Ever wondered why some people find life easy, and others struggle? Or why some people just exude confidence? While others, well… they’d rather hide behind a great big elephant than walk into a room of strangers?
How a person acts and feels about themselves doesn’t happen by accident.
As a child we are quite literally programmed for a certain experience of life.
But as I share in today’s episode on I Love Me The Podcast, if you’ve ended up with a fear-based program where you experience lack and limitation, you can change it, so you’re programmed for love.
Last week we discussed the importance of self-love, and how becoming our own best friend, is a powerful way of cultivating self-love.
But let’s be honest…
Making friends with ourself – while it can appear good in theory – may not be as easy as it sounds.
Let’s spend today, exploring WHY that is….
Why is being kind to ourself – treating ourself with love and respect – why can this often feel soooo ridiculously hard?
It often goes like this…
We decide we’re going to be more loving… but there’s this negative voice inside our head, that keeps telling us that we’re not good enough, or not deserving or not loveable.
Maybe we feel unsafe, or like we can’t trust ourself or others.
Perhaps this inner conversation goes on and on about how stupid we are, how lazy we are, or how frustratingly hard life is….
Or maybe we just feel stuck!
Unable to move past the current obstacle or challenge.
Telling ourself that nothing will ever change.
Where does this unkind chatter come from?
And why is it so difficult to turn off?
Let’s start right at the beginning… from the moment you were conceived…
This tiny little pea inside your mother’s belly, not yet formed into a baby, but very receptive.
Sponge-like we might say.
So sponge-like, that you start to absorb the thoughts and feelings that your mother is experiencing as she carries you inside her.
If she feels lack or separation or fear, you feel those things.
Just like when she feels love, and joy and wholeness, you also feel those things..
You feel and take on whatever is going on for your mother.
And this starts to form your programming.
Programming that dictates how you think, how you act and how you behave.
What I’m saying, is that even inside our mother’s womb we were absorbing information, taking on beliefs and ways of thinking and doing life, directly from our mother, and how she was interacting in the world, as we incubated away, growing into a foetus and getting ready to come out into the world.
Who and what our mother surrounded herself with, how she reacted to situations, the thoughts she thought; these all started to form the program that will essentially becomes our operating system.
Science now shows that our childhood conditioning – our programming – begins in the womb, and continues once we’re born.
And this is why as soon as I got pregnant with my son, I was even more mindful of my own self-talk.
Because I knew everything I was experiencing – everything I was thinking and feeling – was either setting him up for a life of love, or setting him up for a life of fear.
And I wanted to ensure he was programmed for love.
So… our programming begins in the womb.
Then we’re born.
If our birth was traumatic – like it is in many cases – then we take on the negativity from that birth experience.
Those feelings that were felt as our mother brought us Earth-side – they start to shape how we see and act in the world.
How safe we feel.
How wanted we feel.
How loved we feel.
So we’re now out in the world, and we begin the process of learning how to fit in and survive.
And the people we learn this from, are generally our parents, or the people we spent the most time with, before the age of 7.
Yes, the bulk of our programming is taken on from conception up until the age of 7.
And so we receive all of this information from the big people around us, how they speak to us, how they treat us, as well as the songs we hear and the things we come into contact with, like the toys and books we’re exposed to…
All of this gives us information.
And we store this information – this data if you like – in the filing cabinet that is our mind.
Our subconscious mind to be exact.
Because a lot of the time we’re not actually conscious of what beliefs, ideas and information we’ve taken on during this period of our life.
The problem with taking on this information, is that, instead of being taught to love and accept ourselves unconditionally, most of us were taught – programmed and conditioned – to dislike, disrespect and in some cases, even hate, ourselves.
We’re playing with our toys, and then we do something that our carer doesn’t like, and maybe they say ‘You’re a bad little girl’ or ‘How stupid of you’.
And maybe they said it in a half joking manner.
Problem is…
At this young age, we absorb everything.
