Could You Dare Expect to Feel Cherished in Your Relationship? Insights April 2006

Cherished is a powerful word, evoking something that goes beyond ordinary caring, into special.  Most people don’t feel they deserve to be treated as if they’re very special.  After all, to be cherished, shouldn’t you be spectacular?        

People will cherish baseball cards, shoes, old sweatshirts, and memories that bear very little resemblance to the original event – why not you?  If you think about it that way – you can rate up there with baseball cards and shoes -  perhaps you might be willing to consider you could be cherished.  But then there’s reality, which might be the relationship you’re actually in, or your past experiences with relationships, neither of which are particularly cherishing.        

You can change that.  The key is to change the subliminal signals that you put out telling other people how to treat you.  It’s important to understand that your subliminal signals aren’t telling people to tell you how you think you want to be treated – probably the complete opposite.  That’s annoying, but can be fixed.          

Why would your subliminal signals be different than what you want?  The reasons lie deep in the subconscious brain, influenced by tribal memory, conditioning, and genetic imprinting.  Here’s an example:  I consider myself a pretty modern in my attitudes about female roles.  However, when I went digging in my subconscious brain to determine why my sons insisted on cluttering the doorway with their footwear, I found a subconscious element with a strong desire to prove I was needed as a mother by cleaning up after my kids – definitely not congruent with how I think.  Although, like anyone, I have a desire to feel loved, I prefer that didn’t translate into a desire to be needed as a cleaner-upper.  When I cleared up this programming with some self-mastery tools, the boys suddenly and miraculously discovered the closet, and started using it, without me saying a word about the clutter.  That’s the amazing thing about self-mastery – it fixes situations without requiring confrontation.  Since life has proved that nagging is ineffective, I consider self-mastery a vastly superior way of changing the details and circumstances of your life, both large and small.        

Whether your issues are large, like feeling unloved, or small, like clutter, you can fix it by changing what your subconscious is telling people about how to treat you.  I love the frequent messages from my students telling of changes in the details of their lives that might sound innocuous, if you didn’t realize it meant they personally had the power to change those details.         

But are you brave enough to actually change your subliminal signals to tell people to cherish you?  That’s a big one.  Could you actually be comfortable with having the people in your life treat you like you are special, and you matter to them, and they think about you all the time, and they enjoy being somewhere just because you’re there.  For many people, just the idea of that quality of caring is frightening, because they can’t imagine living like that.  And would being cherished mean that you had to learn to give that kind of caring in return?  Perhaps that’s just too vulnerable.  Better to settle for something more ordinary.       

The beauty of self-mastery is that you can decide how far you want to take it.  You can start by clearing up the clutter without having to say anything.  You can progress to having people around you give you more affection and appreciation.  Then, if you want, you can up the ante all the way to ‘cherished.’  If you want it, you can change the subliminal signals in which your subconscious tells people how to treat you, and you can change those signals so that you’re telling people to treat you the way you’d actually like to be treated.  There’s no rush, and it’s yours to decide.       

What if you had the courage to have the people in your life treat you like someone special?  What if you could change yourself to feel like you deserved to be treated like someone special?  What if you could change yourself to feel comfortable giving that kind of caring, too?       

I have to admit that one of the real challenges of self-mastery is that it raises the bar.  You start out clearing the clutter from your hallway, and then you realize the potential.  You start to notice ways you can use self-mstery to improve the quality of your life, and suddenly, you don’t have to settle any more.  That’s why this work becomes intoxicating, because you start to see the possibilities, and the more you do the more becomes possible.  It’s your choice.         

Start small, with a simple little meditation to help you consider making a change of any kind.  After all, you have to start somewhere.  Sit quietly and breathe slowly until you feel settled.  Keep your breathing slow to help your mind be able to cope with the idea of making a change.  Think about something small you’d like to change.  Keep your breathing slow and deep.  What emotion arises when you think about making a small change?  Sometimes there is subconscious fear that making any change will break what you have.  Sometimes there is subconscious fear that making any change will make what you have worse.  That’s the thing about subconscious fear – it’s rooted deeply in the basic fear of change.         

Let yourself breathe slowly while thinking about making a small change, and let yourself feel your reaction to those thoughts.  Sit with your reaction until it passes.  Keep breathing.  If your reaction is very strong, imagine that you can breathe in and out through your heart.  That will help tap into your courage, and help you overcome your reaction to the idea of change.  After all, you can’t do anything until you decide to make a change, and give up settling.  Cherished may seem a long way away, but it gets closer with every step you take.

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