5 STEPS to RECEIVE
WHAT YOU TRULY WANT and NEED
Do you feel that your life is filled with what you truly want and need – or have you been living without your desires being met?
Here is a simple five-step process to help you receive MORE of what is important to you.
- REMEMBER what you want and need.
- Know you DESERVE to have what you want and need.
- Learn how to ASK for what you want and need.
- Be WILLING TO RECEIVE what you truly want and need.
- Stay GRATEFUL for what you have
.What DO you want and need in your life?
What do you need?
When we are born, we are our natural and true SELF. We know instinctively how to get our needs met. When we are hungry or wet or tired, we let our caretakers know. And if our needs aren’t met, we complain, fuss or cry. When we are fed, dry and rested, we were usually a joy to be around, utterly adorable and totally loved. If only life after infancy were so easy!
Somewhere along the way, usually by the time we are two or three, we begin to lose sight of what we truly want and need, and even what we feel. We learn at a very early age that some behaviors get us more love and attention than other behaviors. If we are angry, we don’t get as much positive feedback as when we are pleasing. If we are sad, we may not be as cute as when we are happy. If we are scared, we may be perceived as too demanding or too weak, so we are exhorted to act brave or strong.
So we start to exile those feelings of anger, sadness or fear, and manage our lives by trying to be pleasing, happy, or competent. And this is even if we grew up in the best of homes. However if there is any dysfunction in our families of origin (and there usually is), then we may forget what we truly want and need because being a caretaker and a giver becomes our role in life. We lose sight of what is true inside of us in order to project an image that we manage to maintain.
What do you truly want in your life?
It may seem easier to know what you need because without your basic needs met, you may not survive. Every human being needs food, water, shelter. Did you put down love, affection, nurturing touch? These are what we needed as infants in order to survive and thrive. If infants are deprived of touch, they cannot mature
Although we have our basic needs, it is often more difficult to state what you want. As you answer this question, did you have a difficult time remembering? If so, try to go back in time to when you were young and carefree. What did you want then? Did you want to have fun? Did you put that down on your list?
What else do you want? Respect?
How much of what you wrote was material in nature – a new car, a new house, a new job?
What feelings would be associated with having those things you want? Success, financial freedom, a feeling of competence?
Think back, or free associate, or listen to what other people say and if you want what they want, write it on your list. “I’ll have what she’s having” (When Harry Met Sally) doesn’t mean that you are jealous or envious. It is a recognition that there are other ways of being and feeling that you would want to experience as well.
What stands in your way from getting what you want and need?
Even if we are lucky enough to have an idea of what we want and need, most of the time we see that we don’t have it. Why not? What are the circumstances in which we find ourselves that keeps us locked away from our true desires?
Is it external to us? Other people? Our jobs? On some level, our external reality is a mirror of our internal landscape. If we are balanced, peaceful and centered, our lives reflect that. If we are out of balance, unfocused, chaotic, so is our life. Which comes first?
We tell ourselves that if our lives were different and the people in our lives were different, then we would be different. However, as we learn to shift the pattern of our internal landscape, our outer world will reflect our healing and growth. Then the situations we are in will transform and we will set the stage for different kinds of relationships.
Either the people in our lives will change as we do, or we will learn how to let go and make room to attract healthier people into our lives.
Do you feel you DESERVE what you want?
Deserve-ability is often an issue for most of us. Usually, again, by the time we are two or three, something has happened to us to give us a message that we are not lovable, not worthy, not good enough.
If you think back, there is some event or situation in your life, by the time you are two or three, and another one by the time you are 8 or 10, in which you came to feel or believe that you were less than…..bad, unloved, unlovable.
Sometimes the event can be as benign as the birth of a younger sibling. When I was two, my brother was born and my parents left me for two weeks in the care of an aunt and uncle. That was many, many decades ago when women were kept in the hospital for two weeks after childbirth. My father had to work late nights and couldn’t take care of me, so my aunt and uncle were enlisted for the job.
My mother had lovingly made plans for me. Her brother, my uncle, had always wanted children and had been trying for years to conceive. Several years later they adopted one. My aunt never really wanted to have children and was very cold, distant and uncomfortable. My uncle worked all the time, and I stayed with my aunt, who left me outside to play on my own.
I still have memories of being outside on the curb looking at the rows of houses that all looked alike, feeling lost and scared and probably very sad and angry at being abandoned. But my parents weren’t around, and there was no one to tell. But somehow in my bed late at night, when I would have run into my parents’ bed if I had been home, I sat alone and afraid in the dark.
And I think I decided then, though not consciously, that I would do everything in my power never to be abandoned again. I would be sweet and loving and adorable. I would never show them how angry I was – or how sad and scared. I would be so lovable that they would never want to leave me. And so my codependency was born. Other times in life can be more damaging. Many of us have suffered abuse of some kind. Either screaming and yelling to undermine our self esteem, or actual physical or sexual abuse that makes us question our own sense of value and worth.
Are there any areas in your life of which you are ashamed?
Even if the abuse is due to the perversion of another, there is still a sense of shame attached to the victim. Sometimes as adults, we don’t remember the actual instances themselves, but we have unexplained fears, needs, compulsions.
