Not Reaching Your Dreams? Ask This:

I have a client who kept sabotaging herself. She needed to lose weight. She had high cholesterol, sleep apnea, and shortness of breath that were all largely due to her weight.   In addition, she had extraordinary knee pain that was so bad that she could barely walk. She was mostly homebound, and relied mostly on her daughters to help her get to appointments.   The doctors had no solutions for her, and would not operate on her knees until she lost weight.

She knew what that she needed to healthy vegetables and was working with a nutritionist to optimize her diet for weight loss.  But she’d regularly find herself making excuses and going back to her old habits and her old diet.   Her weight was not changing.

When she came to me, I asked her what she thought was getting in her way.   She told me that she didn’t feel worthy of receiving help!

Tara Brach, Insight Meditation teacher and author of Radical Acceptance: Living with the Heart of the Buddha, says that one of the most insidious problems amongst Americans is that underlying all of our striving to be a better person, is a deep sense of shame that we are not enough.

Our inner thoughts and feelings are governed by both how we and our ancestors have been treated.   If others didn’t have enough time for us, or didn’t acknowledge our pain, or if they neglected us in any way in our times of need, we are often left with a deep feeling of unworthiness.   This unworthiness is accompanied by shame, and feelings of not deserving. The perpetual feeling of not feeling good enough can lead us to be critical of ourselves, to neglect our needs, to abuse ourselves, to develop addictions or to be on an endless path to strive to be more.

If you haven’t reached your dreams, with regards to each specific goal, ask yourself:

“Do I feel worthy of reaching my goal of ____________”?

Rate it on a scale from 0-10, 0 being completely unworthy, and 10 being completely worthy.

If you feel anything less than a 10, then you will need to release feelings of unworthiness, and beliefs created from your past. Thoughts that you’ve had in your childhood, such as “I’ll never measure up”, or “I’m not good enough for him” or “I’m not worthy” can get lodged deeply in your subconscious. They can prevent you from reaching your dreams.

Such thoughts made my client self-sabotage. They prevented her from losing weight, and being able to move freely about. They kept her stuck at home, and required her to depend on others to run errands.   When we released those feelings of unworthiness from her past and from her ancestors, she no longer sabotaged herself.   She found it easier to engage in healthier habits, and the weight finally started to come off!

Do you need help in releasing feelings of unworthiness?   Listen to my interview on Releasing Subconscious Barriers: The Key to Health and Happiness and contact me for a free 1 hour consultation.

Featured image “Vision Planning Indicates Step Forcasting and Ladder” modified, and courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 Image “Flowers” modified, and courtesy of Tuelekza at FreeDigitalPhotos.net