Assertiveness for Earth Angels: How to Be Loving Instead of Too Nice (20 page)

I believe that Jesus was trying to demonstrate for us that we're all connected to God, and that we all have this power. He said that all of us, with faith, can enact the miracles that he did—and more. It's time to stop playing “little”! Your life purpose could be the one to change the world and save the entire planet.

Delay Tactics

The ego doesn't want you to know who you are. It prefers to keep you shrouded in fear and insecurity, believing that fulfilling your life purpose is far down the road from today, and that you're nowhere near qualified or prepared enough to tackle it.

The ego is the tyrannical ruler within us all that wants everyone to stay in the dark so that it may be in charge and in control. The price we pay for its tyranny is that we don't explore the joys and the bliss of taking risks by following our inner Divine guidance.

So the ego uses delay tactics to ensure that you'll never quite be on your purpose. A delay tactic is any compulsive behavior that pushes you off your path. Delay tactics are distractions from feeling like you have the right, or enough time and readiness, to pursue your calling in life.

Your life purpose always involves love. And the form of love surrounding it is something that excites your interests, your sense of purpose, and your natural talents and passions.

So, for example, if you're crazy about animals and you love them almost more than life itself, that's a sign that your life purpose involves animals. Or if you find great pleasure in artistic or creative projects, this is a sign that your purpose involves creativity and artistry. If you love talking to people and helping them arrive at insights, your life purpose involves counseling or consulting or teaching.

If you feel frustrated or blocked in your life, channel those feelings in the direction of taking positive action steps! And don't allow anyone to tell you that you can't. When I first decided that I'd follow my inner guidance to become a published author, I mentioned this to my professor and supervisor in psychology. He immediately let out a guffaw at the idea and told me that I wasn't qualified to be a published author.

Fortunately, I didn't allow his laughter to stop me from pursuing my dream. I somehow summoned up my inner courage to write and submit my first book, even though my personal authority figure (my supervisor and teacher) tried to dissuade me.

Looking back now 25 years later, I can only imagine that his comments were because he didn't believe in himself and was projecting this onto me. If he had been a go-getter for
his
dreams, he'd naturally encourage other people to follow their own.

Sometimes people will attempt to talk you out of following your dreams because they're trying to protect you from disappointment. I promise you that whenever you pursue your dreams, there will be disappointments, but you'll overcome them! Disappointments aren't punishments in life; they're benchmarks showing your progress.

Never be afraid of failure or disappointment, because those are just temporary experiences on the path to your dreams coming true. Just because you fall, it doesn't mean that you'll stay down, unless you give up.

I personally have had many setbacks in my business and in my personal life along the way. I probably would have experienced setbacks anyway even if I
hadn't
pursued my dreams. But the happiness that I get from working on my dreams has given me the strength and endurance to survive those life setbacks.

As I mentioned before, when I first began writing books, my children were very young and I had a fulltime job as a secretary. I went to college part-time during my lunch break. I was extremely busy! I could have easily said that I didn't have time to write my books. And no one would have blamed me. But I went ahead and did it anyway, because the thought of not pursuing my dreams was more terrifying than the thought of failing if I did so.

At first, I allowed my own ego fears to get to me. Instead of writing, I let myself be delayed by focusing on housework. I had this unconscious belief that I was not allowed to pursue my own dreams until my house was perfectly clean. I justified this by saying that my sons were very little and I didn't want them to come into contact with germs.

So I'd clean the carpets incessantly until all the dirt was gone in every single spot. I'd clean under and on top of the refrigerator daily. In other words, I was overdoing the housework. Although it's important to have a sanitary kitchen and home, I was clearly using housework as a defense against ever getting started on my writing. In that way, I was ensuring that I'd never succeed, nor would I ever fail or face disappointment if my book didn't get published.

Once I realized what I was doing, the unconscious fear rose naturally to the surface, where I could face it. Facing your fears is the key to overcoming them!

So what are
your
fears? Take a moment to confront them, and see that they really originate from childhood nightmares that have no real power over you at all.

Addictive Delay Tactics

Delay tactics are usually behaviors that you engage in compulsively as a way of atoning for your fears. Common ones Earth Angels use include:

• Overeating
  
• Substance abuse
  
• Addictive Internet surfing
  
• Compulsive shopping
  
• Love addictions
  

One little-known and insidious delay tactic is rescuing a friend. This involves spending one hour or more per day on the telephone listening to your friend's latest problems and dramas. Now, I should mention that this particular friend always has a brand-new batch of drama and troubles. Oh, and I should
also
mention that she has no intention of healing her life. She is only calling you to brag about how special she is because she has all of these amazing problems. She's calling because you listening to her validates her way of existence. She's using you as a delay tactic of her own, because as long as she's embroiled in one drama after another, she has the excuse of having no time or energy to focus on her life purpose.

You can give this friend all sorts of wonderful advice, but she'll never follow it or put it into action. She will always give you a “yes but” excuse for why she can't take your advice.

This really isn't a friendship, unless she's willing to listen to
your
problems after she's done discussing hers. Usually this type of friend is a drama king or queen (see the previous chapter and the earlier one on toxic relationships), who's seeking a sounding board or someone who will define him or her. You don't need one-way relationships; they're toxic and disempowering. So to break the cycle of this delay-tactic relationship, you'll need to admit to yourself this powerful truth:

You're using the friend as much as she is using you
.

You're using this relationship because it's serving a useful purpose as a delay tactic. You can justify not working on your life purpose because you're too busy helping your friend through her problems. But when you get honest with yourself, you can see what a time waster this agreement is that you both have unconsciously made.

