Do You Deserve to Get What You Want?

Of course you do

A client told me recently that she had just been given a big promotion. She was heading up the HR department for a company in the States, and now she’s heading up the HR department for all the countries this company has offices.

Great news for her. Kudos.

But then she told me that she had started drinking after ten years of sobriety. She said it began at a works meal when she asked the waiter for an alcohol-free beer, and he brought her a regular beer.

And, after ten years, she drank the beer. And then thought that she might as well have another one.

That was two weeks ago, and she has been drinking every night.

We started to talk about her drinking, but then she said something interesting. She said she was waiting to do something to blow her new job. She felt as if the promotion would be taken away from her.

This woman is good at her job. So much so that she’s been given this high powered position that she can do well.

But she doesn’t think that she deserves it. She dismisses the twenty years it took her to get to where she is as ‘luck’, and she’s scared that her luck will run out.

Why do you think you don’t deserve to be lucky?

I’ve written before about luck, but I will repeat that in his book, ‘The Luck Factor’ Richard Wiseman boils luck down to four main elements: maximise your chance opportunities, listen to your lucky hunches, expect good fortune and turn your bad luck into good.

Wiseman says that lucky people aren’t in the right place at the right time any more than unlucky people. But instead of living inside their head, worrying about life, they live in the world. Lucky people are more likely to chat to strangers at a party or even at a bus stop and so are more likely to meet someone who is just the right person to help them with a new job or even a babysitter.

I’m not going to go into all the elements, but you get the picture.

Lucky people believe that they deserve to be lucky, they expect to be lucky, and they embrace everything that comes their way without worrying that it might be taken away at any moment.

Lucky people don’t question why they’re lucky. They don’t think there’s a checklist somewhere in the universe, and a past misdemeanour will wipe luck away because they don’t deserve it.

They’re proud of how lucky they are and what they have achieved.

Why do you think you don’t deserve to be proud of your achievements?

When I ask clients to think, the last thing at night, about what they’ve achieved during the day and not what they didn’t get done, they often tell me that they haven’t achieved much.

Even getting up in the morning is an achievement.

Why do you think that achievements have to be big, fanfare moments? And then, if they are big moments, some people, like my client, feel that this is a mistake rather than an achievement.

Achievements come in all sizes, and you can be proud of every achievement.

Because you deserve to be, and trying to be less than you are can have some pretty nasty consequences.

Pretending you don’t deserve a win

Pretending that you don’t deserve a win when you think you do, or pretending that you deserve the win when you don’t believe you do, can mess you up.

Pretending to be anything other than you are can make you feel disconnected.

You become conscious of the disconnection but can’t see how to re-connect because you’re not being true to yourself.

Everyone needs connection, and so disconnection always causes pain. But when feelings of disconnection are added to the feeling that you aren’t enough and don’t deserve to win, the disconnection causes pain.

How can you not be enough? Enough for what?

The odds of an egg getting fertilised in the womb are pretty low, but your egg made it. You are a miracle, and you deserve to have a miraculous life.

Can you imagine a tree ever feeling inferior to another tree? Or a flower not wanting to bloom because it doesn’t think it’s colourful enough?

It doesn’t matter what parents or peers told you; the only thing that stops you from feeling enough is you. Your thoughts about what is enough and why you aren’t matching up to your idea of enough. Your beliefs about what and how much you deserve.

You deserve to have everything you want

The strange this is that you might not believe that you deserve to have what you want, so why do you believe that you deserve not to?

Why is it so easy to believe that you don’t deserve to have what you want?

Someone in your family might be struggling or battling illness, so you don’t think you deserve to be doing so well.

How does playing small help someone to feel better?

Or your business takes off, and you don’t believe you deserve to make so much money. After all, your parents worked hard and never made this much.

Someone I know built up his business to seven figures, but instead of celebrating, he always managed to sabotage his success somehow and lose his money.

This happened twice before he decided to figure out what was going wrong?

He realised that both his parents worked in ‘worthy’ professions. His father was a GP, and his mother worked with special needs children, and they had to save hard to afford a holiday or the occasional meal out.

My friend saw that he didn’t feel that he deserved to earn so much more than his parents. He thought that because their jobs were for the good of people and his tech company made money for businesses, he didn’t deserve to do well.

But he deserves his success. His parents believe he deserves his success. My friend got around this dilemma was to donating a percentage of his profit to charity.

He likes to make money so he can give away money. And he would have still deserved his success if he kept every penny.

Because he deserves to do what he wants.

And you do too.