This Exercise Has The Power To Transform Your Life
GUEST POST BY DR GREG SCHREEUWER.
I have been on my personal development journey for about 6 years now and in that time, I have learnt various techniques, been to loads of seminars and read so many self help books, as I am sure many of you have. In all that time, I kept receiving a constant message but I wasn’t too sure what to do with it so I kind of overlooked it. The message was: learn to love and appreciate who you are in order to have success in your life. This message has been filtering in and out of my life, probably for a lot longer than these 6 years, but I only truly decided to do something about it, very recently, thanks to my interesting experience with the joys and thrills of immigration and all the associated red tape.
So, I am going to share with you some of the steps you could take, to help you transform the life you have right now into a life where you’re the director. As you are probably aware, achieving what you want for your life is not a piece of cake. It has its challenges and requires a serious amount of commitment. But then again, why wouldn’t you want to commit to having a life where you’re in control of it?
Before we begin, I would suggest you grab a post it note or a piece of paper that you can see every day of your life and write down the following: “Appreciate and value who you are”. Put this note in a place that you will never miss seeing it. If you want, you can set a reminder on your phone that will pop up every day. That’s what I’ve done.
In order to have the success you would like in your life, there is something very important to do. This step can be done on a continuous basis. It will help you to learn to appreciate and value who you are and your unique contribution to the world, as well as increase your feeling of worthiness.
Let’s begin!
Most of us are walking around with huge amounts of guilt and shame that we’ve stored up over our lifetime. This guilt and shame will diminish our self esteem and our belief in ourselves. The reason being is because we’re subconsciously beating ourselves up for all the things we perceive we’ve done wrong to people in our past. What we aren’t fully aware of is that there are always an equal amount of benefits to drawbacks when it comes to the actions we’ve taken. The universe is never one sided. It’s our conscious mind that creates this duality.
So for this step, probably the most important step you will ever take, grab a piece of paper or your computer or your tablet or whatever you want to use to write the following:
Go back into your past and even to your present and write down every single moment, that you can remember, when you felt or feel you did something mean, bad or terrible to one person or many people, that you might still be feeling guilt and shame about.
You may have 4, 10, 20, 30 or more memories that you can write down. For every memory that you’ve written down, write down 25-30 ways that it served you and 25-30 ways that it served the person or people involved in that memory. If 30 is not enough to dissolve your guilt or shame, keep going until you feel grateful to yourself that you assisted them.
This may take some time to complete so be patient with yourself. If you can see that you’ve provided a service to other people, you will start to value and appreciate the contributions you’ve made over your lifetime, and are continuing to make. You will start to increase your feeling of worthiness.
There are so many important steps that I could recommend to help you transform your life but there’s not enough space to continue writing it all down. What I will leave you with is another small exercise you can do that will assist you to own more of who you are. The more you own your own life, the quicker you can transform the challenges you’re faced with.
If you’re faced with a challenge in your life, break the challenge down into things that irritate or frustrate you. For example, if you’re having issues with your partner, what exactly is bugging you about him/her? Are they being pushy or aloof or lazy? When you’ve identified what those might be, write down when, where and who saw you do the same thing. It may be in a slightly different form, but it’s there – believe me! There could be one person or many people that saw you. They could even be strangers or people walking past at the time. Write down 20-50 initials until you own what you see in your challenges/challengers.
Reflection is so important. People, events, government organisations and more will constantly reflect back to us, the parts of ourselves that we are disowning. When we disown these parts, we’re not whole and centered and therefore do not value and appreciate who we are. Transforming your life means owning it all.
If you’d like to take it a step further, write 20-50 ways that your challenges/challengers are serving you by being the way they are. Be grateful for their service to you and see how they are helping you live the life you’d love to have.
These are some simple, yet equally challenging, exercises that I would recommend you do as often as possible. The more you do them, the more you’ll start to see your life transform into a life of gratitude and inspiration.
How did you go with these exercises? Any a-ha moments?
Author bio: Dr. Greg Schreeuwer practiced as a chiropractor in Sydney, Australia for 5 years. He is now a non-practicing chiropractor and resides in Toronto, Canada. During his career, he received training in Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine Principles, Reiki, N.A.E.T., N.E.T. and N.C.R. In 2011, he also attended several of Dr. John F. Demartini’s programs on human behavior.
