When you ask yourself that question, what answer pops into your head?
a) Yes of course!
b) No, life seems geared against me.
c) Depends what you mean by deserve!
If you’d asked me a a while ago I’d have said, “Yes of course I deserve to be happy.” I’ve worked through a lot of personal issues over the years and arrived at a place where I feel optimistic and happy most of the time.
So, why was it, when friend of mine muscle tested me against statements such as:
- ‘I deserve to be happy
- ‘I deserve to be successful.’
- ‘It is safe for me to be a healer’ or
- ‘I deserve to be able to receive reward for my work’ ,
that my unconscious mind tested weak on those statements, which means that on an unconscious level I did not believe them. I was really surprised because in my conscious mind I did believe I deserved success and happiness, and yet something in me wasn’t aligned and accepting those thoughts.
If there is ever a conflict between what the conscious mind believes and what the unconscious mind believes, the unconscious mind always wins! And because those beliefs are unconscious, we aren’t even aware they are there!
No wonder I sabotaged my own success. No wonder I found it difficult to ‘put myself out there’. No wonder I became tongue-tied when trying to explain what it is I do! My unconscious mind was trying to protect me and stop me being successful, because that is what I believed.
All the work I had done on myself had been at the level of the conscious mind. I had thought long and hard through my issues and decided that logically I didn’t need to be scared, that I did deserve love, happiness and success. I made the decision that I didn’t need to be upset about anything that had happened to me in the past and that I could put these things behind me and move on.
All well and good. A lot of personal development work is done at this conscious level. The personal development stuff that tells you to pretty much to ‘Buck up and pull yourself together’ is definitely aiming to change your conscious thoughts. I guess there is a place for this kind of advice. If someone is wallowing in misery, then a pep talk that gets them to start taking steps in the right direction can be the start of their healing journey. For example, for the person that answered ‘No, life seems geared against me.’ A look at how their conscious thought patterns contribute to their unhappiness is an excellent place to start their healing, (although they will still need to examine unconscious beliefs at a later date).
But dealing with problems at the level of the conscious mind, doesn’t tend to create that deep healing and release of emotional issues. Maybe given enough time the changes would filter down to the level of the unconscious mind. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather find a more effective, efficient way than just hoping it will happen sometime.
What’s worse, if you just squash down those negative conscious thoughts without actually processing them, all you do is create something that will come back and bite you on the bum one day! Suppression of negative thoughts and emotions is never the answer, however attractive it is. Those negative thoughts and beliefs need to be healed at some point.
In later blog posts I will be discussion how you can heal those kinds of unconscious beliefs without years of therapy and identify them using muscle testing.
In the mean time try stating some intentions out loud. Say ‘I deserve to be successful’ and then listen closely for the ‘tailenders’, that little voice that says ‘Yeah right!’ or ‘But you’ll never manage it’. If you become aware of even the tiniest tailender, then you are not 100% in alignment with that statement and will be unconsciously sabotaging yourself to a greater or lesser extent. Don’t worry if you are not in 100% alignment. It can be sorted out.
PS – if you answered ‘c) Depends what you mean by Deserve’ make sure that you don’t get so tangled up in analysing the meaning of things that you forget to work out if you are getting the happiness and success that you deserve or not!