7-3-24
Am I living the life I wish for?
What prevents you, me, us, from having a joyous fulfilling life? Perhaps, you do. After 79 years I am now living the life I want. Perhaps, you are not.
What does it take to create what is not in my life or change what is in my life that I do not want? Does anyone know? There are those who claim that we create our own reality. How could that be if I don’t want the life I am experiencing? There are also those who claim that life simply unfolds and we get what comes simply by circumstance, whatever that means.
There is also the “lift yourself up by your bootstraps” paradigm. In other words, you must go after what you want. If you want it, you must do the work, do the hustling, do the training, etc. in order to get it, achieve it, and to deserve it.
Do I believe that I deserve to have the life I dream of, that I want, that I wish for? Do I believe that it is only through hard work that good things come to us? Do I believe that only the wealthy can afford to pursue the training, the expertise, the wealth itself because they by privilege have a head start, or a special advantage?
As I have wrestled with the above questions, I realized that not infrequently I do sabotage my own preferred plans, or best intentions. Why do I do that? What is it within me that interferes with achieving what I consciously want? Are there unconscious or subconscious agendas that work counter to what I consciously want?
I have come to believe that, yes, I have subconscious saboteurs that block or prevent achievement of my conscious desires. I have found that one of those saboteurs is that part of me that was once a young child. That little Phil became at some point very frightened by many threats. Such fears caused this little one within to pass judgment on thoughts, plans, ideas, efforts to change my circumstance, leading to collapsed outcomes. I found many others: deeply held ideas about unworthiness, self images of disempowerment, inadequacies in many ways that also sabotaged plans and efforts to build a better life.
Now comes the question: what do I do about this? Can I ever get past or resolve these subconscious forces?
We will pick up the discussion with these questions in the next post.