You may have heard me and other teachers mention that if something feels like a really big deal, like it’s going to change your life, that its manifestation is usually far away, because things that are about to manifest feel normal and like they’re the “next logical step”. Would it then be better to not get too excited about the thing we want, to even practice being blasé about it in order to speed up our manifestations? And can being too excited actually make us desperate for what we want? Watch today’s video to find out.
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Transcript:
Awesome Courtney’s Burning Question:
“Hi Melody! My question is about excitement/exhilaration. One morning after waking up excited about the day and catapulting out of bed, I felt inclined to google the feeling of excitement in relation to LOA. I guess I expected to see a laundry list of positive results and re-enforcement: ‘Yes! Get super excited! It’s the best idea!’
But instead I saw a lot of warnings about excitement taking you to a place of high state vibration that is rooted in wanting/needing. I totally understand how being constantly hyped up, and especially focused on TRYING to be hyped up, can hinder your manifestations. I get the concept of detachment, I don’t think that’s the part I’m struggling to grasp.
What I’m reading is that it’s wrong to feel too passionate or excited about your dreams and goals and that the ideal feeling is nonchalance/’ordinary’. I’m having trouble with this. How do you feel ‘ordinary’ and nonchalant about something that makes you so friggin’ happy? And doesn’t that contradict the ‘feeling good’ perspective? How can you know the difference between feeling good and feeling too good to the point of desperation? Isn’t trying to maintain that enough to make you go crazy? Am I in the matrix? What year is it?”
Well Awesome Courtney, I’m going to zero right in on the thing that hopefully caught your attention as well! I’m going to re-read it here: “How can you know the difference between feeling good and feeling too good to the point of desperation?”
If you’ve read my book, or you’ve been on my blog for a while, you will have seen the concept of “The Spectrum of Empowerment,” where I map out all of the emotions from the negative side to the positive side. You’ve got to know then that desperation is nowhere near feeling really, really good. It’s not like, you feel good, you feel better, you feel even better… and then you swap over into desperation. That’s not how that works! However there are a lot of limiting beliefs at play here, and there’s also a lot of confusion here, so I’m going to do my best to clear that up for you today.
There is nothing wrong with wanting
People always go on about wanting and how we shouldn’t want anything.
Disclaimer: this is how I view it; this is how I explain it, and hopefully once I’ve explained it, it will make sense. You might find that other teachers seem to contradict this, but there’s nothing I can do about that. See which answer you resonate more with.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting (in the way that I speak about it), because you can’t stop wanting; you are a wanting machine; you are a creator. But there’s a big difference between wanting and needing, and the two become so ingrained in our belief system in this society that we often confuse them for each other, even though they are not the same thing at all.
When we need something, we need it for survival, and this is what’s actually happening in the brain when the reptilian brain kicks in. All the neurological pathways are kicking in that say, “If I do not get this thing, I’m not going to be ok and my survival is being threatened.” The problem, for most of you, and certainly for people who are reading this on a computer, is that you are probably not out there dealing with survival issues. You probably have enough food to stay alive, you have shelter to sleep under and you have enough protection from the elements and predators. These are not big concerns for you.
When we talk about needing, the stuff that gets activated is our actual survival mechanism, and that doesn’t have anything to do with wanting. Like I said, you can’t stop wanting; you are a creator and creators want. Think of it this way: an artist who is working on a masterpiece can already be enjoying the vision of the next five sculptures that he’s going to create, or the next five paintings he’s going to create, or the next five books that she’s going to write. There is no desperation in that; there is only, “Oh my god, I am loving this, and I’m going to love the next thing and the next thing and so on.”
The problem arises because we have a very strong belief in our society that says that we don’t get to want something unless we need it, meaning we only get to want from a place of dissatisfaction. Let me demonstrate this:
You don’t get to buy a new pair of shoes, you don’t even get to want a new pair of shoes, it’s not ok for you to want a new pair of shoes, unless you need a new pair of shoes. So, if you have a party to go to and you bought a new dress, but you don’t have any shoes to wear to that party, suddenly you get to want a new pair of shoes. But you don’t get to just go to your closet and say, “Oh, I’d love a new pair of shoes.” No, no, no – that’s greedy!!
How to make wanting a pure thing
You don’t get to want unless you need.This is a powerful, powerful belief that gets in the way, which means we only allow ourselves to want freely from a place of dissatisfaction. We have coupled dissatisfaction with wanting and then wanting often doesn’t feel good. But if you can give yourself permission to want without the need, you decouple them and wanting becomes a pure thing, as I said earlier, like the artist creating and already wanting to create the next thing, and the next thing, and so on.
