The Strong Within Affirmation Podcast
Education:Self-Improvement
429 I Am And Alwasy Have Been Enough | March 2018 Monday Week 2
Mindful Mondays-#429 March The Strong Within Daily Affirmation Podcast
I Am, and Always Have Been… Enough
“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”
~William James
When I was in sales there was an old adage that was said quite often to help us overcome our fears of rejection, and that saying was—“the more times you hear no, then the closer you are to a yes.” And I always liked reminders like that, telling us that the bad things going on aren’t as bad as you think they are. The so-called negative things are actually helping you get the practice to become better at the crafts you’re pursuing.
To be honest, I had trouble with sales, and I still can have trouble with sales because when I hear a “no” I take it personally. I ask what’s wrong with me, how come they didn’t like me. By thinking that way it brought me to answers that only told me half-way why I wasn’t good at sales. The reason I say half-way is because I needed to see that I didn’t get the sale not because of myself, but because I needed to be a different person.
Now if you are scratching your head to my last statement hold on, as I’ll explain. For a good portion of my life, I was worried about people rejecting me, I was afraid of not being enough, I was afraid that I wouldn’t fit in and be left behind. In fact I used to have dreams of being lost as a child and never finding my way back from the trails I got lost on. And I believe it was my subconscious speaking to me, showing how deathly afraid I was of being left behind, and that I wasn’t enough in more ways than one.
But the fault was not with me, or people not loving me and leaving me behind, the fault was my thinking. And to change to becoming a different person, was not really becoming a different person, but it would be more of a simple shift in my thinking. So take the sales example in the beginning: I shifted my thoughts from seeing a “no” not as a “no,” but an awakening that I really didn’t get to know the consumers “why.” I began to care more about the customer as a person, not just a number sign. That “no” was a chance for me to see that I was in misalignment with the people I was presenting to. My old way of thinking was focusing on sadness and the ego of me not being good enough whenever I heard a “no,” and that kept me in misery. I saw what I really wanted was not just a “yes” or another sale, but I wanted to be of service and of use to people. I wanted to get to know people better…not just so I could sell them something but more so that I could provide value for them.
And that simple shift I think needs to happen in our lives. We fear not being good enough. We want to be perfect so we get it right, so we aren’t laughed at, or aren’t part of the group since you may not be whatever enough you think you need to be…to be loved. And the problem isn’t with you, the problem is with your thinking. The thinking that you have to be different, that you have to be more. And yes I believe we should always be working to better ourselves, but not because there is something faulty with us, but rather there is something right with us that we want to grow into who were created to be.
When I was part of an MTV transformation show where I was a personal trainer and life coach, I got so much pushback from the gal I was working with and from her family. When I told them I was a life coach the family’s common answer would be, “there’s nothing wrong with my daughter.” And I said I agree. They thought I came from a place of trying to fix her because she wasn’t whole. But I said to the mother at the time, “the life coaching students I work with…there’s nothing wrong with them either, there’s something so right with them as they want to realize who they truly are.”
And so every day, I got pushback, I got resistance, I got fighting on what we were doing…instead of trusting the process of knowing I had only one agenda…to love this girl as she was and to help her love herself as well. You see my goal on this weight loss show wasn’t for her to lose the recommended weight to be at her correct Body Mass Index scale. You know that number that Doctors will tell you based upon your height and weight of whether you are too fat or not. I could care less about the weight…I wanted her to change the way she saw a goal, the way she saw herself, and to stop fighting the process and allow it to come to her.
And it was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, first of all because I knew millions of people might be watching and if I failed I’d look like a failure…and secondly I was dealing with people who want to change, but they don’t want to change. And I am not putting the blame on the girl or the family alone… I am also talking about myself. Because during the taping I had so much fear in me from looking like an imposter, not being good enough, and failing in trying to get my message across to this young woman. The message that she could do anything she desired once she stopped fighting the old negative patterns and began building upon the great character already within her.
We fight ourselves towards progress. We put in hard work towards a goal. We fight tooth and nail to get what we want, and sometimes we reach it, and other times we don’t.
