10 Everyday Things You Can Do To Counteract The Belief That You Don't Deserve Good Things
You do deserve good things. Yes, you!
Krakenimages.com / Shutterstock.com I look into my partner's eyes and all I can see is disappointment. Sadness, even pity.
I feel like all he sees in me is a broken woman. Beaten down, lost, and full of fear and anxiety.
He fell in love with a powerhouse, a woman with a purpose in life, turned on and excited, full of expression and strength. A woman who had done her work and overcome many challenges from the outside world and her own internal states.
I didn't believe I deserved something so good
Yet, here I am, looking into his stormy blue eyes and I feel like I am washed up, with nothing left to give, and that I deserve disappointment and pity. Or should I say that I deserve nothing, especially his unwavering love and support, life abundance, security, and dare I say happiness even?
These are the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It doesn't have to be that way.
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The inner negativity that affects your outer world
I replay everything from the days and weeks before and all I can see is my lack and failure.
How I let others down and consistently got it wrong. My health is crashing, my body hurts everywhere. I am exhausted and full of stress.
I feel empty in some strange way and all I desire to do is detach from this world and myself, to numb out however I can. The negativity of my internal world radiates off of me creating toxicity in all of my life and relationships and most certainly is not helping with my money mindset or work.
But why? Why am I here? What created this state of being and why am I allowing or choosing to take up residence in this nastiness that does nothing for me but bring me nightmares and steal everything that I have worked so hard to create?
The answer is trauma
The last few years have been like walking through a field of landmines. From heartbreaks around relationships, domestic violence that led to damaged limbs, the loss of my mother, Covid-19, the economy, my savings going into the red, psychotic boyfriend issues, and then massive health challenges with my grandson to the point of almost being certain that we would lose him.
Yes, life has been loaded with trauma — with zero space to catch one's breath. This sort of trauma gets even better (not) because not only does it keep one under severe stress creating a state of anxiety and PTSD but it also changes the very makeup of our brains and stores in our physical bodies.
If that is not fun enough, it tends to dredge up other older traumas from years past and even childhood, creating a perfect storm where even the most skilled souls find themselves lost in the darkness.
Trauma, defined
Trauma does not have to be some significant event in our lives like an assault or accident.
It can be a normal life event. Often, we are dealing with unresolved issues that have been dormant somewhere inside of our psyches and bodies that get triggered.
Even though we all experience such triggers consistently they go unnoticed (for the most part), remaining unprocessed because we are not conscious of the impact they have on us. Our bodies, minds, and emotional selves are re-living in some format an older event.
This can create self-sabotaging thoughts and feelings. And sometimes, you get the perfect storm scenario as my personal story shared here was created from a downpour of negative life experiences.
You must want something different than what you have been accepting for your life.
Yes, you read that correctly, you are accepting these things for yourself, and in order for you to have happiness (because everything else that you might wish you had is only to gain this feeling of happiness anyway), then you are going to have to understand that you are accepting it for yourself.
Acknowledge this first and then you can take the following action steps toward the life that you were born to live, which is all about your happiness and not just survival like you have been living but thriving which is what you were designed to do.
10 concrete things to do to counteract the deep belief that you don't deserve good things:
1. Acknowledge where you are at
Get real with yourself as to what your current state of self-truth is. Name it and accept it.
Acceptance is the first thing we must do in order to shift the gears from self-hatred and disgust to self-love and worthiness. The negative feelings we carry for ourselves, that self-talk that supports what we believe and ends up creating as a life experience must be turned around but to achieve this we must look at what our current truth is, then we need to look at what our weaknesses are acknowledged that perhaps there is space for us to develop, to mature, to look at life a bit differently.
This is the part where you look at what habits you are allowing yourself to get caught up in that do not support your happiness and healing but keep you stuck in the trauma, in the pain, and in the negative cycle. What are you using to help yourself numb out? In today's world, many people turn to marijuana, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, or sex to numb out.
2. Acknowledge where you are self-detaching
This goes along with numbing yourself out and it is seen often in trauma cases. If you are wondering what self-detachment looks like it's when you block your emotional state from yourself.
You might say things like, “ I don’t care.” or “Doesn't matter.” “Whatever you want.” Answers are often short and non-emotional or non-descriptive responses. What one feels in this state is empty, and literally calloused or unable to state how they feel about something because they cannot accurately or at any real level connect with themselves.
3. Look at your relationships and life patterns
When we are struggling with trauma and negative self-beliefs that we have bought into we create a foundation of warped relationships and toxic patterning in our lives. This is because of how we view ourselves. If you want to effectively make healthy changes for yourself then you have to understand that you will most likely have to change some of the people that you are allowing into your world.
Anyone who is supporting your negative beliefs is not supportive of the future that you want for yourself and cannot respect the healthy boundaries that you will need to structure for yourself. You will have to walk away from or limit your exposure too.
This can also show up in the jobs we choose and how we are treated by employers and associates. Pay close attention to the things your outside world is “telling you” that support your internal dialogue. In order for the outside world to shift and see us differently, we must first acknowledge and become conscious of this connection and then work on seeing ourselves differently to alter the world around us.
4. Look at your strengths and uniqueness
Time to get real with the reality that you are pretty awesome and there is no one on this planet of ours like you, so there is no one else who thinks like you or can do what you do. If you are religious then come back to the bible quote, “God does not make unworthy things.” It’s true. Each of us was born worthy of love, happiness, and good things.
