So Much Happier Blog
Who Do You Need to Become?
“There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path. Don’t allow yourself to become one of them.”
We all want opportunities. If you haven't defined goals for yourself, you might not be entirely clear on what the opportunities you'd most enjoy would look like, but I'm sure that there are certain kinds of offers that would delight you if they just showed up at your door. Once you have addressed clarification of the goals that most appeal to you, it makes sense to start cultivating a state of readiness for those perfect opportunities. After all, you can have all the opportunity in the world, but if you don't have the confidence and the skills to accept gracefully and follow through with competence, you're not likely to enjoy the kind of experience you crave.
Let's take a look at one of your goals. If someone offered you a chance at exactly what you want today, you would no doubt be excited. If you close your eyes and imagine this scenario with vividness, though, chances are you'll also come up with some misgivings as well. Those might be something like, "I'm not ready," or "People will find out I'm a fraud," or "What if everyone says I'm terrible at this?" This is a quick way of finding out what holds you back from taking appropriate action to prepare yourself for success, as well as of showing you reasons why you might be likely to sabotage yourself if and when the goal looks like it's getting too close.
Once you've spent a little quality time digging into this exercise, you can now make some choices about how to proceed. For instance, if you thought, "I'm not ready," now it's time to write out all the reasons why you're not. Really indulge here. We want to get all parts of you on board with moving forward toward that goal, so we really want to know all of the objections you're holding into. Who would you need to become physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually in order to rock those opportunities you want when they show up? Make this as clear a picture as you can, listing all the positive qualities you need to build in yourself in order to be ready—the opposite of what you currently worry that you are.
Once you have that list of positive qualities, it's time to work on one or two so that you're building your readiness for your ideal future. Sometimes you'll need to find yourself some appropriate education and a way to start building experience in a certain area. Sometimes you'll need help healing the effects of past experiences in some way. In any case, it usually helps to find some other people who can support you as you build your competence and confidence. Maybe you could really use a work partner, who will be working on their own goals and with whom you meet to share process and mutual encouragement. Maybe you just need a few people who can listen to your latest developments and cheer you on. Maybe you need professional consultation in some area. Whatever you decide, make sure that the people you choose to join your support system are positive and genuinely want you to succeed. Even a professional should help you to feel positive about yourself and the progress you're making; if they don't, perhaps they're not the right fit for you. There are also plenty of groups you can join if you're not sure you can find any of these in your current life.
As you work on growing into new, positive qualities, you'll also want to consider this: What are all the reasons why you haven't become that person you want to be, and why you may not be able to? The answer to this is also golden as far as its ability to help you address factors that can trip you up. If you don't address the things that surface in this category, your progress will be much more difficult than it needs to be. The best way I know of to handle these worries and objections is through the use of EFT, which is incredibly effective at addressing mental and emotional resistance to progress. I highly recommend that you learn the basics at least and get comfortable with them. If any of this stuff is really dogging you, consider making a larger investment of time and energy in this work. The payoff can be disproportionately huge.
It may also help you to take inventory of whether you tend to overprepare or underprepare. If you're not sure, ask your friends and coworkers, who will probably have some perspective to offer on this. Either way, you may need to circumvent your tendency when it comes to how to choose when to move on to a new aspect of work. Some people tend to admit their own progress very slowly and cautiously. Others habitually underestimate the preparation they'll need to perform with excellence when the chips are down. Either way, it's a good idea to check in periodically with someone who has expertise in your subject area to help you gauge realistically how you're doing in preparing for your specific goals. This will keep you moving forward at a reasonable rate without rushing past important milestones or getting stuck in endless contemplation of detail.
Because you will always be able to think of new goals as soon as you reach your current ones, this is a process that never ceases unless you want to become stale. Therefore, it's important to find ways to enjoy this constant learning process as well as the euphoria of reaching your goals. You can be both peaceful and content with the blessings you currently have, and fired up about the exciting future you're working toward. I encourage you to keep yourself tuned into the balance of these that you're creating for the most satisfying possible life. What can you appreciate, and what can you learn this week? If you keep doing both, you'll keep making progress, and fueling your enthusiasm and energy so you can keep going, always improving your life and your enjoyment of it.
