If you can’t BUY it, WIN it!

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Amanda

Back in the summer, I wrote a few blog posts about my attempts to bring more money into my life. I spent a lot of time trying to clear old limiting beliefs and blocks and to raise my energy field.

I really tried to get in touch with my feelings and to FEEL and EXPERIENCE how frustrated, angry and generally bad I was feeling. The idea is “supposed” to be that if you fully feel your feelings, they wash through you and you can then release them and move on to feeling something better.

For me, that was a “fine in theory” idea and the more I allowed myself to feel bad, the worse I felt and the more I disliked myself.

What you focus on, Grows

Yes, this is one part of personal development that I have to agree with – at least partially. The more I focused on “What’s wrong with Amanda?” and “Why can’t I make any money?” the more useless I felt, the more things and the more the old patterns of lack of money repeated themselves.

It did not, however, seem to work the other way around.

Even when I focused on feeling good, on feeling abundant and joyful, on feeling grateful and on having a positive attitude, that did not seem to break the patterns of lack of money.

Some days, in fact, the better I felt, the more problems I seemed to attract to myself! Huh! Not sure how that one works!

Business died

Over those months, less and less money came in from my business. People stopped buying my products and my subscribers no longer seemed interested in any of the offers I was making to them, either for my products or for other people’s.

I lost interest in it. I lost interest in trying to get people to buy stuff or in creating new products for people to buy.

So, as money was not coming in from business, I decided to look elsewhere.

Raise my energy and Win Stuff!

I decided to go back to my favourite hobby of entering Competitions and Sweepstakes. My logic was that I would raise my energetic levels up high enough to BE a WINNER and draw money and prizes into my life that way.

There brought up a very interesting set of beliefs I had in relation to this, as to where money was allowed to come from and what had to happen for money to come into my life. I will talk about this in another blog post.

I viewed winning competitions as the ultimate test of “push button abundance,” where I could define my wish list, then find a competition where those items were prizes, raise my energy to be in alignment with that thing, enter the competition, win it and draw those items into my life. That is what manifesting is supposed to be about and it should, in theory, be that easy!

To date, my “Grand Amanda Plan” is still a work in progress.

I have had some wins, including an experience day to go Coasteering, some ipod gloves, some juice vouchers, a chocolate hamper, amazon vouchers, a chemistry book, a treasury of quotations book and my biggest and best prize to date – A Macbook and starring in a TV ad, which I won in the recent BUPA by You competition.

You can see that video in another blog post or by going to http://www.bupabyyou.co.uk

Lots of similarities with succeeding at anything

Winning competitions has a lot of similarities with winning the game of life and succeeding at anything. I was quite surprised to discover this, as I somehow thought it would be completely different. I will talk about some of my findings in another blog post.

With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldstoon

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Thank you everyone – We Won!

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Amanda

A huge Thank You to eveyone who voted for my video in the BUPA by You competition a couple of weeks ago.

To my great surprise and delight, we WON the overall prize.

The top 3 videos are going to be used in a national TV campaign, which BUPA will be launching at the end of February 2012. This means me and my wacky dancing are going to be on TV in the UK and on Youtube.

This is a huge step forward for me and is a real measure of how much my confidence has developed and how far I have finally come in my journey to like and accept myself.

Thank You again for all your votes and for all your messages of encouragement.

With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston

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What Healthy Means to Me

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Amanda

Last weekend I created a short video for a competition run by BUPA Health Insurance on the topic of “What Healthy Means to You.”

The voting has finished on the BUPA site and I gained 186 votes in the space of about 4 hours. Thank you everyone who voted for me.

However, this video represents something much bigger to me.

Up until a few months ago, I would never, ever have dreamed – in a million years – that I would be in a video where I am really making a bit of a fool of myself and that video would be in a PUBLIC competition and PUBLICLY displayed on YouTube.

I have lost a bit of weight in the last few months (nearly 2 stone or 26lbs), however what has really changed is my LIKING of myself.

I have let go of a lot of beliefs and opinions about me, that were not serving me and mostly were not actually mine anyway. As I have released past trauma and emotional pain on the inside and allowed the True Amanda Sparkle to shine out, I have truly become less and less interested in what others may, or may not, think about me.

I had to nag at my husband Greg to record that video as we were getting close to the deadline for submitting it. This is me, the shrinking wallflower that has hidden from a camera all her life.

