​We know that children are very impressionable, yet adults teach children all sorts of beliefs that can forever negatively affect their lives, without realizing it and not even knowing if what they are teaching is true. When I speak of adults, I’m referring to any adult in a child’s life - parents, relatives, friends, teachers, movies, video games, news media, and the general population.

Imagine being told that you can’t do anything right, why can’t you be like your sister, you’ll never amount to anything, you’re hard to love, and countless other things, day in and day out, for years. At age seven, my aunt and uncle adopted me out of my biological father’s junkyard. My aunt/new mother would often threaten to send me back to the junkyard, saying things like “you can take the boy out of the junkyard, but you can’t take the junkyard out of the boy”. I know it sounds terrible, and yet I’ve heard much worse things from clients and retreat participants. Then we wonder why kids grow up believing that they are not enough.

Somehow, most of us survive childhood, get through school, and get a job or start a business. We try to use positive thinking, mindset work, read self-help books, go to seminars, take classes, join 12 step programs, and learn lots of coping skills to help us get through. We may end up successful in the eyes of many, however, deep down where no one else can see, we still believe all that stuff that we’ve been told. Perhaps in your thinking mind, you even convinced yourself that you’ve moved past it. Still, deep down something still slowly eats at you or holds you back.

You might wonder if they were right about me, am I a fraud, am I really good enough? Some fine examples about our beliefs and self-doubt are famous speakers, writers, actors, etc. At her now famous Harvard commencement speech, Oprah Winfrey talked about her 35,000 interviews with very successful people. She explained that every single one of them, including past presidents and even Beyonce, asked her after the lights and cameras were off, “How was that, was that ok?”

Are we ever satisfied with our belief about ourselves? Can we really believe that there’s a truth about anything? For every person that believes X and they believe that it is absolutely true, you can find someone that believes the opposite is absolutely true. Byron Katie says to question everything. Since we’ve been convinced about X and believe it’s true, and we tell other people that we believe X, does it make it so?

Beliefs about anything whether it’s about self, other people, or the world, are simply mental constructs (the thinking brain) based on our personal experiences, nothing more. What’s even crazier is the fact that these mental beliefs (thoughts) are often incongruent with what we feel deep down, where no one else can see.

Our thinking mind and our emotional mind/body don’t speak the same language. In fact, our emotional mind/body is non-verbal. It communicates through images, metaphor, emotions, feelings, which are felt in the body and completely inaccessible to the thinking mind. That’s why what you think and what you feel may be entirely different. The thinking mind is about language, words, thoughts, and figuring things out, but it can’t think its way out of our feelings.

Dr Deborah Sandella, the creator of RIM (Regenerating Images in Memory) and author of “Goodbye Hurt & Pain” discovered how to partner with the thinking mind with the emotional mind/body. As a closed eye process, RIM allows for a client to enter a state of hyper awareness where the emotional mind leads the process. Through spontaneous imagination, the client generates their own personal experience, giving form to whatever shows up, making emotions tangible to the thinking mind. While the thinking mind is processing what now appears to be tangible, the client can easily dip beneath the surface to see what is really there, and to work with it in a visceral way to release the old stuck emotions that have been driving the show.

Dr. Candace Pert, (author of Molecules of Emotions, and considered the mother of Psychoneuroimmunology) said, “by bringing awareness to past conditioning - the memories stored in the very receptors of our cells, - we can release ourselves from stuckness. We free ourselves to see and act on that seeing.”
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This is a big step forward in the evolution of mind and body. Beliefs are just thoughts we keep on thinking. None of them can be proven to be true. So, if you or your clients are stuck, traumatized, or are experiencing incongruent thoughts and feelings, I invite you to learn more about RIM. Here are some helpful links. More about RIM.  Purchase RIM Session Packages.  RIM Essentials Training. In just 4 days of live experiential training with an intimate group, you will learn 15 RIM skills to rapidly help clients identify and dissolve their biggest root issues/blocks. We’ll also support you through the first three months of practice sessions and into your future as a member of the RIM community. 

Pleasing others - who would find fault with that? It’s a good thing to consider the needs of others and to be nice, right? Let’s not confuse niceness with kindness. For many, the desire to please becomes an addictive need to please, even at the expense of their own health and happiness. It takes a toll on health, relationships, and quality of life, and it drowns out the inner voice that may be trying to protect us from overdoing it.
 
“As a people-pleaser, you feel controlled by your need to please others and addicted to their approval,” writes Harriet B. Braiker, Ph.D., in The Disease to Please. “At the same time, you feel out of control over the pressures and demands on your life that these needs have created.”
 
Take this quiz to see whether you can benefit from learning to say no to others more often—and yes to yourself.
 
1. I put others’ needs before my own, even at a cost to me and my own happiness.
 
2. If someone needs my help, I can’t say no. I often find it difficult to say no, and feel guilty when I do.
 
3. I often try to be who others want me to be, to agree with them, to fit in.
 
4. I keep my own needs and problems to myself; I don’t want to burden others with them.
 
5. It’s my job to make sure everyone else is happy.
 
6. I always have a smile on my face and an upbeat attitude, even if I feel sad or angry or hurt.
 
7. I go out of my way to avoid conflict and confrontation; it’s better just to keep the peace.
 
8. I am often on the go, rushing to get things done. When I take a moment for myself, I feel selfish, indulgent and guilty.
 
9. I should always be nice and never hurt others’ feelings.
 
10. I’ll do whatever it takes to get someone to stop being mad at me.
 
11. I hold back from saying what I really think or from asking for what I want if I think someone will be upset with me for it.
 
12. I feel like a failure if I’ve displeased anyone.
 
13. I will change my behavior, at my own expense, to make others happy.
 
14. I spend a lot of time doing things for others, but almost never ask anyone to do things for me.
 
15. I don’t often ask people for help, if they really wanted to help, they would offer without my asking.
 
If you answered True more often than False, you may need support in saying Yes to yourself! The motivations for being a people pleaser are usually quite unconscious.
 
The good news is, uncovering and healing childhood wounds that usually underly the problem is easier than we used to think. We don’t need to dig into all the old stories to easily identify the root cause/issue.
 
We now know that emotional memories are stored in the body, and we can use somatic sensing to easily reveal and regenerate those old stuck emotions. We can free ourselves of the unconscious programming of people pleasing and other patterns.
 
Michael J. Kline is a Master Trainer, Retreat Leader and Firekeeper. You can often find him teaching emotional processing skills like RIM (Regenerating Images in Memory), or assisting Jack Canfield, training transformational trainers, or hosting a retreat at Con Smania in Costa Rica. Otherwise, he’s at home in Sarasota FL, with his husband of 34 years, and their labradoodle Luke. You can reach him through his website www.michaeljkline.com or e-mail [email protected]
 
 
Author’s content used under license, © Claire Communications