I believe it fair to say that most people desire to have prosperity and success. If this is true, why do so few people achieve it and continue to live well below their true potential? It occurs because they refuse to do what is required to change the results they are manifesting in their lives.
If you want to go from living a mediocre existence to living a thriving and prosperous life, there are many things you have to do. Big things like releasing the limiting beliefs and negative programming in your subconscious mind. Little things like making a decision to change, setting side time for self-development, doing affirmations, visualizing, and following through with inspired action.
However, let me tell you what I believe is the single most important thing you must do to change -
Release your attachment to your victim story!
If you are not currently living a prosperous life, you probably have a victim (”poor me“) story that keeps you trapped in your reality. A victim story is any excuse you might use to explain why you don’t already have everything you desire from life whether it is to be financial free, enjoying good health, experiencing a blissful relationship with your primary partner, experiencing joy and peace in your life, or a strong connection with the Source (God).
Our victim stories usually are based on circumstances and events we experience in the past, and we continue to use them to limit what we experience in our life now. For example:
Do you ever reminisce about any painful childhood experiences that you endured such as love or affection being withheld from you, being called negative names, being physically abused, or being abandoned, etc. If you are talking about these experiences with anyone other than a professional therapist / Life Coach or explaining how you used them to change your life, then you are playing the victim card.
When you start a new romantic relationship, do you tell war stories about your former lovers? If so, you’re trying to elicit sympathy; thus you are being a victim.
When someone asks how you are doing, do you start listing your body afflictions such as a headache, back pain, or other aches and pains? This is total victim-hood.
Do you believe that your financial results (i.e. the house you live in, you annual income, the balance in your bank account, etc.) are due to state of the economy, government programs, bad partners, your job, or any other outside factors? If so, you are seeking to be victimized because you are giving your power to external forces.
Do you still talk about money you lost in a business deal or investments in the past? What about how the value your house has declined over the few past years? Of course the only reason you are doing this is because you feel victimized.
All of these are examples of victim stories, and they can keep you trap in a lifestyle where you are just surviving instead of being prosperous and thriving.
If you don’t use any of the victim stories I discussed, and you are still not having all the prosperity and success you desire, take a moment and allow yourself to review all your reasons why you don’t have it. If you do this objectively, you’ll be amazed at how many stories you have once you begin paying attention.
Don’t criticize yourself or beat yourself up for having a story about it because we all have victim stories no matter how well we are doing in life. What’s important here, is that you finally come to see that your “poor me” story is nothing more than an incredible illusion maintained by your ego that keeps your trapped in your box you created for your life (your reality that limits what you experience in life). But please understand this, your ego is a survival mechanism, and it tries its best to keep you from changing. However, you have the power to take back control and live the life you truly desire.
The choice is yours to make.
As a co-creator of your reality, you have the power to make a new choice that would create a brand new reality in which your problem of lack no longer existed. The Law of Attraction is working 24/7 and is ready, willing and waiting to bring into your life everything belonging in the reality of your new choice.
So, what’s stopping you from committing to a new reality where lack does not exist and you embrace abundance and prosperity? I think you already know the answer; you are too attached to your victim’s role, and letting go of it can be difficult for most people.
Why are you attached?
You are attached because that victim is who you are for now. It is your identity and your role. In order to choose out of your victim’s role and into a powerful new YOU, your ego would have to relinquish control of your life. However, your ego will resist losing control because it thinks it is protecting you from danger.
But you are not your ego!
However, there is a solution to escaping this trap of your victim’s role, and it begins with the realization that you are not your ego. You are an individualization of God. Can you allow yourself to accept this principle? Once you’ve allowed yourself to be objective about the problem, you can begin the journey to take back control of from your ego and put your True Self back in charge of your life.
When your True Self is in charge of your life, prosperity and success will surely follow.
Ever since I have been studying prosperity and success, I have found that one of the greatest blocks that many people have about financial prosperity is the core belief that having an abundance money or material wealth is not spiritual.
This belief is very pervasive in the world, and it is having a detrimental effect on the quality of most people lives. Many people have been conditioned by organized religion which propagated this belief through the centuries.
If you have been raised in the Christian faith or Churchianity as I called it, you may have hear or read the verse in the bible which states:
“It be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24).
Because of the misinterpretation of this verse, many people are using this verse in the bible as their excuse for choosing not to be rich or wealthy (financial prosperous). But, as with all truths, clarification can clear up the confusion.
