The Best

We want “the best” for our children and our loved ones. Often we write or see this phrase written as a closing salutation in letters or emails. We want the best for ourselves, too. Of course we do! We are expansive creatures, meant to be growing and experiencing more!

How do we get the best?

Drop your limited sense of self –Ernest Holmes

Obviously, we need to be willing to receive the best. We need an attitude of really knowing we deserve and should have more. And we need to know it’s safe— that having more really serves us. It’s surprising how many times when working with a client on this subject of greater prosperity we have uncovered an underlying belief that the person will be rejected by family if s/he becomes successful or more prosperous than they. Another unwillingness to receive greater good is a fear about not knowing how to act or handle money and other assets. The most unusual unwillingness regarding being successful that I’ve come across is that of a client not wanting to furnish his parents with any possible evidence that they might have done a good job raising him! We can trip ourselves up in some pretty tricky ways!

Here’s one from my own experience: James Allen, author of the much-loved little book, “As a Man Thinketh,” said that we are made small by our controlling desires and made great by our dominant aspirations. When I first read this, I wondered what Allen meant by “controlling desires.” I have come to think that in today’s language it means a need to control something or someone. It’s like our present psychological concept of resistance: we can be resistant to something—or in this context of getting the best, we can be resistant to something NOT happening–to NOT getting the best. In my personal case, I was resistant to my parents’ telling me to stay small/keep small, to act always as if I deserve nothing. The admonition went further than just being told to be careful to not act inflated or self-important; we were to be totally subservient. Dad used to say often, to all of us, “Who do you think you are? We’re nobody!” Ironically, in my search to honor being a worthy human being, my resistance to being told to be small was, as James Allen pointed out, keeping me small—because that’s what resistance does!

Life doesn’t happen through control; it happens by expansion. Control clutches and closes off; expansion requires us to be open in order to receive more.

So to prepare to receive the best, we must remove “smallness thoughts” by 1) replace limiting beliefs about ourselves and life, and 2) remove resistances and desires to control—because they make us small, unable to receive.

Once we have removed blockages, we can move on to focus on receiving. And again, we run into the business of clearing away thoughts and actions — in order to be the best container to receive the best. Like attracts like.

We grow not by addition, but by subtraction –Meister Eckhart

Subtracting from our thoughts and actions that which is not aligned and supportive of our greater prosperity causes us to become the best and clearest receiver we can be.

We become the best receiver simply by taking one step forward at a time. Take your very best steps forward, one-by-one-by-one. We all do know what the most principled thing to do is in any given moment.  Just do it. One Step at a time. TAKE YOUR BEST STEP FORWARD. We can do it–and together, we can create the best world ever!