It's Not You, It's Me
“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
In last week’s blog, we looked at how disappointments large and small, sustained over time, can tempt us to take on limiting and destructive beliefs about ourselves and the world. This week I want to focus on a related tendency I’ve observed, equally as problematic and possibly even more pervasive. This is the tendency that many of us have to feel disappointment or frustration, and then turn it quickly and harshly back against ourselves as anger.
In her excellent book Tapping into Wealth, Margaret Lynch includes some great work on how to notice what you’ve decided certain experiences mean about you, who you are and what is possible for you. Uncovering the beliefs about yourself that came about in response to difficult events can be a real eye-opener, because while the beliefs may seem quite familiar when you think about it, you may have no idea where they came from or why they’re there. They probably just seem true, the way things are. Working with these beliefs and reshaping them is a revolutionary experience that can change the entire tenor of your life. However, it’s just as important to look forward and find ways of not forming brand-new limiting beliefs every passing day, and this can be even more tricky. You have to notice how it happens to stop doing it.
I recently had an experience through which I realized very clearly how vicious my self-talk can become when I’m upset or disappointed about something. It wasn’t even triggered by anything all that important, just something that was causing me some garden-variety stress and annoyance that I was tapping about, and I suddenly had a vivid memory of being a young child that seemed connected to the problem at hand. I was probably under ten years old in the memory, and I was so angry and frustrated at myself because there was a skill I was trying to learn that I just could not do correctly yet. All the feelings of frustration, and a seemingly disproportionate sense of rage, as well as feelings of being trapped, welled up. (I never cease to be amazed that such a volume of emotion can be stored and flare with a vengeance when an old memory is triggered, even one you haven’t thought of in years, and that now seems unimportant from an intellectual standpoint!) In this memory, I was just so angry at myself, and I felt that anger in the present as a physical burning sensation all throughout my torso. I remember telling myself that I couldn’t do anything right, and that I’d never learn the new skill because I was just hopeless.
I’m not sure where I got all this, because my parents really tried to encourage us to be positive, persistent, and to put in the work when we were trying to learn something. Who knows? We all get angry and frustrated, and maybe I was just tired and burned out that day. Whatever the reason for the pattern, I recognized this as something I do from time to time internally to this day, and I barely even notice it happening. I generally don’t stop to think about it, and I’ve never seen it so clearly as I did in this memory. I kept tapping on the anger, frustration, and the feeling of being trapped until it all subsided. I was left with a resolve to watch for this habit of thought in the future and work to arrest negative self-talk when I get frustrated by something. I also felt much less concerned with the thing that was contributing to my original stress and annoyance in the present day.
It’s obvious to me in retrospect that when we’re learning new skills, we always have to endure a period of rank incompetence, which really isn’t any fun, but is completely normal. No one is born with skills at, really, anything. Learning is always a process; just because we can’t do something on the first try, that doesn’t mean we’re not able to learn it at all, or that we’re stupid, or useless, or anything else dire. But in the moment, when emotion overtakes us, we’re not thinking logically. We’re far more likely to overreact and decide that our current difficulties “mean” something about us that they don’t actually mean at all. Boy, did I ever do that in that childhood memory! If we can gain clarity about some of the formative experiences that set a negative pattern for us, that creates a path toward undoing them by targeting those experiences with tapping, or NLP, or hypnosis, or some other technique that involves both the memories and a physical element. Techniques that involve the body have proven to be the most successful in creating positive emotional change that sticks.
Next time you find that you’re ranting at yourself when you’re angry or frustrated, ask yourself what this feeling of self-recrimination reminds you of, and think back to the earliest time you can remember feeling something like this. You might be surprised at the answer you get from the old memory banks, and the outdated anger at yourself you might still be holding onto. If you haven’t learned how to tap, hop to it! It’s easy, and I know I’m grateful for it every day that I use it to ease my stresses, whether old or new. When you diminish the power of old emotions, it can be astonishing how your current emotions will calm as well. And keeping your current emotions from spiraling too far out of control diminishes the likelihood that you will reinforce habits of reflexive anger at yourself that have no earthly use in the creation of a happy life.