This verse like many of the verses in the bible was not meant to be translated literally, but metaphorically. When this verse is taken literally, it is quite obvious that a camel can not could not pass through the eye of needle, but Christ had an entirely different meaning. Christ was not telling us that rich people can’t enter the Kingdom of God or material riches are evil and rich people are bad. However, many people who reads or hears this verse make the classic mistake of relating riches in this verse to having MONEY and MATERIAL WEALTH, but this is an incorrect translation.
So what did Christ mean?
When Christ used the words “rich man”, he was referring to you and me because we are all rich. You may not agree with the idea that you are rich, but the truth is - if you have attachments to you material possessions or you get your identity (who you believe your are) from your material possession and material wealth, you are rich in Ego, and this is what Christ was alluding to in that verse.
Your Ego is the veil that keeps you separate from your True Self, and if you desire to enter the inner Kingdom and experience peace, joy, and love, you must not be attached to your possession to the point that you are possessed by your possessions. Although most people tend to associate attachment in terms of physical objects such as money, cars, or houses, it can also apply to mind-states. These mind-states include attachments such as your self concept, your limiting beliefs, your victim story, your negative attitude, your poverty consciousness, and your negative emotions.
As long as you remain attached to any limiting idea created by your Ego, you are a rich man or woman who will find it difficult to enter the Kingdom. Remember, Christ did not say it was impossible to enter the Kingdom, just it is more difficult and hard. So the moral of this story is that, it is ok to have material wealth, but it is detrimental to you spiritual growth if you become attached to it or if you get you identity from it.
Note, when Christ speaks of Heaven or Kingdom of God, he is referring to the recognition of oneness. Of course if people are constantly chasing material things, like money, fame, etc, they can never feel that oneness because the Ego always want more and always create the feeling of duality - Me, My, Them, I have, or I Don’t have, etc.
If you are currently clinging to your riches or finding your identification with it, let go of it. I know this is can be very difficult for some people because you believe what you “own” is who you are; therefore, you may not be willing to give it up. If you let it go, who would you Be?
Recently I had my annual physical, and my doctor stated that I had gained twelve pounds since my last physical. I wasn’t really aware of my weight gain because my clothes still fit and I felt good physically. However, immediately after my doctor said I gained some weight, the word diet surfaced in my consciousness. Since I don’t normally regulate my body weight by dieting, I was surprised that I became aware of this word.
It is amazing that when most people think about losing weight, they immediately think of dieting. Believe or not, a lot of people are on diets these days. There are tons of diet regimens, including the Atkins, South Beach, Change One, Rosedale, Weight Watchers, Zone, Thyroid, Mediterranean, and Okinawa diets just to name a few. There are even diets, such as the Martha Vineyard Diet, that are designed to detox your body. Despite the fact that some people doubt the efficaciousness of this diet, it does remove toxins that are stored in your body.
Although most diets are designed to reduce your body weight and improve your health, I would like to tell you about a diet that is designed for improving your thoughts; thus improving your ability for manifesting prosperity and success.
Your thoughts are the initiator of all your actions and the reality you are experiencing now, but most people are unaware of impact of their thoughts. Psychologists estimate that the average person has 60,000 thoughts racing through his or her mind each day, and many of these thoughts are negative in nature. If you take notice of your thoughts and let go of some of the negative ones, can you see the cascading positive effects it would create in your life?
Most people are bombarded by information that promotes negativity, limitation, and lack consciousness on a daily basis. Negativity spews from your TV, radio, the Internet, friends, family, and the people you work with. In fact, most people are so saturated with lack programming that all they do is complain, blame, and criticize which cause them to struggle.
Let me ask you a question — when you watch or hear the news, do you feel joy and inner peace or do you feel depress and anxious? When you are with your family members, friends, and others people you meet throughout the day, do you hear complaining and other forms of negativity most of the time?
I’m sure most people are not even aware of the negative energy they are putting out all day. If you just listen to their conversations, you will most likely hear nothing but complaining. They will be complaining about their work load, about their job, about their spouse, about their children, about their day, about how short the weekend was. They complain, complain, complain on just about anything and everything.
Although negativity can impact your prosperity and success, there is a diet that you can use to counter the effects of negativity. This diet can allow you to become aware of your thoughts. I called this the 21 Day Mental Diet,and it is based on the 7 Day Mental Diet by Emmet Fox; however, I increased the number of days from seven to twenty-one because most psychologists state that it takes 21 days to change a habit.
