Fear Of Success

In these exciting times of transformation each of us in our own way are being asked to awaken to who we truly are, to step into our power, and to fulfill our mission on earth. What if our hidden fear in pulling this off is about our fear of success, not failure, but success?

What if as a child those important to us convinced us ( knowingly or unknowingly) that we weren’t very smart, or competent, or likable, or that nothing we did was ever quite good enough, and this distorted our real sense of self. Then we grew to believe that we were not capable of doing well in life or that we did not deserve to do well. 

What if we held a childhood belief that who we were was never enough, that in order to be enough we must live up to others' expectations of us. What if we are where we are today because of those expectations. 

Do you still hear your tribe ( family/community/ identity) saying,  Who do you think you are? What do you think you are better than us?

Few things cause more fear of success than a sense that if we follow our dreams, we will betray the people who love us, and more profoundly, loose their love. Further, our deeper unconscious terrors of lose of community and possible isolation can stop us in our tracks. 

We can't imagine how to free ourselves except by messing up. So consciously or unconsciously we provoke self-defeating sabotaging behavior. Even when we pursue our ambitions we have an underly fear.  What will happen if I succeed? Some cultural archetypes equate success with isolation and are so persuasive that in some highly accomplished people they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

There is another layer to the fear of success. Many of us have been conditioned to believe that the road to success involves risks, disappointment, competition and envy.

In order to have a healthy relationship with success we must accept that everyone at some time has been afraid. What we are feeling is no different that anyone else. Know that it is time to figure out what our dreams are for ourselves. Once we have figured out what we want to do, we can put a plan together to achieve it. We all need to start somewhere. Just start dreaming, and however big or small, they are good enough. 

Do what makes you happy. Only you can define success for yourself. Here are a few questions to ask yourself along the way.

1) What do you think will happen if you achieve success ?

2) In what ways do you feel undeserving of success?

3) Who are you afraid of hurting or intimidating if you achieve success?

4) In what ways do you self-destruct achievement and success ?

5) How can you improve your self-talk to assist you in achieving your goals?

The only way we can count our life as truly successful is if we are doing what we were meant to do, regardless of what society at large thinks of it. When we follow our dreams and are successful we change the whole world for all time.

Nameste~ Charlene

Personal and Professional Friendships

Personal friends are very special people in our lives. They are the ones we like, love, know and trust. They are the ones who know us best. They are the first people we think about when we make plans. They are the first people we go to when we need someone to talk to. We will phone them up just to talk about nothing, or the most important things in our life. When we are sad they will try their hardest to cheer us up. They give the best hugs in the world! They are the shoulder to cry on, because we know that they truly care about us. They are the ones who know our deepest fears, and insecurities. They support, sympathize and love us on our journey to becoming. These relationships are personal and close to our heart. 

Professional friends are those we offer intimate services for a fee.  A Professional friend connects with the client in a deeply personal way.  A Professional Friend can be a counselor, therapist, consultant, coach, healer, etc.

In every healthy relationship there is a give and take.  In a professional situation, a Professional friend gives up focus on themselves to focus their attention on the other, their wants, needs, and desires in return for a fee. The form of payment with a Professional friend is usually money.  With a personal friend, we help them with their problems and in return they help us with ours.

Those of us in the healing and teaching fields chose this profession because it is a calling to serve humanity through these modalities. In our profession we draw from many years of personal and professional experiences. We do this services because we love life and deeply want to help.

Those we serve allow us into their private world, they trust us and feel safe with us. They value our genuine caring, our contribution to life, and they feel good in our presence. They sense a bond and friendship that has developed between us. This is healthy, and helps to facilitate healing.

However, after awhile many clients want to know the professional on a personal basis. They want to hang out with them, they want a personal friendship. While the professional genuinely cares about your well-being and growth, they get paid to focus on you.  If you paid them and they focused on their needs, wants, and desires you probably wouldn’t want to pay them because the relationship would feel out of balanced.  

It is my belief that to cross or blur those boundaries  between personal and professional friendships does not serve either parties in the long run.

I don’t need anything

She had an amazing breakthrough, the answer was long in coming, but here it was right in front of her. How could she not have seen this, how could she not know? Over the years she questioned, “what am I doing to block energy, why were my exchanges so unequal, especially financially?”

She watched her friends and family, they didn’t seem to be challenged in this area. She could not accept that this was her destiny, because if it was why was she still pursuing an understanding.