Who's Driving This Thing?
“The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.”
I’ve noticed in my work with clients that many people are much harder on themselves than they would be on anyone else, especially people they love and care about. Something for which one would easily forgive a friend becomes unforgiveable in oneself for reasons that are hard to fathom. Sometimes the client will even say that it seems irrational for him to feel so guilty about something relatively minor, and yet he does. What gives? And why is this such a common experience?
I think the answer is that we have learned this behavior, usually from people who had no idea what was being passed down, in two different ways. First, the conscious part of the equation: When we’re children, we hear from all the adults around us, as well as from friends and peers, about what constitutes being a “good” person. We may have trouble unifying everything we’re told into a cohesive theory about how to behave, but we do know that we’re supposed to try to be “good.” We doubtless remember times when we were accused of behaving badly and intentionally embarrassed by someone, whether publicly or privately. We may learn that life tends to go more smoothly when we behave in a pleasing way toward others; we then take on the job of policing our own behavior, taking on the voices of people we respected or feared and obeying them even in their absence. This is relatively easy to recognize if you think about it—by which I mean that it may take some work to notice when you’re trying to please someone who’s not there, but if you pay attention to how you make decisions, you’ll probably start to see some of these habits before too long.
And now for the second part that is not conscious. Figuring out how this piece is affecting you can be quite a bit trickier. In The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton writes about how recent scientific study has revealed that children under the age of six spend most of their time in different brain wave states than adults. Until the age of two, children exhibit mostly delta brain waves, which in adults are associated with sleep states, and from ages two to six they spend most of their time in theta brain wave activity, which in adults is associated with the kind of “suggestible, programmable” state that hypnotherapists lead people into in order to help them accomplish change. In other words, young children are generally not in a fully conscious state that adults would recognize. They do not have access to conscious decision-making and analytical abilities. Therefore, whatever a small child hears is downloaded into her subconscious directly. Did you get that? Young children have no filter; what they hear is recorded directly into their subconscious minds as truth. When you were young, you learned a great deal that you are not aware of now, and it’s still affecting you today unless you’ve taken concrete steps to update that information.
That explains a lot about why it can be so hard to change old habits and beliefs even if we want to. The reasons why we feel a certain way may well be rooted in events and verbal commands we can’t even remember! We have years’ worth of programming that we’ve never had the opportunity to examine. We may remember plenty from childhood, and still be unaware of some pivotal beliefs that were instilled in us very early. The people who taught them to you have changed or may not be alive anymore, but the messages have not. Part of your mind is being run by ghosts.
We all know that parenting is a tough, demanding, and often exhausting job. Parents do what they can to keep us safe and healthy and stay sane at the same time. One of the methods most use is the application of shame to keep us in line—a sharp tone of voice telling us to stop it and a withering look, questions about what we were thinking when we did something that seemed really dumb or dangerous from an adult perspective, maybe a slap upside the head to let us know just how unacceptable our choice was. (Some of this is non-verbal, or even learned from things we just overheard rather than experiencing them personally.) If they can make us feel bad about certain choices, it’s less likely that we’ll make them again. While this can be effective, its continued use can also leave us with a general feeling of not being good enough/as good as others, or the feeling that we need to talk to ourselves harshly in order to avoid bad decisions and consequences. Once it’s installed, this habit of self-talk can run for decades or a lifetime without your awareness of what it’s really about, or that there are other alternatives. The only thing that really makes this second half of the equation different from the first is that it occurs before we can be fully aware of what’s happening, and we may not be able to recall it later.
Some of this may not seem very empowering. After all, what can we do about things we don’t even remember in the first place? In fact, there are ways to clean up even the mysterious things that may be holding you back. Making positive change happen in your life often requires the use of tools that can open a dialogue between your conscious and your unconscious mind. My favorite of these is EFT/Tapping because it’s highly effective, and it’s a self-help tool that almost anyone can learn and use safely. Once you’ve spent some time getting the hang of it, it’s astonishing what you can learn about yourself and what might be keeping you stuck in a particular area of your life. It takes practice to become confident in this dialogue, but it’s well worth the effort if you’re someone who would like to feel better physically, emotionally, or spiritually, or to work toward more positive mental habits. Despite what we may have been taught, it is possible to learn to treat yourself more kindly, and think and problem-solve more constructively. Quieting habitual negativity can free up a lot of energy for better physical health and greater creativity. And now that you know more about how children function, you might want to spend some time thinking about how you talk to the little ones in your life. What you say to them will shape their habits more directly than you might think. Choose your messages carefully to support their long-term health and happiness just as you learn to be more careful with how you speak to yourself.