It’s about getting excited; for example, sitting on the rollercoaster and being excited about the other rollercoasters you’re also going to go on, but not taking anything away from the rollercoaster that you’re currently enjoying. It’s a completely different mindset.
Desperation comes in when we think that we need what we want. But here’s the thing and it’s the thing that you really want to remember (put it on a post-it note or tattoo it somewhere on your body. But maybe make it a temporary tattoo, because you will remember this after a while…):
Nobody needs an iPhone! Nobody needs the latest toy; nobody needs a car; nobody needs a computer! We don’t need any of these things to survive. And yet, if we were only allowed to want something that we needed, then guess what? We would all still be living in the stone ages; we would all still be Neanderthals because we had what we needed to survive back then. But our lives aren’t about surviving, they’re about thriving. We don’t need any of these things that we’ve created. Nobody needed a microprocessor that allowed us to have a computer that is far more powerful than anything we’ve ever seen before, which fits in the palms of our hands. Nobody needs that to survive, but we want it, and we can enjoy it. It has catapulted us into an age where we are now creating things that past generations couldn’t even imagine in their wildest dreams. It is about evolution and creation, which is fuelled by wanting.
You don’t have to justify what you want
Pure wanting has nothing to do with desperation and needing anything. The faster you allow yourself to want without need, the more creative you’ll become, because you will drop the justification that you first have to need in order to want. Do you see that it becomes so much more fun? Like a child in a room full of beautiful and wonderful toys, you don’t need to justify that which you want. The child doesn’t go, “Oh! Well, do I have a need for that? Why am I allowed to play with that? I’ve got to come up with some reason.”
When was the last time you stood in a store and you found a purse or some other item that you wanted, or you where in an electronics store and you saw the latest iPhone or whatever, and you tried to come up with some justification as to why it’s ok for you to buy that thing, instead of just saying, “I want it; I can afford it; it’s ok!”?
Why is wanting something and it making you feel good not enough justification?! Well, how about you just choose that it is?
Getting into a state of exhilaration
Now that I have created this basis with this explanation, let’s take a look at your question: “Is it possible to become too excited, so that we take ourselves out of the flow of the manifestation and swap into desperation?” No, it is not! Desperation is nowhere near exhilaration!
So here’s the thing: when something feels like it’s too big a deal, you cannot get into a state of exhilaration, and I mean true exhilaration, about it. What you are doing is faking it. When you are desperate and you think you are in exhilaration, you are faking it. You’re trying to be exhilarated about it, but you’re not. It doesn’t actual feel good. When you are truly in exhilaration (and that is why I say you can’t fake this, you actually have to feel the way that you want to feel), you are doing it because it feels fun to do it. You’re not even doing it to make anything happen anymore, you’re just doing it because it’s a fun fantasy for you to engage with; it’s a fun vibration for you to be in and it feels so good, and yay – then you are in the flow.
Trust how you feel
Here’s what you do: You reach for the best feeling that you have access to on that subject, which might not yet be exhilaration, but it’s the best feeling you can reach for. Sometimes, in the beginning, it’s going to feel like relief – relief from pain, relief from needing, and relief from desperation. You are going to feel relief. So you reach for the best feeling, and as you acclimate to that, you get access to the next highest feeling, so you reach for that, and as you acclimate to that, you get access to the next highest feeling, and so on. When you are in desperation, you don’t have access to exhilaration; you just don’t. You can fake it, you can be delusional about it, but you won’t yet feel true exhilaration. So what do you trust? You trust how you feel.
Do you actually feel good, or are you noticing that you don’t actually feel so good? Are you pretending to feel good? Do you feel good intelligently because you are thinking intellectually positive thoughts that should feel good? Or do you actually feel good? In order to feel good, you have to be honest about it and admit how you actually feel right now. If you feel like shit right now, notice that you feel like shit, and ask yourself, what is the thing that you can reach for that feels better than shit, instead of saying, let me reach right up to exhilaration.
Bottom Line
You know when you are feeling really good. Trust that you are feeling really good, because I can feel that you generally are. Don’t shit all over that by questioning whether or not feeling really, really good is ok. That’s another limiting belief that has come out that has been mirrored back to you, and yes it’s bit you just a little bit in the ass. For you, that is what this is all about. You asking yourself, “Is it ok for me to feel really, really good, or am I doing something wrong?”
I am here to tell you: Nope, you are allowed to feel really, really good. Choose to honor yourself, choose the perspective that it’s ok to be happy; it’s ok to have an awesome life; it’s ok to get everything that you’ve ever wanted. You can let go of all those beliefs that are saying that’s not a good thing, that you’re not allowed to have that unless you have a justification, and you can’t want something unless you need it.