The 21 Day Mental Diet
The 21 Day Mental Diet is designed to help you become aware of your thoughts and offers you a way to be more conscious of your thinking throughout the day. Although this diet takes twenty-one days to complete, it may have far-reaching benefits that could transform you mind and your life. However, the success of this transformation is dependent upon you completing the diet, but this will not be easy because this may be the most challenging diet you’ve ever attempted.
Just as you consciously pay closer attention to what you’re eating when you are on a diet to lose weight, you need to start paying closer attention to thoughts that surface in you conscious mind throughout the day. If you have never consciously listened to your thoughts throughout the day, your findings will be eye opening.
Goal
The goal of the diet is very simple. For twenty consecutive days, don’t allow yourself to speak a single negative thought. It is your job to stop all the negative thoughts that come into your conscious awareness, refrain them, but do not speak them. If you speak a negative thought, you have to restart the diet. For example, if you are on day 10, and you complain how the price of gas is too high, go back to day one.
The first time I did this diet, it took me about four months before I could complete all 21 days without speaking negatively. The average person who really gives this their best effort usually takes 4-10 months to go 21 consecutive days without speaking negatively. This is not easy, but you will find that your entire life is happier, more loving and more enjoyable!
So if you are willing to do this diet and transform your mind and your life, let’s examine what is a negative thought.
What is a negative thought?
Any thought of fear, failure, confusion, anger, disappointment, criticism, sadness, or worrying.
Any thought of disparagement, blame, spite, gossip, jealousy, or disapproval of others.
Any thought of sickness or being in an accident.
Any thought that is not positive and constructive in nature, whether it concerns you or someone else.
In short, any kind of complaining.
Note, Eckhart Tolle, the author ofA New Earth stated “Complaining is not to be confused with informing someone of a mistake or deficiency so that it can be put right. And to refrain from complaining doesn’t necessarily mean putting up with bad quality or behavior. There is no ego in telling the waiter your soup is cold and needs to be heated up-if you stick to the facts, which are always neutral. ‘How dare you serve me cold soup…?’ That’s complaining.”
When you catch yourself thinking a negative thought, reframe it. To do this, say CANCEL! and state a positive affirmation.
For example, if you are have a negative thought such as “gas prices are too high.” Say CANCEL! You can it out loud or silently in your head.
Next reframe your negative thought by stating “I choose be financial abundant and allow money to flow to me easily and consistently.”
Well, are you ready to begin to change your mind and your life? If you are ready, make a decision to start the 21 Day Mental Diettoday. After you have made your decision to follow this diet plan, do not tell anyone. In fact, keep it a secret. Sometimes when you attempt to step out of your box, even well meaning friends and family can negatively influence your thinking. If people notice a change in you attitude, continue to keep the diet to yourself until you successfully complete it.
Remember, your thoughts are the foundation from which all your dreams are manifested, so in simple terms, you need to tune OUT of the world negativity, and tune IN to your own prosperity and success.
Each one of us has the constant chatter of thoughts in our heads. This persistent little voice is known as the ego. The ego is a manifestation of the individual self in the physical world, and it is the aspect of us that exists solely in the realm of thought. The ego is our conscious identity of who we believe we are, and it is the part of us that interacts with the world. It is the ego that expresses individuality (separateness) and gives us the sense of me, my, mine, and myself.
The word ego comes from the Latin form, meaning “I”, and it is the I-ness in us that creates the sense of separateness from the rest of the world. Eckhart Tolle, who is a spiritual teacher, says “The word “I” embodies the greatest error and the deepest truth, depending on how it is used.” When most people use the word “I”, it is a misperception of who you are, and it is a false sense of identity. This occurs because most people make the mistake of identifying themselves with the little “i”, the ego or False Self, instead of the big “I” or the Higher Self ( the Soul) which is connected to God. Some spiritual teachers call this false sense of identity an illusion, but this word denies the reality of our experiences. An illusion has no existence, but a delusion, on the other hand, is a convoluted and twisted way of perceiving Truth. Albert Einstein, who had deep insights not only in to the reality of time and space but also into human nature, referred to this false sense of identity as “an optical illusion of consciousness”.