The Upward Path
“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.”
Among the needs that humans have in the esteem category is the need to feel our own capacity, in other words our ability to handle life as its events wash over us. We all long to feel that we are enough. In fact, in my work with clients, I often find that most of us have a deep-seated horror of not being enough that keeps us in a lack mentality, which in turn continually stimulates the body’s stress response. Numerous factors can feed this vicious cycle, including the amped-up messages we receive daily in many modern cultures that no one is ever enough, that we must all be striving to be the best at all things all the time—which of course is a losing battle, because no one person ever could be. In the end, no one else can decide for you that you are enough. You must simply decide yourself that you are. Maslowe identified several ways in which we seek satisfaction in the process of making this decision, some of which we’ve already covered, some of which we address this week, and some of which we’ll look at next week. Since the highest rung on the ladder of capacity that can be achieved through learning and practice is generally known as mastery, that is where we will set our sights today. This is within the reach of most of us, and a worthy goal to strive for.
One can be a master of information, or of practice, or of both. Someone can have expert-level understanding of a subject matter area, yet be unable to produce results in that area. That person is still a master of intellectual knowledge, and that can be incredibly useful if applied in some way or passed on to others who can apply it. Someone else can be a master of doing something with a high degree of excellence, but be unable to explain it, and lack the benefits that come with studying widely on the subject. He may have focused on results only, and sought only the coaching and information that was absolutely necessary to keep moving forward. This too can be extremely useful, as this kind of mastery leaves a trail that others can analyze and duplicate, and again pass on to others. The master who is most revered, though, is often the one who both understands a subject deeply and can demonstrate that knowledge through action and the creation of exceptional outcomes. This person is often widely influential. She is likely to receive feedback from others to that effect, which helps her to feel significant—but that’s next week’s topic! I’m getting ahead of myself.
Thoreau famously claimed, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” and I think most of us know all too well what he was getting at. Many people fail to find ways to live with purpose, verve, and the feelings of self-esteem we’re addressing here. So if we all desire feelings of competence, and building mastery in any area is helpful in producing those feelings, why don’t more of us commit to striving for mastery? Well, how about: Life is not easy, first of all. Second, if we are not stubbornly purposeful about setting a course and continually working to stay on it, it’s so darned easy to be distracted by what others want for us, by the demands of others, by pain, by pleasure, by loud noises, and heck, by shiny objects! You name it, we’re curious about it. And that’s fine. That’s all part of life. But if we don’t allow ourselves to apply our innate abilities to the pursuit of mastery, we miss out on one of the grander adventures it’s possible to have on this planet.
The process of blossoming into mastery is one filled with drama. I remember years ago hearing Marianne Williamson make the distinction between the “cheap drama” that prevails when you’re living a petty, childish, self-absorbed life, and the worthy drama that remains part of your experience when you’ve grown into a more authentic, mature person. (I’m paraphrasing from memory here, so apologies to Ms. Williamson if something is lost in my translation.) I loved this concept, and I think this applies to growing into mastery as well. Truly mastering nearly anything requires treading a long road that includes difficulty and constant effort and change. It includes learning from others who are available to you, even when you know they’re not the best teachers or you don’t love their personalities. It also includes the necessity of eventually throwing off the strictures of what has been done before, just as a teenager must assert personal independence through acts of rebellion (on whatever scale) in order to become an adult. There will be times when you have support and help, and others when you don’t; portions of the road will inevitably be lonely and dark. At times your prospects will seem hopeless as you hit barriers that seem final. You will lose things along the way, which is part of the price of the journey. You will gain many others, including successes and personal strengths that can’t be taken from you. The empowerment that results from reaching the mountaintop at the end of the road is one of life’s peak experiences (another concept originated by Maslowe, by the way—what a guy). If you ask anyone who you consider to be a master of a subject or a skill set, I think you’ll find that his or her story of the path that lead to mastery was full of ups and downs, and expressed the truly meaningful drama inherent in striving for excellence through exhilarating highs and frightening lows.
