As always, my intention is to raise awareness. I ask you to stand next to me and view experiences from a new perspective. If what I suggest makes sense to you, wonderful, and if not you may want to tuck it away for consideration at a later date or discard it. The choice is always yours.

With a new year upon us many are reflecting on what they would like to accomplish in 2003. Contemplating new year resolutions, goals and aspirations,  some of us are determined to find happiness, be successful or to have more fun in 2003. These goals are not as difficult as you may think, but there may be something you need to give up in order to have what it is that you do want. Sometimes it is necessary to let go of something old in order to make room for something new. The only obstacles between you and your heart’s desires are those you have put in place.

We encourage you to look at what you have created in 2002. Were you struggling, suffering or sacrificing? What belief would be necessary to have created what you experienced? Did you find yourself martyring or having an investment in what was wrong in your life or how you sacrificed? You can’t have fun and be happy and successful for long if you tend toward martyr or investment in struggle or sacrifice because suffer, struggle and sacrifice are contradictory to fun, happiness and success. I’m sure that in some areas of your life you have some very positive beliefs and in other areas you probably have some beliefs that are outdated and even destructive to a future that you do want. Destructive beliefs must be brought to awareness, processed and released in order to energetically shift your consciousness to attract a more optimal future.

We all long to love and be loved. This is our nature, but along the way we have been wounded and these woundings have instilled fears around love. We may have developed beliefs around love in our efforts to interpret situations in our past that we didn’t have the maturity, vocabulary, tools or support to understand. We also have been taught beliefs around love by parents, teachers, society and religions that may not be accurate. These sources may have done the best they could or not, resulting in twisted views on love and loving that need to be updated, and creating wounds that are in need of healing. As children we tend to look at authority figures as perfect and ourselves as wrong or flawed and have interpreted life in the past through these eyes.

You may have heard the expressions, “when you can receive love you can receive anything,” or “all you need to do is love yourself.” Sounds easy enough, but if it was that easy why aren’t more people doing it? Probably because they have lost touch with what is on the inside and are over-focused with controlling circumstances on the outside. Deep down you know the truth, but sometimes you need to be reminded of what it is. Sometimes something won’t make sense to you because you know in your heart that it isn’t true and sometimes you are holding on so tightly to an untruth because if you acknowledged that it wasn’t true it could threaten the entire myth of what you were taught life is about. We strongly recommend you re-evaluate your myth. As the saying goes, “The truth will set you free.”

Most of us realized a long time ago that we were not going to get the love we needed to grow just by being so we adapted in order to get our love needs met. If you realized that when you were sick, injured or in trouble that you got love and attention from your parents and when you were happy and doing well you were ignored, then your interpretation may have been that when I am in a bad place I receive love and support.  Whenever you needed a little love you would attract a less than desirable situation to get it. As an adult if you still hold this belief in your subconscious your successes, happiness and fun will be short lived at best because you will unconsciously fear that love will be withdrawn if you are in a good space.

With so many people unemployed right now, this belief is definitely one that could be standing in your way. Obviously there are other factors to consider, but if self-pity is an issue for you, you will always sacrifice happiness, fun and success because being in the bad place will be more comfortable until you work through the issue. You will unconsciously believe that love will be withdrawn if you are in a good space because it always has. If a decision is to be made between laying off an employee with “self-pity” energy and one without, with other factors equivalent, guess who’s the most likely candidate? The light of the employee with the “self-pity’” belief is like a neon sign saying, “Pick me! Pick me!” Getting laid off would help him/her to demonstrate their “poor  me” belief that has gotten them love and support when in a less than desirable space in the past. The belief is demonstrated, not as a punishment, but because you have it.  For the “poor me,” failure is comfortable and success is frightening.

If you have lost your job in our declining economy and can’t find another one, you are probably looking for reasons why in your efforts to make sense of the situation. Try looking further to the personal message that is there for you. The issue isn’t really about the job situation, the job situation is the form the issue is using to play itself out. Issues can play themselves out through many forms including illness. When you only address the symptoms of an issue, you miss the message. The mind, body and spirit must be tended to when addressing problems in order for there to be resolution. If the root of the problem is not treated it will grow back, often in a different form, but with the same message. There’s always a gift and the sooner you can receive it the more quickly you can get yourself unstuck. There are messages and gifts for everyone affected by a situation, not just the so called victims and the gifts are different for each person. Many of our clients are realizing that addressing what a situation has brought up for them personally, can help the person directly affected more than any external help you could offer.

