Over 25 years ago I was taking a personal development training and was presented with a difficult question: What do you want? I panicked. My heart started racing, I broke out in a sweat and my hands started shaking. I had just been asked a question I was unprepared to answer.  And then it hit me: All my life I had been taught that I did not deserve to ask for things.

This probably affects more people whose parents grew up in the depression than people who grew up during the past 30+ years of prosperous times. However, I ask the question of our students of all ages and have found a common thread: The ones who know what they want and aren’t afraid to ask for it are moving forward with their lives much faster than those who don’t know what they want.

But why do some people know and others don’t? In my case I found that many well meaning parents, relatives, teachers or friends mistakenly believed that by lowering my expectations, I would be less disappointed when I didn’t get what I wanted. As with most children, I thought I could have it all so it took a lot of counter programming to get me to the point where I couldn’t even think of what I wanted.

As a child you ultimately want to please your parents (even though at times it may appear that your mission in life is to make them crazy).  Of course, if you look at a healthy 3 year old who still knows that they are the center of the universe, wants everything and has no desire to share anything, it’s a good reminder of where we all were at certain points in our development and why we are “socialized” while growing up. Three year olds don’t have a lot of friends. They tend to have doting relatives but the friendship thing is still in development until they learn to share and give as well as receive. However, they can’t really learn to give until they have learned to receive in a healthy way. But alas, I digress.

The process that starts out with good intentions transmutes into a toxic message that you do not deserve what you want. Low self-esteem ensues and over time, the question of what you want becomes traumatic. You lose the ability to ask for what you want and once you stop even thinking about what you want, the ability to manifest becomes a mystery. It’s replaced with the programming that the only way to receive something is by working for it.

So we find ourselves in a strange place in history. Simultaneously we have most people believing that they don’t deserve to have what they want at the same time the news is focused on huge amounts of money being given away to businesses and people who have lost the ability to manifest what they want or need. It’s important to remember that the news makes it seem like everyone is getting bailed out but the reality is that it’s really a small percentage. If there is 10% unemployment that means that 90% of the people are still working. The number of companies that are getting government loans is small compared to the number that are not. But the impression is that most people are out of work and most companies are getting help from the government.

The reality is that the news and the perception of the crisis is actually driven by the basic belief that we don’t deserve to have what we want.  The message is that you don’t deserve to keep the money you earn and amazingly, the majority of us are willing to go along with it, paying our taxes, allowing the government to take our money and give it to others. We are manifesting our inner belief that we don’t deserve to have what we want.

So how do you change this? It starts by knowing what you want, in great detail and with a positive feeling for wanting it. There are many ways of developing this process with Treasure Mapping, list making and journaling. If you would like more information on this topic, please let me know and I will expand on this in a future posting.

May you be healthy, wealthy and generous.

Sincerely,
Kris

p.s. Please feel free to ask questions by using the comments. The more you ask for what you want, the more you will receive.

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