Today he dedicates himself to the growth of his company and vision called Be Who You Wanna Be International (BWYWB), which is a unique online social networking platform and educational resource for children. BWYWB’s mission is to assist children to be recognised for who they are, by empowering and inspiring them to fulfill their dreams.
Positive affirmation for the day: Everything is exactly as it should be.
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I love the exercise that Louise L Hay suggests – every day for thirty days, whenever you make eye contact with yourself in the mirror, say to yourself “I love and accept you exactly as you are”.
It feels strange/weird/dumb at first, but it is funny how after a couple of days, you can actually feel something shift inside you, and the Resistance starts to dissolve…
Umm, and if you happen to say it out aloud to yourself in the toilets at work, do make sure that the bathroom stalls are empty first!! That was embarrassing…!
Love it Jess!
Louise Hay’s affirmations are fantastic and I would recommend them to anyone who is interested in healing their body and/or mind. Her body of work is definitely transformative and something that could be useful in everyone’s lives.
hahah! i love this post 
im gonna give it a try – though not a work lol 
Greg, what a wonderful thing you are doing with your company. I have added you to my blog reading list.
Jess thank you for introducing us to such wonderful people, like Greg. I now follow many people’s blogs that you have introduced us to. Thank you. xxoo
I was very pleased with article with the exception that doing bad things is ultimately for the good of others… While I agree that ultimately things work out for all involved, the means to that end are the stuff of a life well lived.
For instance, my childhood friend’s father left Jim and his mother. His mother was shot point blank with a shotgun and he saw it as a baby.
As another for instance I had a friend who was repeatedly raped by her father and brothers.
In either case there is no way that such actions should be justified as beneficial. That’s just well down the road to being mentally ill.
It may work for smaller things but with “big stuff” it doesn’t scale.
Hi Josh,
What we perceive as bad, might be seen as good by someone else. As a result certain people might classify that as mentally ill or unstable. We’re ok to look a the small things and find the balance there, because it doesn’t seem that crazy, but the big actions that people take on others do have benefits. It might be hard to se, but believe me they are there. The universe always has a complementation of opposites that coexist together.
Let’s take the Colorado shooting for example. There was definitely a perceived villain in that cinema, but are you aware that at the same time, there were several heroes balance out his villainy? That’s not to say that there wasn’t a huge amount of loss in that cinema but the question I would ask is, what benefits are going to come from that situation? What are we going to learn about humanity or ourselves? What is it teaching all of us? Every action, even as severe as Colorado, serves a purpose – otherwise it wouldn’t be needed. We think that the world should be all about peace without war, but that’s a fantasy. The idea of creating peace comes from the fact there is war. Without war, we wouldn’t be striving for peace and we wouldn’t be taking the time to find ways to coexist in a different way, where a different form war exists, but without the loss of life.
When we don’t take the time to consider that issues like rape or murder or cancer could have their benefits, then we’re choosing to turn a blind eye to some of the greatest lessons and blessings available to us. I have worked with people who have going through these issues – rape and murder – and they uncovered some of the most incredible blessings that brought tears to their eyes. For so many years they were in judgement or resentment and didn’t even realise that it assisted them and it was something they could be grateful for. I am sure that there are people who will read this and be shocked with my statements and that’s ok. The reason a lot of us have huge judgements towards others for leaving people or raping or murdering is because those are, in some way, reflections of parts of who we are that we’re ashamed of or don’t want to face. We have all done those things in our lives except, the form in which we did them might be completely different. That may be hard to come to terms with, but that’s just simply a universal truth.
My suggestion to you, or anyone else who reads this comment, would be to go and see where you ‘raped’ or ‘murdered’ someone else in your life. You might say that you’ve never done that. You have, it just wasn’t in the form that you’re familiar with. If you look at what rape is, it’s overpowering someone and taking control in order to get what you want. It’s a form of dominance. I’m sure you’ve done that to someone before, maybe with your words or maybe as a superior to someone at work. We’ve heard statements like: “raping someone of their dignity” – that’s another way when we can humiliate someone in public. The quality is the same but the form changes. The same with murder. I can tell you that when I was a kid, I actively took a magnifying glass and murdered ants in my back yard. Although I didn’t do it to people, it’s still murder and there are people out there who would call me one. Or murder could be taking someones ability to live the life they want. How many times have you made decisions for yourself, that may impact someone you love and stop them from living the life they want? That’s also murder – just a different form.
