Future’s So Bright… Where Are My Shades???

Today’s article is the third installment in my Life Lessons REVEALED series.

We’re going to look at the MOTHER of all Life Lessons: Self-Worth! I would argue that this lesson is the lesson of humanity. Low self-worth is the root of nearly every sad, disrespectful thing one human being does to another or to themselves. High self-worth is the root of great innovations, honorable relationships and profound achievements.

As a technical reminder, the Life Lesson is determined from the Life Purpose Blueprint in your fingerprints. If your Life Lesson is self-worth issues, it is indicated by the fingerprint on your right middle finger.

Your middle finger, that one you might reveal to show disrespect and lack of value, represents the spine of your hand, its midpoint of strength, balance and harmony. In an ideal world, you stand in your own worth and contribute to the value of others. You are confident and inspire confidence in others.

OUTER Worth is measured by three values: money, time and energy.

INNER Worth is measured by your integrity, honor, intangible values (creativity, love, connection, etc.) and commitments.

The way we discover what it means to experience and enjoy high self-worth carries with it some specific tests.

The STUDENT path of self-worth includes the following tests which challenge your ability to value yourself and others:

• Breaking agreements and contracts: The reason for agreements and contracts is so that both parties know what they are agreeing to and can refer back to it later if any discrepancies arise. Certainly, these agreements can be re-negotiated, but that requires having sufficient self-worth to communicate that you’re not satisfied with the agreement as it stands – BEFORE you decide to break it!

  If you have low self-worth, chances are that you may avoid intimate discussions about contracts and will try to wriggle out of them using methods that only lower your self-worth further.

  For example, in my nine years as a coach, I’ve been fortunate to experience only a few instances of contract violations. However, when it does happen, it is painful to me personally for I have invested great time, energy and care into helping that client reach their goals. When they quit mid-way through or, worse, blame me for their inability to take action on their goals (or read their minds and meet their unspoken needs), it feels like a punch in the gut.

  Worse, I know the energetic debt the person is creating for themselves. I will tell you – in nearly EVERY instance – the money, time or energy you think you’ll save by BREAKING a contract will cost you about twice as much in money, time and energy moving forward. When someone breaks a contract with me and someone else asks me, “Would you work with this person?” my answer is simply, “No, and I suggest you don’t either. They can’t honor their agreements.” You’re better off paying up, owning up and moving on with a clean conscience than bailing out. Trust me on this. If you don’t, you’ll get to experience the fall out for yourself – or you already have. Was it “worth it?” I doubt it.

  Oh, a few hints about folks who do break contracts. They tend to engage in this behavior habitually. They will probably lament about a previous coach who ‘let them down’ by failing to stroke their ego or tell you about other programs they dropped out of or didn’t like. Quitters are the most proficient critics. Beware clients who nitpick and are always finding fault. It indicates their own negative self-judgment and poor self-esteem. I suggest if a potential client begins dropping these hints, do not work with them in ANY capacity. Move on and keep your own integrity intact.

  They also seem to think they are ‘special’ or the rules don’t apply to them. To add the cherry on top of this steaming pile of specialness, they will use their ‘special’ (re: victim) status to leverage you for a ‘special’ rate, a ‘special’ payment plan, a ‘special’ program, or try to get you to work for ‘free.’ Yuck. And if YOU ‘agree’ to this, you will lower your self-esteem in the process.

  In fact, in some of my coaching relationships (especially when the client’s Life Lesson is ‘self-worth’), the client’s ability to honor the contract is so challenging, THAT ‘honoring the contract’ IS THE COACHING! If they can succeed in just getting through to the end without blaming, complaining, creating drama, failing to pay or quitting, they will notice quantum leaps in other areas of their lives.

• Money issues: I realize I could write a book about this topic and barely scratch the surface! In a nutshell, money is an external measure of value. How we use our money reflects what we value.However, the amount of money you possess is NOT a measure of your internal value.Money reflects how effectively you are giving value in the world. You may have a great product, program or service, but if you’re not offering it and selling it to others, its value is not seen and felt by others.

