Free Your Mind and the Rest Will Follow!

   We don’t like to feel bad.  Just take sorrow, for example.  Do you realize people spend billions of dollars, every year, to avoid feeling it?  We read self-help books, go to counselors of all types, and take legal and illegal drugs and medications just to avoid it.

Think back to the last time you felt deep sorrow about something.  As you were experiencing that pain, you probably made an agreement with yourself to never feel that way again.  Can you remember exactly what it was you told yourself?  Maybe you, like me, went through a particularly painful divorce.  If so, I’d be willing to bet, at some point, you promised yourself you would never let anyone treat you that way again.  Maybe you swore you would never marry again or perhaps you decided the next time you suspected another person’s intentions were bad, you’d be the first to land the blow.  You might not realize it, but that was an agreement to either repress or project any pain you feel today.  The problem is, when we don’t allow ourselves to process emotions, they tend to create blocks in our energy systems.  Those blocks can eventually show up as major problems or illnesses in our lives.  They can also prevent us from ever attracting good back into our lives! 

On the other hand, if we give ourselves permission to feel strong emotions, but we do so in a negative manner (unworthiness, self-blame, pity), we are also doing ourselves a great disservice.  Absorbing negative energy to punish ourselves can do nothing but cause us tremendous suffering…short term and long term.  This type of behavior is common to those who feel a need to harm themselves in some manner.  Generally, it is not done in awareness, but is more a pattern of behavior they acquired during youth.  Long ago, something happened to make them feel like they deserved to have a bad life.  They believed they didn’t do what was needed to earn happiness, and they promised to do all they could to honor that agreement to reprimand themselves, constantly.  Who would have thought that 6-year-old child who agreed he would never amount to anything would fulfill that destiny until he died?

The only emotions that don’t harm us are those that freely flow in and out of the system…positive feelings.  Negative emotions felt as nothing more than a hiccup can also be quickly dissolved, but any strong negative emotion is still there, unless we do something to remove it.  The ironic thing about the agreements we made to feel bad is that we made most of them in order to protect ourselves.

Ray Dodd, author of BeliefWorks and The Power of Belief writes:

Agreements based in fear are designed to keep us safe. When we are hurting, we make an agreement with ourselves to get the pain to stop.

Suppose you are seven years-old,  you fall down and begin to cry. Your father says, “Stop crying! Don’t be such a baby!” You feel ashamed and hurt by his words. If this happens repeatedly you might decide, “It’s not safe to show my emotions. I can’t let people know how I feel.” That’s a personal agreement based in fear.

Having an agreement like that might serve a purpose in the moment, but long after the danger of being hurt has passed, those agreements sink below the surface of conscious awareness and begin to run our lives. They color the opinions we have about everything. They define the point-of-view of our beliefs.

Past agreements we made with ourselves may no longer serve us well, but if we don’t do something to change them, they are the operating systems running our lives.  We may think we’ve moved past all that, but I can promise you this, if you didn’t do something to remove the energy of a strong emotional pact, it is still in charge of your life! 

That painful divorce is still running the show.  You may be thinking, consciously, how much you want a wonderful new relationship, but the bigger part of you (your subconscious) is not going to let you hurt yourself again.  

“But wait a minute,” you might say.  “That was 10 years ago, and things have changed a lot since then.  I no longer feel that way.”  That’s not what the subconscious mind believes.  It is acting as if it is still happening and since you made a strong emotional agreement to protect yourself from pain, it is simply running the program you designed around safety.

Add to that the fact that the subconscious program is ONE MILLION times more powerful than what you are currently saying you believe, and let’s face it, your conscious mind looks like a toddler trying to knock down The Hulk.

Who’s really determining the course of your life?  You may believe it is the person you are today, but more than likely, it is the child of your youth.  Most all of the programs you’ve installed were taken in through the emotional immaturity of a pre-school kid.  Those who lived in healthy, supportive environments cannot exclude themselves, either.  They, too, had moments where they felt strong negative emotions.  It came as a package deal.

Take a good long look at the agreements you’ve made with yourself, over the years.  Are they still serving you well?  If not, what is your plan to dismantle them and put in new ones that offer you a better life?  Talking about it won’t work!  If it did, you would have the life of your dreams.  To replace the old programs with new ones, you are going to have to go straight to the source of the problem…the subconscious mind. 

Emotions.  Powerful stuff!  What tapes did you create with strong feelings?  Do you remember moments filled with deep sorrow, tremendous fear, intense anger, powerful guilt, unspeakable shame or painful remorse?  In those moments, what did you agree to?  What have you done to reprogram those beliefs that are holding you back today? 

Today, you have the option to change your beliefs.  I mean really change them in ways that finally allow you to live the life you’ve always wanted.  Who’s going to take control…the 6-year-old version of yourself or the adult who now knows better?  You have the ability to remove the past so you can accept the gifts of today.  Emotional Freedom Techniques is the fastest, easiest, and most effective way to clear out the old, non-serving beliefs and put in new, affirmative energy.

Or…just let those old tapes play the same old song.

What’s it gonna be?

I AM…Jodi
www.godisaverb.com/blog