I was getting really into the dancing and thought I was following the dance on the screen, but apparently I was not doing it right. I had a whale of a time. I felt totally uninhibited, free and full of my own self-expression.

When I saw it, I roared with laughter and I have watched it several times since because I find it so funny. I know that all my amazing friends around the world are laughing WITH me and no-one is laughing AT me. Although it does not really matter to me if they were laughing at me.

I have finally learnt to recognise ME, Amanda Sparkle, and to be happy with me, and whatever shape or size I happen to be at the moment is just fine.

I have finally made peace with me and can honestly say I like Me!

With abundant blessings.
Amanda Sparkle Goldston

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Weight Release Part I – Outer

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Amanda

I have struggled with weight issues since I was 8 years old. My parents had a pub, which meant we ate at funny times. I spent a lot of time on my own. I was bored and I started eating and there was plenty of food in a pub/restaurant kitchen!

I can remember, when I was 9 years old, my class at school were learning about weight and measurement by weighing and measuring each other. On the day before this lesson, I stood on the bathroom scales staring miserably down at the dial. I was 9 years old and weighed 9 stone (126 pounds) and I was dreading the following day because I knew who was the heaviest and fattest in the class – Yes, me!

Over the years, I have failed on every diet I ever tried and each time I tried something new, I ended up putting on even more weight. Each New Year’s Resolution was a bigger weight loss goal than the one the previous year!

In August 2011, I hit my heaviest ever – 250lbs (for my UK friends that is 17stone 12lb) on a 5’6″ body. As of 20th December 2011, I have so far released over 24lbs, shrunk by over 24 inches overall and dropped 2 dress sizes.

 
 

I have dropped almost 2 dress sizes and you can see how the fat has really come off my face, neck, shoulders and stomach.

I was weighed on 19th January and I have released another 2lbs over Christmas, which I am very proud of, considering the amount of rich food and chocolate I have eaten.

When you are trying to lose weight or accomplish any goal, there are TWO essential parts that need to work together in harmony for you to achieve your goals.

These are:

1) OUTER ACTIONS,

such as, in the case of losing weight, Regular Exercise and a Balanced, Healthy Eating Plan based on the your choices or the advice of a suitable qualified exercise and/or nutrition specialist.

2) INNER ACTIONS,

such as Clearing away any limiting beliefs about yourself or visualizing yourself at your ideal, healthy weight and how wonderful that feels in your life.

So, what did I do?

OUTER ACTIONS

Firstly, on the back end of a bit of what might be called “emotional blackmail” I joined a Ladies Only gym, which has a circuit of 10 machines, designed to work all the major muscle groups for 3 minutes on each machine. I go 3 -4 times per week for 30 minutes.

I have started to walk the dog regularly, which is a great way of thinking and allowing creative ideas to flow, as well as getting some exercise.

On the back of that, I have found that my appetite has started to reduce and portions are considerably smaller. There is frequently food left over from an evening meal for lunch the next day. I also try to eat slower and chew my food more.

The biggest thing has been the sugar cravings have dropped considerably and I now eat hardly any chocolate – as a Life Long dedicated CHOCOHOLIC, I never thought I would say that- ever! I still eat cake, but I have one piece instead of the whole cake. I pretty much eat as I please.

Over Christmas, we had a lot of chocolate and I found I got sick of it. Yes! Me! Really! I was very glad to see the last of the chocolate and biscuits being eaten. I have even stopped entering competitions to win chocolate.

In my opinion, my success is only partly due to diet and exercise. I believe the biggest weight release has come because of the INNER ACTIONS.

I will talk more about this in the next blog post.
With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston

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Weight Release – Part 2 – Inner

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Amanda

INNER ACTIONS

I have known for a long time that my weight was tied up with my total lack of self-esteem and high levels of self-loathing.

Whenever I got upset or angry or frustrated, which was frequently, I reached for the chocolate and the biscuits and the cookies and the ice-cream and all the high-sugar, high-fat, calorie and cholesterol laden junk – that logically I know does not do me any good at all, but once I started I was like an unstoppable eating machine and I had to eat every last crumb of everything.

In short, I really did not like myself. I had no confidence and I would not have been seen dead in a skirt or anything remotely feminine.

