What Do You Believe?

This morning, as my kids were sleeping in my bed, I walked through the house doing my usual routine.  I cut the porch lights off, began opening the shades, and as I was about to make my coffee I was overwhelmed with happiness.  The feeling ran through my body from the top of my head through my toes, and I felt a huge expansion in my chest.  For a moment, all the noise in my head went silent, and I was fully present in my life.  I looked around my home and everything was just right.  Everything that I had prayed for, fought for, cried for was there.  I felt happy and deeply grateful for about 30 seconds, and then that dark voice in the back of my head said, “It’s too good to be true.”

Throughout my life, when things have worked out almost perfectly, come together seamlessly, or felt too good, I’ve always expected something to go horribly wrong next.  It’s like when something goes right, and I’m actually happy, the Universe laughs and says, “Watch this!”  Then BOOM, it all comes crumbling down.  For as long as I can remember, I never settled into moments of happiness because I feared what would happen if I did.

On my journey of self discovery, I realized that it is the limiting beliefs that I hold about myself that do not allow me to enjoy the fullness of my life- it is NOT the Universe.  Nothing external causes my suffering.  At this point, I realize that my internal landscape reflects my outward experience.  What I mean is, the beliefs I hold about myself shape how I engage with life.  The moments when I feel happy, but then immediately think something is going to go wrong, reveals my belief about what I deserve.  Deep down I struggle with the belief that I don’t deserve love, abundance, happiness…all the beautiful things in life.  Because of that belief, when I experience happiness, my natural tendency is to disrupt the feeling and call in the negative.

Discovering and examining my self sabotaging beliefs is hard.  Saying them out loud and writing them here is even harder.  However, it is absolutely necessary for growth.  Because I am aware of my limiting beliefs, I am able to notice how they shape my thoughts and actions, and I can now shift out of them quickly.  This morning, when the dark voice in my head said, “It’s too good to be true,” I immediately shifted to the loving thought, “I deserve all the love and abundance that God and the Universe offers.”  By shifting immediately into a loving space, the limiting belief gets diminished.  One day, the goal is for it to be gone completely.

If you’ve reached the point in your life where you feel like nothing is changing…the patterns, experiences, thoughts, etc. are all the same, I invite you to take a look at the beliefs that you hold about yourself.  They will reveal how you show up in your life.  Now, this is really deep and challenging because I’m inviting you to take a look at the parts of you that you don’t really want to look at.  The parts of you that you’d like to blame on something or someone else.  However, in the discovery there is an opportunity to clear those limiting beliefs and awaken to a greater expression of life.