There’s no filter to differentiate between sarcasm, people’s moods, or other factors, which would prompt someone to say something of a negative nature.
This young we don’t know if something’s real or not, or if a person is acting inappropriately towards us.
We simply take on whatever the big people around us say, as fact.
It becomes our truth, and we go through life believing these things, allowing them to shape who we are, how we act, and how we behave in certain situations.
Because before the age of 7 we were sponging up everything.
Absorbing people’s opinions, beliefs, judgements and criticisms.
We are naked and exposed, totally vulnerable and dependant on the big people around us – those big people of influence.
So we absorb everything they tell us, both the positive, AND unfortunately, the negative.
And so this information – this collection of beliefs and ideas – becomes our operating manual for how to behave and act in certain situations in life.
It guides our decision making, and because of this, dictates the results and outcomes we get.
Now… this programming doesn’t just develop through parents being out of integrity, or overly negative towards their child…
Let’s imagine you’ve just walked into the kitchen to give your mum a big hug.
But you’re greeted with your mum raising her voice, and sternly telling you to get out.
You’re quite shocked.
Mum doesn’t usually act that way.
So YOU take this as her not wanting you…
Not realising that moments before you walked in, your mother accidentally dropped a glass, and she was only raising her voice at you, because she didn’t want you to cut your foot on the shattered glass that is now sprawled across the floor.
As an adult, we can rationalise our mother’s strong tone and protective words.
But as a child, all we take on, is ‘Mum doesn’t want me’.
Maybe Mum doesn’t love me’.
‘Maybe, I’m not loveable’.
And this becomes one of our beliefs.
I’m not loveable.
Thus, setting you up to have a based program, as opposed to being programmed for love.
So let’s look at what limiting beliefs actually are….
Ultimately, a limiting belief is something you believe that holds you back from moving forward, from reaching your potential.
It’s a belief that limits you.
It stops you achieving your goals in any given area of your life.
It keeps you living a small, limited life.
A life where things feel out of reach, or unattainable.
Difficult or down-right hard.
And these limiting beliefs can show up in different ways – they may block our view of the opportunities that surround us, or they could cause us to sabotage our relationships, our career, or poison our body with toxic substances.
It’s these sorts of beliefs that keep us heading back to the fridge for more chocolate mud-cake when we know that we’re full.
And I use this example, because before I cleared out a heap of my limiting beliefs, that’s pretty much what I’d do.
I had this love / hate relationship with food.
I’d buy a block of chocolate, or three, and hide them in the highest cupboard in my house, so I’d have to get a chair to reach them.
And yet, I’d still get out the chair and get them down, eating block after block, making myself feel sick.
I couldn’t stop.
I knew I needed to stop, but there was something else driving my actions.
And that thing was my programming – the collection of limiting beliefs I had that was telling me I wasn’t loveable, and so I sought out love, through food.
Through chocolate.
Yet, once I released these beliefs – which I what I teach in my Remarkable Relationships program at my online school – then I didn’t eat chocolate in the same way.
If I ate chocolate at all, it was one or two squares, and it was a healthy dark chocolate.
And I felt no need to go back for more.
Because I felt full, just from being alive.
By this point, I had become programmed for love.
If we feel we lack something, if we don’t feel FULL in ourself, then we’ll try to fill that void with external things, such as food, cigarettes, drugs, gambling, people.
People who don’t feel complete in themselves often crave a romantic relationship because they think that will fill them up, give them the love they crave.
Love that maybe they didn’t get as a child.
The thing is, you can’t get love from another person or from a substance.
The only place you’ll find love, is within.
And we find that love within, through practising self-love.
Now the interesting thing with limiting beliefs, is most of the time we are completely unaware of what our limiting beliefs are, because like I said, they’re stored in the subconscious mind.
So let’s take a look at the role of the subconscious mind, as opposed to the conscious mind.