Some of us learned to give up our identity in order to be loved by parents. You may have sacrificed who you came here to be and took on who your parents wanted you to be in efforts to be loved. As an adult you may still be following someone else’s dreams rather than your own. This will leave you with a very empty feeling inside. You are betraying your very Being when you are not honoring yourself. If you are attracting people that betray you, you may want to consider the possibility that they are mirroring your energy. If you have a tendency to betray yourself you will attract those who will betray you because you do.

In the case of the economy and losing a job, the message could be that your work was not expressing who you are which is what work is meant to do. A job was never meant to identify who you are. If you easily give up your opinion for one that someone else holds you may be playing the chameleon and betraying yourself out of fear that love will be withdrawn for being you, speaking your truth, and following your dreams. Losing a job will give you some time to redefine who you are and how you want to express yourself. When one door closes another opens when you are ready. The pace is yours.

When we are sacrificing we are giving from an empty place and truly have nothing to give. With the holiday season so freshly behind us, now is a great time to reflect on your giving. If you put taking care of yourself on the back burner this holiday season you may have found yourself aggravated, stressed or cranky, short in response to loved ones and/or strangers and aggravated by those experiencing laughter and joy such as children. Perhaps you were irritated by those excited about what they might ‘get’ because they weren’t sacrificing like you or maybe you couldn’t wait for the holidays to be over? These are signs that you are giving from an empty place.

The holiday season is a season for giving, and receiving is giving. Graciously receiving is giving someone the opportunity to fully experience the joy of giving. If you respond to a gift with “you shouldn’t have,” or “you spent too much,” or feel you have to run out to buy a gift to reciprocate, you are putting down or judging the giver and are not graciously receiving. If you had difficulty experiencing the joy of giving, be honest with yourself and address your difficulties rather than pushing them away or controlling them so next season can be more joyous for you. Receiving will be difficult, but entitlement will be easy if you believe sacrifice is noble.

It is particularly important for those in the field of service to take time to replenish so they have more to give. Sacrifice is not service. In the field of service we are most effective when we are a channel for Divine love, rather than giving of our own sweat equity. Our focus should be on keeping this channel clean and free of emotional debris that can taint the love we long to give. If you are in the field of service be aware of your intentions, those you are serving are not less than you. Helping people to help themselves is what service is about. Feeling bad for someone and feeding their self-pity can keep them stuck and doesn’t do anyone any good.

If sacrifice is your pattern, entitlement is just around the corner. When we sacrifice and sacrifice, over time we believe we are owed. Because we are sacrificing we expect others to be sacrificing too and are frustrated when they are not. When we are sacrificing we feel entitled, but what we don’t realize is that most often no one has asked us to sacrifice so it is not fair for us to expect to be owed for our sacrificing. This is where sacrifice gets ugly. Look at the Catholic Church where priests were asked and chose to live an unnatural life of abstinence and then believed they were entitled to sexually abuse innocent children as punishment. This choice to sacrifice created rage that was expressed through sexual abuse, an emotionally crippling act of violence. Sacrifice lead a number of priests to believe they were entitled to abuse the innocent. There’s no love here.   

Men may feel entitled when they are sacrificing for their families. Love is not about sacrifice, but if you were taught that it was by parental and religious example then you too may find that you have developed your own way of sacrificing for love. When you are doing the sacrificing it puts you in control. Often when men believe they are sacrificing for their family rather than choosing to support their families out of love, on some level they want to punish those they are sacrificing for. Some punish by emotionally  withdrawing from their loved ones; coming home from work and withdrawing behind a newspaper, sporting event or spending long days on the golf course, or nights out with the ‘boys’. Entitlement is not always the source of these activities, but it is important to be honest with yourself about the intentions behind your actions. 

Mid-life crisis can involve entitlement issues and sacrifice. Finding yourself in your 40’s, realizing you are not where you thought you’d be and that you have been sacrificing for years, you may decide that now it’s time for you in an entitled way. You may find yourself acting selfishly and giving to yourself at the expense of others rather than acting as the responsible adult.

When people are giving and giving and then feeling unloved, unappreciated and resentful their intention for giving may be to get love, rather than giving out of love.  When we give out of love we give freely with no strings attached and are fulfilled by the giving. When we give to get love, we give with strings attached and when things don’t come back the way we planned we will find ourselves frustrated and resentful. 