This is a really big concept that we discussed here today and it takes some practice and some reminding yourself, because you might be hearing all of your grandparents’ and parents’ voices in your head saying, “But you don’t need that.” Yeah – but you want it!! So let that be good enough.
I hope that I’ve answered your question, and I think I may have given you a lot more than you were asking for, but I have given you what you were a match to. 🙂
This has been this week’s Q&A. Huge hugs to all of you and see you next week. Bye!
Love your feedback, can we hear more…Awesome…
What I’ve been learning first and foremost is, one has to be happy in order to attract what they want. So like a lot of us, we do become desperate in that we need that we really need that good job to get out of the shit job that we have in order to feel happiness but the bottom line is, you have to learn to be happy w/o the good job yet! Focus on being happy and grateful. I had become “desperate” if you will, to get out of my job and to get into my dream job. It’s like paddling upstream. We get caught in that false sense of “I’ll be happy when” and the bottom line is, yes, we may get really excited about the new job that we manifested but that will also get old. The crux of any manifestation, in my opinion is, learn to be happy and grateful with where you are and yes, WANT what you want but not out of desperation, ever. Thanks, Melody!
So many a-ha moments happening for so many people, thanks to this post. 🙂 I read this a few days ago, but my a-ha moment seemed to have delayed itself. Now, all of a sudden, after reading this other post about fear by Melody (http://www.deliberatereceiving.com/fear-part2-what-is-fear-and-how-to-release-it.html#axzz4BuqVLQj2) and I started to realize that I need to let go of my need for money and my fear of lacking it BUT that I could still want money and be okay with it, the pieces of the puzzle are now starting to fall into place.
Great video, Melody! And you’re looking gorrrrgeous! Thanks for sharing this message as always, I really needed to hear it, ‘desperately’. 🙂 <3
Getting excited about your manifestation and feeling like it’s the next logical step aren’t mutually exclusive.
Wow… I glade I awoke you up. The amazing thing here is you have to ask before
you sleep… so it will open-up to you. When your there in a lucid dream then you
are in total control.
Sorry I am put two things here, I was emphasizing visualizations & affirmations.
Mostly I am fascinated by Melody`s teachings and sometimes I get carried away.
This morning I woke up from the most wonderful dream! I was living a dream come true, doing something I’ve dreamed of for so long! I felt so inspired, joyous, confident and passionate. It was amazing! I’ve been spending a lot of past few days is feeling my emotions and resting.
This dream was filled with so much inspiration, that on top of the world feeling, I’m really excited about it!
That sounds really great! 🙂 Looks like this was a great manifestation for you.
Btw, I listened to this call today: http://members.deliberatereceiving.com/coaching-call-093-shes-been-doing-everything-right-why-isnt-her-stuff-here-yet/
and it gave me such a great feeling. It’s the best call I have heard so far, and it awesomely “explains” what we really want and how everything works.
Take a look at the description, and if it feels good to you, and if you can get it, listen to it, it’s just so amazing!
But the bottom line is, we all want the feelings, so remind yourself often of those wonderful feelings that you had in this dream.
Oh hello, it is me Courtney – the person who submitted this question, completely forgot about it, and then received the answer in such perfect timing that I jumped up out of my chair and shrieked.
Thanks for this, Melody! It’s funny that I am in a completely different place receiving this answer than I was in asking it, and I’m really grateful for that. Re-reading it I’m realizing that, as you mentioned, there was resistance that prompted me to ask this question to begin with. I was so happy I had to research it to see if it was okay???? Hahaha. I am also really enjoying the clarity of knowing that exhilaration can’t even be reached via desperation, that’s an angle I hadn’t considered and one I really needed to be reminded of.
In celebration of this post (I clicked the video and didn’t even realize it was my question until a few mins in, then went batshit) I got myself a S’mores frappuccino. WITH WHIP. Cheers!
Hi,
You want to know more ?
Yeah but I can’t understand you.
I think you type some and think some.
Whats your message Terry?
Sorry,* not really * * Lamborghini *
Bottom line is to have fun…do you see..
Energize your inner beings…to build the
bridge to move on to the 5 Th Dimension.
What do you mean?
I ask that question everytime he writes.
He knows something we don’t .
Dear Melody,
I WANT to tell you that you are amazing. I do not need or better WANT
anything back.
I want you all to paint this picture in in your mind. Yes right now. A golden
Aubergine c/w black markings or just in the total reverse…Do you see…
I did tell I would…tell about this…
Dreams & Dreaming,
Do you know you have telepathic messages coming-in every night from your higher
YOU !
