The Self-Help Trap

     When I had my awakening I felt manic and aware of everything. I felt the true nature of love which is not what we feel for another person but something we are. What we feel for another person is an emotional bond and this is necessary for our survival but it is not actual love. If you cannot say you love everyone and everything then you are not sitting in love.

    From here I started researching spirituality and the world of self-help. From the mystical to the scientific I took it all in. I jumped from one technique to another bouncing from one guru to the next. This is what many refer to as the "self-help trap".

    Looking back over the last few years I see that it was my mind being overwhelmed with how much I hated my life and how badly I felt about all the time I had wasted listening to others. I couldn't believe I had allowed all those people to take advantage of my good nature; how dare they treat me like that!

    I slowly realised that it was me that allowed the treatment and it was up to me to make shifts within myself in order to experience shifts in how people treat me. How could I expect anyone to respect me if I didn't respect myself?? On deeper inspection, I learnt that a vast majority of people put themselves last on the "deserve respect" list.

    I have spent a lot of money on books and spent even more time watching videos promising to change my life. It has taken me a long time to realise nothing anyone else does is going to make any difference to how I live. Minus a few books most only help the author by making them richer through your desperate state. Atomic Habits by James Clear is one book that stands out as actually a great investment and I highly recommend getting that book. Habits are what create our day-to-day life so if those aren't good then neither is your life.

    My mindset around money was never very good and that is due to the family I grew up in. I had the programming of "people like us" which subconsciously put a barrier between myself and pretty much all earning potential beyond just enough to pay the bills. Instead of working on this, I focused on the advice to just be grateful and deep-diving into the abyss of toxic positivity. While being grateful for what we have and having a more positive mind is a good thing it is important to realise that those supposed negative emotions are ok too; we have them for a reason.

    This is all to advise you to think before spending your time and/or money on method after method after method. I now stick with science that makes sense to me, like neuroscience. Affirmations work when repeated to program the subconscious, and I think they are worth doing, but not alone. Action must be taken at some point, no matter how small. If you want to start a business then you do actually have to make a decision and go for it. I am not saying miraculous things don't happen because they have happened to me numerous times, but it is dangerous to rely solely on these.

Take care everyone and I will see you tomorrow.