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Bye-Bye Self-Sabotage!

Drop Your Baggage - Love Your Life

AuthorHouse

KEY 1. The Obstacle of Feeling Unloved

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."

Rumi (Sufipoet and mystic, 1207-1273)

"The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, this is love."

Victor Hugo (French poet, novelist and dramatist, 1802-1885)

"To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless."

G. K. Chesterton (English born Gabonese critic, novelist and poet, 1874-1936)

This key invites you to:

• Become aware of what keeps us from feeling lovable.

• Examine who and what we are

• Learn how we are connected to one another and lovable at all times.

• Use tools and techniques to feel lovable and connected at all times.

Remember that old childhood rhyming song: "Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. Guess I'll go eat worms ...?" We all have had one of those days where we felt utterly unloved and unlovable. It is so human. It may be because of something we did or something someone else did to us, or perhaps it may be due to life circumstances where we felt that no one recognized our accomplishments or abilities. Perhaps we are just feeling lonely and disconnected from everyone; or we feel guilty about something we did to someone else and, therefore, believe ourselves to be unworthy of love. We question how anyone could possibly love someone as awful as me?

When we feel this way, it appears that nothing will go right for us. We live with the perception of lack and futility. We can't see or experience anything but lack and futility in our lives when that is all that we open ourselves to perceive. There seems to be no joy in our life, and abundance escapes us when we harbor thoughts that we are not loved. There is no passion in our relationships, work, hobbies or activities that usually fulfill us. We feel empty. In essence, we are empty. We are stuck in our perception of emptiness, isolation, and lack of belonging or connectedness to someone or something.

What gets in the way of feeling lovable?

– Negative life experiences both past and present (poor health, abusive relationships, traumatic experiences)

– Negative parental influence (judgmental statements from childhood that have been internalized such as "You will never amount to anything", "You are bad", "You can't do anything right", "You ruined my life")

– Grief and loss (of persons, pets, social status, occupation, power, relationships, health, or possessions)

– Guilt (over past action or inaction imagined or real that is now regretted)

– Abandonment (by parents/spouses through separation or divorce, by friends/loved ones through life circumstances or relocation, by God)

– Unworthiness (sense of being "less than" others due to past experiences)

– Shame (of what we perceive was done by us or to us in the past)

– Embarrassment (of physical appearance, social status, actions, life experiences)

– Loneliness (sense of isolation or lack of connection to anyone)

– Rejection (by your children, in relationships, at work or school)

– Culture or Creed creating separation (division by race, belief, gender, groups, teams, our competitive nature, socioeconomic status, education, preferences, religious dogma)

We are always creating separation by either thinking of ourselves as being included in or excluded from groups or situations. We judge our selves and others at times by what groups we associate ourselves with or what possessions we have or don't have. Think of how often we have met someone and asked: "Where do you live?" "What school did you go to?" "Which sport does your child play?" "What car do you drive?" Think of how often we strive to "keep up with the Joneses down the street" for fear of being judged or for how we judge ourselves if we do not have equal status symbols to those we admire.

We essentially judge ourselves by how we believe we appear to others (physical appearance), our possessions, and our apparent attitudes (thoughts and feelings) rather than by who we really are.

Many people perceive themselves to be nothing more than their physical body, thoughts and feelings. When we do this, we feel alone and isolated in handling our daily stresses and challenges in life. We do not understand that we are part of a greater whole and we take everything personally that occurs in our daily life. We begin to create a feedback loop (see Figure 1) based on how our body responds to stressors and the thoughts and emotions that are triggered by the stressors from our past experiences. It is easy to get lost in this repetitive pattern of our thoughts and feelings that get dredged up. We feel trapped with no exit.

For Example: Something as simple as a trip to the store can rapidly trap us in a spiral of faulty thoughts that isolates us in a world of our own creation.

Imagine that you are driving to a major shopping center in the height of the holiday season to make some last minute purchases. You have somehow deluded yourself to believe that you will be the only person who will be making such a last minute visit to this store and that you will likely just breeze in and out in ten minutes. As you pull into the packed parking lot, you spy a parking space opening up just in the front of the store's entrance. What luck! You pull close to the space, turning on your blinker to indicate to the world that this space is YOURS. As you begin to contentedly hum a cheery tune, you wait patiently as the person currently occupying the space begins to back out. Everything is going according to plan and you will be home in time for dinner.

