Assertiveness for Earth Angels: How to Be Loving Instead of Too Nice (9 page)

Worry

Worry arises when you try to control the future by figuring out what bad things might happen so that you can prevent them.

The trouble with worry as a control device is that the opposite of what you desire always occurs. What you worry about tends to happen. It's an extremely low-vibrational energy that causes tension in your face, body, and mind.

Worry pushes away other people, who are consciously or unconsciously repelled by the low energy of this emotion. So, worrying can leave you feeling lonely and afraid at a time when you need support. In addition, by obsessively worrying about something, you'll tend to manifest that very thing in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So instead of helping you control the future, worry actually brings about everything you
don't
want. It's probably one of the worst defense mechanisms that you can adopt.

Worry can be an inherited habit. If you saw your parents worrying a lot, you may have adopted this behavior as a normal part of life. Sometimes parents feel that this is a requirement of love. Some parents even tell their children: “I only worry about you because I love you.” And then the child grows up confusing worry with love.

Of course it's normal to be worried about our children! But when we realize that this emotion helps nothing and can often bring about negative results, we become more motivated to turn this around.

Worry can become an addictive habit as well. (Addictions are obsessive and compulsive behaviors that create temporary relief and happiness, followed by long-term pain.) Worry can briefly give you the feeling that you'll be able to master and control the situation, so it becomes your go-to coping habit. In addition to the behavioral addiction to this emotion, excessive worry can also lead to substance addictions that you turn to in an attempt to calm yourself down.

People who worry a great deal have a sense of doom-and-gloom about their future. They expect the worst, often as a way of avoiding being surprised or disappointed if the worst in fact occurs. These are often people who have had challenging and harsh lives, and all they've known is pain and betrayal in their relationships. So it's no wonder that they worry that more pain will come their way.

Chronic worry can suppress your immune system, and you might also experience symptoms of panic attacks and muscular tension. Medical studies show that chronic worriers are more prone to cardiovascular disease and other illness.

The first thing to know is that you can make a better future for yourself without having to resort to worry. So before you start worrying about worrying, let's talk about some real options for you:

1.
Avoid stimulants in food and beverages.
Coffee, tea, colas, chocolate, sugar, and other stimulants can make your body nervous and tense, and your mind will attribute this tension to anxiety.

2.
Exercise.
Blowing off steam through cardiovascular exercise such as jogging, running, using an elliptical trainer, yoga, fast walking, swimming, bicycling, dancing, and so forth is a wonderful way to reduce or eliminate the worry habit.

3.
Turn worries into prayers.
Worries never help anything, but prayers always help everything. The next time you're fretting about something, frame your concern into a complete sentence. Either write the worry down on paper, type it on your computer, or say the complete sentence out loud. By facing your worries, you defuse their power over you. Worries, left inside and unconscious, are what create the low-level rumblings of anxiety in the background of your mind and emotions. Next, put the words
God, please help me with this
. . . in front of the worry. You have now turned your worry into a prayer.

As you know, God and the angels can only help you if you give them permission. They respect your freewill choices, and will only intervene if you ask. So by turning worries into prayers, you have just allowed heaven to support you with miraculous solutions.

Dark Night of the Soul

The dark night of the soul occurs when you confront your innermost fears and feel them completely and deeply. For most people, this means facing issues of life and death, the meaning of your life, and whether life is worth living. The dark night of the soul is similar to the initiations that ancient Egyptian candidates for high priest- and priestesshood would endure.

In that culture, you'd be enclosed in a sarcophagus, which is like a coffin, for several days. In that enclosed environment, with no light and just enough air for you not to suffocate, your mind would terrify you as your fears came alive as very realistic hallucinations.

At the end of two or three days, when the sarcophagus was opened up, if you were still alive, you passed the initiation. Some people actually died from fear, even though it was just in their minds. This shows how terrifying our thoughts can be if we were to really confront them head-on.

In a dark night of the soul, you feel totally alone in the world, completely misunderstood, as if you don't fit in anywhere. You feel like your life doesn't matter, so what's the use of carrying on?

Like the ancient Egyptian initiation, the dark night of the soul puts you in a position of life or death. Some people don't survive, because they decide life isn't worth living, and they tragically take their own lives. For some, this suicide takes a slower pace, with the person using toxic addictions to gradually kill themselves.

But if you can stay with the emotions, including the very painful ones, the dark night of the soul can actually lift your whole life to a higher and clearer level.

Nobody wishes for a dark night of the soul, and it's not something that you can create artificially. Basically, it just happens when you least expect it, usually because something has triggered a deep and dark emotional place inside of you.