Why is that?
Is it because we are good sometimes and other times we’re not good enough. I don’t think so; I think it’s because we are waging a battle within our mind upon every moment from old beliefs. The split mind of who we truly are (our greatest and most true self), and the fears of who we aren’t. The beliefs that we may not be worthy, that we may not be good enough, the beliefs that someone better deserves it more than us. And so we work towards a dream or a goal by looking at ourselves from a place of lack.
We subconsciously are telling ourselves that it’s going to be hard and maybe it might not be worth it because you may fail—so don’t put in your “all” because it’s easier to fail knowing you didn’t try, than to give it your all and fail and be proven what a piece of crap you are. And that last sentence is not me saying that, that’s the negative voice inside, the subconscious darkness we allow to lie to us and tell us we aren’t enough.
But that doesn’t have to continually happen. Like my dream of being left behind, that fear was within me, because where I started any endeavor, where I began any goal, always began from a place of not feeling like I was enough. And I believe it’s easy to go to that fear, the place of not feeling as good enough as you SHOULD be, because it’s an easy out for us. It’s a generic starting point that seems natural because we believe it feels easier to NOT fail than it is to go out and make mistakes in your endeavors.
But I believe that is a faulty way of starting. It’s like you running a race, that you are going to run your heart out to, but actually start out facing the wrong way. You are worthy to have whatever you desire in your life. You are able to do what you want in your life. You have so much power and potential in you already…we just have forgotten that, as we’ve been sold a faulty bill of good for too long by marketing, advertising, and societal messages telling us we need to be more, that we aren’t enough…yet. You are told to buy this product to feel beautiful, get this new gadget to feel more successful, or acquire these things to have people admire you.
But you don’t have to acquire anything new because you feel you’re lacking. The way we become more is to understand we ALREADY are more. It’s like Stephen Covey says in his 7 Habits of Highly Efffective People book…“start with the end in mind.”
And that principle is not some crazy saying just to visualize what you want. It’s actually the process of helping your mind to melt the future and the present together. It’s the lessons you are giving to your negative thoughts in your mind telling it that there’s no difference between where you want to be and where you are. Yes, you will have to work to make a goal happen; but not because you were lacking to begin with, but more because you were onto a higher mission. Realizing the potential of who you have always been.
There’s no difference between the person you are now and the successful future person you visualize and want to be. The only difference is that visualization knew one thing that the present moment mindset forgot. It was already at the goal, and it didn’t have to fight the whole way to get what it wanted. Yes, your successful future self had to work, but it only had to allow who they were…to become who they are. There was no resistance in the work, there was only belief and a knowing they were able, they were worthy, and that it was worth it.
Today’s Personal Commitment:
It’s such a simple question, but it has plagued the world for the course of all humanity…and I want to ask you this question now. Do you believe you are enough?
I am going to let you sit with that question for a moment and to really feel it.
Do you BELIEVE you are enough?
Because the only thing that has been keeping you back from realizing your potential…is your belief of who you are right now. And I believe the best way to change, is not to see your future self as different from your present self. Sure the goal is already met by the future self, but the future self met the goal because they knew they were worthy and that they were able to do what they set there mind to.
So the challenge today is to write your present self a letter from your future self—telling you why you were able to do what you did, telling you what you had to believe about yourself, and what you need to remember in making it to that future outcome.
This exercise is not a goal in negativity of telling you why you aren’t good enough now, it’s an exercise on love and reminding you about the principles you’ve always known. The principles that you are enough and that you can do anything if you focus in the most efficient way possible—remembering that it’s not about fighting to the goal, but allowing yourself to the goal.
I Am, and Always Have Been… Enough
Thanks for listening. I'm sending great energy your way as we become Strong Within together,
Personal Development Life Coach-
Chris O'Hearn
Contact info- email: chris@strongwithin.com phone:865-219-3247
Music by:
- Zest by basematic (c) copyright 2011 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
- I Have Often Told You Stories (guitar instrumental) by Ivan Chew (c) copyright 2013 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee USA but available worldwide
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