However, as you sit there imagining how good dinner will taste, a small green VW bug zips into your parking space before you can maneuver into it. The outrage of this injustice begins to boil within you. You feel your muscles getting tense as you tighten your grip on the steering wheel. As you clench yourjaw, you begin to think "Why does this always happen to me?!" You feel angry about the situation in which you see yourself as a victim. Thoughts that resonate with being a victim resurface from earlier in the day at work and begin to flood into your mind; "The boss overlooked me again for the promotion" "Someone else got the credit for the successful project that I did". "Nobody appreciates me!"

You begin to chew on the bones that have been buried in the recesses of your subconscious. "Nothing ever goes my way." "I am never good enough for anyone to notice." "I may as well be invisible!" "I willfail at everything I do!" As your brain waves are becoming predominately high Beta, the acid begins to churn in your stomach, your blood pressure rises, your head begins to pound, and your jaw tightens further. "I think I am having a heart attack!!" "Wait until I find that jerk with the VW bug and give him a piece of my mind!" Your anxiety begins to turn into panic as you are becoming convinced that you are indeed experiencing symptoms ofa heart attack since that does indeed run in your family.

"Didn't Aunt Martha have a heart attack at age 46?!" Increasingly breathless, you look distractedly for another parking space while your mind chews more profoundly on the faulty thoughts from the past that are being unearthed at a frighteningly fast pace. After several minutes you finally find a space that is in the outermost edge of the parking lot. You can almost see in the distance the front of the store (if you had the binoculars you were planning on purchasing) from where you are now parked and you know that it will take ten minutes to make the trek to the entrance in the cold and now drizzly weather. As you trudge to the store cursing under your breath, you barely even notice the extremely pregnant, exhausted young woman with two toddlers trailing behind the brimming shopping cart that she is pushing in the rain. You are so lost in your own negative thoughts and feelings ofanxiety, anger and resentment that you lack empathy and do not even notice the car heading for the last trailing child.

In the above scenario, you are feeling unlovable, terribly alone, disconnected, victimized, angry and panicked as you become adversely physically affected and isolated by your thoughts and feelings as well as you go into high Beta brain waves. You take everything going on around you personally. How could you have possibly dealt with the above scenario in a different manner? What is the key that will unlock the repetitive cycle of thoughts and emotions that result in physical symptoms and isolation? How can you become more aware, mindfully refocus the direction of your thoughts, change your brain wave pattern and create anew?

Imagine once again that you are headed to that major shopping center at the height of the holiday season, still searching for that convenient, close parking space andlookingforward to returning home soon for dinner. You spot the space at the store entrance that is about to become available. Once again you indicate to the world that you are about to make this spot your very own. However, right on cue, here comes the green VWbug whipping into the space ahead of you while you dream of your scrumptious meal that is suddenly out of your grasp.

You feel that all too human and ego-based flash of anger and resentment from the injustice of the situation, but this time you deal with it from an evolved mindset. This timeyou choose to not take it personally. When you get out of a victim mentality and become the observer of people and situations in the world around you, you take on a whole different perspective. Your brain chemistry changes. Once you transform the anger and resentment (see Key 4) about losing the coveted parking space, you remind yourself that we are all part of a greater whole. From those thoughts and feelings you create a completely different cascade of chemicals in your brain and body. Your brain waves approach Alpha as you get into a more open and compassionate mode.

You acknowledge the possibility that perhaps the person driving the VW bug had a real need to be closer to the entrance; they might be handicapped or have a sick child at home or some other greater need for having that space than you did. Perhaps the person was not in competition with you for the parking space and simply did not see you. Or perhaps, in the grander scheme of things, we were needed elsewhere at that moment. It is not always just about us. When we are out of High Beta brain wave, we can actually think about the needs of others as well as our self.

We drive on looking for another spot and finally find the one out in the nether regions of the lot. When we get out of the car, we are not caught in the loop of how we feel we are victims of circumstances or other people's actions, so instead of being caught in our own internal loop of faulty thoughts and emotional reactions, we are fully present and in the moment. We feel part of a greater whole. This allows us to be more intuitive.

