We sabotage ourselves because deep within we’re afraid of disgracing ourselves.
This fear we express as two seemingly opposed dysfunctions – sometimes as fear of failure and at other times as fear of success. Most of us utilise both forms of fear to handle different situations in our lives. But in truth, they’re both the same fear – the fear of standing tall and taking full responsibility for the way we handle life’s challenges and life’s opportunities. We just don’t think we’re good enough.
We may think we’re fearful about meeting new people, starting a new job, entering into an intimate relationship, passing a test, handling finances, moving house, dealing with a health issue or facing up to someone or something from our past. What we’re really fearful about is our ability to competently handle the situation. After all, we don’t truly think we’re good enough….
Many of us find that just the thought of talking in public can bring on enough fear to freeze both our vocal chords and our brains. Our bodies go rigid, too. This is an obvious example of the effects of deeply believing we’re just not up to scratch.
Some people deal with this fear by accepting it – okay, I’m no good at this and useless at that so I might as well just get used to it and not try anything. So they go ahead and restrict their opportunities, adventures and experiences, carefully avoiding almost any opportunity to be successful. Indeed, not being successful becomes almost a badge of honour – see, I told you I was no good at anything.
Others take a slightly different path – okay, I’m no good at this and useless at that so I need to be careful not to ever do any good in those areas as I’m sure I’ll never be able to keep it up. These people nurture their inadequacies as if they were valuable gifts. They’re the first to tell others all the areas of life in which they have declared themselves useless; and they’re equally quick to ensure they don’t trespass into these areas.
Still others try another tack – okay, I’m no good at this and useless at that so I shall compensate by becoming brilliant at other things and then people won’t notice my failings. So they go ahead and develop their abilities, always fearful that others may one day ‘run rings’ around them, thus showing them up as the useless people they believe they actually are, deep inside. This is especially evident in people who strive for external wealth but never privately seem to have enough, or strive at external study but never seem (at least to themselves) to be qualified enough, or strive for manipulative control of their family or friends but never seem to be satisfied with their relationships. Disgrace rears its head, disguised as failure, the moment we fail in our chosen area of success.
All of these approaches ultimately do fail. And each of them requires subjective valuations based on distorted beliefs about who we actually are to exist in the first place.
The answer, the remedy, is to objectively revalue our identity.
Being realistic, we cannot easily forego private judgements so we need to judge ourselves from a wider perspective instead of a narrow, inadequate and incorrect focus that often arose from our childhood. Parents and peers who regularly told us we were bad children or unwanted, no good at this or useless as that, easily (and unthinkingly) established patterns of worthlessness within us. Over time, we hid these beliefs of disgrace deep within. We became ashamed of who we believed ourselves to be.
This false sense of Self we call ‘ego’.
When we honestly re-evaluate our upbringing and objectively reconsider our origins we find we are actually beloved sons and daughters of God.
We are awesome creations of a most loving Infinite Intelligence.
We are eternal thoughts in the Mind of the Master.
We are the living acts of Immortal Life.
We are Divine Consciousness in action.
Although we are already perfect we have not yet learnt to access our wholeness. Like a child that needs to learn firstly how to crawl, then to stand, then to move forward and finally to jump – even ‘though these attributes of movement already exist within them – we likewise need to learn how to access our greatness.
When we remove our fear of disgrace we remove our sabotaging behaviours effortlessly.
When we have no fear, when we’re living truly fearless lives, then we have no difficulties allowing ourselves to express who we truly are, moment to moment.
We’ll simply let our greatness develop and expand naturally.
Our efforts may go up and down like a yo-yo, but that doesn’t matter as we’ll be living the greatness we find ourselves to be.
This greatness will express itself as love of life, love of humanity, love of opportunity, love of challenge and love of Self (the Divine within).
We’ll just be being who we are – and we’ll be truly happy to be so, too.
An Affirmation: I was created to express the greatness of God and I joyfully live each moment allowing this Love to express itself through me!
More in a fortnight!
Blessings and Love,
Les