While some of this may sound pretty good, the hard parts are no joke. Most of us are never taught the skills that make up the strength known as discipline. Most of us are petrified of discomfort, for instance, and are never given strategies for dealing with it in a healthy manner so that we can keep moving toward our mountaintop. Most of us lack basic knowledge about maintaining the health and balance of the body, mind, emotions and spirit. Many of us were never shown the basics of organization, which is necessary for keeping everything together through a long and taxing effort. Many of us were not instructed in the development of focus and techniques on restoring it when it has evaporated. You can expect more on these topics in blogs up ahead. But those who are keenly aware that they are missing essential pieces in these areas will lack the confidence to take on a process that can be as grueling as the effort toward mastery.
For those who do venture out onto the path, and who persevere through all the strangeness they encounter, life becomes far fuller and richer. Whatever they are able to achieve is far more than they had before, and more than those who never try will ever have. Now, I believe all human life has value, and that we need not be on a path toward mastery in order to be worthy. We still have the power to decide for ourselves that we are worthy for any reason or no reason at all, and in fact I recommend it! Doing so tends to immediately make life feel better, and that tends to enliven our energy and creativity, which in my world is pretty much always a good thing. But if we are able, why not try to wring the most juice out of life that we can? Feeling that we are competent, that we have done good things, and that we can do more is a major component of building self-esteem. Why not reach for something grand and see how far we can climb?
It’s worthy of mention that yet higher than mastery is the realm of genius, but that is reached only when mastery is combined with natural talent to yield the astonishing feats of someone at the pinnacle of his or her area of endeavor. Therefore, as you consider what to master, I highly recommend choosing something that ignites your curiosity with the flame of passion. When you love a subject, learning is a joy, even a happy compulsion. It will be a lot easier to keep going if you always have that flame keeping you lit from within. It will also attract others with its brilliance and power, which can open up opportunities as you reach milestones and require new resources. Now, off you go! If you’re not yet on the path to mastery, dig deep for ideas about where you can place your target. The pace and the goal are entirely up to you, and your business only. What mountain do you want to scale? What's a tiny step you can take to begin?
*I was influenced in this post by some of the resources listed here, including a great book called Mastery.
Money, Honey!
“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”
Continuing to follow along with Maslowe’s concept about the needs we must take care of before we can really thrive as a total human being, in this week’s blog, we’ll take a look at another aspect of security: Your ability to make enough money to support yourself and your family. We’re not talking here about your ability to live the most abundant life possible, as that will be for a later post. This one will be about how to create the feeling that you can always handle your basic financial needs.
Your feelings about making money, saving money, and spending money are shaped most profoundly by what you were taught experientially by your family. If you saw your parents and other family members struggling to make and have enough money, then you most likely learned that making money is hard, and that not having enough is something to be feared. If you watched their fortunes go up and down, you probably came away from that experience feeling that money is fickle, and one can as easily lose it as gain it. If you were often told that your family couldn’t afford the things you wanted, then you may have learned to resent money as a concept altogether. I’m sure you can see that these attitudes that so many of us learn about money are not at all helpful in our quest to feel safe and secure enough to pursue the life goals that most excite us.
With these attitudes in tow, we are far more likely to talk ourselves out of taking even small risks in moving toward our goals. We will tend to move through life with a sense of fear and pessimism about our possible monetary outcomes. We are likely to feel that we’re not equal to the task of providing for ourselves and those we love during changing times. All of this will sap our energy and enthusiasm for life in ways it’s hard to fully comprehend until we’re able to finally find ways to transform these beliefs and attitudes.
