Here’s a super-quick thought-starter question for y’all at the head of a loooongish post…
What are the top 5 things in life you resist?
Pleassssse don’t say there’s nothing you resist in your world, coz I won’t believe you!
Just to keep it real, here’s my short-list de resistance:
- Getting all my tax paperwork together (it’s kind of like homework for grownups, isn’t it?)
- Taking my car for a service by the date the little sticker tells me to
- Getting out of bed when the alarm goes off
- Taking enough down time for myself
- Shopping for jeans (coz really!)
All pretty normal stuff, right?
Things we don’t like doing, we put off. Kinda makes sense, yeah?
But this can also be viewed as resistance, baby!
Coz, we still need to do our taxes, get our car serviced, get out of bed, relax and buy new jeans. Eventually!
But in the meanwhile, what do we do when we’re NOT doing those tasks we’re trying to avoid?
- We brood.
- Do our best to forget about ’em.
- Distract ourselves with a zillion shiny shiny things!
- We feel guilty or lazy or berate ourselves in some way.
- We worry.
- We rebel (ehhhh fark you, task!)
- We think… maybe it can wait another month or six or twelve.
But the thoughts around those things we know we want or need to do? They remain.
So do all of the emotions and reactivity around whatever we’re avoiding and resisting. Hmmmm…
Resistance is not only futile, it takes up a lot of energy
“Energy follows thought. You think and the energy follows your thought. You think the same thought again, and more energy follows. Then – you get what you concentrate on – good or bad!”
~ Mary Garbely
If you continuously give your energy and attention to anything, it comes into being.
For example: if your attention is focussed on an overseas holiday, you get very busy with researching, planning and booking all the arrangements.
But how do you make any of that happen? By THINKING about your trip, where you want to go and what you want to do. That’s how it begins. Yeah?
As anyone who’s planned a holiday knows, this process can definitely take up a lot of time and energy! But in that case, it’s enjoyable and exciting.
What if I told you that we have the same ability with our thoughts and feelings, and said thoughts and feelings can TOTALLY affect our lives?
What if your attention and energy is focussed on what you DON’T want?
Or on what you need to do, but don’t want to do (i.e. those taxes!).
Or how you feel about yourself? With perhaps lots of negative self-talk?
The answer is three-fold:
- Eventually you will most likely have to do something about whatever you’re resisting.
- But you’ve spent a lot of time feeling unhappy about it, perhaps for a really long time.
- Sometimes, by focussing on what we DON’T want? That’s exactly what we get, in the same way thinking about your holiday leads to planning it and getting on that plane.
How we end up getting what we don’t want
Another quote from Mary Garbely, creator of the New Zealand First Light Flower Essences:
“Thought. This is what creates all things that are, that have ever been and even will be. The things created came from the substance of thought”.
Which is another way of saying… our minds are super-red-hot powerful
Thought can be both creative and prescriptive.
I love riding my bike around town – never give up being a kid, I say! – and yet when I talk about cycling, all too often other people tell me they’d be “too afraid” to cycle on the roads. That they’re happy to cycle only on bike paths.
Which means they don’t do as much cycling as they’d like to. And when you consider how much fun riding your pushie can be… wowzas!
Basically, if you tell yourself it’s too scary to ride on the streets, then it WILL be too scary to ride on the streets.
And I’ll let you in on a not-so-secret secret: the way you get to those bike paths is via roads with cars. Yes!
The two most powerful thoughts are Fear and Love
Fear is kinda like the King Pin in terms of stopping us from having what we want.
Speaking from personal experience, I’ve found we can put all of the positive vibes and affirmations we like out into The Universe BUT if we’ve got an underlying story of fear going on, then The Universe can’t hear or see us.
Sounds a little bit out there, perhaps. But hang in there, loves!
Fear is like a burly bouncer keeping you out of the cool clubs
You know what you want, or how you’d like to feel about yourself. It’s all that awesome stuff that those OTHER people are getting. The ones in the cool clubs, living the cool lives.
But there’s Fear at the door. Saying NOPE. You can’t come in.
The kicker is that that bouncer is on YOUR payroll!
Don’t get me wrong. Fear is meant to protect us from any harm we perceive around us. Unfortunately for us modern day people, it’s no longer about the much-mentioned sabre toothed tiger or woolly mammoth thundering their way in our direction.
