?
A thought will carry a certain vibrational frequency, and it will likely either feel good or, feel bad. Remember, Manifesting 101 states that we have to be in vibrational alignment with what we want to be able to receive it. It is already there for us, but without vibrational alignment, we can’t receive it. How do you vibrationally align with what you want? To simplify, lets just say that everything you want feels good. If you wake up every morning with some semblance of the thoughts: “I’m not enough.” “Things don’t work out.” “I’m unhappy” “I need things to be different before I can be happy” “Everyone is doing better than me” etc. then you are not going to feel good. And so, you are living with Gremlins that are stealing your shoes!
Using I AM’s
I Am statements are the quickest way to rid yourself of your Gremlins. After all, you are the master of your mind, not the other way around. By using I Am statements, you program your mind to have faith in possibility instead of disaster. You override your negative programming with intentionality. I find I Am statements extremely helpful when I feel helpless in my business. When there is too much to do, and I don’t know what step to take next. Or, when there is some big, scary step I have to take that is outside of my comfort zone. “I am powerful. “I’ve got this” “I am guided” “I am enough” “I am a Powerful Creator”. These I Am’s, said out loud, are like a life raft in a vast ocean of unworthiness. They never fail to get me unstuck, and the next thing I know, I am acting like that girl I see in my future: In control, confident, and taking care of business. I have come to depend on my daily dose of I Am’s like a multivitamin, taken daily for good health: every morning when I wake up; while I’m driving; in the tub; on my runs. I am always saying my I Am’s out-loud or under my breath. It is very important to not just think them, but to practice saying them. It is a very powerful tool to rewire your brain, and so worth feeling a little goofy doing it. I find them grounding, energizing, uplifting, and more. And subtly, over time, I have noticed that my automatic responses have changed. Whereas before my knee-jerk reaction to a challenge used to be: “oh crap, I can’t do this”, now it’s: “I’ve got this, I am powerful.”
Put Your Effort Where It Matters
The reason Manifesting and The Law Of Attraction are such a phenomena is for two reasons: The first, is that most of us have seen evidence of manifesting working in our lives, and we can feel the truth of that birthright deep inside of ourselves. The second is, that we secretly all love the idea of making things happen while lying down. All of my favourite activities are done in a supine position: writing, sleeping, Netflix, sex, and even eating. If I had a dollar for every time I have choked on my take-out because I have attempted to eat it lying down… on the coach… while watching Netflix…a nd having sex. Just kidding, I always pause Netflix. But seriously, many people don’t understand that although the creation of what you want is not your business, unblocking yourself so that you are free to move toward what you want actually takes work. When your mental clutter is cleared, you find what inspired action feels like. Joyful, easy, and paradoxically effortless, even when it feels like hard work or takes energy. You find that when you take one step towards your dreams, it takes a thousand steps towards you. But, the key is, you will want to take that one step every day. You won’t dawdle. You won’t fret that it isn’t going to work out. You won’t avoid dreaming bigger and bigger because you don’t see how you will reach your dream. You just take one joyful little step everyday, because you can’t help but doing what you love. And, you don’t have the Gremlins telling you “What’s the point?” You act as if things will work out, and so your vibrational match to that is things working out. The key concept here is: We do not attract what we want, we attract what we are. Say your I Am’s, and get your vibration to the point where you are worthy of all you dream of.
Cleaning up your vibration (your thoughts/feelings/beliefs) and keeping it clean is not unlike doing mental housework. It needs to be done often, and diligently. But, on the bright side, it can be done lying down… Just remember to pause Netflix first.
If you want more information on being getting into Vibrational Alignment with all that stuff you want, you can read more about that on my blog post Manifesting 2.0.
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