  The ability to create money is the ability to create and then offer value to others. If you have trouble being paid what you’re worth or asking to be paid at all, you need to look at your own self-doubts and insecurities. Then ask yourself, “How will this prospective client lose out if they don’t work with me? What value and transformation can I bring to their lives?”

  I know that if someone works with me, their life will be transformed immensely. However, the path to transformation can bring up uncomfortable feelings, thoughts and memories. It can cause a person to want to retreat in fear or bail out.When you’ve “got confidence,” you honor your agreements, invest your money where your mouth/agreement is, and proceed through the discomfort without quitting.

  Ironically, this is the ONLY way to GROW your confidence. You can only GET CONFIDENCE by COMMITTING – to YOUR SELF and mirroring this commitment in your relationships with others.

• Doubt, worry and in-security: These are the Medusa-headed step-children of low self-worth. You make a decision and then second-guess it. You worry about your kids, your finances, your future. You want security but feel it comes from outside of yourself: your clothes, your looks, your finances, the esteem of others.

  Security can ONLY come from ONE place: INSIDE of you. Having FAITH in a benevolent Universe also helps. Everything in the material world is temporal and fleeting. Where does your real security reside? If you KNOW you are here on Earth for a specific Life Purpose, are you willing to put your FAITH and SECURITY in that? If not, why not?

The MASTER path of self-worth includes the following behaviors – which amplify feelings of high self-worth and esteem toward others:

• Commitment: To commit is “to do.” When you commit, you make a promise, a pledge, a vow, an assurance to YOUR Self to follow through on something. For example, I got married because I knew it would help me with commitment in other areas of my life. My husband had been married before and didn’t feel the need to get married again. He agreed to it because he knew it would help me. He said later, “I had no idea how much our marriage commitment would deepen our connection. I’m glad for both of us.”

• Integrity: Integrity is not a static state. You walk the integrity tight rope and fall off. You get back up on the rope and try again. All of us make mistakes. What keeps us in integrity is to speak our truth, apologize when we’ve messed up and keeping moving forward with our commitments. Integrity is the ongoing work of matching your insides with your outsides. Does your appearance, your lifestyle, your fitness level match how you feel on the inside? If you feel resentment toward someone, but don’t tell them immediately and clear things up, you begin to lose integrity with yourself, then with the other person. Can you make your inner emotional state congruent with your outer relationships?
  

• Valuing Your Work and Your Finances: When you value your work, it’s amazing how other people begin to value your work. When you think of your work as a service to others, the value increases further. Managing your money is also vital to your sense of self-worth and security. Looking at your numbers on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis keeps you in touch with how well you are offering value to others and if you are offering the BEST value you have to offer. When I’ve offered programs that weren’t big hits, I knew that either I didn’t present the value well initially or it wasn’t the value my clients needed or wanted. By looking at WHAT IS WORKING in my business, I can do more of that, deepen the quality, and offer MORE value.

• Implementing Good Systems: The Universe is a system! Your body is a system! Your business and your life run better with systems. Systems increase efficiency, reduce waste and clutter, and allow you to LEVERAGE your outer values of money, time and energy. The ability to leverage your money, time and energy allows you to commit more deeply and fully to your Life Purpose. If you don’t have efficient systems, find a systems expert to help you implement them.

• Time Management: Like money and energy, time is an outer measure of worth. When you show up on time, you VALUE your time and the other person’s. When you use your time wisely, you are valuing your life force. Time is the ONE resource we can never, ever reclaim. When it’s gone, it’s gone.Is your time being ‘spent’ on what you value or are you spending it on trivial, meaningless activities that neither leverage your money or energy nor deepen your commitment to your Life Purpose? The choice is yours. Are you making the strengthening decision with your use of time? Or the weakening decision? You ALWAYS have that choice in EVERY situation.