That is when we notice the very pregnant, exhausted young mother and her two toddlers. We observe that she is not fully present to monitor her own children's safety as a car is rapidly approaching. This time we are no longer self-absorbed. We are fully present and available to quickly rescue her child from danger. From this perspective we become acutely aware that everything occurs for a reason even though we might not understand it fully in the moment. There is a reason for every circumstance and every person who crosses our paths. Every lost parking space and, in fact, every encounter becomes a new adventure and opportunity.

The missing piece from the first scenario is that there is no connection to spirit (which we define as God, source, universe, collective consciousness, higher power, chi) or unity with one another (see Figure 2). When you feel disconnected from a sense of a greater whole, everything that occurs in your life centers on you. You perceive that you are alone in the world and you are nothing more than your physical body, thoughts and emotions. This tends to breed the mentality that "whoever has the most toys in the end wins". It is "kill or be killed". There isn't enough for everyone. Competition is everywhere and you see everyone as a potential competitor. You are living in High Beta and Survival Mode.

When you add spirit or a sense of connectedness to others into the mix and feel the connection, your whole awareness, consciousness and brain chemistry shifts. This affects your whole body – blood pressure, muscle tension, heart rate, gut and emotions. You focus your attention on being part of a greater whole in which you play a vital role. You become aware that you are important and have a purpose in this great experience of life. It is not about being a victim. What is going on around you transcends you as an individual at every moment and yet involves your participation.

It is important to recall and be aware daily that you are loved and lovable at all times no matter what is going on in your life: You are never alone or abandoned. There is never an actual separation between us and any other person or thing. When you consider that each of us are energetic or spiritual beings residing in and expressing through a physical body, then you understand that there is no separation between energy/spirit and matter. When you have this awareness, there is never a sense of abandonment. You experience a sense of connectedness in knowing that All are One, and One are Many. We are all part of the bigger whole.

For instance, have you ever had the experience of suddenly thinking of someone and then they call you on the phone, show up on your doorstep, or you run into them at the most unlikely place soon thereafter? Have you ever had a strong feeling that a child or loved one was in trouble or in great need only to find out later that your intuition was correct? We are energetically connected to our loved ones at all times. ... And they are connected to us as well. You just need to tune in. Your loved ones are constantly sending you love every moment, and all you need to do is take the time to be mindfully aware of and experience their love flowing to you in order to feel it.

What about those times where you have had a falling out with a loved one? Even though we become angry at one another over situations at times, there is still a deeper, underlying connection and love for that person that remains. Do you recall that, perhaps even after a breakup or a misunderstanding that causes the end of a close relationship, you might sense that there will always be a place in your heart beyond the hurt for that person even though you may not choose to have an on-going intimate relationship with them? This is because we are energetically connected to one another and when we can transform our anger, resentment, or shame, we can allow ourselves to feel love and compassion, become aware, and shift our perceptions.

What makes us so sure we are all connected? Now it's time for a little Quantum Physics lesson. Locality in physics is the idea that things are only influenced by forces that are local or nearby. However, Quantum Mechanics says there is something called entanglement. This theory of 'Entanglement' states that particles that once "interacted" are forever entangled, whereby their properties are reflected in each other's behavior. For example, if you take two particles that came from the same reaction and separate them by galactic distances, they will forever act as one (ie, what one does, the other will also do). This has been scientifically proven to actually occur at distances of at least 18km. In Quantum Physics, Einstein's "Spooky Action at a Distance" proposes the concept that an object can be moved, changed, or otherwise affected without being physically touched (as in mechanical contact) by another object. That is, it is the nonlocal interaction of objects that are separated in space.

Lynne McTaggart, an award-winning journalist and author, wrote two ground-breaking books called The Field and The Intention Experiment that we recommend highly. We live in a multidimensional world and we are multidimensional beings. The Field tells the story of respected frontier scientists all over the globe who have produced extraordinary evidence to show that an energy field – called The Zero Point Field - connects everything in the universe, and we ourselves are part of this vast dynamic matrix. This concept embraces the theory of non-locality and a radical new biological paradigm-that on our most fundamental level, the human mind and body are not distinct and separate from their environment, but a packet of pulsating energy constantly interacting with this vast sea of energy. It offers a scientific explanation for many of the most profound human mysteries, from alternative medicine and spiritual healing to extra sensory perception and the collective unconscious.

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Excerpted from Bye-Bye Self-Sabotage! by Tracy Latz, Marion Ross. Copyright © 2016 Tracy Latz, M.D. & Marion Ross, Ph.D.. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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