How do we keep ourselves from living our best lives?
Most of us are familiar with the terms fear of success or fear of failure; but do we really understand what these concepts mean, or do they feel mostly like abstractions that we can’t quite define or recognize within ourselves?
I’d guess that most of us, when making decisions and choices, are hardly ever conscious of the fact that we might be sabotaging ourselves due to our response to these fears and other limiting core beliefs. And yet, we tend to sabotage ourselves on a regular basis through many of our habits or patterns of thought, emotion and action.
If these patterns were easy to recognize and change, we’d already be ahead of this game. But such things are rarely obvious or easy to spot and address. That doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to do it or that we shouldn’t be continuously working on it, anyway.
We are certainly able to come up with convincingly valid reasons for hitting the brakes or checking out of life. Have you ever made a decision about changing something in your life that would bring positive results and forward-movement, only to find yourself grabbing onto the first available excuse (other people, life circumstances, etc) to interrupt the process? Don’t get me wrong, some of the causes for interruptions and change of course can be challenging, difficult obstacles to be surpassed. Life sometimes demands that we slow down or stop for justifiable reasons, such as the loss of loved ones and the consequent grieving process, or the management of a serious health issue, etc. It can be scary to get up and continue to move forward, especially after we take a fall or feel that life knocked us down; and that’s a particularly hard process for highly sensitive empaths. However, for many of us, that can also be reason enough to stop progress all together. Of course, I’m not referring to the normal (and quite necessary) rest and relaxation pauses and stops, along with play time, that all of us should take to be able to recharge; I’m talking about giving up.
More often than not, the most valid excuses mask our deepest fears, which is a fact that we can’t get away with ignoring forever. If we dig deeply enough, we are bound to recognize that life constantly scares us (especially in these intense healing and transformational times) and we don’t need much of an excuse to want to stop on our tracks or even go on reverse, if at all possible. The problem is that we’re not built to continuously hide or retract; sooner or later, our mind, body and spirit start paying the price for staying out of the stream of life for too long.
How long is too long? There’s no easy answer, but we know what happens when we choose to hide and avoid for unhealthily long periods; we’ve all been there and dealt with the consequences. We ‘re quite aware that, at a certain point, the Universe starts nudging us forward; if we continue ignoring the nudges, they eventually become full-out, impossible-to-ignore slaps on the back of the head or kicks in the heinie… So, rather than waiting for that to start happening again, it’s best if we take some time to consider in which areas of our lives we have slowed down too much or stopped the flow. Awareness is half the way; even the process of acknowledging stagnated areas and the need to start moving forward again can open the door for the next phase of the journey to begin.
These uncertain times call for taking a leap of faith as we continue to move forward, trusting that the path will reveal itself as we take the next step.
What’s one small step you can take to move towards your goals and dreams today?
© Gisele Marasca-Vargas; 08/04/22
Comments