Many if not most of us were taught from a very young age that life is very hard and unfair, a constant struggle and that as humans we really can’t trust one another or even ourselves for that matter. Furthermore, if this isn’t our experience, then we must be doing something wrong and we don’t deserve to be happy. And while we can hopefully entertain that this isn’t exactly the healthiest outlook to pass on, I don’t feel that we intend to necessarily cause harm by demonstrating this to our children. In fact, I feel most parents would say they’re trying to protect and prepare their kids.
But then again, where does this need to want to “prepare” them to struggle come from? Well, from OUR parents, right? And from theirs? And theirs? Well, where did this consciousness of lack and imperfection and fear truly begin? When did we begin to view life as something we need to survive rather than thrive in?
I remember as a child the moment I realized that adults were actually not these “all-knowing” beings that many of them appeared or claimed to be and even as a child I knew that I was onto a higher level of knowing beyond many of the adults around me, simply for the fact I had an inner understanding deep down that life actually wasn’t meant to be hard, that it was fair, and that it wasn’t meant to be such a struggle if you just learned how to trust and work with it (and yourself).
I somehow just knew that we, all of us, were meant for greater things than the daily small talk and stresses and that for those of us who had the courage to go for it; to go against what we were told how life should be, were the ones who were actually HAPPY.
Why? Because they were taking control over their own happiness; they made it an inside job. I didn’t know how to consciously structure this awareness at the time, but looking around at all these adults telling me what it takes to live a happy life (by acquiring more and more stuff and comparing yourself to others) and yet seeing for the most part how miserable they all were; well, I knew something was up. And unlike most people under the age of 10, I spent much of my time pondering things like this and trying to uncover this and other mysteries of the workings of life and the universe and what it means to be a (happy) human.
Needless to say…this made me a pretty strange kid.
Well, that and the fact I could see auras and energies! 
But seriously, I’m not saying that I was immune to establishing negative core beliefs about myself. I did form several, just like everyone else around me, and eventually, even my own inner knowing was tested and layered over with false perceptions of the world around me that I started to convince myself were real. Slowly but surely I too fell victim to core beliefs (or what I now call “shadows”) that had me believing I didn’t deserve love, peace, or happiness in my life, and for years I played out this drama to convince myself it was all true…
The biggest ones I personally took on were around self-esteem and having fear around being who I really am. I knew I was “different” and for a long time, I let the harsh words of other kids putting me down for the weird things I’d say crush my self-esteem and make me shrink so small like a turtle going deep into its shell. I learned to believe that my opinions were not important and that I had nothing of value to say.
Soon enough, this would manifest as different habits including mumbling when I spoke and a severe fear of public speaking. As a teen, I developed some serious resentment as I rebelled through poetry full of morbid angst and hatred for a world that could never understand me.
Do you see how dangerous believing the opinions of others are? And this is what we’ve done as children before we had a conscious choice as to whether or not to do so. Now, if anything isn’t fair in life, it would be that. As children we are literal sponges of words and emotions and unable to always coherently process them, we bury them deep with our psyches where they surface later in life in many different ways.
I’m sure some of you can relate. When you feel like no one understands you, you inevitably feel alone and tend to withdraw and I think this happens to so many of us for so many different reasons. Whether we are taught we aren’t good enough or too fat or told we’re stupid. Words and actions are so damaging and the truth is they stick with us well into adulthood. So, literally all of those issues you are still having and are yet to identify; the causes are literally rooted in your most early years of life. And this is how we always work with shadows to heal them…we go back to our childhood when it all started.
When we ask various people about their childhoods, we can get a number of varying responses ranging from quite positive to quite negative and even these ends of the spectrum have their own light and dark corners. With so many variables, saying that one had a “good” or “bad” childhood completely is rather difficult to do. And with good reason. We are multi-faceted beings and we are here to experience not just one end of the physical spectrum of reality, but everything in between. Each corner of space and time offers a great lesson if we are open to it. And perhaps the current paradigm of being in a cycle of “lack” and seeing life as a mere struggle we need to survive is our greatest lesson yet. 
For at this end of the spectrum, we have lost sight of our divinity and greatness. We are seeing a place in our reality where Source or God doesn’t exist and this is merely impossible. We’ve convinced ourselves that there is even a chance that imperfection exists in the Universe as even that which appears imperfect just IS. Perhaps in the vibration of struggle, we learn to surrender. And perhaps in surrendering we find our true strength.
When we teach others, especially children that they must “earn” love, then we are convincing them they are anything less than divine creations, which is false information…we have lied to them. And children being children will know this on a soul level and receiving this conflicting information will cause an energetic disturbance they will not and cannot process, thus manifesting in harmful core beliefs about themselves they will carry into their adult lives. We all do this and have had this done to us. Hopefully not out of intention, but out of ignorance, and now with awareness, we all have the choice to take heed with our words, with children and all people; even ourselves.
To thrive in life, we are taught we must get the degrees and climb the corporate ladder to “success”. But then again, that depends on what your definition of success is, which is nowadays meaning many things to many different people. However, regardless of how you define success, one thing that remains abundantly clear that everyone wants is…well, abundance, and happiness. And we are finally agreeing on what it really takes to get there. It’s not “stuff”, well, not material stuff anyways. It’s the good stuff, going on within you. More specifically, what YOU think and what YOU think of YOU.
While hard work is an inevitable part of reaping the fruits of life’s abundance, life doesn’t have to always BE hard. If you’ve come from a particularly difficult upbringing, or from a very poor family, you might have trouble entertaining any other concept but “life is ALWAYS hard and ALWAYS a struggle” because that has ALWAYS been your experience growing up.
But even if you grew up in a very wealthy family, chances are still good that you may have been ingrained with core beliefs that put a damper on your sense of self-worth; which is really what determines how much or how little we truly allow ourselves to suffer in life. Or in other words, how hard we allow things to be before we finally say, “Enough is enough!” In the age where the American Dream has literally turned into a nightmare, it’s up to each and every one of us to wake up to our own creative power and start thriving in life!
Tamara Rant is a Co-Editor/Writer for CLN as well as a Licensed Reiki Master, heart-centered Graphic Designer and a progressive voice in social media activism & awareness. She is an avid lover of all things Quantum Physics and Spirituality. Connect with Tamara by visiting Prana Paws/Healing Hearts Reiki or go to RantDesignMedia.com
Tamara posts new original articles to CLN every Saturday.
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This article was originally created and published by Conscious Life News and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Tamara Rant and ConsciousLifeNews.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this Copyright/Creative Commons statement.
Awesome article Tamara! Thanks sooooo much!!! -Ross