When you were a young child, you were pure love. You were happy, alive and free. Unfortunately, you were born into a world that suppresses this state. As a result, you got hurt and you got hurt a lot.

As a little child, the only way you could explain these painful losses of love was to blame yourself. In a moment of hurt, you bought the notion that you were worthless, not good enough, a failure, not worth loving, or in some other way, not okay.

This wasn't the truth, but to a little child, this was the only explanation that made any sense at the time. You then hated the very notion that you created. "No one can ever love me if I'm worthless. Worthless is a horrible way to be."

The moment you bought the notion that you were not okay, you created a core issue that would then sabotage the rest of your life. From that moment on, the underlying focus of your life would be to avoid this hurt.

You may never notice this hurt but it is certainly there. It determines your actions and shapes your life.

A good way to see this hurt is to notice what happens the moment you get upset. Notice the immediate surge of feelings and emotion that come forth. This is the hurt that runs your life.

Any circumstance that reactivates this hurt then becomes a threat that must be avoided at all cost. To protect yourself from this threat, you automatically fight, resist and hang on.

This creates a state of fear, upset and tunnel vision that sabotages your life. You destroy love and create opposition and resistance against yourself. Ultimately, the avoidance of this hurt is responsible for all your self-sabotaging behavior and all your suffering.

The irony is that the more you fight these feelings of being not okay, the stronger they become and the more they run your life. Everything you do to avoid this hurt creates more of the very hurt that you are avoiding.

To see how this works, be sure and read the examples at the end of this article.

By avoiding and resisting these feelings, you give them power. Here is a short exercise that demonstrates this:

Imagine four large yellow balloons on the ceiling above you, but don't think about them. Whatever you do, don't think about those four large yellow balloons on the ceiling above you. You just thought about them. Don't do that.

Notice what happens when you try not to think about the yellow balloons. You keep thinking about them. In fact, you can hardly think about anything else. Your resisting keeps the thought alive.

The same is true with the hurt of feeling worthless, not good enough, or whatever your issue is. Ultimately, these feelings are only thoughts, but by resisting the thought of being this way, you give the thought power and carry it with you day after day.

It's not the truth that you are worthless or whatever, it's just a hurt. But it's a hurt that most people will do almost anything to avoid facing.

To heal this hurt and to be free inside, you need to do the opposite of fighting it. You need to own it and embrace it.

Find the specific hurt that you've been avoiding and make peace with it. Get to the place where you can say, "Yes, I'm worthless. So What? I'm also worthy." As you do this, the hurt loses power and disappears.

To start the healing process, find as specifically as possible, what the hurt is. The best way to do this is to look at your upsets.

Make a list of all the major upsets that you've had in your life. Then find the hurt that's under each one. Go back in time to the moment each upset began and ask yourself this question: "What do those circumstances say about me?"

If someone leaves you, this may say that you are not worth loving. If you lose your job, this may say that you are a failure. Find the words of "not okay" that hurt the most.

The more painful the words or the more you want to deny them, the closer you are to your hurt. For most people, the bottom line hurt is worthless.

While you are looking for your hurt, don't look to see if you are this way, because you're not. Look to see if it would be painful if you were. The more painful this would be, the closer you are to your hurt.

As you work with your upsets you will discover that the same hurt keeps showing up in your life, over and over. This is the hurt that runs your life.

See a list of common core issues.

After you find the specific hurt that you've been running from, the next step is to do the opposite of fighting it, which is to own it and embrace it.

Allow yourself to feel the hurt of being this way. Cry if you can. Then, while you are feeling this hurt, look over your life and see all the evidence to prove that this is indeed an aspect of you.

Find the evidence to prove that you are worthless, not good enough, not worth loving, a failure or whatever else you've been avoiding.

Remember, this isn't true in reality. This is only true in the realm of thinking and emotion. But in this realm, worthless is very real.

So put yourself in the hurt of feeling this way and look at your life and see all the evidence to prove that you really are this way.

The evidence will be there if you are willing to see it. It has to be. It wouldn't keep showing up in your life if it wasn't there. You don't have to like it. You just have to tell the truth about it. Let it in.

Worthless is part of you. It's also no big deal. You are also worthy. Worthless and worthy are both aspects of being human. So allow yourself to be human. Allow yourself to feel all the hurt of being worthless, not good enough, a failure or whatever your issue is.

The more you let in the fact that this is an aspect of you, the more impossible it is to run from it. When you can't run from it, you can't fight it. When you can't fight it, the core issue loses power and disappears.

It's just like the yellow balloons. If you stop fighting them and let them be there, they go away.

As you heal this hurt, your whole life then begins to change. Instead of creating a life of fear and upset, you create a life of love. You restore the happiness, the freedom and the aliveness that you once had.

You see life clearly and you become far more effective. In relationships, you can end the conflict and restore the love, one human being to another.

The process for finding your core issues and healing this hurt is very simple and very fast, but it takes more than just an understanding of how it works. It's important to actually walk through the healing process.

The best way to find and heal this hurt is to do one or two Individual Consulting Sessions with Bill Ferguson. Consulting sessions can be done by telephone or in person.

The second best way is for you to attend Bill's weekend workshop, Return To The Heart ^SM. If you can’t do the workshop, get the Mastery Of Life Audio Course or read Bill's newest book, Get Your Power Back. If you want to start the healing process now, download the audio course or the book.

Make sure you do this work. Healing this hurt is one of the most important things you can ever do.

Give us a call at 713-520-5370 if you want more information.

See some examples of how core issues work.

Copyright © 2007 Bill Ferguson - All Rights Reserved