And if we do remember, even if we intellectually know that it wasn’t “our fault”, our self esteem and self worth are affected for decades. We should have known to tell someone, we think. We shouldn’t have allowed it. We should have put a stop to it. We should not have enjoyed it.
Often we need therapy to help us let go of our erroneous self conceptions. If we don’t believe that we inherently deserve to be happy and prosperous and have what we need and want, then we won’t.
Again, our external situations are often mirrors of our internal reality. If we don’t feel we deserve something, we won’t have it. Once we know that we deserve to have our needs and wants satisfied, then we can take the steps to attain that goal. The inner knowing is the first step toward manifesting that reality.
Your thoughts are your prayers. Your thinking are the brush strokes on the canvas of your life. To change your reality, you change your thoughts.
You may need help on releasing some negative and self destructive thought patterns to enhance your knowledge of your innate deserve-ability.
Can you forgive yourself?
As you let go of self judgments and criticisms, you open the way to forgiveness.
Only by forgiving yourself for choices made, roads not traveled, actions taken or avoided, can you open yourself up to the possibility of new life experiences.
You did the best you could with what you knew at the time. And every experience, no matter how negative it may be perceived, is what made you the person you are today and brought you to this moment in time. And in this moment, you have the power to go forward with a new vision and clarity.You can hold on to your out-dated vision and version of your self, or you an open to your true Self and allow your soul to shine.
Can you forgive others?
Even if we manage to forgive ourselves, forgiving others is more difficult. We may feel that forgiving is condoning, or that we are letting someone off the hook too easily. We do let someone off the hook, but that someone is ourself. Hanging on to anger and resentments just poisons the mind and spirit of the carrier.
Anger is appropriate when your boundaries have been violated. It is how we learn to recognize our boundaries review who we are in the constellation of our world. But resentments fester and corrode our spirit.
As we forgive another, we let ourselves off the hook. We are free to use our energy in ways that bring us joy.
We may need to do some work to acknowledge our feelings and release them. But once we do, our lives can be transformed.
How do you ask for what you want and need?
Once you know what it is you truly want and need, you have to work through your issues of deserve-ability BEFORE you ask for them. If you don’t believe you deserve to have them met, the way you are asking may sound like a demand, a nag, or a threat.
When you are centered in the truth of your own value and self worth, you ask from a different energy. You put out what your wishes are in a way that comes from a heart-centered place. You are not blaming, not judging, not demanding. You clearly state your feelings, and then you allow someone else the respect to respond the way they need to.
You don’t have to save them from their response. You don’t have to protect them from your needs and wants.
You are entitled to your wishes, your desires, your opinions, your feelings. If you don’t validate them for yourself, no one else can do that for you.
- You can ask without expectations that the other person will automatically comply just because you’ve asked.
- You can ask knowing that the other may need time to think about your request and then more time to consider whether they wish to fulfill it or not.
- You can ask with clarity, not having to couch your words in defensive posturing so as not to make someone else uncomfortable.
- You can ask to take care of your own needs and wants, rather than keeping still so as not to run the risk of offending someone else.
You can ask knowing that if you are asking for too much, someone can tell you, and you can adjust accordingly. You can apologize, you can reframe or rephrase your request, or you can ask someone else who might be more able or willing to comply.
If you ask knowing that you deserve what you truly want and need (as long as it is respectful of others and does not infringe on their rights or harm them in any way), then you can ask without expectations, judgments or blame – of yourself or another. Its a palms up way of communicating.
Are you willing to receive or are you only comfortable giving?
If you have learned how to take care of others in order to feel loved, it is often difficult to shift roles and learn how to receive. We feel more in control when we are giving. We feel less needy. We don’t have to be grateful to someone else.
I’s hard to allow someone else to give to us. We feel like we “owe” them something. We don’t know how to let it in. We are worried that we have to immediately reciprocate. We believe that getting our needs met is selfish.
If you can’t let yourself receive, you may still have some issues of deservability to work through. Go back to that step and do some more work to remove another defensive layer. As you peel back the layers on the onion of your psyche you can release more defenses and masks. You can retire some of those managers and release those exiles and come from your authentic self. And the joy of doing that work – and it is sometimes work – is that as you grow and heal and mature and blossom and become more authentic, you attract healthier and more authentic people and relationships into your life.
Are you grateful for what you do have?
No matter what are individual circumstances, there is always something or someone for which to be grateful. The more we can learn how to acknowledge the small miracles, the larger ones we will manifest.
Even your problems can be viewed as opportunities for growth and change. Be grateful for all that is part of your life, because that is part of the larger plan for your spiritual growth.
In any given moment on every day, stop and acknowledge your many gifts and blessings.
See how much of what you want and need you already have. Know how much you deserve them.
And whether you remember verbally requesting them or not, on some energetic level you did ask for them. That’s why they are there.
Know that you have the ability and power to manifest your heart’s desire, your innermost truth and to realize your every potential.
Remember what you want and need, know you deserve it all, learn how to ask for it, be willing to receive it, and always stay grateful.