Claiming what you want 

Finding the fuel for change

There are a thousand million reasons why we don’t claim what we want.  We think we aren’t worth it, can’t have it, don’t deserve it, are incapable of it, don’t know how to claim it, aren’t qualified, and on and on.  In fact frequently we keep our desires hidden even from ourselves.  We don’t want anyone to see what we really want because we feel shame, inadequacy or unworthy of what we desire.  Often underneath it all we feel that what we desire might un-include us from our groups, friends, families or society.  If we really investigate our relationship with desire we might even find that we have a negative relationship to desire itself.  As if desire is something bad or sinful.

We aren’t really taught to focus on what we desire.  Instead we are taught to “do the right thing”.  Meaning to do what everyone else does and what has been culturally agreed upon and accepted.  Most people are living in this way and they don’t even fully realize that they are not living in alignment or connected with what they desire.  If fact they’ve deluded themselves to whatever degree they’ve been able to that they actually want what they’ve been told they want without ever investigating for themselves if its actually true.  So it gets really tricky to see the truth of ourselves and sometimes the only way that you can notice that you aren’t living connected to your desire, but rather to simply “do” this thing called life, is a subtle sense of low energy.  Other signs are not feeling an aliveness inside, not feeling your heart open, noticing a flatness or dullness or feeling unable to connect to yourself or others fully.  

Really what needs to happen is that you need to begin to see how the activities you are currently engaged in, people/groups you hang out with or ways in which you spend your day to day activities don’t resonate for you.  It may not be that all things, people or activities fall into that category, but if you begin to really honestly take a look you will find some that don’t resonate and yet you are continuing to engage with them. 

Committing to yourself 

Energizing effort

If you are really honest you should begin to feel a sense of frustration with engaging in those things which don’t resonate for you.  Often what happens is people get to this point of feeling frustration (or sense of feeling stuck) and perceiving the frustration as bad, so they look for ways to alleviate this tension that is building.  They might watch a movie, play a video game, eat some food, drink some wine, have sex, scroll Facebook, etc.  They now feel less tension, but they also have less energy for change.  Alleviating the build up of tension will always drop the energy that is available to you to move towards what it is you truly desire.  

With this drop in energy your consciousness also drops into a state of powerlessness or helplessness to be able to do anything about your own life.  You actually believe that you can’t do anything.  That its just hopeless and quite possibly will just always be this way.  Essentially that you can’t change, and you really feel that you changing is not up to you.  That its up to some external circumstances or forces, and that unless the circumstances (which include your body) somehow magically changes, you’re doomed.  This is disempowerment.  This is disconnection.  This is lack of awareness of your self.  And it fucking sucks.  

Moving from perceiving powerlessness to realizing that you are the one with the power is a tremendous shift in consciousness and energy.  When you are brutally honest with yourself and claim what you want the power arises, the energy arises, the determination arises.  You become unstoppable.  Its going to happen.  There is no longer any doubt or question about it.  Yes there is work, yes there is stuff to be done, but rather than it feeling like draining effort it becomes energizing effort.  Effort which produces what you desire, which is always fulfilling rather than depleting even if the physical body gets tired.  This is the difference between acting from your alignment/desires versus working from a place of nonalignment with self.  When you are out of alignment everything will feel like massively hard work even if its just cleaning out your refrigerator or taking a shower.  When you’re in alignment the focus is no longer on the activity, but on your desire and alignment.  The activity itself becomes a non-issue and your desire the only thing that matters.

Discover what you truly desire.  Bring it into focus multiple times a day.  Speak it out loud.  Share it will people even if you feel timid or unworthy of it.  This will bring it more and more into the field of your awareness and strengthen your commitment to you.  

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado