Which impulse is strongest? Does it matter?

I was talking with a friend last night and she mentioned something her pastor had said at church and I thought I really must share this with you as soon as possible, because it speaks to the push/pull struggle of change that we all experience.

She said, ‘Your strongest desire is not always your deepest desire.’

Ain’t that the truth!

Let’s unpack that a little bit.

Your strongest desire is usually something you feel in the moment – a craving, a need for sugar or distraction or comfort. And its intense, hard to ignore and just feels completely, bloody necessary, undeniable even.

You know it, you’ve felt it and it pushes you towards that to which you’ve been saying ‘No More!’

Food, chocolate, anonymous sex, pornography, gambling, alcohol, drugs, whatever your poison of choice is.

Or it maybe something that appears more benign that one of the above poisons: sitting on the sofa watching tv all night rather than working on a new project. Doing busy work for your business rather than jumping into the thing that you know will move the needle on your success but it scares you so you put off doing it. Grabbing a sandwich when you’re starving, because everyone knows gluten intolerance isn’t a real thing, (It is!) because you didn’t take the time to prepare food that would nourish you and your body.

That’s your strongest desire – the one that pushes you fast into something that’s not in your long term best interests.

Your deepest desire – well that’s the one that you dream about, the desire that pulls at your heart and soul. The longing you have to follow and yet something, usually that momentary distraction, keeps getting in the way.

Your deepest desire comes to you in dreams, ideas, inspiration that encourages to follow your heart, to be healtier, happier, to be your ideal self living your ideal life and that is different for everybody but you know what yours is.

Think about the two conflicting internal desires like this. When I was working in corporate management, we were often told to prioritise the tasks on our daily to do list into four categories, Important or Urgent or Important and Urgent or Neither Important nor Urgent.

Now, you’d automatically think you would do the important and urgent first but not necessarily because some things were easier to do and I could get more tasks ticked off my list and so I would get on with those because it made me feel more productive.

Another factor that got in the way of prioritising the right task was how loudly the urgent tasks were shouting. Was a customer continually calling/emailing/ demanding updates, was factory production held up for some reason? The loudest tasks sometimes got done first just to get rid of the annoyance factor and they might have been in the last category – Neither Important nor Urgent.

But generally, it was a good method to use to decide what to do, provided you actually sorted the tasks accurately into their categories and then did them accordingly.

And you can use a similar sorting for your desires.

Imagine a line or a path in front of you, stretching all the way to the distance on either side of you. And to one side is your deepest desire, the inspiration for your dreams, the ideal you living your ideal life. and to the other side is your other desires, all the little and big cravings and distractions and sabotages and delaying tactics.

There you are in the middle of what you want, because you want both. Let’s not deny that. You want both, and one will make you feel good in the instant of using it and then you’ll feel horrible and filled with self disgust or disappointment and so you’ll want more just to keep the feelings at bay.

The other demands that you deny yourself that instant gratification of desire and keep going on a more austere path leading you to fulfiling your deepest desire and for days, months and maybe even longer you might not see any change, any improvement you have to trust that you will get there, that you must keep going.

Neither direction is actually easy on you, but one will ultimately give you something so precious you can’t even imagine what it feels like – freedom!

Both are attractive but one is infinitely more seductive than the other because its easy and you know its rewards and you can feel it already, the endorphins swimming in your bloodstream. And its habitual, you fall back into answering the call of these desires so easily.

But you have a choice, You always have a choice.

Which call will you answer?

The push of the seductive, instant fulliment of cravings or the pull of the deeper, purer, more holy call to be free, to be all of you without anything holding you back any more?

It seems obvious when you imagine the pathway of desire – yes, lets give it a pretentious pompous name! Its obvious that every step along the path in one direction does actually take you further away from the other. And yet, it is also just one choice away. Paradoxes, who doesn’t love them?

This is good news, it means that every step you take towards your deepest desire, you are leaving the cravings, the distractions, the poisons behind.

It means that you will get stronger and more able to follow the pull of your deepest desire without having to struggle with strong desires for quick fixes that actually fix nothing but make your life worse.

What’s also good news is that you are always able to choose one way or the other. That power is always yours and yours alone. No-one can force you to choose one direction, you always choose. That choice is always available to you.

You may go along with other people and do the destructive thing because its how you connect with people, its how you made yourself belong somewhere. But you don’t have to. Its a choice you make each and every time.

Everyday, we make thousands of little seemingly inconsquential choices that all add up to how we see ourselves which impacts how we show up in the world.

Do we get up when the alarm goes off or snooze it and end up running late?

Do we make time for breakfast, meditation, getting right with ourselves before we go out into the world or do we rush out the door unthinking, straight into the day and grab something to eat on the way, dropping instantly into stressful thoughts about what we have to do, who we’re supposed to be?

Do we take care of ourselves and give ourselves the best we have to give or do we just go out unprepared, unprotected, unsupported?

Every step we take, every choice we make, _ I typed that becfore I realised what I was writing and now I have Sting singing in my head! Let me start that again.

Everything you do impacts who you are.

Every choice, every decision made, every action taken, every desire denied or satiated.

Long term or short term – that’s the question.

What are you living for?

Short term fulfilment or long term satisfaction?

There is always a way for you to change direction, to change from someone who gives in to those strong desires, to turn to the undeniable deepest desire and start living towards that instead.

And its tough at the start, the dial on your appetite desires seems to go way up and they shriek and scream for attention, to be fed.

But sometimes loud is neither important nor urgent. Its just loud and you can ignore that and go with the pull towards being you, free from all of it.

Because you made a different choice.

You choose yourself.

And that’s what you need to keep doing now. Over and over again. Choose yourself.

And when you’re ready to make that choice easier, that’s what hypnosis does for you. Strengthening your choice to be your ideal self, feeling the joy, satisfaction and freedom as you loosen the hold of cravings and self sabotage.

When you’re ready for that, message or email me and we’ll talk about what support programme you’ll need.

Love,

Cynthia

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