The ego is not a physical entity; rather it is a mental concept of who we think we are. This mental concept is very powerful, and for many people, it controls the realities they experience. The ego acts like a defense attorney, and it will supply us with any evidence that we need to keep our psyche convinced that all our actions are justified. Much of the content of the ego has been repressed in unconscious form, and it manifests as distorted thinking patterns. The ego uses these distorted thinking patterns to deceive us into believing that we are helpless victims who are unable to create our experiences. The ego perceives its main job to ensure our survival, but this is part of the fallacy. The ego is not concerned with our survival, but its own, and it protects itself by controlling us from changing our realities.
Although most people know they have an ego, most are unaware that they are being controlled by it, and this occurs because they identify self with ego which is the focal point of their sense of self. This identification with the ego, the little “i”, as self is the root of their suffering, anger, misery, frustration, unhappiness and all other negative emotions.
The identification with the ego occurs during early childhood, thus the ego is a byproduct of our upbringing. It constantly monitors our relationship to everything in our environment. It observes who we are in relation to people, places, and objects. Once we develop the skill of language, the ego catalogues our relationship to our environment using words. In relation to our parents, the ego identifies us as “the child”. In relation to the size of our parents, we are identified as “small”. These observations become our identity. Everything that is observed serves to create a label to identify the self. This labeling is the ego’s way of creating a human “identity”, beginning with “i” during our childhood. As we grow older, the original i-thought attracts other thoughts to itself, and it becomes identified with a gender, the body, possessions, a nationality, race, religion, profession. Other things the “i” identifies with are roles such as mother, father, husband, wife, opinions, likes and dislikes.
We all have roles, but the more seriously we take our roles, the more we disconnect from our Higher Selves. Even fairly beneficial roles are subject to this. Take a kind woman who defines herself as a loving mother. What happens when all her children grow up and begin to want independence? The stronger the role, the harder it is for the ego to let go. In the ego’s efforts to hold on to a part of itself, it might turn the same loving mother into a controlling tyrant. She might unconsciously retard her children’s growth into independent adults so they will always need her and be by her side. Or she might turn into a bitter, lonely, complainer.
Roles are not restricted to the individual. Some egos find their strongest identity as part of a group. These groups can range from violent street gangs to a weekly book club, from our religion to our race and our nationality. Another thing the ego identifies with comes from our perceived childhood ‘traumas”. These traumas are “perceived” because they are based upon our interpretation when we were a child. When we were no more than a child, a simple and perhaps insignificant incident occurred, and we came to an erroneous conclusion about it that was to become the pattern for our life. Something was said or done that hurt our feelings and rattle our identities. As a result of that upsetting experience, we arrived at some fundamental misconception about ourselves, and that deduction became our primary ego identity that determines who we are BEing and shapes our reality concept.
Even though we made this conclusion from the view point of a child, we usually have carried our reactions of this early painful experience with us into adulthood to some degree or another. The memories may now appear as constant anxiety, feelings of rejection, low self-esteem, and inescapable fear of abandonment, depression and pessimism. We may feel powerless to exert any control over the events of our own lives. We may feel unworthy of love or success or vibrant health. We may feel that nothing good can or ever will happen to us.
Identities
Although we have a primary identify that we created from our fundamental misconception of an event that occur in our childhood, we have many kinds of identities. An identity is any declaration or deeply rooted determinations about what we are and what we are not, and what we are capable of and not capable of. Most identities are in the form I AM (whatever) or I AM NOT (whatever) or I CAN or I CAN’T; however, all identities are not equal. For example, I AM cold or I AM angry are identities, but they are fleeting physical experiences and easy to change.
While there are various types of identities including roles such a parent, daughter, father, doctor, teacher, it is the Essence identities that control our lives. Essence identities are those that affirm or deny our fundamental spiritual essence and determine our self-image and self-worth. Just as there are negative and positive emotions, we also have negative and positive identities.
Examples of positive essence identities include I can, I AM able, I AM worthy, I AM deserving, I AM strong, I AM smart, and I AM good to name a few. These types of identities produce happiness, joy, prosperity, and inner peace.
Examples of negative essence identities include I can’t, I AM unable, I AM unworthy, I AM less than, I AM stupid, I AM weak, I AM not good enough, I AM bad, to name a few. Our negative essence identities are based in fear and they are the cause of our problems, conflicts, poverty, and suffering in life. Most of our negative identities were created to help us survive something that, at one time, made us feel unsafe or insecure either emotionally or physically. Psychologists call these mechanisms “ego defenses”. These ego defenses built a fence around your heart (body, psyche) to keep it safe from harm.
