The Number One Desire that People are Guilt-ed Into Not Desiring or Deserving
“Life isn’t supposed to be all fun and games!”
How many times did you hear that, or some version of it, growing up?
If you’re like the vast majority of people, you received this message plenty. The basic idea is that hard work and sacrifice are the price we have to pay if we want to be successful, happy, “good” people. This message was drilled into our heads by well-meaning parents and teachers, and later by bosses, religious leaders and even friends.
And in all this conditioning, the number one desire we feel the most guilty about pursuing is the basic human desire to feel good.
In our American culture in particular, feeling good is not seen as a worthy pursuit in and of itself. In fact, it’s often viewed as lazy, useless or hedonistic. But from a spiritual and energetic perspective, feeling good is not only the most natural state of being to reach for, it’s also the most effective state for manifesting our other important desires.
Understanding the Inner World of Feeling and Vibration
It might surprise you to realize that the way we feel in the privacy of our own inner world has everything to do with the results we produce in our outer world. This is because everything in the universe – including ourselves – is made up of energy, and all energy resonates at a particular rate of speed, or vibration. Bad-feeling emotions – such as anger, frustration, anxiety, guilt and blame – vibrate at a lower, slower rate than good-feeling emotions like love, optimism and appreciation.
Our moods, feelings and dominant emotions – as well as our thoughts, beliefs and of course our words and actions – all generate vibrations that are registered by everyone and everything that comes into contact with us. If you doubt this, pay attention the next time you enter a room where people have just been fighting, and compare it to how you feel in a place where people have been laughing, praying, dancing, or meditating. One vibration is soothing and attractive; the other repels and causes our energy field to contract.
Once you understand feeling bad simply draws to you more bad-feeling experiences, you realize that here is truly no virtue in suffering. You were born hardwired with the desire to feel good, because in that state you naturally and easily magnetize to you all that you desire.
Here are three daily steps that will support you in making feeling good your normal, go-to state:
Step One: Look for Things to Appreciate
Image by Priscilla du Perez via Unsplash
No matter what circumstance you find yourself in or who you are with, you can always, always find something to appreciate. The fact that you have a roof over your head, that there are people in your life who love you, that you were born with the ability to perceive and enjoy the beauty of nature…
These are gifts that we often take for granted, but all we have to do is imagine life without them to realize just how much we have to appreciate! But, to overcome the rhetoric of our past conditioning, we have to exercise our appreciation muscles, so to speak.
I recommend keeping a gratitude journal in which you make a list of one thing each day that you are grateful for, and then listing five reasons why you appreciate it. Wherever you are, look for things to appreciate and whenever possible, speak these things out loud – if only to yourself! The more you appreciate, the more things will be drawn into your experience for you to appreciate.
Step Two: Release People and Things That Rob Your Joy
Along with being taught that life is hard, we’re also taught to “make the best” of situations, relationships, and people that are unhealthy, no longer serving us, or have become otherwise intolerable.
Sometimes the things that steal our joy can’t be instantly released – like a job we’ve outgrown; a partnership that is no longer nurturing; or a mountain of debt that will take time to resolve. However, with a little attention, most of us can find plenty of “minor” things that qualify as being irritating enough to diminish our joy. It’s not the size of the infraction that matters; it’s the effect it has on you. The bottom line is that you deserve to feel good, and to make your own emotional and vibrational wellbeing your highest priority.
Step Three: Realize You Have the Power to Feel Good Now
Image by Zac Durant via Unsplash
Most of us have what I call an “if/then” relationship to feeling good. We think that IF we meet the sales goal; IF we earn a certain amount of money; IF we make a good impression with the person we just met, THEN feeling good will be our reward. But that only sets us on a treadmill where we’re constantly striving for a better-feeling life, but never end up catching up to it.
There is absolutely no reason to postpone your innate right to feel good to some future time or situation, because you can choose to feel good right now.
At the root of our guilt about feeling good is a flawed and destructive belief in scarcity. We believe that there is only so much happiness, love, success and abundance to go around – and we’re afraid that if we claim our full share we will be depriving someone else of theirs.
But the truth is, we live in an abundant universe that is capable of yielding to each one of us as much or as little as we ask for. Your feeling good does not detract from anyone else’s – in fact, it serves as an example for what’s possible. There is enough fulfillment, satisfaction, inspiration, clarity – and every other good feeling experience you can think of – to go around. To draw it into your experience, you only have to be willing to ask for it, and to receive.
Christy’s next article which will be published on February 24, 2021, in the ImageMakers & Influencers Magazine will be titled
How to Prevent People (Friends, Parents, Partners, Employers) From Limiting our Desires—Without Threatening Such Relationships