• Energy Management: Valuing yourself includes valuing your precious life force, your energy. This requires engaging in excellent self-care: sufficient rest, relaxation and movement. Do you sleep enough each night? Eat right? Drink sufficient water? You know the basics with self-care. DOING the basics, however, committing to it, that is your BEST feedback for whether or not you have high self-worth. If you overeat, skip sleep, engage in addictive behaviors, hide your truth or any other of the various methods of self-deception, you are showing yourself that you don’t matter very much. How much do YOU VALUE YOU???

Above all else, remember that high self-worth is the result of doing things that strengthen you and low self-worth is the result of doing things that weaken you. ONLY YOU can truly know and decide what things you wish to spend your money, time and energy on. ONLY YOU. Who else would know?

Coach’s Challenge: Take a quick assessment of your money, time and energy expenditures. Are they reflective of what you MOST VALUE or could you re-allocate your resources toward those people and activities you value and that give you value in return?

If YOU are curious and want to know what your Life Purpose Blueprint says about your Life Lesson, your SPECIFIC Life Purpose and a whole lot more, GO HERE NOW and Claim “YOUR Purpose” session BEFORE the price goes up!

Baeth reading in the camper, rain on the rooftop.  Unconditionally loving her alone time

I promised to continue delivering you information about your Life Lessons. Today, we’re going to look at one of the most popular ones: Emotional Authenticity.

Remember that EVERY Life Lesson has lessons for all of us.

The Life Lesson is determined from the Life Purpose Blueprint in your fingerprints.

Emotional authenticity is the ability to express what you feel appropriately, fully and in the emotional moment. The reward for emotional mastery is self-acceptance, the foundation for unconditional love of yourself and others. One of the markers of a person with high self-esteem is the ability to like one’s self and accept one’s emotions.

The STUDENT path of emotional authenticity includes the following behaviors – which don’t work, by the way, in creating self-acceptance:

• Stuffing your feelings

• Denying your feelings (This is a tough one, since you probably don’t even know your denying anything. Hence, denial.)

• Rationalizing, justifying and explaining your feelings – in other words, ‘analysis paralysis’ and thinking, thinking, thinking about feelings, feelings, feelings.

• Blaming your feelings on yourself or others. (Blame is VERY popular when we have feelings that are uncomfortable or unfamiliar. We want to ‘off load’ the discomfort onto something, either our own failings or the perceived failings of someone else.)

• Martyrdom, aka Co-Dependence. Classic “woe is me” stance. “Look at all I did for you and all I get is this crummy tee shirt???” Feeling like the beleaguered savior of the world comes from the inability to express and fulfill your own needs. Hint: NO ONE is responsible for fulfilling your needs, except your mama when you were a kid. No, smoke signals don’t count as communicating your needs.

• Gossip, backstabbing, and sabotage. This is the classic approach of clusters of emotionally challenged individuals who cannot speak their own feelings to the person that needs to hear them. A good deal of gossip is actually healthy – passing along information, gaining support from a confidante around an issue that is troubling you, laughing at the latest antics of the office comedian. But the story you tell to 10 different people to slay someone’s reputation, um, what are you afraid to say TO that person? Say it. That is emotional authenticity. And it takes COURAGE.

The MASTER path of emotional authenticity includes the following behaviors – which do work, by the way, in creating self-acceptance:

• Identifying WHAT you are feeling in the moment. Ask yourself, “What am I feeling right now?”

• The ability to discern the difference between bodily sensations, heart-based emotions and intuitive hits. For example, your stomach grumbling could indicate you are hungry or have indigestion. It is beneficial to attend to your body’s needs. A heart-based emotion could be crying caused by the grief of losing a beloved pet. An intuitive hit could be knowing that you really MUST join that new coaching program, BECAUSE it is going to stretch you. You may feel scared shitless to act on the intuitive hit, but you trust your intuition over your fear. Now we’re talking high level emotional mastery here!