Theseessence identitiesbecome our perception of who we are (our self-image) and determine who we are BEing. Who we are BEing affects our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves and determine what we experience in our realities. While much of the negative information, observations, opinions, attitudes, and “perceived traumas” the ego absorbed during our young formative years created our identities, most of it is no longer needed.
If we are to live a prosperous life, we need to turn our attention from the past and begin to dis-create our negative essence identities. This can start when we are able to consciously view our negative essence identities from a spiritual witness perspective, but to do this, we have to awaken.
Most of us remain asleep and thereby in a state of unconsciousness with little, if any, awareness. Many of us have heard about the concept of being “born again”, but most people do not know the true meaning. Well, the true meaning of that is awakening to our true SPIRIT-ual nature and living from our Higher Selves, and that involves surrendering the illusions of the ego.
Personal Development is something I have been passionate about since I was a teenager; however, my own healing journey started about 8 years ago, was when I began to discover the possibilities of creating my life based peace, happiness, and prosperity. As I discovered the power within myself, I attracted people, books, and classes to aid me on my journey of healing myself and returning to wholeness.
I began my own journey of healing when crisis had struck me in my life after going nearly financially destitute. Everything I thought myself to be was taken out from under me, and I had no idea who I was.
In the beginning of my journey, I was searching for the secrets to being financially free and successful. I read books and listened to tapes on visualization, goal setting, and using affirmations, but I was not getting the results I wanted. As time went on, I became depressed, angry, and frustrated with the world. As a way of protecting myself from feelings of my financial “failure”, I suppressed the pain of my emotions, but all that changed when I was introduced to a process that transformed my reality.
At the time I was a working as an insurance agent, and one of my clients who was training to be an energy therapist asked if she could demonstrate a process that would release my anger and frustration. At first I was skeptical, but I was very amazed by the process after using it. As she continued with the process, I began to access the repressed emotional pain and release it. Immediately I began to feel shifts take place in my body and my mind. During that initial session, I discovered limiting beliefs of being “undeserving and unloved” stemming from a my childhood. I saw how these beliefs had literally controlled my life and stopped me many times from going after what I wanted.
With this process, I was able to reframe and create my new identity by changing the way I looked at myself and the world. I received many new perceptions about myself and the world, and I was able to see the lessons I needed to learn to awaken.
What was this amazing process that allowed me to easily release my suppressed emotions? It is called Emotional Freedom Techniques or EFT.
What is EFT?
Emotional Freedom Techniques is an Energy Psychology process developed by Gary Craig, a personal performance coach in California, that uses the ancient Chinese meridian system to eliminate all kinds of emotional, mental, physical and spiritual discomfort.
If you are familiar with acupuncture, you know that the body is made of a system of meridians. The meridian system was mapped out by the Chinese over 4000 years ago and is the basis of all acupuncture treatment. Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) use the same wiring as acupuncture except there are no needles; instead you tap with your fingertips on some of the acupuncture meridian points.
The theory of Emotional Freedom Techniques is that the cause of all negative emotion is a disruption in the body’s energy system.
Strong negative emotions cause a shock in our systems, creating the equivalent of a short circuit in our energy system. Strong emotions can be triggered by a thought, a memory, or an event (depending on how you think about the event). For instance, if you think about how angry you are that your spouse yelled at you, you may feel tension in your body.
Once there is a build-up of emotional or psychological distress, one of these pathways or meridians becomes blocked and must be cleared or aligned in order for healing to occur. Using EFT, you can balance the energy system which stops the power of that thought from affecting your body in that way. . Once the energy circuits (meridians) are then realigned, balance to the energy system is restored. You may still have the thought and the memory of what occurred, but without the emotional intensity that the thought was associated with. You are then much more able to think about the event differently. Your thoughts become more flexible.
While the theory may not make much sense to you, what I know is that EFT works.- often quickly, and often dramatically. I have seen this with my own eyes over and over again.
EFT has been proven clinically effective as a simple yet powerful way of releasing fears, phobias, anxieties, angers, addictions, and all kinds of emotional and physical issues. This is a new paradigm in healing because it no longer takes months or years of therapy and boxes of tissues to resolve problems. With EFT, specific issues can often be dissolved in minutes - forever!
The beauty of EFT is that ANYONE can learn how to apply it on themselves. It is painless and harmless, and it is completely safe, simple and easy to use.
For more information about EFT, watch this video from Gary Craig.
