Am I too selfish? Am I too greedy? - By whose standards, dare I ask...

This blogpost was inspired by a comment I read in a Facebook group. This is it:

'Today I was handed a severance offer. I have been in this company for over 5 years and I am over 40. I want to find something more flexible, in a better location, and to have a chance to take on a leadership role.

A big part of me feels that if I take this offer, I will never find another job as good - it's work from home, with benefits, free health care, and decent enough pay. Although it sucks the soul out of me at this point, keeps me up at night and I can't travel when I want or live where I want. 

Am I being greedy? Should I just be thankful for what I have? What would you do guys?"

Being thankful and grateful for what we have is certainly a good starting point, no doubt about that. The state of being appreciative of what we have elevates our vibration as we focus on abundance and achievements rather than lack.

However, being grateful doesn't mean settling down for what is the current state of affairs and not wanting to change our circumstances. Quite the opposite is actually true. From a place of abundance and gratitude, we can create an even better life - for ourselves and for our loved ones. In fact, I'd go even further and say that we awe it to ourselves (and our loved ones) because we are more than capable of changing things around. 

This brings me to the topic of "judgement". 

Too often we do things out of fear of being judged. 

"Too rude!"

"Too selfish!"

"Too loud!"

"Too quiet!" and so on... 

But have you asked yourself, "Why? By whose standards am I too...[fill in the adjective]...?"

Imagine these two identical seeds that came form the same plant and ended up in two different environments through no action of their own, mind you. (This is true story - form my allotment!) One thrived and bloomed into beautiful flowers while the other one was left in the paper packet... Does the second seed now think that its brother was a selfish, greedy, inconsiderate show-off because it thrived and produced seeds of its own? Or does the first plant feel it needs to slow down and stop ripening its fruits not to hurt the feelings of his less fortunate brother?

Our judgements of ourselves are our biggest hindrance to evolving into the thriving humans we were born to be. We are our own worse enemy, especially if we grew up surrounded by "judgement" of what was or wasn't considered "socially acceptable behaviour". This is our biggest and most dangerous virus, our low level of self-respect, worthiness and self-love. As a result, we rush around like headless chickens, doing what we are told to do, felling like we are expected to feel, chasing other people's appraisal and forgetting our own navigation system which, by now, may be even malfunctioning due to years of constant neglect.

This brings to mind the story of the captain on a boat who found himself in a foggy night at sea, without a map. Luckily for him, he saw a glimmering light in the distance and shouted through his megaphone (or maybe he was luckier and his radio was still working), 

"Hey, you are heading in my direction, we will crash!" 

From the darkness, the reply came, 

"Yes, you're right! You're heading in my direction, better change your course immediately!" 

The Captain, with his ego as big as the boat, shouted back in rage, 

"Who do you think you are, telling me to change my direction?! I am a big frigate with lots of guns and torpedoes! You change your course right now!" 

Do you think his attitude changed when he heard the answer,

"Sorry, can't do that! I'm a light house."

Photo by ArtHouse Studio from Pexels

Lots of us behave like this Captain, motivated by status and the expectations of others, while suppressing our real feelings and avoiding our pain points. I was no different, I used to be like that myself. I believed life happened to me, events were either bad or good luck over which I had no control and I was expected to just do my best at driving my boat (do you drive a boat or do you navigate it, whatever the verb is...), forgetting about dreams of a better life for fear of being labelled greedy and selfish. Now, after colliding head-on with two lighthouses so far in my boat-driving adventure called life, I can honestly say this:

• Whatever one thinks about anything - they are free to think it as much as they want and it has nothing to do with me.
  
  
• My own happiness and other people's judgements and opinions of me are two separate measures. I can do something about the former and the latter is none of my business.
  
  
• I am living my life as a decent human being, treating others the way they want to be treated.
  
  
• I am worthy of love and happiness.
  
  
• I deserve to be fulfilled form what I do.
  
  
• I trust my inner navigation system to take my boat to safe waters, always.  

This is how I drive my boat now and I love watching the tomato plants on my allotment as they produce in peace and harmony their yummy fruit and seeds. 

Photo by Eva Elijas from Pexels

Having Self Worth issues? - You have the solution within you

School, parents, society, everyone forces upon us an 'interpretation' of what our self-worth and self-image should be. How we see ourselves and how much we value ourselves is being heavily dictated by our environment. In our current state of society there is a constant and powerful bombarding of conditioning and solidifying (propaganda-type) of what our perception of ourselves should be: advertising, media, news, shop windows, government rules and regulations, how other people look, speak and behave.

Pause for a moment to reflect on the amount of precious time and energy we spend entertaining the need to meet the criteria that others have imposed... And we do this blindly, lead by the subconscious fear of being judged and shamed etc. This fear of being judged (of which we are not even aware most of the time) makes us go through life looking to satisfy the cultural criteria about how we should look or behave, and there seems to always be a need for something else, nothing is ever good enough, and consequently we are never really happy.

Let´s consider some questions:

– Does being thin and wrinkle-free improve the perception about your body?

– Does wearing certain clothes and accessories boost your self-esteem?

– Does having a new car or a big house make you feel better?