All small things and bigs things have there benefits. Our resistance to accept that is purely a resistance to acknowledging it within ourselves because we don’t want to face that we are the same.
Hi Greg,
Trigger Alert.
I can understand the points you’re making. I’ve had the same thoughts when trying to understand “evil” before (I’ve asked myself how I’ve killed something in someone, etc.)
But I do think we need to be careful when talking about rape and murder.
There’s a fine line between what you’re saying above and implying that it’s okay for these things to happen to people.
There’s no excuse for rape, pedophilia, abuse, murder, etc. It’s never okay to do these things. If people can find a way to forgive these abuses, find strength in them, and in the cases that you reference, be grateful for them, those are a reflection of the victim, not the abuser. No one should condone this behavior or make anyone think that they are doing someone a favor in the long run by victimizing them.
Hi Adrianne,
No one is condoning rape, abuse or murder as viable responses to create awareness and yes, there is a fine line between what I’m saying and what was mentioned before. However, we do attract crisis into our life in the form of an abuser, a murderer, Cancer, pedophiles and all the others to help us learn. They are there for a purpose. We may not like it and we may even reject it, but we cannot deny it. It doesn’t matter how many of them we put away or sentence to death, there will always be more. Take Cancer as an example. Cancer is increasing every year. Nothing that is being done to ‘eliminate’ Cancer or kill it is making the situation any better. In actuality, it’s adding to it, to some degree. The more you try and get rid of something, because you don’t want to face what it’s teaching you, the more it proliferates and goes out of control. As human beings, we are living in a fantasy world to think that we can eradicate war, put all criminals in jail, stop bullying, and eliminate all the big issues that exist. It’s universally impossible. Did you ever say to yourself: “I never want to be like my mother or father or grandparents”, but somehow you’ve become like them and you hate that about yourself? That’s avoidance behaviour and not seeing how their actions or inactions served you in your life.
I put myself out there and walk the fine line because I see so many people walking around in fear and judgement, who are not taking the time to see that what they see in others, is within themselves too. We are no different from the people that we persecute. We think we’re better and they’re worse. This is one of the reasons those people exist, because somewhere or sometime back in the past we stopped appreciating people for who they are. We may have done this to extremes. Is it crazy to think that in some way we have projected ourselves so much onto other people that they had to act out in such extreme ways just to be noticed? I don’t think so. Have you ever stopped to think that maybe the person who is abusing is also a victim too? A victim in a different form who is doing whatever is necessary to feel valued in some way. Subconsciously, the brain does not see the world in dualities – as positives or negatives, good or bad. Attention or being noticed is just that. If it’s for doing what we perceive as good, that’s great. If it’s for doing what we perceive as bad, that’s great too. The subconscious does not discriminate. Consciously, though, we place judgement on everything. It makes us feel better about who we are and the things we’ve done. We compare our actions to those of others and determine whether ours are better or worse. When we perceive that we’ve reached a conclusion we then put down or lift up other people. This approach to life is very separate and not integrated whatsoever.
It’s easy to deal with the smaller issues but it is always way more confronting to deal with the bigger ones. A perfect example of this was the post I submitted on Cancer last year. So much controversy, challenge, triggered responses. If it stimulates a response, it’s having an impact and bringing things to the surface for people to pay more attention to. The problem is, most of us are not interested in dealing with those issues and want to constantly push them aside or find ways of refuting them. There is nothing wrong or right with that. It’s human nature to avoid. It’s what we’ve all been taught. “Don’t touch – it’s hot” or “Wash your hands, you’ll get sick” or “You can’t watch those movies. They’re bad”. How are we expected as a society to handle big challenges when we’ve been conditioned to turn away from them? How are we ever going to learn to transform the world we live in, into a world we’d be inspired by? These are questions I leave for all of you to consider. I’d love your feedback.
Great article!
I do think that it’s important to remember that some things that frustrate us by others , we have done ourselves, though I do learn from my mistakes so when others don’t , I can’t say it could serve me in any way long term
This sounds extremely similar to Dr John Demartini’s process that he describes in his book “The Breakthrough Experience”. I highly recommend that book (he runs courses around the world too) to go through the process more thoroughly.