I started looking inside myself, to identify my feelings about myself and the beliefs about myself and my health that I was holding. Most of them were very negative and not helpful to being able to release weight.

I started to listen to my own audio relaxations.

I started to really feel my way through some of the trauma from my childhood, without trying to push the painful feelings back down with food. Surprisingly, once I allowed myself to really feel what I felt, without judgement or trying to change it, the feelings seemed to diminish and release.

The more old, non-serving beliefs, feelings and junk I cleared away from my mind and energy field, the easier the weight seemed to come off and the more effective the gym programme seemed to be.

Please note, weight won’t come off by just sitting on the couch meditating. You need to take some action as well in terms of food and exercise.

Yo-Yo Sabotage

There was a very good reason why I would yo-yo with diet and exercise, why I would release a few pounds and then go on a huge binge when someone or something upset me. I would attempt to starve myself and then I would eat the entire contents of the fridge in about 20 minutes.

One day I ate a 400g (1/2 pound ) bar of chocolate all by myself in about 10 minutes. I would lose total control and it was as through my mouth was an automatic eating machine.

The Reason for this was simple…

In my head I saw myself as FAT!

I have seen myself as fat from being about 8 years old. That was when my eating issues started. My parents had a pub/restaurant, so we, as a family, would eat at all sorts of funny times. I was then on my own a lot and I was totally bored, so I started eating to comfort myself and fill the huge gaps of feeling lonely.

Not long after we moved into the pub, my parents went out to a concert and I was left with a babysitter. Whilst they were out, a man shot himself in the pub. Looking back, I was quite traumatised by the event and had that happened now, I probably would have had months of counselling. Not long after that, my eating binging got a great deal worse.

There was then more trauma as I went into my teens, with my parents getting divorced and I felt even more out of sorts. As a teenager I had a gorgeous figure, even though I had a boyfriend at 16 who told me I was fat!

So this then caused me to attract unwanted sexual attention from creepy, leery old men! Ugggh!!

I really disliked myself!

All of this led to a huge inner LOATHING.

So it is not really surprising that my body reacted the way it did and put on my weight, each time I tried to release some weight. Each time I set a weight released goal, it was bigger than the last time!

Success at last!

Success finally started to come when I began working on releasing all the old, inner junk, beliefs, patterns, emotions and fears. I began to like and accept myself for who I am, right now in this moment.

I looked at beliefs I held about myself and the reasons why I had not allowed myself to have the slim, trim gorgeous figure that I so longed for …… or did I really want that?

Afraid to be feminine

One of the things I found was that I was really afraid to allow myself to be feminine. I had become quite masculine in my shape and I was displaying a lot of what might be classed as masculine traits – aggressive, argumentative, fighting and I was starting to get whiskers on my chin!!

The thought of walking down the street wearing a tight t-shirt and a mini-skirt absolutely terrified me! What if I attracted some unwanted attention and couldn’t deal with it?????

I started using all the tools I had in the toolbox, ranging from breathing exercises, to my own meditations and those of other people, energy clearing exercises and simple observation of how I was really feeling – without judgement.

I found that my chocolate cravings started to reduce, my weight started to come off, my exercise routine was working really well, I started to regain a feminine shape and found myself looking at dresses and skirts!!!!!!

Huge Success – Showing a bit of Cleavage!

There was a huge success for me on the evening we went to the office party organised by the company where my husband works. Not only was my usual party dress hanging off me, I spent all evening pulling it up at the front. This is the first time in a very long time that I have dared to go out with any cleavage at the front showing.

I felt confident, sexy and totally at ease with myself. That was a huge FIRST for me.

I have finally come to like and accept me, as I am, as an amazing human soul. The most fantastic thing is I have finally stopped worrying or caring about what other people might think of me!

You might be interested in my Inner Weight Release Toolkit, which is a collection of Relaxation Audios and Resources that I have personally been using on a daily basis for a few months.

With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston

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Unconscious Commitments to Struggle

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Amanda

Over the last few weeks my journey of exploration into “why can’t I bring any money into my life?” has taken me down a lot of different routes and I have discovered some very valuable things about myself.

A few weeks ago Kristin Morelli said that I might “have an addiction to struggle” and I have come to the conclusion she was right.

We all tend to operate according to commitments that we have made or beliefs that we have taken on at some point in time and most of these are unconscious. Interestingly, these are stored as memories in our cells and have a positive or negative energetic charge to them.

