Do you put other people’s well-being above your own and call yourself accommodating, empathic, a martyr, too nice, or a peace-maker? Do you justify this behavior by telling yourself you just want to make things easier for everyone, you’d rather help than be helped, you want people to like you, you prefer to stay out of confrontation and away from conflict or just don’t want to make a mistake and come across as foolish?
This way of thinking may serve as a viable coping mechanism when you are at a loss of how to make a better decision, but if left unchecked over many years this behavior can mature into a deeply ingrained habit that you have now accepted as a part of you. What once started out as an easy solution to an immediate problem has now become a recurring pattern in reaction to life and various situations. If you are suffering from chronic depression, sadness, resentment or anger and are interested in freeing yourself from your limiting beliefs then Spiritual Life Coaching is ready for you.
What Is A Belief?
If we think of the human mind as computer hardware, we can liken beliefs as computer software that we download to run predetermined programs. Someone that experienced a trauma in life may have learned that keeping quiet keeps unwanted attention away. This may have served it’s purpose at that particular time, however without consciously checking in to gauge whether or not this belief is still appropriate, you are at the mercy of interpreting all life events as a potential threat. If there is no immediate sense of danger to your survival then this belief of keeping quiet to keep the peace is no longer working for you; it is working against you.
Beliefs serve a purpose in our conscious evolution to help us move through life. Beliefs are like stepping stones or rungs on a ladder; to be used for a short time until we outgrow them and move on to a more empowering and inclusive way of perceiving reality. For example, as children we all viewed our parents as god-like figures that never made mistakes. We all were very heavily influenced by our parents and took on much of their same beliefs and ways of operating in the world simply because that’s all we knew. However, as we grew older our perspective of them inevitably changed due to a more diverse set of life experience to draw upon. Overtime, we come to see that our parents are not infallible and in fact do not have all the answers. Thus our belief of our parents has graduated to a more mature perspective.
“Life itself is neither good nor bad; it just is.” – Liz Hancock
Life itself is neither good nor bad; it just is. As human beings we navigate through life using different levels of perception to determine our immediate reality. As mentioned in my earlier post, Human Conscious Evolution in a Nutshell, we all see life differently. Some of us see life as a beautiful miracle full of wonderful perfect-timing-surprises and others see life as dreary, sad, and full of pain. It is not life that is the determining factor – it is YOU.
The obstacle with most people is that they don’t outgrow their early beliefs and unconsciously remain stuck using outdated coping mechanisms to solve present day challenges.
If you are really interested in freeing yourself from limiting beliefs and behavior then you need to WIN:
- What – Find out what your beliefs/programs are; create more self-awareness; understand your cognitive dissonance (this is Spiritual Coaching at its best!)
- Identification – Finding out the ‘what’ will give you an indication of what you are currently identified with (I’m a good person, I’m a likeable person, I’m a sensitive person, I’m a do-gooder, I’m not worthy, I’m not deserving, etc.) This software is running in the background, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy with all your experiences and interactions, and essentially is running your life!
- New Conscious Choice – When you know how you identify yourself (what software you have downloaded) then you can consciously choose to change your current mind-set and beliefs to accommodate the person you prefer to be (ex: a nice person with firm boundaries, a deserving person that is worthy of love, a kind and loving person that says no, etc.)
Questions To Ask Yourself
Here are some questions I ask my clients when they are interested in breaking through their limitations and are ready for change:
1. What are some positive aspects and side-effects that this belief/behavior has provided you?
Asking yourself what ‘juice’ you get out of a given situation will help you uncover why you’ve chosen to keep it for as long as you have. For example, someone who calls themselves a doormat or martyr perhaps gets a label of being very nice and easy to get along with. Your software program says that very nice people are always liked. Therefore, you always strive to be nice in every single situation because you want everyone to like you. There is always a reason you have kept a certain belief; you just need to uncover what the reason is.
In this example you must be completely honest with yourself and understand that you’ve created an attachment to the identification of being nice. Identification is the number one way humans get stuck in life; we think we are fixed in our beliefs and personalities and do not have the choice or power to change.
Through Spiritual Life Coaching we learn that identifications are just roles we choose to play in life; they are malleable and flexible depending on what we want to accomplish.
2. What else do you get out of believing this belief? What are ALL the benefits?
If you keep digging you’ll soon find that there are many other reasons for not wanting to change your core belief of being a people pleaser. For example, many people soon discover that they have taken the easy way out of life by avoiding conflict at all costs. If you are completely honest with yourself, you’ll discover that the energy behind this is fear and may show up in many different forms including: shame, guilt, apathy, grief, anger, lethargy, or even laziness.