When you ARE at REST and a-sleep. Key information sent to you from your higher
self…
You want to open-up to this or a-waken your inner consciousness , when in this state
of being, called the resting or awakening state. To master this is to want to …Remember
this, is only wanting to look for your hands…Yes we are talking about dreaming and not
in our awakening state… Do you understand…
Again try to see your self in a tinny box, just sitting down with your legs in the lotus
position,relaxing… now in your mind-eye…see yourself focusing on what you WANT to accomplish in your lives…Do you see…
Why does the Universe hate me? Why hasn’t it helped me? I have been stuck in an extremely unwanted situation for a long time. I’ve been asking for help to get out for years, and I’ve been doing whatever I can to get myself out. But I’m still here. Why is the universe not helping me? I’ve been getting extremely angry, having many releases, doing everything Melody’s book and blog suggest, but there has been no improvement. I’m still stuck and extremely angry that nothing is happening.
Hi Anonymous!
The universe does not hate you. 🙂 The universe is not some external higher power that grants or rejects wishes. YOU are the universe and the power, YOU are the magnet who draws in more of the energy that you send out into your life. There´s no judgement, no punishment, you’re simply just a magnet for energy.
I’m by no means an LOA guru, I just know what has worked for me. Four years ago I was pretty much on rock bottom (even a little below), I had no money, no job, I had failed out of university, I was running out of my savings with no upcoming job opportunities in sight. I discovered LoA, and started studying it at the same time as I started practicing meditation. With a month left to homelessness I managed to manifest a crappy job with an asshole manager, so I was able to pay my bills at least. I kept working on myself, meditating, reading Melody’s blog, reading books, watching youtube videos on spirituality, burning incense, listening to plinky-plonky music, you name it. Turns out I had a lot (and I mean a lot) of crap and limiting beliefs buried inside me that had to come out, and it has taken its sweet ass time to come out as well. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster to say the least. Slowly but surely my life was improving year after year, I gradually manifested better and better jobs, people, and opportunities into my life. Now four years later, I’m finally starting to feel like the powerful manifester that I am. A couple of months ago I quit my job, without having anything else in sight, because I already knew something awesome was coming my way, and within two weeks I was offered an amazing job contract.
Like I said, I’m no expert, and I don’t know you, but what has worked for me has been a great deal of patience and acceptance in combination with meditation and a constant quest for more knowledge and spirituality. I don’t know if this helps at all, but keep working on yourself, maybe it doesn’t feel like you’re getting anywhere right now but you most likely are, they’re just small steps that you don’t notice right away.
I LIKE you! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Thank you Melody, this was brilliant and you make it so easy to understand.
Hi Melody,
Getting this email gave me my biggest a-ha! Moment and coincides with what I have been starting to realise.
What I got out of it is, it’s ok to want, but you can’t be desperate. Meaning, you can win the lottery if you WANT but it can’t be obsessed over, you can’t want it to the point of being desperate.
In my case, I want a new house (a home lottery to be precise.) I’ve bought some tickets, I’ve viewed the gallery of pictures a lot of times to the point where I am trying to imagine, feel I have received it and it is mine. Obsessed with it. I feel now, that unless I find peace with my own home, unless I find some joy with it and be happy with what I already have, I know now, that those feelings of despair and obsession subside, and then I could have what I have asked the universe for. These feelings have to be genuine and not faked. I know it’s coming, I just have to stop feeling desperate for the house I want, and be at peace with it.
Thanks Melody. It’s what I needed to hear.
Shit! I read this and I cried. The difference between wanting and needing 🙂
I feel guilty and ashamed when I want something. Im 28, but it never struck me so far that i was allowed to want anything unless I needed it
I’m not sure if it’s because I’m feeling happier (maybe relieved is a better word) but Melody seems so much happier and funnier than usual.
If you absolutely loved this video as I did and want more on the topic, here’s another one of her video’s done two years ago that makes me laugh over and over again. The funniest part is the bit about the rollercoaster, you’ll pee your pants. Or else my sense of humour is just warped.
http://www.deliberateblog.com/2014/01/06/can-you-have-it-all/
What if you dont know what you want?
