You know the people I’m talking about … they emit positive energy and the attract ideas, plans, actions, success, love! Maybe you think, “Lucky them, they have it all. I wish I’d had their chances.” The truth is, they may have been born lucky, but they’ve also made choices that attracted luck to them. They’ve chosen to think positively about themselves, their life, others, and to take action in order to achieve their goals. Mostly, they’re exciting people to be around, and their positive energy rubs off on others, so people seek them out.
Then there are the other people, the negative ones. They always have problems – often their problems are bigger than anyone else around. They’re usually complaining about other people, circumstances, and life in general. They’re energy suckers. Spend too much time with them and your life starts to look pretty miserable too.
You would think that everyone would want to resolve their problems and feel better, wouldn’t you? But the truth is, that some people find that their problems bring them attention and sympathy, and that’s called secondary gain. My problem attracts attention, so I go around telling people that I want to solve it, but I don’t really want to solve it at all because all that attention feels good.
Sometimes a person enjoys complaining about their problem, but it also gives them a reason to not have the thing they want. For example, maybe I don’t have the confidence to ask for business, but I also don’t want to ask for business because I think that would be pushy, that puts me in a double bind.
I had a client who was in direct selling and she came into the office to do a process called Time Line Therapy™ which is about letting go of negative emotions from the unconscious level. This process usually takes as little as 2 minutes for most people to let go of a major negative emotion – we do it for anger, sadness, fear and guilt. So this lady comes in and we let go of anger perfectly, we let go of sadness perfectly, we got to fear – and we always ask the unconscious mind for permission to let go of the emotion. So I said, “Okay, so is it okay for your unconscious mind to let go of the negative emotion of fear today and for you to be aware of it consciously?” and she said, “No.”
I was surprised, so I re-framed and said, “I want to remind your unconscious mind that its highest prime directive is to preserve your body and keep it safe and so holding on to this negative emotion is actually not in line with its highest prime directive. So, knowing that, would it be okay for your unconscious mind to support us in letting go of the fear today and for you to be aware of it consciously, knowing that we can keep the learning and let go of the negative emotion.” And she said, “No.”
I was pretty curious about this, because this is the first time that this had happened to me – most of the time, with a bit of a refrain to the unconscious mind it loosens it up and they say, “Yes.”
So I said, “Well, could you ask your unconscious mind why? Just tell me the first thing that comes up.”
And she replied, “Because if I let go of the fear then I won’t have an excuse.”
Ka-ching! Secondary gain! It’s a lot easier for people to accept you saying you’re afraid to make a cold call. They’ll accept that because fear is an acceptable excuse and then people will feel sorry for her and make excuses for her. Whereas if she says, “I don’t want to do it” which is what it was really about, people will say “Don’t be lazy, get over it.” So by having that excuse or hiding behind the fear I can be okay with the fact that I don’t want to do what I should do and what I have to do.
The thing is, when we tie up out attention on these negative emotions and attitudes, then our energy gets tied up feeding them, too. That means we don’t have energy to do things that will help us get the results we want, so we end up in a vicious cycle of frustration and failure. Our minds and bodies are like channels, and if you block the channels with negative emotions or memories, then there isn’t much room for positive energy to flow. On the other hand, once you start unblocking the energy channels and focusing on positive outcomes and energies, then suddenly you attract the kind of results and relationships that make you happy.
Whatever you focus on grows. So, it’s really your choice. Do you want positive things to grow, or negative ones?
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