Do You Deserve Happiness?

by Sally ~ January 26th, 2010. Filed under: confidence, creating a life you love, Happiness.

This is continuing the conversation in the series “Ten Reasons NOT to have what you want”.

Today we’ll talk about the reason “I don’t deserve it”. As with all of these reasons we give ourselves, this one can have many layers behind it.

If you sometimes feel like you don’t deserve to be happy or to achieve your dreams and goals, it may be because you lack self confidence.

This may be linked to experiences from your past that left you feeling fearful to put yourself out there again but most of the time the fear is worse than actually doing it.

There are many things you can do to help boost your self confidence.

List some of your successes in the past. What gave you the courage or confidence to succeed? How can you use what you have learned from that and apply it to your current situation?
Do you just need some practice? Maybe you can ask friends or family to help you practice your skills.
Use your imagination to its fullest. Like an athlete who can visualize crossing the finish line, use your power of imagination to internally practice success. See the article on How Do I believe I Can Have What I Want? for more on this.
Some people successfully use affirmations and others think they are a bunch of hooey. But those internal messages and thoughts really do make a difference. Your thoughts affect your feelings. Your feelings affect your actions. If you have conditioned yourself to believe that you don’t deserve something or that you are not good enough, why not practice retraining your thoughts to create a different outcome?
Another twist on using affirmations is to be aware when you have a negative thought or feeling and just take a second or two to notice it objectively, and use that to think about what you would rather think or feel.

We will talk more about confidence when we get to reason #9 – I’m not good enough.

Could it be that it is just easier to use an excuse like I don’t deserve it? Then you have a built in reason for not trying, and if you don’t try, you won’t fail either.

Another reason behind feeling like you don’t deserve it may be linked to the fact you feel guilty for having something when others don’t. You may see the suffering in the world and wonder why you should be happy or abundant when so many are without.

One way to reframe that is to ask, “Does it help anyone else if you deprive yourself of happiness?” I personally think if you have more, you can give more. That can be in the form of energy, money, or service. There is also a direct effect on the people around you. Enthusiasm and kindness are contagious. And taking care of yourself allows you to take better care of others.

What are the reasons you use that keep you stuck?