Most of us are running on autopilot and are honouring commitments to ways of thinking, feeling, being and acting in the world that are not even ours!

Most of them belong to our families or ancestors or past lives and were given to us or thrust upon us as truth. However, they are not our conscious choice.

Some of these energetic patterns are very powerful. I have not had a good relationship with money for several lifetimes and there was nothing very positive from the family lines either.

I can see how I have been very committed to hardship, struggle, lack of deserving, not enough, not valuing myself or my products/services, fear, hard work for no reward, judgments of myself and money and a fear of not shining out in the world in case someone laughed at me or tried to destroy me.

I can see the results of those patterns simply be looking around at my results in my life.

As many of you may know, I read Tarot cards, so I used the cards to ask myself 18 very powerful questions about what was keeping me stuck in life, where the energetic patterns had come from and the gifts for clearing them. It was like being hit by an energetic and spiritual steam-roller!

The comfort and familiarity of those beliefs and patterns is what has kept me stuck, even though they have not served me and I have put myself and my family through a lot of financial pain to keep them running.

Making the change into new and unfamiliar territory is a scary thought, especially as it seems to involve me SHINING my light out into the world, being seen, interacting with and serving people, helping to enrich their lives, using the gifts I have been given, being totally comfortable with me in my own skin, trusting in the Universe and allowing life to unfold for me – rather than me having to be in charge.

Yes, all of that came out of my personal explorations, especially when I asked myself the pointed question about “Who would I be in the world without this addiction to struggle?”

There is only one challenge with digging up old beliefs and patterns – I can’t really hide behind them anymore. As they have now come into my awareness, it is a conscious choice as to whether I carry on as I have been before (in pain) or take a huge leap into the unknown and let the Universe support me!

Once you become aware of your commitments and patterns, yo can then release them. It starts with a decision to let go of them. We will be talking more about ways to release these patterns in the next few blog posts.

Have a great day.

With abundant blessings.

Amanda Goldston

 

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Breaking the Cycle

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Amanda

Richard Wilkins of Ministry of Inspiration is a UK based Inspirational Speaker and a truly amazing human being. In the 1980s he had a very successful property company and was living the “millionaire lifestyle” with a mansion, fleet of Ferraris and all the trappings of success. Overnight he lost it all, including his wife and family.

In his darkest hour, as he was contemplating taking his own life, he recalled a conversation he had overheard where someone had said “Paul will get there one day.”

Getting There

He started to wonder where “there” was, as everyone he knew seemed to “almost there” or “nearly there.” He himself had been “nearly there” but had never been happy.

What he realised what that “there” is not somewhere outside or a distant place. It is, in fact, right here and now, right in this moment. Most people take actions or buy things in order to feel good and it is frequently said that “money does not buy happiness” or that the accumulation if external stuff rarely brings the good feelings that we hope it will bring us. That is because the feelings come from inside of us and are not attached to anything external.

This revelation changed his life.

Choose Your Life

The next part of his talk made a huge difference for me. It is often said we all have the ability to choose how we feel and what we do and how we live our lives. I usually cringe when I hear (often very rich and successful) personal development gurus say that because I think to myself, “Yes, it is alright for you, but, my life stinks. It is not what I would choose, but I don’t seem to be able to change it!”

In an ideal world, we would all choose to be happy, successful, healthy, with great relationships and friendships and living a wonderful life. I had certainly found I was not choosing an amazing life. So, why not? Why have I created such a crap life for ,myself? Sometimes I really detest this idea of I am responsible of everything that comes into my life!

The answer is very simple.

Who is choosing – Me or the Script?

If I am experiencing something that I would not ideally choose, then that is not who I truly am – it is me reading from The SCRIPT!

What is the Script?

The script is the complete set of beliefs, actions, expected behaviours, cultural ideas and societal rules that we were handed as a child and which has merely grown with us over time. It contains all the ideas such as “life should be a struggle” or “money does not grow on trees” and all these things which govern our behaviours and or reactions to situations.

For me it contained things like “when you have financial challenges, you should feel sad and depressed and struggle to solve the problem” or “money will run out in the first few days of the month and then you struggle” or “problems get solved by efforting, not by intuition.”

The Script is not who you truly are, however many people lives their lives by reading from the conditioned script and think that is who they really are. Then they wonder why they don’t feel good and they don’t know why they don’t feel good.