By choosing to easily avoid a given situation you unknowingly perpetuate the repeated pattern of this cycle over and over again. If you dare to see reality as it truly is, often times you’ll see that there isn’t anyone that is being controlling, overbearing, or threatening to you, yet you choose to see life this way as it perpetuates your belief of always being persecuted as a victim. You are creating your own self-fulfilling prophecy!
Many people are tired of having the same situations come into their lives but they lack the greater awareness that they are actually unconsciously attracting them! Avoiding and ignoring something always attracts more of it. In this world, nothing disappears unless you confront it.
3. Which of these benefits do you know you want to keep? What are some of the benefits that you simply cannot live without?
Through Spiritual Coaching we navigate through what characteristics you want to keep while at the same time letting go of old beliefs and programs that no longer serve you. For example, someone may like to be known as a kind and empathic person but want to let go of the need to always accommodate other’s needs first. It is absolutely possible for someone to remain sensitive to other’s feelings and emotions without taking on this energy as their own.
Through Spiritual Coaching, client’s learn to get out of black and white thinking (“I must be nice ALL the time”, or “I can never say no”) and migrate into a more fluid view of themselves and the world (“I say yes when it works for me and my needs and say no when it doesn’t work for me and my needs; I understand that my needs change over time and circumstances”).
An individual can still be known as nice and kind while still upholding their boundaries and communicating their needs effectively.
4. In what other ways can you meet each identified positive need?
As you continue diving deep into your belief structure and the reasons you have held tight to them, you can choose other ways to meet these needs. Someone that wants to be seen as nice can choose to do something that would serve this need by volunteering for a cause that resonates with you, serving in your local community, helping a neighbor, choosing a career or vocation that helps and serves others, working with plants, animals or children, exploring artistic passions such as cooking or baking, painting, or sculpture, the options are endless.
These are all constructive ways in which to expend your energy, express yourself and your identifications. In this way, you are still keeping your desire to be considered nice and of value, but are focusing this energy in a very specific way. With your desire to be of service now focused in a clear direction, you let go of the unnecessary feelings of unworthiness, guilt, resentment, or anger; you no longer feel the guilt of having to accommodate others at your expense, or take on other’s energy as yours, or avoid confrontation if/when it is necessary. You have now created a new software program that says you are nice and kind but have clear boundaries and limits to the amount of energy you will spend and where you will spend it!
Honesty, Integrity and Responsibility
Change comes only when we get honest with ourselves. We must realize that our lives are 100% our making and stop the victim narrative of always being persecuted. The truth is that most of the time it is only our belief of being taken advantage of that keeps us in the never ending cycle of seeing ourselves as martyrs and people pleasers. If it is undeniable that you are being taken advantage of, then it is time to take responsibility and see how your actions and beliefs have put you in this predicament.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Are you strong enough to let go of the past to consciously create a new future? Are you courageous enough to put forth the time and energy to take responsibility for your life and make the necessary changes to live a life full of happiness and joy? Do you have the necessary integrity to persevere and stay on course even when things get tough?
No one ever changed themselves by taking the easy way out – the path of self discovery has always been one of blunt honesty, an earnest desire to change, the upholding of integrity and perseverance, and of course responsibility. If you are ready to take charge of your life then please contact me, I’d love to work with you.
From Believing To Knowing = True Transformation
Our personalities and identifications are accumulated constructions of past life experiences and our reactions to these experiences. We have acquired lifetimes worth of unconscious reactions to external and internal stimuli. As one embarks on the spiritual path we do so knowing that we aim to dissolve these unconscious reactions to life and instead acquire the ability to respond consciously; self-realization. When we are willing to go within to get beyond, we slowly migrate from Believing to Knowing.
In order to respond consciously to life one must cultivate their mind in such a way that their unconscious tendencies and compulsions are quieted, subdued, and even erased. In order to do this, one needs to raise their vibration and bring in more energy (prana, ki, chi, shakti, etc) into their mind/body system. Everyone is familiar with eating food as our main energy source, but in fact this is a very crude and gross way of invigorating our minds and bodies. A much more efficient way to bring more energy into our systems is to meditate. Meditation quiets the mind and relaxes the body and with regular practice raises our level of consciousness. When we meditate our bodies and brain slowly get accustomed to taking on higher and finer levels of energy which directly affect our way of perceiving the world and how we interact with it.
Thus, meditation is essentially the systematic process of peeling back and removing thousands of layers of accumulated identifications, compulsions and tendencies that comprise our ego. What we are left with is a pure natural state unencumbered with previous software data that limits our perceptions to life and our world. This heightened natural state of perception is every human’s birthright. Humans have the ability to expand our consciousness infinitely.
As a Spiritual Life Coach I assist clients in whatever part of the journey they are on, whether they want to focus their energies/desires/identifications in a more healthy direction or they simply want to remove the false ego and live life free from any fixed personality and instead be more aligned with the true source of life and experience unlimited freedom!