Instead, our society has grown up with fears around: health (will I/won’t I get a terminal illness); income (or lack thereof); contentedness; keeping up with the Joneses; being “successful” (i.e. owning your own home and having kerzillions in the bank); and so on.
We feel like we’re not good enough, that we’ll never be good enough, that others are better/have more/know more/are wiser, smarter, nicer or a better person than us.
And we let these emotions run RIOT in our brains because we don’t have any proof to the contrary. Or so we believe.
And in fact, we keep up the negative internal dialogue for so long that we come to accept these thoughts and feelings as undeniable fact. BUT THEY AREN’T, MY LOVES!
This is how we end up sabotaging ourselves from having what we want
We think our way into feeling like we’ll never be good enough. Let me repeat that:
WE THINK OUR WAY into feeling like we’ll never be good enough
Remember when I wrote about whether your best is good enough (and synchronised swimming!)? Yeah, that.
In Kinesiology, we refer to these sorts of thoughts and feelings as sabotage programs.
And I clear them with all of my clients in relation to their goals, because most of us are running multiple sabotages in the background of our minds.
I explain sabotage programs to my clients like this:
Imagine there’s an old record player in the attic of your home. Someone has played a record and left the stylus hovering over the record, so it keeps on spinning. Even if you layer other sounds over the top of that record, it keeps playing until we lift the stylus off and stop it from endlessly turning.
We can have all sorts of beliefs, thoughts and ideas stuck in our minds on repeat.
These particular examples are pretty much an epidemic out there:
- I’m not good enough
- I’m not a nice person
- I always attract the wrong partner
- I’ll never own my own home
- I’m not very creative
- I’m not very good at…
- Life is going so well, I’m afraid something bad is about to happen
- Cancer runs in my family. I’m afraid I will get cancer and die.
- Why don’t I ever get what I want?
- Why is she being successful when I’m just as good as her?
- When is it ever going to be my turn?
And so on!
Upside? You’re not alone in thinking these thoughts!
What you resist, persists
Yep, back to that.
Coz you’ve gotta know this: THINKING about what you don’t want is resistance, too.
Every bit as much as putting off submitting your tax papers!
WHY? Because you still go through all of the obsessive/compulsive thinking.
Which brings up a whole raft of other emotions and fears. Which makes it more real. Which means you spend more and more and MORE time thinking about those things…
And before you know it, you’ve manifested exactly what you don’t want.
OR you’ve convinced yourself you’re not a good person and therefore don’t deserve anything good in life. So then life sucks. So then you believe that you were right all along.
We are ALL beings of light
If you don’t believe me, just ask a quantum physicist. They’ll tell you pretty much the same thing, just without the spiritual/energy healing/yogic flavour.
There’s no part of us that is not a part of this world, or this Universe. I mean really, we’re IN the Universe, so of course we’re a part OF it!
“Does the word DUH mean anything to you?”
~ Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Original Movie
Which is a long, round-about way of saying… think the things you want to be true about yourself, such as:
- I am loving, patient and kind
- I’m super-cute and foxy rrrrreowwww!
- I am successful, healthy and capable
- I am One with the Creative Forces of the Universe!
The goal here is to re-program your mind and thoughts – to change the ongoing record from playing negative stuff to playing positive stuff.
Might as well, right??
Oh? And how I deal with my own tendency to resist stuff?
I’ve turned it into a game. I get a maximum of three opportunities to put things off.
Then I’ve made a rule that I HAVE to face up to whatever I’m attempting to avoid.
Most of the time these days, I only need one of those three putting-it-off moments.
Ya feel me, darlin’ heart?
And, if you’ve got thought patterns you’d like to unwind and/or any goals you’d like to achieve (hint: the two are intertwined!), then I can totally help you!
So if you’d like to book a Kinesiology session and kick out any patterns, thoughts or habits that aren’t in your best interests?
Buzz me! Via email amanda@returntosourcewellbeing.com or phone 0411 092 342.
Much love,
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Ambha Amanda Roberts is a Kinesiologist, Intuitive Healer, educator and facilitator based on the Sunshine Coast, Australia. She offers Kinesiology sessions both in-person and via Skype/Zoom all over the world. Ambha Amanda is the co-creator of Adventures of Staria, which includes a series of Staria cards, and an upcoming book for children (including inner children). |