If you find yourself doing something or experiencing something, that does not feel good, then ask yourself, “Is this something I would choose – if I could choose?” and if not, ask yourself, “Is this me that is choosing or is the Script that is choosing and I am just reading off the Script?”

It is an incredibly powerful thing to do.

Richard Wilkins is of the opinion that you cannot change, eliminate or even re-write the script. This makes a lot of sense to me, as I have attempted to do this for years with various personal development programmes. I have made changes, but they have never lasted.

Going Beyond the Script

What you can do, however, is go beyond the script. Awareness is the key to this. When you become aware that you are operating or reacting from with the script, you can then pause and ask yourself “who is choosing?” In that moment, you can take over the choosing from a place of higher energy, higher vibration and higher consciousness. You are not fighting the script, you are accepting it for what it is and then going beyond it.

Who you are is who you choose to be. It is not the script that you have carried with you all your life.

As I started to think about this and apply it to my financial situation, I began to feel so much lighter. I have been running the patterns of how someone is supposed to react in a life of struggle!

This also comes back to the questions that Kristin Morelli asked me “Who would I be without struggle?” – The beautiful, magnificent, shining, marvellous, infinite spirit being by the name of Amanda Goldston – and “what am I trying to avoid feeling by staying in struggle?” – well, that is feelings of love, joy, peace, well-being and abundance.

Actually, it probably states in my script that I should not feel those fantastic feelings, especially when I am struggling with money and I certainly should not trust the Universe to provide for me!

My good friend Ken MacLean and the Guys from the Interview With Spirit show have had a lot to say recently about the power of feelings, especially reaching for good ones. I will talk more about that in the next blog post.

All my internal searching over the last few weeks has been very valuable, as it has given me a lot of insight into the beliefs and patterns contained in my script. It is a great relief to know that I don’t really have to attempt to clear them away (quite a futile task). All I have to do is choose a reaction or a response that makes me feel better than the old, non-serving, habitual patterns.

Richard Wilkins has some terrific free videos on his website. I would highly recommend checking them out.

http://www.theministryofinspiration.com/

With abundant blessings.

Amanda Goldston

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Repeating Patterns

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Amanda

So, here we are again – the beginning of September – and I find myself running the exact same patterns that I have run over the past couple of months. Money has come in during the last week of the month from increasing the overdraft (which I had long resisted doing) and from Greg’s salary and I have felt pretty good about that whilst it was in the bank account.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly money evaporates when “necessities,” such as food, fuel for the car, new tyres for the car, shoes for the kids and haircuts have built up over a period of time and suddenly you can do them all.

I have been trying to allow myself to feel lighter and freer around money and having money and that worked OK, to some degree, whilst there was money in the bank. Once the first of the month came around and all the bill payments went out of the account – dink, dink, dink, dink, gone – I started to go into total FEAR and up came the belief that there would have run out of money by about the 8th of the month.

It was later in the month this time round, because we have extended the overdraft! I started telling anyone who would listen – and myself in particular – that we were back in the same pattern. It makes the month painfully hard when I have decided on the 1st of the month that there is not going to be enough to get through the month. In a lot of ways,

August was a hard month as I had been struggling almost every day to find money to feed us and spent a large part of each day just trying to exist – Not fun at all!

I was already creating all the mental pictures of struggle, hardship, having to say “NO” and all the other patterns I have been running. I was practising and perfecting these in my head and subsequently feeling very heavy, bad and uncomfortable about next week and the week after!

This is a bizarre thing about worrying about the future – I end up feeling really bad NOW and the future has not got here yet! Our heart and mind do not really recognise time.

Everything, especially feelings, happen in real time, right now, whether they relate to something that is in the past, in this present moment or now.

I have been reaching into my feelings recently and trying to really feel and experience them. Despite Greg having just been paid, all our needs for the day having been met and some money left over, I spent most of 1st September in a place of sadness and almost depression. I felt like I wanted to cry.

So I am feeling bad when I have absolutely no money and I feel equally bad when I am in an OK position and my needs are met for the day!!! Huh! How does that work then??

Clearly there is something else going on here, that has nothing to do with the amount of notes and coins called money that I have in my purse or my bank account!