Firstly – the conscious mind is all the stuff we’re aware of – all the stuff that we know we know.
Pretty straight forward, right?
On other hand, the SUBconscious mind is like a storage room for everything that’s not in our conscious mind; we’re talking about previous life experiences, belief systems, memories, our skills.
It’s our subconscious mind that controls the autonomic nervous system – the control system for our body; it’s what keeps us breathing and our heart beating – it’s what helps our body digest food.
So as you can imagine, our subconscious is always processing different types of data.
Always trying to support us, so we don’t have to consciously make everything happen all the time.
Imagine if we had to remind ourself to breathe or pump blood…
That would be a LOT to work.
And require all of our attention and focus.
It would take up so much of our time, we wouldn’t have the time or energy to do things like go to work, play with our kids, meditate…
So our subconscious mind, is super important, because it tells the body what to do.
It takes care of things, so we can go out and live our life.
Think of when you learnt to drive a car.
At the beginning all your attention was focused on operating the car, changing gears, adhering to the road rules.
It was a lot, right?
Or, it certainly was for me!
But then with practise, driving a car becomes an automatic process.
Our subconscious takes over, because through all of our driving practise, we’ve been programmed on how to drive a car, and so now we’re free to chat to our kids or listen to music while driving, without needing to think about every gear change, or when to turn the indictors on to change lane.
Those things happens automatically, often without much thought at all.
And it happens automatically, thanks to our subconscious programming.
The problem comes, when our subconscious mind is programmed with something that isn’t serving us.
With a limiting belief or five, that are guiding us in the wrong direction in life.
Maybe we have unhealthy spending habits, or tend to attract in people who don’t treat us so well, or struggle with our weight.
The reason we keep repeating these kinds of patterns in life, is because that’s what our subconscious mind was programmed for when we were a child.
And our subconscious mind is really powerful, and is actually responsible for 90 percent of our thoughts, actions and behaviours.
90%.
That’s why it can feel soooo hard to break a pattern or change a habit or attract in a different outcome in life.
We are literally programmed to experience life in a set way.
We are programmed for love, or we are programmed for fear.
So the reality that we experience day in, day out, is a direct result of this ‘programming’.
This collection of limiting beliefs are working together, at an unconscious level, dictating the decisions we make, guiding how we behave and respond to situations, and supporting us in doing things the way we’ve always done them, so we can get the results we feel comfortable getting.
But what if we don’t like the results and outcomes we’re getting?
What if our life isn’t going the way we’d like it to?
Then we need to change the programming.
We need to become programmed for love.
Because no amount of dieting and exercise will help you get the weight off and actually keep it off.
Not if you’re programmed to dislike your body.
You’ll always go back into old behaviours that will stack the weight back on.
No amount of saving and working five jobs in order to get ahead financially, will help you get rich.
Not if you’re programmed with limiting beliefs that tells you ‘It’s unsafe to have a lot of money’.
You’ll also find ways – unconsciously – to get rid of that money, because you don’t want to feel unsafe.
Is it actually unsafe to have money?
No.
That’s just a belief.
But while that belief is at play – hiding out in our subconscious – then you’ll prioritise safety over having money.
We will ALWAYS get the results we are programmed to get – in ALL areas of our life, regardless of whether we consciously want them or not.
It’s like in my early 20s, I was going to be put in a mental home after being diagnosed with severe clinical depression, and becoming a risk to myself with frequent suicide attempts.
I went to numerous therapists and psychologists and tried all sorts of things that were meant to help or at least manage the depression, but I couldn’t break out of the cycle.
That was, until I started working with the subconscious mind.
As soon as I learnt how to change the programming, the depression lifted, immediately.
I got off my meds, and depression was no longer part of my life.
That was almost 20 years ago now and the depression hasn’t returned, because I changed the programming that was responsible for creating the depression in the first place.
And this wasn’t just something that worked for me.
I’ve since helped countless people do the same.