This type of continual drama and one-sided relationship needs to either end or be managed. Your top priority should be taking care of your physical, mental, and spiritual health so that you can be a vital member of the community and there for your family.

And part of taking care of yourself includes devoting at least one hour per day, without exception, to focusing upon your passions, priorities, and purpose (which are usually one and the same).

Being assertive means being honest with yourself and others, as we've emphasized throughout this book. That entails having the courage to face your addictions and other delay tactics. If your addiction is completely out of your control, seek professional help, including the online and in-person free support groups through Al-Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous. There are 12-step meetings for nearly every addiction, including eating disorders, compulsive spending, codependent relationships, and substance abuse. There are even wonderful and free-of-charge online 12-step meetings that you can easily find through an Internet search for “online 12-step meetings.”

Many of these addictive behaviors are actually attempts to gain more happiness and peace. The ego tells you that if you acquire one more glass of alcohol, one more new dress, one more new relationship, one more cigarette, and on and on . . . then you'll finally be happy and at peace.

Be honest with yourself about how this delay tactic has done the opposite, and has actually
interfered
with your happiness, health, and purpose. Have a conversation with your delay tactic and tell it good-bye. Be willing to forgive yourself and everyone involved in enabling your delay tactic. Your sense of humor may even make you see that your delay tactic was part of our human foibles and quirks.

Every experience you've ever had has been a teacher and an opportunity to learn and grow. So all of the delay tactics that you've been involved in have taught you something and brought you blessings, even if you can't see them right now.

The purpose of delay tactics is to prevent you from moving forward. Delay tactics are your unconscious mind's and ego's way of preventing you from ever experiencing rejection, or disappointment regarding your dreams. Delay tactics allow your dreams to be perpetually in a state of suspension, where you'll never have to face the pain of having them not come true if you were to try for them.

But dreams, like lottery tickets, can only succeed if you take a chance on them. And then each day devote at least one hour toward
realizing
them. It doesn't matter
what
you do, but only that you do something—anything—related to your dream.

Love Addictions

Believe it or not, you can get addicted to love! Not the Divine love, which is 100 percent healthy, but the falling-gaga-head-over-heels type of love. Earth Angels are susceptible to love addictions because of their penchant to search for the bliss of heavenly love and their romantic desire for a soul mate.

Love addiction means that you continually look for “the one” so that you can have the fairy-tale romance that you dream of. You become hooked on the endorphins and neurotransmitters associated with romance, such as
phenylethylamine
(PEA), the feel-great chemical that your brain secretes when you're falling in love. This is the same chemical in chocolate and is in the same class as the drug ecstasy. PEA makes you feel like you're floating on air.

The other addictive chemical associated with love is called
oxytocin
, a hormone released when a woman is sexually aroused. This hormone emotionally bonds her to her partner. This is one reason why women can't have casual sex: oxytocin makes them want a serious relationship with whomever they sleep with.

Love addiction can be dangerous if you get involved with violent or inappropriate people in your quest for the addictive love feelings and chemicals. It can also lead to sexually transmitted diseases and low self-esteem and shame.

If you believe you may have a love addiction, you can gain real help from the 12-step group called SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous), which has free online support to help you detox from inappropriate relationships. SLAA is based on the same effective model as Alcoholics Anonymous that has helped millions of people. Just visit
www.slaafws.org
to find resources and online meetings.

Perfectionism and Paralysis

If you have perfectionistic tendencies, you may try to delay working on your dream until you believe it's the perfect moment. This guarantees that you'll never move forward on the path of your purpose. Because—let's face it—there's never an ideal time for you to begin working on your dream.

Your ego will try to tell you that you must first feel ready before you can start. But the truth is that the ego will
never
allow you to feel ready, because it will always feed you lies filled with insecurity and anxiety.

Your ego will try to convince you that you're unprepared, unqualified, or a fake or phony.

In fact, one of the ego's favorite delay tactics is called the “Impostor Phenomenon.” This means that you compare yourself to everyone else, using the ego's separation beliefs that you're less than others.

The ego will try to tell you that you're not qualified, or that you're an impostor who's faking your way to success. It warns you that you'll eventually be found out as a fraud, and all of your hard work will have been for nothing.

If you listen to the ego's warnings about being an impostor, you'll be paralyzed under the misguided notion that you're protecting yourself. You'll be afraid to make the first move, because you unconsciously remember your childhood or other lifetimes when you were ridiculed (or worse).

There will never be a time when you feel completely prepared, qualified, or ready. That's because such a time doesn't exist. You're always improving yourself and your life. There will always be some sort of issue or drama trying to pull you off of your path.

There's always some world crisis or some upheaval concerning a loved one, and these are ways for you to feel perfectly justified in focusing on
them
instead of upon your dream.

This goes back to what I've said repeatedly: just one hour per day, devoted completely to your dream, will be the genie in the magic lamp that grants your wishes.

If you feel like you don't have one hour a day, let's look at that belief. Perhaps you're tired in the morning or at night, and the rest of your day is devoted to work or other duties. What this means is that you simply must increase your energy levels so that you have more time available to you each day. This doesn't mean pumping yourself full of caffeine or other drugs to try to artificially stimulate your energy.

Your energy must be naturally stimulated through exercise, sunlight, and a healthful diet. By investing the time to exercise and eat healthfully, you will be rewarded with many extra hours of useful time each day. And that extra time can go toward daily work related to your life purpose. (In
Chapter 19
, we'll talk more about how you can increase your available time and energy.)