• Expressing what you are feeling in the moment – to the appropriate person at the appropriate intensity. Granted, this takes practice and lots of embarrassing moments of being too timid or too blustery. Good news? You can keep attempting emotional expression until you hit “just right.”

• Transmuting the emotion into self-acceptance When you feel calm inside, you know you have gotten the emotion out of your system. You have accepted your feelings. One way of working with this concept is to simply ALLOW your feelings to move through you. Don’t try and fix them, explain them away or tell a big long story about your horrible childhood (save that for your therapist). Just FEEL it. If you are sad, crying it out. If you are angry, write it down or take it to a punching bag. If you are joyful, find a way to celebrate.

• Identifying negative self-talk and asking yourself, “What is the feeling BENEATH this self-judgment?” Judgment ALWAYS masks your true emotions. For example, when we judge others, it is because they trigger feelings in us that are uncomfortable, such as envy, jealousy, anger, vengeance, passion, attraction, or fear.

• Recognizing that discernment is not the same as judgment. You may run across someone that you really don’t enjoy being around. You can still love them unconditionally without choosing to spend your free time with them. Discernment doesn’t have an emotional charge to it – it is a CHOICE, rather than a compulsion. Judgment comes from the compulsive need to deny your own feelings, needs and insecurities. The more you express your true feelings, the more you love yourself, and paradoxically, the less you judge others. You find compassion for their struggles, knowing that they are as challenged as you in growing into their true spirit and purpose.

• Practice forgiveness. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean you are denying any wrong doing. Forgiveness is saying, “I allow you your humanity. You will experience the consequences of your choices on your own path. I attend to my own path and allow you yours.”

Coach’s Challenge: On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest, rate your current state of emotional authenticity. You may want to print out this article and rate each bullet point on a scale of 1 to 10 for additional insight. I recommend making a list of every person you have unresolved feelings with and doing something today to make it right, such as forgiving yourself for your mistakes or forgiving them for hurting you. Sometimes it helps to write a letter, even if you don’t send it. The main thing is this: Get clear with YOURSELF about what YOU FEEL. That is the first step to emotional clarity and emotional freedom. Now that is something to LOVE!

If YOU are curious and want to know what your Life Purpose Blueprint says about your Life Lesson and a whole lot more, GO HERE NOW and Claim “YOUR Purpose” session BEFORE the price goes up!

You asked and I listened. I polled you on the #1 Thing that’s been holding you back from achieving your true calling and the answer is consistently: “Baeth, that’s easy! My LIFE LESSON!”

As there is so much fascination and fear about Life Lessons, I’m introducing a brand new article series on the various Life Lessons you may possess and how to harness their incredible, life-changing power for your own good. Whether you have a particular Life Lesson or not, chances are high you will relate to the opportunities and challenges the lesson presents.

The Life Lesson is determined from the Life Purpose Blueprint in your fingerprints.

In this article, we’ll explore a popular Life Lesson: “trust, surrender and intimacy issues.” It is a lesson that is often misunderstood but with great opportunities for self-discovery by its owner.

If you have trust, surrender and intimacy issues as your Life Lesson, you may experience a deep and personal connection to God, to the divine. You may feel that God, angels and spirits communicate directly to you, giving you guidance on many matters in your life. You may also find that a strong energy moves through your body from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. You may be aware of a connection to something much larger than yourself, perhaps a connection to infinite intelligence, eternity or infinity.

You may mistrust yourself sometimes, wondering, “Am I really experiencing this?” or “Why is God telling ME all this? Can’t He tell someone else? I don’t want to know this much!” The opportunity here is to realize that you are specially designed to receive these messages and use them for your own self-development. It is important to not brag about these messages nor be silent about them either. Use them for yourself first. Through trial and error, you’ll begin to discover which messages to share and which ones to keep to yourself.