Whereas the answer might be yes for these examples, the point is to find out what is the starting point, what is it that truly motivates and drives our behavior.  Do we act based on a loving and accepting self-image and as a consequence we create a life of wellbeing or do we believe our joy and happiness depend on how we look, how much money we have or the things we can buy with it, as well as on the external/social approval we receive based on these? Are we coming from a happy loving space or do these desires fulfil some neediness and fear of lack?

Mother Nature is a beautiful source of inspiration with very simple and effective examples on how easy it is to create a joyful way of being: a lavender plant would not dream of changing its aroma to smell better in the eyes of another lavender plant, a cow would not think of losing weight to please a partner, and certainly you’ve never seen a dolphin want a speedboat to go faster in the water.

These examples could serve as an invitation for us to realize that over the course of our life we have involuntarily learned and stored in our subconscious mind a series of perceptions, behaviors, attitudes and habits from the people and environment around us. And because they are subconscious, first we are unaware of them and second, they create our life. We downloaded these while we were very young and could not properly discern. In other words, we are actually a series of programs that others have believed to be right for us, and now we run them automatically. Certainly, many of these programs are useful and functional for our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual well-being, while others are at the root of our daily limitations, barriers and difficulties.

Here is a practical experiment, in order to recognize if you are running automatic programs that condition your self-image. Let´s think of the last time you bought new clothes, a new phone, or a new tv, and ask yourself some of these questions:

• Did your self-image improve? Did your life improve in significant ways? Are you satisfied with the time and energy you had to put into obtaining this? Did others change their perception about you?

If the answer was “not really”… then you know that the “need” for these items is a program, a way to fulfill our lack of self-worth through material things.

Here is how Mother Nature can provide us with the perfect antidotes to the lack of self-esteem, the distorted perception of ourselves and the feeling of not being enough, along with some of the Principles that make it such a wonderful example of sustainable success.

• Adaptability: recognizing when a change is necessary for us and being able to adapt in a natural and effortless way. 

• Balance: the ability to use the masculine and feminine aspects of your life to achieve a balanced view of things, including the time devoted to work and to your personal life. 

• More is not always better: being able to recognize that you already have enough and that you can make better choices by selecting quality products that last over time.

If you are ready to take charge of your life and change the subconscious programs that keep you from seeing yourself with the eyes of “I am enough” and “I love myself”, so that you can enter a new level of expanded awareness and sustainable wellbeing, you can consider choosing PSYCH-K® as a way to internalize millions of years of Mother Nature´s wisdom.

The Power of Perceptions

I was having a conversation lately with a friend of mine and I remembered my childhood. This chat made me acutely aware of the importance that our PERCEPTIONS of things play in our lives. Let me give you a little bit of context first.

I grew up in a small village where people walked everywhere. Everything was, and still is, in close proximity and we rarely got in the car to go places unless we had to go to the nearest town...
As the elder sibling, I remember being constantly sent around on errands, mainly shopping ones. We were lucky to have a couple of shops in the village, including our own bakery, a grocery store, a clothes shop and a hardware store. I'm not counting the hairdresser's salon or the pub because they had no concern for me as I was never involved with them: my mum used to cut my hair and I was never allowed in the pub...

To cut a long story short, I had this PERCEPTION in my mind that going to the village center to do some shopping for my mum or for our elderly neighbour (she struggled to walk) was a HUGE problem... It involved going up a HUGE hill while I was trying to remember what I was sent for, repeating in my head what I needed to buy and what I was going to say to the shop keeper, over and over again, so I won't forget or make a mistake,... I dreaded this experience. I hated that hill.

I thought that hill was really big and high. It was a great source of pleasure in the winter time when it snowed. Because it was such a big hill we had super great fun skiing and sledging down it. But when I had to go up it in order to go to school or to the shops, my perception of it was completely different - I associated it with hard work and I thought it was enormous.. It also made me create associations and beliefs in my mind that life is hard, that I must struggle to be loved, that as I grow older I wont be able to walk far etc... big impact that fortunately I am now able to address and heal.

Fast Forward 20 + years... I went home after a long absence during which my parents had moved house and did not need to climb the hill to go to the shops any more. I remembered the big hill and purposefully went to see it... The shock and the wonder! That hill that I had perceived as HUGE and enormous was in deed nothing more than a slight elevation of the road! Now my perception of it was entirely different. The size of the hill did not bother me in the least, it did not seem to be connected to hard work at all and it certainly seemed tiny compared to other hills I had climbed in my life. It was the same hill but my PERCEPTION of it was 100% different.

This might sound like a trivial story of a little girl growing up and finding her adult power but if you think about it from a more universal, metaphorical aspect, it is a lesson about perceptions shaping our reality. Most of the time children have a different perceptions of the world compared to adults. These perceptions (although different) are as much real and truthful to them as the perceptions we hold as adults. The perceptions we have (and it is the same with children) shape the reality and become our TRUTH. They even change our biology...

The big moral of the story comes to two things really.
1. Loving as my parents were (and still are), they had no clue that my perception of the hill was bothering me to such a great degree. Otherwise they would have done something about it.
2. You are now starting to understand this better and have a chance to do something about your child's perceptions of the world and improve it. For this, I offer my support and commitment to be of service.

I am looking forward to having a chat.