by Linda-Ann Stewart

A while back, I read an article that talked about your readiness to accept abundance. The author mentioned that you sometimes don’t receive the good you desire because you don’t feel worthy. His advice was to get over it. Though your feelings of worthiness tend to contribute to the good you can accept, or the lack thereof, it isn’t the whole picture. I’m sure you know successful people who don’t feel worthy. Why else would there be an epidemic of addictions in the towers of success? Alcoholism, workaholism, addiction to prescription and non-prescription drugs just to make it through life.

Successful people have opened themselves up to succeed in business. They’ve accepted all that goes into it. They’ve removed their beliefs in failure, they’ve changed their attitude about their business, their financial situation, and their lives to create the right atmosphere for their success. They may have been motivated by feelings of unworthiness, a need to prove themselves to someone, a need to fill the empty place within them with success, or some other motivation. They have achieved abundance, and they’ve worked hard for it, but they still don’t feel worthy of their own success.

On the other hand, I’ve known many good, talented, hardworking people who struggled all of their lives, but never achieve success in business. They deserved to succeed, just as much as anybody else, but they didn’t. And they probably felt just as worthy, or unworthy, as the successful person. They blamed bad luck, or the economy, or something else for not succeeding when in reality it is their own belief systems that held them back.

When you feel bad about yourself, you might bounce checks as a way of verifying your bad opinion of yourself. Or you might turn down opportunities because you don’t feel you’ve suffered enough. That was one of my patterns. I was told by people who’d worked hard and ended up with nothing but an empty pinata that I didn’t deserve what good I’d manifested. For a long time, I believed them. I couldn’t allow myself to be successful until I’d struggled as much as the talented people who’d never achieved their potential.

The article I read reminded me that you don’t get what you deserve. You get what you expect, and what you’ve identified with. The Universe rewards your consciousness. If you have a consciousness of failure, that’s what you get. If you have a consciousness of health, that’s what you receive. Whatever your consciousness, that is what you get to experience.

Do you identify with life flowing smoothly, and everything working out, no matter what the appearance? Then so be it. Do you identify with a statement like, “I can’t do anything about my job or my finances?” If so, then you get to wallow in that. Your consciousness attracts conditions in the outer world to fulfill your inner beliefs. The conditions of your life are a direct reflection of your consciousness.

Instead of waiting until you feel worthy of abundance, health, or good relationships, why don’t you begin to identify with it now? Rather than reaching outwardly for your goal, begin to pray for the consciousness of it. Raising your consciousness to accept what you desire will adjust any old, restrictive attitudes. When you have the consciousness of your desire and have identified with your good, then your goal will show up in your life. Whether you feel you deserve it or not.

Copyright 1999, 2010 Linda Ann Stewart
All Rights Reserved

self improvement, self help, personal growth, personal development, motivation