“The only permission, the only validation, and the only opinions that matters in our quest for greatness is our own.” ~ Dr Steve Maraboli There is nothing more tragic than a person that feels they need to wait for permission to be happy, live their life or be their most authentic self. When our minds are plagued by fear, guilt or unworthiness we begin to believe that we don’t deserve to be truly happy until the other people in our lives are as well. Or perhaps we do the opposite. We feel as though we have no right to be angry, sad, depressed or unhappy because we still see so many in the world that have so little compared to us. Either way, when we feel guilty about being our most authentic self and start operating from the notion that we need to wait for the world outside of us to give us the green light to start feeling however we feel, we are wasting precious time. In reality, permission will never come from any source outside of our own hearts. We are the only ones who can liberate our own selves by giving our selves the validation, acceptance and permission we often wait for others to give us. As children, many of us were told that who we were wasn’t ‘enough’. We were told how we ‘should’ feel about certain things, and when we had an emotion that was out of alignment with what our parents or caretakers thought was appropriate, we were scolded into feeling a way about something that we didn’t truly feel. Thus started our journey further and further away from our authentic selves. Genuine emotions were replaced by things like social “niceties”, manners, politeness, obligatory conversation and at a certain point we begin to be a societal robot of sorts. We begin to act “appropriate” at all times and we begin to operate off how we “should” be instead of going inward and visiting how we truly felt about a particular circumstance. Unfortunately, taking this path away from our true self only leads to one place… dissatisfaction with our lives. We can never be truly fulfilled and content with our lives until we stop waiting for our family, or society, or our friends to give us the permission to be who we truly are. In order to come back to the universal truth that happiness is our birthright we must begin to rewire our subconscious minds to start believing we are worthy of love and happiness. “The moment you learn to separate guilt from pleasure is the moment you stop doing what you’re ‘supposed to do’ and start living the life that’s in your heart.” The association of guilt with things that give us pleasure is one subconscious belief that is hard-wired in too many of our minds. It may come from having a background in organized religion (where we were told we were ‘bad’ or a ‘sinner’ because of our natural tendencies), or even a history of addictive behaviors (where we begin to associate something we wanted to do with something that we would feel guilty or remorseful for later). Either way, when guilt has been matched up with our natural urge for pleasure seeking we begin to feel bad about feeling good. In order to unravel the guilt and fear that may be blocking us from being our most sincere self, we must become hyper aware of what situations trigger those emotions. Then we must ask our self, what belief about life am I holding on to that gives me the impression that I need to feel fear or guilt in this circumstance. When a belief in something that is out of alignment with a universal truth is brought up in to our awareness, it is actually unraveled automatically. We are the light that illuminates the darkness of a fear based belief. As mentioned above, another way guilt can creep into our psyche is feeling guilty about being sad or angry. The fact of the matter is we have every right to feel emotions, and the more we feel “bad” about feeling an authentic emotion we actually ensure that we will stay stuck in that said emotion. What we resist persists, so anytime we are trying NOT to feel something, we energetically feed it with our resistance to it. The spiritual quest shows that everything is ok. Fear is ok, guilt is ok, sadness is ok, and it is only in our acceptance and unconditional love of these particular emotions that they will begin to dissipate from our subconscious programming that is keeping us stuck on unworthiness or unhappiness. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. You playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” ~ Marianne Williamson The journey of our lives is actually coming back to our most authentic self. Perfection is how we start (and it’s actually how we stay, except we begin to believe that we are not), and recognition of our perfection is what we travel back to as we evolve and mature as a person. A miraculous thing begins to occur the moment we realize we don’t require permission to be joyful, inspired, excited or in love with life… we not only free our selves and our own hearts, but our light liberates others to do the same. Image source Free yourself Candle flame
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