What I have learnt over the last few weeks is that I have to use these negative situations and feelings as a springboard to discover what is really going on. I decided too feel into the energy of money.

The energy of money felt very heavy, laden with stress, burden and responsibility. Ikky and Yukky came to mind. Hmm, that is probably not the best feeling to be having if I desire to attract more money into my life!

Perhaps a lighter, kinder, more loving approach to money or to myself might be more useful? Perhaps I have still not totally released my beliefs over deserving-ness to receive or maybe my ability to actually receive and be grateful for what has come in, needs some attention.

By the time I got to the end of the day I was feeling very low. I decided it was time for some drastic action.

I had been planning on going out to listen to one of my favourite inspirational speakers, Richard Wilkins of the Ministry of Inspiration. As I got to the end of the day, I felt so bad that I almost did not go. I am very glad I went because he gave me a completely fresh perspective and helped me turn my whole thinking and feeling around.

In the next blog post I will share some of his fantastic wisdom and practical tools from his programme “Broadband Consciousness.”

With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston

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How to Release “Addiction to Struggle”

Posted on August 28, 2011 by Amanda

This whole process was triggered off by questions I sent to David and Kristin Morelli for help in releasing my inability to draw money into my life. They replied to me in a video, which you can see by clicking the link below.

http://www.everythingisenergy.com/2011/08/d-k-today-episode-4-experiencing-financial-freedom/

The main questions asked were

1.       “How does Struggle serve me?”

2.        “Why would I want struggle in my life?”

3.       “Who would I be WITHOUT Struggle?” and

4.       “What am I not allowing myself to feel by running the struggle pattern?”

 

David and Kristin suggested I allow myself to really FEEL into these questions. I could not do questions 3 and 4 initially.

This is what I did.

I sat with a notepad and pen (and a cup of tea!) and kept asking myself the questions over and over again. I asked myself what STRUGGLE really felt like and immediately got this very heavy sensation in my body.

Many of the great teachers tell us to really FEEL into the feelings in our body, so that they can be acknowledged and released.

This is the point where it is very easy to think, “I’ll come back to this later!”

I had to be prepared to give it the time to sit there and be willing for all of it to come to the surface. I am truly sick of having no money, so whatever part of me is pushing it away needs to be found, acknowledged, loved and released.

All sorts of thoughts, ideas, money “logic” and justification then started to come to the surface. I let them all come up, however bizarre, strange or irrational they sounded to me. Clearly if my subconscious was prepared to reveal all this to me, then I needed to be fully present and listening to it all.

There were several instances when I thought what a truly, horrible, spiteful, vindictive, controlling person I have been. It is really quite amazing that I have got anyone left in my life!

Writing it seemed to help because it also slowed the process down, so that I really felt each one. Most of them had the same heavy, icky, yucky, horrible feeling to them, so there was not a lot of difference in them.

When I got to the ones about Greg leaving me, then there was a feeling of real panic. It was almost terror and I started to cry at that point. This probably helped the releasing process. By this time, my physical body had become so heavy, I could not actually move. This was probably just as well as I felt a strong desire to get up and do something else at this point.

Kristin and David had told me to “Just own it” and in doing so, it would start to clear. Interestingly this is what happened. By just being able to admit to myself that I have created so much drama, trauma and struggle in my life by those thoughts, feelings and actions, they started to dissipate. Writing them down helped and then going through them with Greg later seemed to release a lot of the emotional charge.

6 Human Needs

As I was doing this, I also applied a process called the 6 Human Needs, which I first learnt from Tony Robbins. Human Beings have a series of 6 basic needs for survival and thriving. The first 4 needs can be met from either a positive perspective or a negative one. The last 2 can only truly be from a positive perspective.

They are:

1)      A need for CERTAINTY

2)      A need for UNCERTAINTY

3)      A need for SIGNIFICANCE

4)      A need for LOVE and CONNECTION

5)      A need for GROWTH

6)      A need for CONTRIBUTION

As I looked at those in light of our situation and all the benefits to NO MONEY that I had just found, I realised I was getting my needs met in the first 4 areas very much on the negative side.

We had a certain amount of money coming in. I knew what that was, when it would come in and from where. I was in control of that and had shut off the possibility of anything else coming in from anywhere else.

We lived on the knife edge of uncertainty with the slightest little thing being able to throw us into financial drama, crisis and drama at any moment.