If you are looking for love and appreciation from outside yourself to prove that you are worth loving and appreciating, it never works. In order to attract those who love and appreciate you, that energy needs to be present in you first. You must love and appreciate yourself on the inside in order for it to be validated on the outside. No matter how much you do or how much you sacrifice, it will never be enough if you believe that just being you is not enough. I have seen people do extra on the job or for friends and family and then believe they are owed even though no one ever asked them to go the extra mile in the first place. In many cases they aren’t doing it for the friend or for the company, and when honest with their intentions, realize they are doing extra because they believe that doing what they are asked won’t be enough because it was never enough which translates to the belief, “I am not enough.”

Many mothers learned sacrifice from their mothers. They put their family first because this is what they were taught and because they are contributing less financially. Not contributing financially can translate into “I am unworthy,” or “I am worth less,” or “I don’t deserve.” Getting a job won’t free you of these feelings. It is important to acknowledge that truly putting your family first requires putting yourself first, taking care of yourself on all levels, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual so you can give the best of yourself to those you put first. Being a mother is not a sacrifice it is a choice. When putting yourself last and sacrificing, you are giving from an empty place and may feel entitled to have your children behave because they owe you that. You may use your sacrificing to manipulate and guilt trip them into behaving. You may give them a privilege and then use it against them to control them. You may know someone that has bought their child or teen something they really want, only to take it away as punishment or you may have heard I’ll buy you ‘this’ if you do ‘that.’ Many kids these days respond very negatively to manipulative discipline because it is like a double edged sword. They think they are being given a privilege out of love and then the parent is turning around and using it against them.

Teaching a child to do the right thing because it feels good is much more constructive than teaching them to do the right thing out of fear of the repercussions from doing wrong. But if religion has taught you that you are flawed and defective with original sin from the start you may not believe that your children could possibly do the right thing just because it felt good. Motivation by fear for the flawed and defective would be what you learned and what you practice until you heal the wounds that believing you were flawed and defective created in you.

Our parents were our role models. We learned more from what they did than from what they said. If their advice wasn’t worth taking themselves, we may have listened out of fear of being punished as kids, but as adults we will potentially find ourselves stuck in the same places with issues our parents didn’t deal with being handed down to us. If they told us not to drink and punished us for drinking, yet they drank in excess, chances are we’d listen to avoid being punished as kids, yet may find ourselves in the same trap, suffering from a more or less socially acceptable addiction because the issues they addressed through drinking were handed down with addiction as the processing tool.

What we learned was not always what was best. It’s important to take what we learned from our parents that was good and to heal from what we experienced from them that wasn’t so good and to move forward with what we learned so we can help others. If you

move forward only with the tools you were taught, wounded,  and with the beliefs you were left to interpret during your childhood from parents that didn’t know how to communicate, you are likely to find yourself caught in the same places.

You may say that you are completely the opposite of your parents, but if you haven’t healed yourself on the inside chances are you have adopted your own flair for doing the essence of what they did. As an example, if one or both parents were outwardly controlling, telling you what to do and how to do it, control is what you learned. As a parent yourself, in your efforts to not control, you may allow an abundance of freedom for your children. You may think you are the opposite of your parents, but both extremes are controlling, one is active and the other is passive. Both actions come from a fear of losing love. Your parents may have controlled you to keep you close, leading you to believe you needed them out of fear of losing you to friends or to death, and you may be controlling by giving too much freedom out of fear of losing love by being too authoritarian.

Often when you control with what you don’t say you are sacrificing your thoughts and/or feelings to avoid conflict. You may find that in order to survive or be loved in your family of origin you learned passive control and are still practicing it. There may be parts of you that saw happiness as sacrifice, and you may find that you are still sacrificing your feelings in efforts to keep the peace and keep everyone else happy at your expense. Eventually the suppressed feelings will come to a head and you will blow up, most likely regretting what you did or said in the heat of the moment. Addressing issues as they come up and communicating your feelings is imperative to any healthy relationship. It is important to realize that if sacrificing your feelings has been your pattern that you have some serious processing and purging of old unresolved issues and emotions to address. That I can attest to. Also important to remember is that as adults when emotions are triggered only 10-20% of what you are feeling is from the current situation and the other 80-90% is old stuff that is coming to the surface from the trigger. If you don’t address the old stuff you may give the person doing the triggering 100% of what you are feeling and that isn’t fair because it’s not all theirs. If it is bringing up old stuff involving them from the past, it’s still not fair if you dump all the emotion now. If someone irritates you 9 times and on the 10th turn you dump the emotion from all the other times it is not all right. You could have avoided the build up of emotion associated if you had addressed the issue at the beginning. If you chose initially not to address the issue, it is necessary to give the person the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t know how what they were doing was affecting you. You may have been taught to sacrifice your feelings to avoid conflict, but have come to realize that sacrificing your feelings creates huge conflicts and comes from a place of fear of losing love rather than from a place of love.

