Soulshine

   Throughout my life I have committed self-sabotage against my own happiness endlessly-- far too many times to count. Self-sabotage is a terrible problem for so many codependents/addicts.  The problem is rooted in the false belief that we are not good enough for any person. It's especially difficult if we are approached by a man or woman who is very attractive to us. We just can't believe that this fabulous person could actually be interested in us. After all, we're telling ourselves, at least subconsciously, that this person is too interesting, too handsome, too sexy or too intelligent to be interested in us. And because we don't want to make a bigger fool out of ourselves than we already perceive ourselves to be, we push him or her away. This fabulous person may pursue us and yet that still isn't enough to convince us that we are worthy of him/her. Sooner or later, they get the message and they are gone from our lives. Days, weeks or months later, we may realize

     I am a champion at beating myself up-- even after years of recovery. I sharply criticize myself for how I look, how I act, for my many mistakes, for operating out of fear when I want to have power over my life through faith-- and the list goes on. Most of the time, I'm not even aware of how nasty I am being to myself. It's so ingrained inside of me. It's a natural reaction. I promised myself in early 2023 that I was going to "wake up" and begin living life from my conscious mind instead of reacting to life from my subconscious mind. I broke that promise. As a result, a year that should have been the best year of my life was filled with knee-jerk, fear-based decisions that destroyed my greatest hopes for personal happiness. Since late last summer, I have mercilessly beaten myself up over the disaster I created. But now, I've decided it's time to stop. In Christian churches we are in the season of Lent. Many denominations urge people to "give up&qu