I was the most important person in all of this, controlling, dominating and manipulating everyone and everything. That is a huge responsibility and a very noble one.  That makes me a very significant warrior!

No money keeps the family united in struggle and no-one can ever leave because of a lack of money. We may not have had any money for food, but we had love. It is also a great connector to friends and other people who are struggling.

Ouch, ouch and triple ouch!

Releasing

I made a rule that if something unsavoury has come up from the depths of my psyche, it is not going back in or down, so the only option is RELEASE and CLEARING!

Through working with people on Clearing Limiting Beliefs I have come to realise that change can happen in an instant. When someone makes a choice that something no longer serves them, a decision to think, feel and act differently can happen in an instant. It does not have to be a long drawn out process.

I made that decision to release all this non-serving stuff and immediately began to feel a lot lighter. I made the decision that I am sick of struggle, trauma and drama. I would really rather let the Universe handle all that heavy stuff.

My choice is now EASE, FLOW and FUN.

David and Kristin were right. You cannot heal and clear something until you fully acknowledge what is there to be dealt with.

More ramblings on this journey of self-discovery shortly.

With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston

 

 

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Addicted to Struggle

Posted on August 26, 2011 by Amanda

How does Struggle serve me? Who would I be without struggle?

These two questions were presented to me this week after a comment from my friends Kristin and David Morelli that I might be “addicted to struggle” which would go a long way to explaining  my current financial situation.

I have looked at this issue before, but more from an intellectual perspective. I had never really felt into it, so here we go.

I sat in the garden with a cup of tea and a notebook and started  to feel really heavy and quite physically sick, so I thought this must be the vibration I am looking for.

Poor Me

There was a lot of Poor Me because I can’t do stuff on my own, I need someone to take care of me, look after me and provide for me. OK, that might mean I have to have a level of obedience to the “hand that feedeth,” however I could also kick back against that and rebel against it.

There will always be a saviour

By staying poor someone or something would surely come along to save me.

Me the Saviour

I have also had a bit of that saviour in me. When things have got tough it has given me huge pleasure to pull out a little bit of money that I had hidden away at some point, to stop everyone else wasting it, and save the day at just the right moment.

Loyalty to Family Patterns

There was a loyalty to and affinity with family patterns, as my family on both sides had always struggled and in some ways still are struggling.

Who would be holding their hand out?

This then led into the questions of “I f I had lots of money, who would be holding their hands out, expecting support?” Hmm, maybe no money is serving as a bit of a protector here!

This led into the thoughts of “who else might be trying to steal from me or who would be demanding money, that I may not necessarily agree that I should be paying?” There has been a lot of fear around and news items to do with theft by governments, people being made bankrupt and having their assets seized over tax. For us personally we have had major issues with our mortgage company and some of their very unpleasant behaviour and other companies claiming money.

No money as a protector

If I stayed poor, then I have the protector of being able to say to them “go away, I have no money, I can’t pay you anything, (even if I did owe you anything).”

Can’t make mistakes

So, if I have no money, then I have to say NO to people and things. I can’t buy stuff, so I can’t  make mistakes, I won’t lose money on bad products and poor investments, therefore no-one can come asking for money.

No-one can demand or expect anything of me

This means no-one can demand anything of me because I have not got the money to do anything, therefore I can’t do anything in life, so I won’t fail. I can’t’/won’t stand out, so therefore I can be the same average, mediocre and safe as everyone else I know.

I spend so much of my time in trauma and drama and figuring out how to survive for the day that I can’t create any products  or finish anything I have started and then I have not got the funds to promote them properly, so they don’t get marketed, I don’t get rejected and I don’t make any money.

Money won’t get wasted

No money  is actually a good thing because then it won’t get wasted on useless rubbish and pointless stuff.

Can’t get rejected

If I don’t have any money, then I can’t move into circles with people who do have money because they would only laugh at me and reject me anyway.

Noble to struggle and be a martyr

I get the opportunity to be a total martyr, putting everybody else’s needs before my own. I can buy the kids stuff but not me.  Of course, it is very noble to struggle, to work long and hard for no reward because then it brings me closer to God or my creator. I have to work hard, as results achieved without hard work or struggle are not really worth anything. There is no value to anything that comes too easy.

