self-belief
Visualizing Your New Reality
We all want certain things in life: an exciting career, financial success, good health, a fulfilling romantic relationship, and a happy family life. Achieving these goals require dedication, hard work and some sacrifices. What many people do not know is that they can boost their efforts to achieve these goals by using visualization.
To fast-track your dreams, begin by shaping and clarifying your vision. What we imagine in our mind’s eye, is what will become manifest in our life.
Some of our dreams are easy to visualize. It is simple to picture yourself on a tropical island, with a gentle breeze blowing sweetly across your face. Or visualize yourself driving down the highway in your snappy new sports car. Imagining such things are not that much of a challenge for most of us.
But what about the more serious, large scale goals? For example, how do you visualize making the huge leap from a mundane office job to an exciting, globetrotting career, that will offer you both financial freedom and sense of fulfillment? Or how do you envision moving from a tiny cramped apartment to a glorious, well-designed home? These things may be more difficult to imagine, since they are outside your everyday experience and seem out of reach.
The solution is to break these visions down into smaller, more practical steps, instead of focusing solely on main outcome. We must tap into our life experience, as well as the creative juices we all have within. Build an image in your mind of the desired goal or outcome by visualizing the different aspects towards accomplishing the overall dream.
The Courage To Shed Our ‘Old Bark’
In recent readings, new romance has been indicated very strongly for one of my regular clients. This is a welcome new development, because for a long time, and to his annoyance, his readings tended to relate more to business than to affairs of the heart! He has been very open to new romance for a long time now, but it has been eluding him.
In many of his readings, his late father featured prominently and suggested that unresolved issues connected to his dad were actually impacting his self-worth. As a result, he also didn’t feel lovable or attractive enough to meet a life partner.
It seems strange though, that after reading for this gentleman for several years, he’d never mentioned his family. The subject only arose unprompted during the recent readings. This suggests that subconsciously he was ready to release that old baggage and to embrace positive change.
Because he was ready, we were discovering that it was important to now remove any deep-seated belief systems and blockages to his happiness, and for him to finally find a life partner who respected him, as opposed to the abusive relationships he’d known for years. I told him that he was like a tree shedding old bark!
This took me back years, to a time when I would help a former boyfriend, who was a horticulturist, with his seasonal work of pruning. He would climb the trees and prune those, and I learned to be quite the rose pruner at ground level.
Learning To Love Yourself
Sadly, my inner-critic began speaking to me at a relatively young age and continued to do so well into my 20s and beyond. Personally, I feel this played a large part in me losing my job at the age of 24, during the 1980s recession. It was a time in which work was so hard to find, and when I finally did, even more negative self-talk began to have an effect on my life.
With no job and no money, I felt worthless, stupid, disliked, and that I had no potential whatsoever. Most fortunately, however, I proved myself to be wrong and later found, from experience, that the way to a happier, more confident and fulfilled life was by learning to slay that inner critic and start loving myself. Furthermore, you can too! Here’s how.
Firstly, remember that you do have a choice. Which one will you listen to: your inner critic or your inner guide? I remember the time when I told my family I was going to start working in the spiritual field. Yes, they laughed and said to me that it would never work out for me, and I that I could not do it.
Sadly, this boosted my inner critic once again, but at this particular time in my life, circumstances and the need for a more fulfilling job made me look at things from a different perspective.
Spirit Courage, Body Bravery
We all know someone who clearly walks to the beat of their own drum. These people typically have a robust inner strength, and refuse to accept at will any pertinent information handed to them by anyone in a position of authority. The one such character that stands out in my life is my maternal grandfather.
We came from a small town of 8,000 souls. Although our neighbors enjoyed the comforts of electricity, running water and all the modern conveniences of that time, my grandfather instead chose a code of living that suited him best.
The farmers in the area also had the use of tractors and other types of modern farming equipment that enabled them to work in a more worldly fashion, but my grandfather stubbornly refused to adhere to these modern trends. He had reliable horses to pull his plow and haul the hay, used kerosene lanterns when electric lighting was easily available to him, and firmly kept to his agenda with a tedious water pump that was needed for the normal household chores.