I had a major a-ha moment with this one. I use the word NEED a lot for things that I want. That word is so heavy and burdensome and brings about that feeling of desperation. I don’t NEED any of the things that I think I need. I just WANT them and that’s perfectly okay. We’re supposed to WANT things. 🙂
A puzzle piece just fell into place. Squeeeee! Thank you Melody and Courtney! 🙂
Hey Melody
I really resonated with so much of what you said here. I too like to stress to people that wanting what you want is okay–you’ll probably always want something. Like you said, if we just focused on basic needs, we would be living very different lives. One thing that went through my mind while reading this was that I sometimes think we work on feeling good just to get what we want, and that isn’t a bad thing of course. We want to get in vibrational alignment. But there is this ‘ulterior motive’ to our good feelings and it really isn’t genuine, and then when things don’t change as quickly,etc…we find it hard to maintain that state. Of course we get frustrated and we are not expected to feel happy all the time, but when we work on cultivating happiness just for the sake of it, I don’t think we experience these drastic fluctuations as much due to outside circumstances not changing in the way we want them to or on our timetable. Anytime we find ourselves questioning whether we are going about ‘feeling good’ in the proper way, that may be a sign we are using positive emotion as a means to an end.
I agree, I think it’s hard for people (me included) to let go of the idea that a manifestation is some kind of reward bestowed on you by The Universe for good behaviour, feeling happy being the good behaviour you get rewarded for 😉 Like a gold star for doing your homework neatly or something.
It’s like some people feel that once they get their cool manifestation/thing/money, they can stop with the feeling happy stuff, and good riddance. . Like feeling happy is a chore that is only worth putting up with for the reward. And OK, where the **** is it? it’s been weeks! How much longer do I have to feel happy??
exaggerating for comic effect, but you know what I mean 😉
Melody, the cat pic is the best yet!
I totally agree with connecting wants with needs. I myself decide I want something and then talk myself out of getting it because “I don’t need it” therefore it is “a waste a money”. My fan had been given me issues but I waited months before buying a new one cause I kept saying “the old one still works… Mostly so I don’t need a new one”. Finally I just got fed up with the old one and bought a new one and I am so happy I did. I’m going to consciously try to separate my wants and needs from now on.
I just had such a massive aha moment! During the recent new moon, while playing with the feeling of financial freedom, a specific net worth ‘occurred’ to me. The amount is 100X more than I had calculated for my target net worth, and I was suuuuuuper excited…at first. Then I became overwhelmed as I wondered how I would spend it, would I have the right team in place to help manage it with me, etc. I began looking for reasons to justify a net worth of that amount. If I didn’t have a plan for it – a need for it – than why would it come and what would I do with it? Now, thanks to Courtney’s question and Melody’s answer, I realize what happened and can go back to screaming with delight.
Hi Melody,
I love this post. As usual, it is full of awesome insight. I do have one question though:
How do we draw a definitive line between needs and wants? We might say we need food for survival, but this is only strictly true when we are actually starving. So needs become conditional on outside factors. What determines that razor’s edge between needing and wanting? And is it the same for physical and spiritual needs? Do we in any sense need to move toward spiritual enrichment, or do we just want to?
Ok, so that’s like 3 1/2 questions, actually…
IMO, why not throw away the whole idea of needing anything? It’s really a disempowering point of view anyway. When you really connect with the universal flow, all your “needs” are effortlessly met. So who cares what’s technically a need or just a want?
Really nothing’s a need. Even if you die, you’re still 100% fully pure positive energy, as Abraham puts it.
Thanks for the reply! I think I am sort of getting at that same point with these questions. It becomes so difficult to determine a need from a want because, perhaps, needs are an illusion.
I think that this has been mentioned somewhere before, but I’m not sure. If there’s something or someone, imagine never getting it. If you feel like it would still be okay, because there are so many other wonderful things out there (an infinite number), and getting this thing simply makes it even cooler, then that’s a “want”. If you imagine never getting it and can’t imagine your life that way, no matter how many other things there are, then that’s a “need”. At least that’s how I have come to understand it.
P.S. I don’t know if you have read this yet, but it tackles the topic really well: http://www.deliberateblog.com/2011/09/13/jagger-was-wrong-you-can-always-get-what-you-want-but-youll-never-get-what-you-need/
Hey melody, I am an avid reader of your blogs and this post resonated with my beliefs to the core . I was brought up mostly by my grandparents and yes , I still remember that every time I wanted something , I had been taught to ask myself – “do I need it ?”, ” am I really going to use it constructively ?” And yea, often when the answer was “No” I gave up wanting that thing, although I actually felt good about wanting it , Sans logical explanation to it. Detaching want from the need, takes practice , but how can this be done in case of those things at which I have been failing for quite a long time now ?
Great explanation, Melody. I get so much what you mean about people not allowing themselves to want. I hear people all the time say things like, “Oh I just want enough money to cover my basic needs.”
It’s like, why? Why not want it all? Why not want so much more?