You are here to learn how to trust your inner wisdom, surrender to the guidance you receive and develop your own relationship with your authentic self. As you come to know yourself, others can come to know you. If you do not take these steps, you may find that you too easily trust others or don’t trust anyone at all. You may also be a person that others find they can’t trust, because you waffle in your decisions, certain one moment and doubting your guidance the next.

A short cut to progressing in this Life Lesson is to be EXPLICIT in sharing your inner process to the APPROPRIATE PEOPLE. Sharing your inner world with a therapist, a coach, a lover or a close friend can help you find your spiritual truth and trust it. This is authentic ‘surrender’ and it takes great courage.

If you refuse to trust your inner guidance, renege on your most important decisions, fail to communicate effectively or demand that others communicate with you in a specific, overly detailed manner, you may find yourself experiencing isolation, loneliness and creative stagnation.

Here are some examples of common scenarios I’ve observed with the trust, surrender and intimacy issues Life Lesson:

·        Francesca, an executive head hunter, sends me an email. I don’t receive the email or it goes into my spam folder. She assumes I am ignoring her and doesn’t ask if I received her email. IF I ever hear from her again (usually by persistently tracking her down to find out why she isn’t taking my calls), I’m told that my communication abilities are flawed and disorganized on top of my being insensitive, thoughtless and rude. That’s the “specific, overly detailed” communication style I mentioned earlier. At this point, my attempts to explain I never saw the email fall on deaf ears. Francesca no longer trusts me, although the story of her rejection happened entirely in her own mind.

REMEMBER: Logic will be USELESS when you are in the GRIP of your Life Lesson or someone you know is in the grip of theirs. Some people go their whole life believing a story about an event that is based in nothing but illusion (the shadow side of authentic communication).

·        Joey, an inventor, visualizes a successful outcome with a creative project that he’s been imagining for years. Instead of taking action on the vision, he second-guesses his instincts and procrastinates. Time passes. Then, Joey comes across the project as envisioned and COMPLETED by someone else. Ooops. Bummer. Especially since it’s an invention that sold millions!

·        Amy, a painter, makes a powerful decision and significant financial investment to apprentice with an artist whose work she admires. After a few communication snafus (that Amy created by refusing to follow the artist’s instructions and refusing to follow up), she decides this artist is a nit-wit and wants her money back.

It doesn’t occur to Amy that she knew this was a great decision when she made it – because this more-experienced artist would hold her accountable when her Life Lesson reared its head. As much as Amy truly wants to be SEEN and known for who she really is – she will back away as the intimacy increases with her mentor. This sabotage plunges Amy into feelings of isolation and creative constipation.

Instead of reaching out to clear up the communication breakdown, she cuts off all contact and retreats back into the world she knows, rather than trusting her initial decision and surrendering to the unfolding process. Her own painting, curiously, grinds to a halt.

If you have this lesson, remember this: if you call someone, give them a few days to call you back. If they don’t, call again. Then LET GO. Assume the best – the person is away in Fiji for the month and will call you when they get back. If a month or two passes with no word, try again by writing a letter. Then let it go. Surrender.

If your best attempts at communicating YOUR inner truth are not received, you can then trust there is no intimacy happening. As they says, “He or she just isn’t that into you.” But until then, TRUST and give the other person the benefit of the doubt.  Because your trust meter needs adjusting with this Life Lesson, it’s important to let others SHOW YOU who they are – and give them the chance to do so – before writing them off. Also, if you are harboring resentment toward something you feel they ‘did to you,’ there is really only ONE QUESTION: did you explicitly communicate your inner experience in the moment, or not?

Most importantly, when you feel disconnected, isolated or mistrusting, remember YOUR SOURCE and connect back with God and infinite intelligence. That will always bring you back to the truth. You may remember that everyone is made of Divine substance and thus, everyone is doing their best, even if you wish you could control the process and timing with which life moves.

Let go. Listen. Surrender. LOVE.

If YOU are curious and want to know what your Life Purpose Blueprint says about your Life Lesson and a whole lot more, GO HERE NOW and Claim “YOUR Purpose” session:

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