Life and Afterlife Coaching: “The Secret Behind ‘The Secret’, Part II: Removing Obstacles to Prosperity”
In the first part of this exercise, we discussed how to discover your deepest fear in order to become aware of it, acknowledge and accept its presence, and hopefully diminish it. Fears can motivate us to work harder, treat one another better, and often serve as useful survival mechanisms. However, the possible side effect is that some fears can intensify over time, creating blocks and perpetuating patterns long after they have outlived their initial purpose.
SUMMARY OF PART I: THE SECRET BEHIND THE SECRET
Write your deepest fear
Write the fear that causes that fear
Write the fear that causes that fear
…and so on, until you discover the core fear you are dealing with now.
An example could be:
“I’m afraid I’ll never get my career going
(because) I’m afraid it’s too late,
(because) I’m afraid of getting old,
(because) I’m afraid of dying,
(because) I’m afraid of being destroyed.”
Now, once you’ve discovered your deepest fear behind the superficial fear, become aware of when you feel that way throughout the week. What triggers you to feel like you’re going to “be destroyed” (or whatever else you are ultimately afraid of: failure, being exposed as a fraud, ending up alone, etc.)? How does that affect your decisions? Is your fear making choices for you?
The second part of the exercise is to replace the Fear Phrase with an Antidote Phrase. Here’s an example: You’ve recognised from Part I of the exercise that your secret fear is “There’s never enough money“. The next time you have that thought, tell yourself, “Oh, there it is. That’s the phrase that comes to my mind sometimes. I remember how my father used to say something like that. I choose to think another way now. The truth is that there’s always enough money.” The antidote phrase is “There’s always enough money”.
If you find that reprogramming your thoughts like this on a conscious level is not making all the changes you want to see in your life, you may benefit from hypnotherapy so that the old thoughts can be even more deeply reprogrammed on a subconscious level. Then the antidote phrase could become more automatic. In this example, prosperity and abundance hypnosis could be helpful for combatting scarcity consciousness. If hypnosis is not affordable (especially if your deepest fear is financial), please know that the conscious programming will most likely become embedded in your subconscious mind with time and patience.
An additional technique to integrate into the second part of this exercise is the Prosperity Anchor Technique, a physical exercise used to invoke positive feelings that replace negative thought patterns. In the following example, wealth is the focus if your fears are financial. However, the words “money” and “finance” can be replaced with anything: love, confidence, spirituality, fulfilment at work, health, happiness, serenity, understanding, compassion, or anything else you are seeking to increase in your life as the antidote to your Fear Phrase.
PROSPERITY ANCHOR TECHNIQUE
*The next time you are triggered by an event and think your Fear Phrase,”There’s never enough money“, or anything similar, simply squeeze your thumb and middle finger together in exactly the same way, think to yourself “there’s always enough money“, and remember that powerful feeling of knowing you have access to both necessary and desirable resources.
Try to create the physical posture of how you perceive a wealthy person would stand or sit right now as you are reading this. If it feels uncomfortable at first, observe someone who you think of as successful and financially secure, then mimic their stance until you have developed your own version of a posture that exudes financial confidence. Play this part like an actor, acting “as if” you have access to all the advantages you want in life until circumstances are closer to matching your expectations. You will send a psychic signal to others to respect you more, and belief in your personal wealth will increase the likelihood of attracting abundance. Additionally, faith in the future can make you more relaxed, happy, and engaged in the present moment, which will improve relationships and eventually increase the opportunities that come your way. That’s not magic, by the way; it’s the effect of feeling well about yourself and subsequently improving your attitude toward others.
ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE: THE GIFTS OF RECOGNISING GIFTS
Making a daily or weekly gratitude list allows you to have a more realistic perspective on how much abundance already exists in your life. When you decrease the power of fears and surrender to acceptance of present circumstances, you allow space to exist within your consciousness for additional prosperity. If you were a landlord with a home to let, you would have to wait for the present tenants to move out before allowing new residents to move in.
Gratitude lists seem to work most effectively in written or spoken form. Writing what you are grateful for, from major to minor things, can rewire your brain for positive thinking and *WARNING* you may find your thoughts become increasingly happy! The more you find to be grateful for, the more you will have to be grateful for.
When you say thank you to gratitude itself, the thank you thanks you back.
A recommended book on the topic of facing your fears and embracing the shadow side of yourself isDark Side of the Light Chasers, by Debbie Ford.
