Most people assume that their life is not going to go the way that they want it to go. They assume that something or someone will either get in the way, or prevent or make it difficult to achieve what they want to achieve. Indeed, this is often one of the causes of low self-esteem. We assume that because other people do not help us, or even intentionally hinder us, it indicates that what we want has a low priority or is unimportant and so we must have a low value too.
Once we see this happening, we seem to notice it more and more often and each time we do, it ‘confirms’ our low value and lack of importance.
Who Is Responsible?
Obviously, nobody would intentionally prevent their own success and so a lack of success appears to be caused by other people who have their own self-interest at heart. They seem to be taking success away from us.
Yet, if we blame others for our lack of success, or if we give credit to others when we succeed, then we assume we are powerless to change anything ourselves. So if you want to be successful, the first thing that you must do is take responsibility for every aspect of your life. Now I know that if things have not turned out the way you intended, taking responsibility can give rise to feelings of guilt and so it feels better to blame someone else, yet as I said above, blaming others leaves you powerless. let’s just assume that you always did your best and so there is nothing to feel guilty about. I am sure that’s true, so just let it go and recognise that there is nothing you can do to change the past. Feeling guilty about something in the past won’t change anything – all it does is make you feel bad – so let the guilt go and focus on what you can do now.
Who Is To Blame?
When you want to be successful and yet your experience is something else, you feel bad and you know that something is wrong. This bad feeling magnifies your awareness that things are not the way you wanted them to be and this is likely to cause counter-productive assumptions of jealousy towards those who are having success. Then you start to blame a whole list of other people and perhaps even yourself. Yet constantly blaming others leaves you powerless and blaming yourself leads you along the road to depression. Worse, if you blame yourself it assumes that you are unable to be successful or achieve anything worthwhile. This is never true, yet while you continue to believe it, it will certainly seem to be true and if it seems to be true, you cannot be truly happy.
Before you can be successful, you must know that you have control. Only then can you start moving towards your goal. Your lack of success, or whatever the problem is, is not the result of an injustice that has happened to you, it is not that the Gods are punishing you or because you have ‘bad luck’ and it is certainly not because someone else has taken your success instead of you. What is wrong is within you and you do have control.
When Were You Successful?
I want you to think about a time when you were successful; a time when you did something that made you feel good. Notice that success and feeling good go together. Many, perhaps most, people attempt to get what they want by trying to push away the things they don’t want, yet this cannot work. It is important to realise that we tend to get what we focus on, so if you focus on what you don’t want, you will get more of it. And while you have what you don’t want, you do not feel good.
There is a part of our brain called the Reticular Activation System (RAS) and its job is to get us whatever we pay attention to and works extremely well. Unfortunately, people start to believe that the only way to keep unwanted things from their life is to pay attention to them so that they can ‘defend’ themselves against the unwanted thing or circumstance and they become afraid that if they don’t, they will be vulnerable. In reality, it is the other way around; you only have it in your life because you pay attention to it. The solution is to ignore it as far as possible while paying attention to what you would rather have instead. However, it is important for you to realise that it is not just saying they words, “I want this instead” that activates your RAS, it is the feeling that you have while you are saying it that causes your RAS to bring it to you. So if you say it and believe that it will work, then it will. Better still, say it and feel happy about receiving it.
How To Be Happy
It is your purpose to feel happy, but it is no good saying, “I will be happy when such and such happens”, because then you are simply putting off the happiness and you are keeping your happiness in the future. If you want to be happy, you must feel it now. Find things to be grateful about and give thanks for whatever you find. Some people say that they have nothing to be thankful about, yet this could not be further from the truth. No matter what is going on in your life right now, there is always something to be thankful about – even if it is only that you can read this.
Make a point every day, and as many times of the day that you can, to feel grateful for anything even slightly good that either happens to you or that comes into your awareness. The more you do this, the happier you will become; and the happier you become, the more positive and the more successful you will be. I know that might sound hard to believe, but if it were true, then surely it must be worth the effort? And I assure you it is true. If you don’t believe it, then try it and see. Just doing it will change your mind and you will discover that happiness and success really is your birthright.
Bill Webb has put together a complementary report called Raising Your Self-esteem that can help you to get rid of low self-esteem forever.
To download it instantly, visit http://www.raisingyourselfesteem.com .
Article Source: Feeling Good Is Your Birthright
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