As far as monetary skills, some of us are lucky enough to have been taught some of these at home. If you did learn some basics about balancing a checkbook or budgeting, for instance, then you may have built some confidence around your ability to handle money. If you were allowed to participate in discussions about financial decisions, then you probably built more there. Those of us who were very fortunate may have learned about investing, or how to run a business. It’s also possible that you learned some things at school that were relevant to finance. You may have had classes in junior high or high school that touched on the basics of earning and using money. You may have elected to take classes in college about business and finance. All of these create advantages that help us to feel competent in the financial arena of life. Unfortunately, many of us come through our schooling with little to no practical learning about financial matters such that we lack confidence and a sense of literacy in this extremely important area. If you didn’t learn these early, you may still be struggling to learn them now, but there are resources available to help you at every turn if you are willing to look and learn from them. It’s not hopeless, even if you’re not where you want to be!
Once we enter the workforce, we start learning through trial by fire if we’re still relatively clueless at that point. Now we are responsible for earning money and paying our expenses. We’re likely motivated by both needs and desires to make ends meet. We start gaining valuable on-the-job skills, and realizing that some of the things we picked up along the way, like social and communication skills, have very real practical value on the job. If we’re willing to continue learning and stay flexible, we can often parlay our gains in experience into better job opportunities or entrepreneurial ventures. If we stop learning or aren’t assertive in looking for expanding opportunities, for whatever reason, then we’re not building the confidence in our ability to earn that would help us to create the important sense of security we’re after.
Another way to build confidence in your ability to support yourself is through life experiences in areas not related to income. Say you encounter a health challenge and are able to make lifestyle and attitude changes to help you in regaining vibrancy as you follow a recommended course of treatment. Rising to the occasion has taught you that you have power within the circumstances that present themselves in your life; you have the ability to roll with the punches and come out better than before, with new knowledge, skills, and belief in yourself. Or say you have a serious issue in a relationship with someone close to you, and you confront it and take action to improve the relationship. While the skills you learned in doing so may not seem immediately relative to your income, you will often gain faith in your ability to handle whatever comes to you in the future. And you may also find that those skills will eventually help you in your moneymaking ventures down the line. Things that you are particularly good at in life have a way of making themselves useful in surprising ways.
The world we live in has changed so much, and so rapidly, that many of us were never formally prepared for the kind of economy in which we now must function. It wasn’t long ago that the norm was for a worker to spend 30 or more years working at the same company and retiring with a financial package designed to keep him going for the rest of his life. Now the norm for a similar worker is to move to a different job, and often workplace, every few years. She is now responsible for her own retirement income. We are at a distinct disadvantage if we’re not good at negotiating and selling ourselves and our talents, or if we’re afraid to try new things and branch out into different kinds of work. Things move quickly in this economy, and sometimes it’s necessary to regroup and take an opportunity that’s being offered even if it’s not what you were looking for. It’s possible to leverage every step you make into more of what you want, but sometimes patience is required.
If you want to feel a sense of security that will free you, here are the items I recommend considering:
- Take stock of your financial skills. Do you know how to budget, balance a checkbook, organize your yearly information to get your taxes filed? If not, spend some time on basic financial literacy. These skills are essential to feeling secure around money.
- Learn about the basics of investing. What are some of the kinds of investments available? It can be very helpful to ask people you know about what investment ideas they’ve come across and chosen to use. Obviously, it’s better to ask people who seem like they’re doing relatively well financially! You may not put this research to use right away, but the more comfortable you become with investing concepts, the more easily you will be able to make good choices when it’s time.
- Regularly take stock of your marketable skills and update your resume. Often we don’t give ourselves credit for the skills we’re constantly learning in the course of life and work.
- Think about skills you have that you might not normally include on a resume, but that help you to remember that you can be flexible, and that you have learned and grown all throughout your life. If you don’t like trying new things, find ways to stretch outside your comfort zone, and make an effort to enjoy the thrill of the novelty.
- Have the courage to examine the beliefs you were taught about money and your ability to have enough. Find a process you can follow to transform any that are clearly not helpful. Often this process yields tremendous gains in your confidence and ability to excel going forward! My favorite way to address this is through Tapping, which can help you to quickly gain clarity and improve your money-related beliefs, but there are many possible paths to the same result. Find one that appeals to you and do this essential work.
I hope this post has given you a few things to think about as you work toward creating a sense of confidence in your financial safety and security. Until next time, I wish you and your family all monetary happiness!