Clear the depression and get off their meds, so they can start to actually live.
Help them become programmed for love.
How we think about ourself, how we feel about ourself, how we feel living in this world; it’s all based on the programming we took on as a child.
And it doesn’t matter how successful someone looks on the outside; a person can have all the fancy trimmings; the mansions, the sports-cars, the dream job, the sexy husband… all that jazz… If they’ve been programmed to dislike themselves, then they’ll always have a sense that something is missing or lacking in their life.
That they’re not quite living up to the vision they have for themselves.
So they’ll keep striving, they’ll keep searching ‘out there’, all the while giving themselves a hard time for not being good enough.
Most people these days are really hard on themselves.
If we spoke to other people the way we often talk to ourselves, in many cases this would be called emotional abuse!
We don’t get the result or the outcome we want, so we give ourself a hard time, and we justify that behaviour by thinking that we need to be punished.
And while yes, we do need to hold ourself accountable for our actions…
People don’t thrive when they’re constantly being put down.
You tell a person enough times they’re hopeless, and they’ll eventually start to believe it, and then start acting that way.
However, if you offer a person – who maybe isn’t doing so well, who’s perhaps indulging in undesirable behaviours or isn’t performing in their job well enough – if you offer this person love and kindness, by way of positive feedback and encouragement, their sense of self will start to transform, and as a result their behaviours and productivity will improve.
This is essentially how our programming came about.
We were told things, given feedback and treated in certain ways.
Depending on how positive or negative your childhood experience was, will depend on whether you’ve been programmed for Fear, or programmed for Love.
So… what does it feel like to be programmed for love?
In short, we feel good about ourselves, and we feel good about our life.
Any self-talk is of a positive, supportive nature.
And we feel inspired about what we can create moving forward.
As a result of this, the different areas of our life – relationships, health, finances, career, our spirituality – they thrive.
This is what is available to all of us, when we’re programmed for Love.
And while most people were programmed as a child to experience less than this reality, we can change that programming.
Just as we can install new software on a computer, so too can we install new – more supportive – beliefs into our subconscious mind.
And that has essentially been my life’s journey – guiding people and teaching people how to do this for almost 20 years now – through my school Getting Naked – because I saw how powerful it was in my own battle with depression.
When I stripped off those beliefs that weren’t serving me, I was free to be me.
And then as I’ve continued to release these beliefs, I’ve seen how I can transform each different area of my life, so life feels good.
So when a challenge arises, I can easily and quickly find a solution.
Because I have a solid program; I’m programmed for love.
The common enemy we all have, is our limiting beliefs.
Our programming.
But our programming can be changed.
In my experience, changing our beliefs, is the quickest way to create change in our life.
And the more beliefs we strip away, the closer we get back to our true, naked self.
The being that has all the potential in the world.
The being that is here to make a difference.
The being that is here to have a really fulfilling and expansive experience of life.
And the being who is here to feel whole and complete.
Just the way you are.
This is always the end result when someone goes through my One-on-One Intensive or my Remarkable Relationships program and applies what I share with them.
Because changing the beliefs, changes our life.
When we’re struggling in any life area, we simply need to look to our beliefs, and start to question them, rearrange them, and allow new, more supportive beliefs to take their place.
And that’s something we can all do, once we know how.
Now you know what it means to be programmed for Love….
Start to pay attention to what your negative mind chatter is.
What programming you may have taken on as a child.
Notice if you feel like you have a more fear-based program running, or you feel like you are actually programmed for love, perhaps with just a few little glitches to clear out.
And then join me next week, when I share the number one tool I use personally and that I teach all my clients, so they can rise above their fear-based programming, and access the love within.
This is a really simple, yet profound exercise, that not only makes you feel good when you’re feeling bad, but helps you access wisdom from within.
For we all deserve to feel the loving presence inside of us.
May this episode offer you the answers you’ve been looking for, and the hope that will guide you forward.
And may you be programmed for love.