Dark nights of the soul, like every part of life, serve a healing and useful function. The dark night of the soul is a mirror that you hold up to yourself so that you can see the contents of your ego's fears. A lot of the painful emotions you're experiencing are connected to situations that happened in your childhood. Present-day situations are triggering painful memories.

Don't numb your pain or run away from your emotions. They're your teachers! Just keep asking your painful feelings,
What are you here to teach me?

Ultimately, it will boil down to this: forgiving yourself and everyone who has ever hurt you is the only way to escape the pain. You don't need to forgive their actions. You definitely
should
still stand up for yourself and be truthful about your feelings. And you don't want to stand for any form of abuse. But forgiveness is essential as the ultimate detox. Let go of the past in all directions of time and finally be free!

CHAPTER SEVEN

BE YOUR OWN
AUTHORITY FIGURE

O
ne of the top questions I'm asked is whether someone's dream will be successful or not. Usually people will tell me that they have a dream career, and they wonder whether it's safe to make the change from their current job and move forward in the direction they desire.

As an example, people will often ask me if they're a healer. What they really mean by that question is: “Could I be successful as a professional healer?” They know they're a healer because they've had many experiences where their healing energy has helped someone. But what they don't know for certain is whether they could make it a full-time occupation.

When someone asks me this question, of course I can give him or her a reading. I can see the energy around everyone and how it relates to their ideal career and life purpose. This is something I've been doing with my friends since I was a kid.

While I'm certainly happy to do career and life-purpose readings, what I'd prefer is for people to become their own authority figures. Because what troubles me during these readings is the feeling that the person is giving his or her power away to me. So I always do my best to empower him or her.

We're raised to be
dis
empowered, unfortunately. In school, we're taught that we must raise our hands in order to go to the bathroom, which is a basic and necessary bodily function. We're taught that we have to raise our hands before we can speak, when speaking is another natural function.

Yes, these rules create social parameters and order. But the unfortunate result is that we learn to squelch our natural impulses and instincts. We become overly compliant.

We also learn to rely upon other people giving us permission to do what we want or need to do. This sets up a very unhealthy chain of events. And it leads to people second-guessing themselves as adults.

So if a very talented healer comes to me and she isn't doing healing work because she's second-guessing herself, I consider this a tragedy. Think about how many lives she could have touched and healed if she'd just followed her inner guidance when it first arose.

Stop Playing Life Safe!

Every successful person has to take risks in order for his or her dreams to come true. These risks are both physical and emotional.

A retailer has to risk money by opening up a new store. An author has to risk rejection and loss of time, with many hours spent writing and submitting material to publishers. An artist risks humiliation if others don't appreciate his or her artwork. And activists risk being labeled as conspiracy theorists, negative, or paranoid because they're speaking out about social issues.

Playing it safe in life gets you nowhere. Playing by the rules doesn't give you an
A+
in life. There's no one in the sky with a clipboard judging each of your actions.

Yes, there are actions that can bring more love to the world or more pain. And as Earth Angels, we have missions to bring more love into the world and to avoid bringing pain to others.

When people ask me whether their dream career would be successful, what they really mean is: “Can I pay my bills doing what I love?” And here's the truthful answer, based upon my many decades of studying what makes someone successful in terms of worldly success and emotional success (that is, happiness):

The truth about any dream is that virtually everything is accessible and attainable for everyone
. There really are no blocks. Ninety-nine percent of blocks that you experience are coming from your own fears. And those fears are projections that you place onto your path by worrying about the future.

When we worry:
Could this happen?
or
Could that happen?
we are planting the seeds of those feared situations coming to pass. We always meet our future worries upon the path.

The Secret to Success

Anything that you dream of and are willing to work toward will succeed. Anything that you're willing to take risks for will go well.

The most successful people work for themselves. They rarely hold jobs working for someone else. So if you want to significantly increase your satisfaction levels with your job, as well as your income, you must be your own boss. It's wise to begin your self-employment part-time and keep your regular job to pay the bills. As your self-employment gradually becomes more successful and your income increases, you can eventually quit your day job. But this doesn't happen magically on its own. You have to take the risk of starting your self-employment. You have to assume financial and emotional risks to do so, but the rewards are enormously worth it.

God is your employer. You might say that we Earth Angels work for God Inc. And just like any ethical, good company, all employees of God Inc. are given plenty of support and are well supplied.

All you have to do to get ahead and have wonderful assignments, as well as raises and promotions, is follow the guidance that you receive as an employee of God Inc.

Have you ever worked for a company where there's an employee who argues with every assignment he or she is given? Does this employee tend to get recognition or raises?

Usually not!

The employees who tend to get promotions and raises are those who have the team spirit and who follow the directives they're given from management.