He was a very dedicated and diligent employee, working in the shipyard. He helped to load cargo ships from all corners of the globe, which came for the mighty salmon our region was extremely well-known for. Papa, as he was known to one and all, married at a very young age, which was a normal occurrence in those days, and managed to sire 15 children. He was also very well-versed and totally immersed in politics. The entire neighborhood would first ask his advice before casting their ballot, or not, for any politician brave enough to run for local office.
How To Boost Your Confidence
Sometimes I wish that confidence was for sale! Feeling confident can make all the difference, for example, when you are anxious about accepting a social invitation, without the need for spending hours of internal dialogue trying to convince yourself it will be okay for you to attend. Confidence also means being able to easily decide what to wear for the big night out, and so on.
Indeed, I have marveled at other people’s ability to do such things with ease. However, these very same people are no different than you or me. It is just that they have mastered their mindset with regards being confident, and so can you! Here’s how:
Maintain Healthy Boundaries
Have you noticed certain people in your life encroaching on your space and time? If so, it may be time to implement some polite, yet firm boundaries. By doing so, you should find that this really builds your confidence in both professional and personal relationships, and you no longer feel drained or undermined by specific individuals you have to share some of your time and space with.
Practice Self-Awareness
We hear a lot these days about being more self-aware, but just what is meant by this? Well, it simply means having the ability to recognize when you are falling into a pattern of self-sabotage. Let’s say, for example, you are due to meet a person who continually makes significant demands on you, but you find great difficulty in saying no to them. By learning the art of becoming more self-aware, you can plan, in advance, how to remain strong and firm with this particular individual, so that your relationship with them becomes far healthier.
Through The Looking Glass
We tend to not see ourselves accurately. We too often choose to focus on our shortcomings and weaknesses, such as we perceive them to be. And I believe we are all guilty of this. I have not in all my years met anyone who was truly satisfied with themselves – until it was sometimes too late.
I was just as guilty of this as anyone else. My childhood was one that I wouldn’t have wished on my worst enemy. I was abandoned by both parents when I was very young. I was raised by an aunt and uncle, who took pleasure in reminding me that my parents did not love me. My aunt also took every opportunity to beat the daylights out of me, while my uncle did nothing.
When I hit puberty, several older males in my ‘family’ began to stalk and harass me. I’d go into the kitchen and soon find myself backed up against a wall. Nobody believed me. Nobody did anything to stop it – not even when I was raped at 16 by a family friend’s son, who was deemed to be a “good boy” and “would never do anything like that.”
I could go on and on about all the horrible things that happened to me, but once I turned that momentous age of 16, and having had the experiences that I have had, I left my aunt and uncle’s home. I went to live with my boyfriend, his sister and their mom. When I left, my uncle dumped all my clothes on the front lawn.
Be Patient And Trust The Process
Life presents many challenges to each of us. Even those people who you think have lucky ‘horseshoes’ and ‘rainbows’ over them, have their own challenges, just like you and me. However, it is how they choose to deal with adversity that makes the real difference in their ‘fortunate’ lives. Their choice of reaction, or non-reaction, to each setback or negative event in their life, is what creates their ‘luck.’
If your life seems to be suffering from a lot of ‘bad luck’ lately, take another look at how you reacted to your last break-up, loss of a job, lack of finances, or not manifesting your dreams. Are you that person who chooses to sulk, complain and be envious of the success of others… or are you the person that knows that challenges are just side-steps towards what you are going to achieve for yourself?
Your perception, or the way you look at life, is what makes or breaks us in the end. That person who seems to have everything you desire, did not get there because they were ‘lucky.’ They arrived where they are because they believed, and they worked hard on what was important to them.
When that job didn’t come in that they wanted, they didn’t get upset or discouraged,. They didn’t give up and think they were not good enough. They stood back up, shook it off. They accepted that they didn’t get that job because something far better was probably in store for them down the road. It often is that simple.