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Could Allowing Yourself to Feel Good Help You Live Better?
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Gabrielle Bernstein is a spiritual superstar. At this point, she’s written so many bestselling books it’s hard to keep track of them. Her newest—Super Attractor: Methods for Manifesting a Life Beyond Your Wildest Dreams—is all about helping you create your most spectacular life (first by recognizing you deserve to live it). “Being a Super Attractor means that what I believe is what I receive,” she writes. “I can co-create the world I want to see by aligning with good-feeling emotions and directing them toward my desires.” While it sounds like she’s just straight-up bragging, her message is that you, too, are a Super Attractor. The book, then, is about teaching you to claim that power. Start by diving into this excerpt from the book, below.
It’s Good to Feel Good
Of all the blocks to our Super Attractor power, the biggest is our resistance to feeling good. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself: Have you come to rely on fear as a form of protection against feeling disappointment or hurt? It becomes so easy to slip into this way of thinking that you may not even be aware of it. Fear can feel like a natural way to protect yourself and stay in control. We’ve all come to be far more comfortable in a state of fear than in a place of joy and faith. You may be thinking, “Wait, I don’t walk around feeling scared all the time. How am I relying on fear?” The answer is that fear takes many forms, and emotions you likely recognize—such as anxiety, defensiveness, judgment, and the impulse to control—really stem from a sense of fear. Think of fear as the opposite of love. When you rely on fear, as most of us do, you are disconnected from the free-flowing love of the Universe.
RELATED: 6 Ways to Conquer Fear for More Happiness and Success
The unfortunate truth is, many of us are addicted to fear. We’ve become so accustomed to the fearful projections of the world that we don’t trust that things can be good. Unconsciously we think that if we focus on the good stuff, we will lose control, be unsafe, or be susceptible to disappointment. The ego has convinced us that “good” is limited and eventually our luck will run out. We suspect that anything really good is probably too good to be true. Society has convinced us that if something is worth having, it requires struggle, heroic perseverance, and sacrifice. Therefore, we’ve become addicted to suffering, and this mindset actually increases our struggling! When we believe we need to suffer, we tell the Universe it’s what we want.
Remember the message of Chapter 1: the Universe always delivers. If we believe in suffering, we will suffer.
What I’m about to say may startle you. I want you to read this next sentence as many times as you need to in order for it to sink in: In order to truly live as a Super Attractor, we must accept that good things can come easily.
This is likely the opposite of everything you’ve ever been taught! This is because most of us have it all backward. For our whole lives, we’ve held on to fear-based belief systems to feel safe. We believe in thoughts like “I have to work incredibly hard to succeed,” “I’m too old to have a baby,” and “I’m terrible at relationships.” Can you see how all these thoughts are backed with an energy of resistance? Our resistance to feeling good is what blocks the good that we want to attract. The moment we release that resistance and let ourselves feel good, then everything we truly desire begins to come to us naturally. When we feel good, we attract solutions rather than problems. When we feel good, life flows naturally.
I know it’s hard to get your head around this. Many students of spiritual practices (including me) believe this concept but have a difficult time applying it. Fear has a strong hold on us. We resist feeling good so much that we expect life to be hard.
By way of example, here is how fear presented itself in the early part of my career. In the first decade of building my business, I experienced a lot of joy and faith. But beneath that joy and faith was an ever-present undercurrent of fear. I was scared that if I weren’t working my ass off, then my career would all fall apart. This belief system stemmed from childhood. When I was young, I picked up the story that “If I don’t do it, no one else will.” I spent my life believing that I had to strive hard and overwork in order to get what I wanted. My career continued to move forward because the joy and faith were stronger than the fear. But even though I was having fun and achieving success, I always felt as if it had to be hard or it wouldn’t continue to work. No matter how inspired I felt or what I accomplished, I always felt as if I was fighting, and that there was always more to do. The belief “If I don’t do it, no one else will” was blocking my Super Attractor power. And even though the Universe presented me with a lot of opportunity and success, it didn’t come without struggle. I knew deep down that there had to be a better way, but for a long time I wasn’t ready to truly access it.
RELATED: 5 Ways to Cultivate Optimism for More Happiness
It wasn’t until 2016 that I hit bottom with my workaholism. My struggling and stress finally took me down. My belief that I had to do it all created a world where I felt very unsupported, fearful, and alone. My body was falling apart, I was barely holding my business together, and my relationships were suffering. Then I hit bottom. Often, a bottom is a moment of surrender, and in this case it was for me. In this surrendered state, I said the words out loud: “There has to be a better way.” I could no longer resist help from others, and most of all I couldn’t continue to resist support from the Universe. Once I hit this bottom, I received a gift. I could finally see how I was terrified of feeling good. I realized that I equated feeling good with losing control. Worst of all, I was afraid of surrendering to the higher power of the Universe. I believed that I had to rely on myself and that I had to suffer to succeed. While this belief system was deeply ingrained in my psyche, the Universe had begun to present a spiritual solution.
The moment I hit my knees and surrendered to the Universe, clear direction was presented to me. As soon as I became willing to change my belief that I was unsupported, support came through! It first showed up as intuition. When we realign with the Universe, we can receive loving direction as an inner knowing. Sometimes it can come as a hit of inspiration or a download of information. This time I heard very clear intuitive direction. I was journaling one morning and my hand started to move faster than usual. My handwriting shifted and the words on the page took on a different tone. I knew that I was receiving direction from a Universal presence. These words came onto the page: Pay attention to the places where you feel supported. Feel the feelings of support, and continue to feel them more.
Excerpt from Super Attractor: Methods for Manifesting a Life beyond Your Wildest Dreams reprinted with permission from Hay House. (Hay House Inc., September 24, 2019)
The Nutritious Life Editors are a team of healthy lifestyle enthusiasts who not only subscribe to — and live! — the 8 Pillars of a Nutritious Life, but also have access to some of the savviest thought leaders in the health and wellness space — including our founder and resident dietitian, Keri Glassman. From the hottest trends in wellness to the latest medical science, we stay on top of it all in order to deliver the info YOU need to live your most nutritious life.
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