Sometimes someone in a relationship will sacrifice to balance the scale. In a marriage if there is one parent who is the fun parent, the other parent may find themselves becoming the disciplinarian by default in efforts to balance the scale. They may find themselves sacrificing fun and being frustrated because they never wanted to have to balance the scale in the first place. Sometimes in a relationship there is one partner who over spends and the other partner takes on the role of thrifty, sacrificing purchases and activities to balance the scale. Sacrificing in these cases builds resentment. Marriage should be a partnership with both parties communicating thoughts and feelings and working together so issues don’t get out of control. If you have chosen to balance the scale there may be some martyring, controlling, sacrificing, not good enough beliefs, or issues around support going on. If you have difficulty being heard or taken seriously, you may not be listening to parts of yourself on the inside or taking their calls for help seriously. Be honest with yourself, did your partner ask you to balance the scale or did you do it voluntarily? Have you communicated your feelings as they come up or are you allowing them to accumulate and using them as a club? In a healthy relationship both partners are whole within themselves, creating something greater when they come together, balancing scales is co-dependency.

Like attracts like so if you are attracting an abundance of what you don’t want you are just as capable of attracting an abundance of what you do want. You just need to figure out what energy is blocking what you are asking for because you always get what you want according to your belief system, but it isn’t always what you have asked for. Difficulty receiving love on the inner planes will manifest as difficulty receiving love on the outer planes.

The other side of sacrifice is a beautiful place. It is a place where there is communication, love, balance and harmony. It is a place where people are honest even when it isn’t convenient; where they take responsibility for their feelings and are free to communicate them appropriately and understand how to process them; a place where people communicate out of courtesy rather than leaving others to interpret their actions. It is a place where people can be REAL with each other and live their lives clean. Not a perfect place, but a place where you can trust in yourself and not get caught up in trying to please everyone out of fear of losing love. The other side of sacrifice is a place where you are free to act from a loving place and feel safe doing so; a place where two people whole within themselves can come together to create something more without looking to another to make them complete; a place where people encourage each other’s growth and are supportive.  On the other side of sacrifice you can see that your parents did the best they could with the tools they had and you are grateful for what you learned from what they did that was good and from what they did that wasn’t so good and you are a better person for it. You don’t forgive and forget, sacrificing your feelings to be the bigger person but realize that forgiveness comes from a place of love, understanding and compassion and not from a place of pity or better than.

When you can understand why you sacrifice you can get in touch with destructive beliefs that are keeping you stuck like “I’m not enough,” “I don’t deserve,” “I am not supported,” “I am unworthy” and “I am unlovable,” and destructive energies like martyr, control, blame and self-pity. You will never truly find your happiness, success and fun with these energies blocking you. In order to have your desires find their way to you, you need to believe them with your mind and your heart. What you ‘think’ about what you want must be in line with what you ‘feel’ about it, otherwise one will cancel out the other.

You will never ‘find’ happiness, ‘find’ the time for personal growth or ‘find’ the time for anything you want to do, have, or be. If something is important to you, you have to ‘make’ the time for it. Giving a little to yourself every day will help to keep you in balance and away from the extremes of sacrifice and entitlement. We hope that you will make a conscious effort to leave sacrifice behind in 2002.This effort will not only contribute to your accessing more optimal futures than were possible with sacrifice energy, but will also assist in shifting the planetary consciousness, raising awareness in others, those you know and those you don’t know, to the deeper meaning of sacrifice. True service is on the other side of sacrifice, service that comes from the heart, service that heals. Healing yourself first so you can truly be of assistance to others. The other side of sacrifice is a place where it is great to be you and it is great to just Be!

All information in this newsletter is the opinion and experience of the practitioner and her clients. This newsletter is not a substitute for medical treatment or professional assistance.

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Trish Whynot, D.C.Ed. is a Doctor of C.O.R.E. Education, specializing in ASAT™ C.O.R.E. Counseling. She utilizes meditation, energy work, aromatherapy and crystals in her alternative approach to wellness in Middleton, MA, and can be reached at 978-314-4545 or visit her website at www.holisticoncepts.com.