A football ticket

At this point I seemed to be running out of ideas, although I was not convinced I had got to the bottom of it.  I kept asking myself “how does struggle serve me when no-one can buy anything they want to buy?” Suddenly a thought popped into my head about a bill to be paid on Friday. It was for my husband, Greg’s, football season ticket. This is one of the few items of pleasure he has.

This triggered off a huge tirade of the real thoughts, feelings and emotions. By this time, I was feeling so dejected that I actually could not move physically. That was probably just as well, given what was about to come to the surface.

The pain of pleasure

How dare he be spending money on something he loves? I don’t like football, so he shouldn’t either. Clearly if he loved me, he would not want to go and he would stay at home and watch it on the expensive Sky TV channels that I did not want to buy either.

The Control Master

So there was a definite joy, pleasure and power out of being the Control Master with money and deciding who can or can’t do what with money, depending on whether I judge that to be a pleasurable experience or whether it is a waste of money. I don’t really spend anything on myself and if I do it is for my own self-improvement and growth (as I am not perfect and need fixing), I put everyone else’s need before my own, I spend my life in martyrdom tied to the computer, working long and hard trying to make paltry sums of money.

Everyone should be a martyr

So, as I don’t spend on pleasurable things for me, everyone else can have just the bare necessities but no-one can have pleasurable things for themselves because that means that there is only me in martyrdom and everyone else should suffer in martyrdom alongside me.

Pleasure is not allowed, as there is no money for pleasurable frivolities.

So, I am the boss and everyone does as I tell them to do or they don’t get any money for anything they want.

The kids come first and Greg can suffer alongside me. He should sacrifice his pleasures for the greater good of feeding and clothing the family and living in bare existence because that is what noble martyrs do.

How is it that money always seems to show up for him in some way shape or form when he wants to go to a football match or pay for his season ticket?

Frivolous waste and Bare necessities

Money wasted on frivolous pleasure items could have been spent on food and bare necessities. Anyone wasting money on pointless pleasure items will be made to feel great guilt and shame because then the flow of money will be blocked, when all known sources of money have been exhausted. Then there will then be no money for food or other necessities, so that we can then get into blame, recriminations and regrets as money was wasted and not managed wisely.

Struggle keeps the family together

Anyway, struggling keeps the family together in love, closeness and struggling against a common enemy. If we had money, they might all go off in their own directions, doing their own thing in far flung parts of the world and I would be left all alone. I would feel rejected and abandoned.

No money stops us splitting up

So, moving into very uncomfortable territory now – if we had money, would Greg still want to stay with me?

With money, Greg might leave me and find someone nicer and someone who shares his passions, especially football. So if we are caught together in the death grip of a huge mortgage, no-one can go anywhere.

As a downside to being without struggle, then one or both of us might raise our vibration, so we end up joyful and happy. That would be very bad because members of the opposite sex could be attracted to that high energy and high sexual energy and so one or other might end up going off with someone else who has a matching high energy vibration.

The creativity of struggle

Anyway, when we have no money and plenty of struggle and drama, Greg and I come together in great creativity to solve the problems and fight the common enemy. The bigger the drama, the more intense the conversation.  We can’t really discuss goals and future plans because we haven’t got any money to do anything anyway!

Control of Money

As I have controlled everything, I have complete control over all the money that comes into the family. It is no wonder Greg feels resentful. All his money disappears into “the common pot” and there is not even enough for him to buy a few DVDS or his football ticket. I have felt resentful over things he has bought, which I have considered wasteful and he has probably felt the same way about my spending, which has brought us to the point of nothing.

Your money and my money

He has always had a huge desire to support his family, yet his salary has never really seemed like it was enough to do the things we wanted to do. I have often said that “his salary pays the bills and my income is for pleasure”.  Now, there is an interesting pattern for him! That has sort of worked fine, whilst I was bringing in income. As soon as that stopped, the bills got paid and nothing else!

Greg’s feelings

Turns out that Greg’s own self-worth and self-esteem was so low that he was frightened of me leaving him and scared to death that no-one else would want him! This poor man has put up with me for 22 years!

So with carrying around all of this stuff, it is not really surprising that I have had issues with my physical weight for most of my life.

Having looked at and really felt all of this, I have to say I feel a lot lighter and the atmosphere in our house seems to be much better

Now to look at the next part of the question, as to “who would I be without struggle?”

With abundant blessings.

Amanda Goldston

 

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