There are many layers to our existence, and the depth of our awareness determines the kind of life we lead. What we see on the surface—in the form of relationship issues, health challenges or money problems—may have very little to do with what’s really going on. If we dig deeper, we can tap into a whole new dimension of possibilities—in ourselves and in our world.
Take the case of 40-year-old Marie, whose life seemed to be filled with conflict and crises. Her relationships were everything she didn’t want, her work as a designer no longer felt fulfilling, and things rarely seemed to go the way she wanted them to. On the surface, she appeared to just be unlucky—attracting the wrong kind of guy, working in a demanding industry, and suffering the inevitable slew of health problems due to stress, pressures at work, emotional angst and fatigue.
If we dig beneath the circumstances, seeing them as signposts towards a deeper truth, we might see that Marie has some deeply engrained beliefs about not being lovable or worthy, and about life being a constant struggle because she felt she didn’t deserve to have it easy.
If we go deeper again, we might see that those beliefs have a strong emotional charge that attracts the very people, situations and dynamics that confirm the validity of those negative beliefs. (Thanks to exciting discoveries in quantum physics, we now know that our thoughts are electrical and our emotions magnetic, giving us the power to affect our circumstances, whether we do so consciously or not.)
If we dig even deeper, we might see that Marie is being challenged in the very areas where she is emotionally ‘wobbly’ (due to her upbringing), and that she is attracting the perfect opportunities for flexing her emotional ‘muscles’ in order to develop a healthier sense of self.
Going deeper again, we see just how powerful Marie really is, having created the perfect scenarios for growth and personal transformation. The challenges that she considered to be ‘bad luck’, the result of ‘all the good men having been snapped up’, or simply the inevitable price to be paid for having a demanding job, are actually the direct result of her subconscious pushing her towards wholeness.
By bringing her face to face with the physical manifestation of her low self-worth, her subconscious is giving her lots of opportunities to reclaim herself. For as long as she fails to see what’s really going on, however, those frustrating scenarios will keep repeating themselves until she gets the message. It’s not about the men out there, the industry she works in, or other people being difficult. It’s all about Marie.
Relationships fail because of our incomplete understanding of their true purpose as stepping-stones to self-discovery and personal autonomy. They mirror our ‘missing pieces’, reflecting back to us what’s missing inside as a result of how we were programmed to think and feel about ourselves. Whether we have issues with colleagues, clients, friends, family or lovers, all our relationships are powerful catalysts for change, challenging us to address whatever is in the way of healthy self-acceptance and self-expression.
Providing us with a unique perspective of ourselves, relationships show us that when we lack certain essential qualities, such as acceptance, respect, validation and support, we attract people with those same missing pieces—which is why we so often experience heartache and disappointment when we fail to get from our partner the very things we ourselves have been missing. Once we understand that filling in our own missing pieces makes us magnets for more of those same positive qualities, we can use our relationships as springboards towards wholeness …and the love, laughter, ease and fulfillment that automatically result.
Five steps to freedom
1. Identify what qualities are missing from your relationships. These often include acceptance, respect, trust, emotional honesty, validation and support—all of which are required for us to be ourselves and for our relationships to be harmonious, authentic and mutually supportive.
2. Find practical, everyday ways to start demonstrating those qualities in your life—especially towards those who fail to express those same qualities to you. Remember: what’s missing in your relationships is missing inside you.
3. Catch yourself if you think it’s about them. Stay focused on making you whole, rather than blaming someone else for not giving you what you need. When you take care of your own emotional needs, you attract others who have cultivated the same healthy self-sufficiency.
4. Take responsibility for your choices, actions and reactions. Our choices and boundaries define us, telling the world what we think we are worth. If we make unhealthy compromises in the hope of being accepted, for example, we perpetuate a cycle of neediness. We must accept, validate and honour ourselves first, if we want to see those qualities expressed to us by others.
5. Pre-live and pre-love your ideal future life. Since your emotions are magnetic, the more you think, feel and act like the person you want to be, the more you become that person—and then attract the perfect complement to it.Trust in your magnetism to attract what you truly deserve—and get excited about the good things coming your way.
Gratitude is one of the most powerful emotions we can experience in transforming our lives. If we feel deep gratitude and excitement about our ideal future reality—before it happens—we create a strong magnetism that draws that reality to us. Pre-living and pre-loving your ideal future reality is the most powerful way to make it happen.
Only Marie can change what she is attracting—by changing what she feels and believes about herself and what she is subconsciously transmitting to her world. She can reflect on some of her habitual thoughts (such as: this won’t work and there are no decent men out there) and feelings (such as frustration, disappointment and hopelessness) and ask herself: Do I want more of that? If not, she can focus on their opposites and start to embody the qualities that she wishes to see in herself and in her partner, colleagues and clients: optimism, confidence, validation and healthy self-worth.
Life gets exciting when we realize that we can orchestrate our own reality rather than being at the mercy of seemingly random circumstances. When we recognize the truth of our deeper selves, we can turn our lives around. We can consciously convert limiting beliefs to their positive counterparts; we can choose to feel certain uplifting magnetic emotions that align with the love and life we desire; and we can start to leverage the power of both in transforming struggle into ease, conflict into harmony, and work into pleasure.
The deeper we dig within ourselves, the deeper the truth we discover …and the truth will always set us free.