As a baby, we expected it and knew this, but then our lives and the people we looked to for support and guidance who were wounded from their experiences and did not know any better told us differently and we believed them. Make a list of everything you love to do that fills you up and makes you smile. List out what you are good at. This is one of the most challenging things for our wounded minds and hearts to do. The acceptance. But you are worthy I promise you, you are.
5. Get to writing
One of the best skills to develop next to a desire to learn new things and face your fears is to create the ritual or habit of writing. In almost two decades of working with thousands of clients, I can tell you that this healing practice meets some of the strongest resistance. Every reason and excuse will come up and I myself am guilty of so many of them as well, however, if you slow down and take the time to instill this practice you will not be let down. It is one of the best processing tools we humans have. Create three different journal books for yourself.
Gratitude and Self-love Journal — this is where you write down just five things each morning that you are grateful for. It can be that you had a bed to sleep in or that your dog did not pass gas while he was sleeping at your feet and wake you up to anything that you are authentically grateful for. The self-love portion may be a bit more difficult depending on the day of the week, but just try to give love to one body part if nothing else such as, “I love that I have all my toes because with just one of them gone walking would be hard and I would not be balanced.” Or “ I love that I think about others' well-being and strive to help.”
Visioning Journal — This is where you journal a memory that you have not made yet. I call it daydreaming in your life. What we envision, think about and most importantly attach feelings to what we create in our lives. This is a fantastic way to create what you want. Don’t try to do a big vision though, memories are often fleeting and just about a flicker in time, therefore treat this exercise just like that. Little moments are created and then watch them blossom into your reality.
Trash can journal — This is one of the most powerful things. You would not put your actual trash can in your refrigerator because we understand that it would spoil our healthy food yet we often collect all of our thoughts and feelings ( negative and positive) in one journal. Thoughts and feelings are energy. Let’s stop mixing it up. Clean up the internal realms through cleaning up your journaling practices and watch the wonders happen.
6. Strategize a realistic healing plan for yourself
Be realistic, yet creative. This means being willing to look at all options for your healing. Coming back to trauma and sabotaging programs stored in the mental, emotional and physical houses of our being, if we are to get the healing that we want and move the mountains of our pain bodies then we need to look at ourselves from a holistic whole-being approach.
This means being willing to explore such healing avenues as EMDR, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Structural Integration or rolfing, the emotional link to disease, diet, and exercise, meditation, yoga, life coaching as well as traditional therapy. My personal path of healing and what I have seen with numerous clients that have success is the approach of it takes a village. No one person can support all that you need to become whole again.
7. Build a good support system
You now have the healing support “gurus” by your side but you need a home support team as well. This may be family, friends, or an intimate partner. They need to respect what you are doing and be on board with your boundaries and goals. People who have our backs in our time of need are mandatory for us to be able to heal and thrive.
There is no such thing as a self-made human. For everything we build and go through in our lives or destroy for that matter, we all have people by our sides supporting us. Choosing our people wisely is what we must do for our future selves of tomorrow and the story that we want to create.
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8. Build self-esteem
Self-worth and love stem from self-esteem. In order to do this, we have to step away from our own worst critics, ourselves, and allow for failure. Allow for our mess-ups and even learn to find humor in our humanness. Because you will only always be human and that is a beautiful thing with unlimited potential. Learning new things, focusing on healthy choices, and asking yourself challenging inquiry questions will help with this.
The courage to see yourself in all your ugliness and beauty is powerful — most choose to hide from themselves. Waking up each morning and taking the initial step to stay on task for yourself—is immensely powerful. Creating new habits and finding something that excites you, gives you purpose or meaning — game-changing. Little by little, progress is far more valuable than perfection.
9. Become of service
Humans need to feel needed to be of value. We are social creatures that need community and one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is to become of service to another.
When we put our attention on another, we discover our hope, our greatness, and wisdom and we feel more worthy of our lives. There are so many opportunities in today's world to be of service and it has never been more needed than after our world crisis.
10. Get selfish and invest in you
Becoming self-determined and letting go of the ideas, goals, visions, and beliefs that others have of you and your life will alter your very existence into what you want instead of what someone else wants for you. You are only responsible for yourself and your happiness, realize this very important fact.
Investing in yourself and in your future is a priority to changing the beliefs that you are allowing to dictate your views of self, life, and future. You are the creator of your experiences. You are all-powerful.
Even though you cannot control how people act or what experiences come your way you can do the inner work and healing on yourself to make your internal world rock solid and resilient as hell which will alter your response to life situations and your choices as to what you are willing to allow or not.
Step by step, you got this thing called chaos that seems overwhelming and out of your control. It’s okay that you have bought into the state of being a victim of life and felt lost There are opportunities where you least expect them and all your dreams can come true but in order for you to achieve this and more, you must be willing to make what is familiar and unfamiliar and what is unfamiliar familiar.
This is where your good life resides and it's right there with you now.
Rene' Schooler (A.K.A Kendal Williams) is a highly-trained leading intimacy and relationship expert coach who works with singles and couples worldwide. She has been featured on LifeTime TV — Married at First Sight and has co-authored the books 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Health with Dr. Mercola and Building Foundations for Change.