Pushing past the "blocks" to Happiness

There are many different "reasons" that our overall happiness may be difficult to feel. One of these may be that we have family of origin trauma and wounds or fears from our experiences growing up.

Although we may have worked hard to heal these old experiences, they can be deep seeded. If you think about an actual seed deeply rooted in the ground you can get a sense of what I am writing about. For any of you that have done some weeding, there are those few little buggers that you try to pull up but they snap at some point and you just know the seed and roots are still in the ground. That is a drag because then the decision is to either say, "ahhh...I got enough of it. Maybe it will just go away." or "oh for crying out loud...I have to get on my knees and really dig this baby up!!"

Experiences that we had as children (seeds of beliefs leading to accompanying patterns of behaviors) can create deep roots.  We may avoid digging far down enough into our psyche to pull out these seeds and their roots for good. The key reason for this is because at some level, as children, we experienced things that brought fear, even fear of death, into our belief systems. As children we are too young to know that Mommy's rage does not necessarily mean she'll actually kill us (or for some, their lives may have been in real jeopardy) or that Daddy's emotional neglect did not truly mean we would lose our basic survival needs (again, for some this may have been a true issue). As adults these fearful and life preserving beliefs and patterns keep us hostage to limitations, fear, and insecurity.

Some of you may remember the Little Albert experiment from psychology class. You can read a simple article here http://www.psychology.sbc.edu/Little%20Albert.htm . I invite you to take your time in reading it, pondering it, and reflecting on the truth of it. This was such an unethical experiment but perhaps if we all can get some significant "Ah HA!" healing and awakened moments for ourselves out of it, poor little Albert may get some justice!

If Albert could be conditioned to fear in this way, it is quite possible that any of us could have been conditioned to fear experiences as well. Albert's reaction to "like" stimuli is so important to note.

Our past conditioning is one reason we may have difficulty starting anew in any moment. For some of us, changing the course of our thinking brings a subconscious reaction of discomfort EVEN IF IT IS CHANGING OUR THINKING TO MORE COMFORT! There is a HUGE "WARNING" reaction we get from somewhere so deeply hidden that anxiety most certainly will ensue.

Be kind to yourself. Understand that YOU are like Little Albert. What love, reconditioning, and nurturing might Little Albert have needed to be at peace with a rat, a rabbit , or a Santa mask after he was conditioned to transfer fear from a loud fear inducing sound to an object and then to more objects?

How might you have been conditioned to fear something? What are the ways in which you transferred that fear to other objects throughout your life?

What love, reconditioning, and nurturing do you need to be at peace in your world?

How cool is it that YOU CAN recondition yourself! TODAY..start TODAY! Today is a great first day to begin to walk right past some of your conditioned blocks to HAPPINESS! Little Albert - we got this one buddy!! Today is our first day to begin!