In reflecting back over her life she learned to be independent, strong, responsible, reliable, dependable, and a good worker, out of survival necessity. These were good qualities, weren’t they? 

She cared about people and in her sensitivities to others needs and pain she learned to give of herself freely. It took a long time but over time she noticed the more she did or gave the more was asked of her. This inequality of her giving and receiving was puzzling, was she not good enough, did she not deserve, did she not have value. She tried all the harder and gave, and gave even more, until one day in a long drawn out illness, when she could no longer give to others.  All her focus and energy  was now on healing herself.  During this time it came to her that all those years people were responding to an unconscious message she was projecting, “ I don’t need anything”. How did this happen?

Yes, she was self sufficient since childhood, she had to be, she could only rely on herself to get her needs met. Early on it became clear to her that love and kudos came to her for a job well done. Others came first, she became a good little caretaker.

This awakening of this hidden belief was profoundly freeing to her. The opposite was true, she really needed many things from life. Now she understood why they  did not come.

She had read that when humans speak only 10% of what is communicated is verbal the other 90% is nonverbal. What power the unspoken word wields. Today, I am happy to report the exchange of energy she gives and receives is dramatically improved.

 I guess if she could talk to you herself, her question might be ,“ what are you communicating non-verbally ?

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

When life gives us experiences and challenges that we feel ill equipped to handle we often spiral into negative thought patterns which create a self critical path in our brain. These thoughts running through our conscious mind with sufficient emotional force enters our subconscious as a “truth”. Some of these may be, I am not good enough, I am not valued, I am not loved, I don’t deserve, I am damaged. I did something wrong, I must be punished, and on and on. If not checked can lead to a life of depression, despair and more. 

This deep path, trodden for many years causes us to feel very insecure, vulnerable and unloved. To compensate we try to make up for these so called flaws by giving and doing for others, thus loose our sense of self, making us feel stifled and uncomfortable. We spend far too much of our time worrying about what other people want and think. By neglecting to develop self love and inner happiness, it puts us in the vulnerable position of needing all our love and happiness to come from others.

By focusing our energy outward, and then expecting that someone else should be filling the void created by our neglect in developing strong self love, we put ourselves in a position of powerlessness. Besides, It is not our job to make others happy, it is actually impossible.Waiting for someone else to give us what we need to feel validated, happy, loved, and fulfilled is a sure recipe for frustration. 

The way back to our selves is love. Loving that which we perceive as unlovable and unacceptable within us. What’s love got to do with it? Everything! To experience real self love, we need to create our own sense of well-being, and learn to honor and value ourselves in our thoughts, our words, and importantly, our actions.

What gives any belief its power is no more and no less than our belief in it. We often don’t give ourselves credit for our courage to endure the suffering, challenge and to move through it, and most of all to survive it.

In this radicle time of change many of us are awakening to the fact that its important to love ourselves. This is the only thing we have any control over amidst all the transformation, systems breaking down, as life seems to be falling apart.

We know it is time to heal, to let go that which no longer serves, to forgive others, and love ourselves. But, we often get stuck on how to love ourselves?   And if we knew how to love ourselves, how do we continue the practice?  Self-love is appreciating who we are,no matter what we have experienced or done. We must learn to feel good about ourselves, directing loving thoughts inward, and being good to ourself through actions. Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow.

We cultivate love by allowing our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known. Honoring the spiritual connection that grows from that suffering with trust, respect, kindness and affection. To gain positive results in our lives, our actions have to match our desires. Action is the fuel that drives us in the direction we want to go. Without fuel, we drift, and if we are using the wrong kind of fuel (actions that are taking us away from where we want to go) we end up either powering off in the wrong direction or creating a malfunction in our lives. This type of malfunction can show up as illness, depression, or a whole range of unpleasant emotions. If we are continuously taking actions that go against what we truly want, we can expect results that we are less than thrilled with.

I know that we are not our experiences, we simply had these experiences. Every life, because we were born, has a right to be here, and there is a calling for our lives.  It is soothing for me to look at life as The Source having a human experience.  

How do we deal with all the changes,  live life without fear and know that no matter what happens, no matter what happens, we are going to be all right. We are going to be all right. It is about having an open heart, being able to openly receive the possibility of all that is. We must decide today to make our happiness and development of practical self love a priority.