The 3 Wants - And How To Avoid Them

I've been immersed in the Sedona method's "Keep It Simple Sweetheart" Process for the last few weeks. I was asked to review the product. I get asked to review a lot of products and say 'no' a lot too. But Steve Seretan persisted and so I agreed to take a look. I'm glad I did.

The Sedona method was developed by Lester Levenson some twenty or so years ago. It was designed to help release from the grip of emotions. You know, like when you get stuck in frustration, anger, depression, despair or worry and you can't seem to shake it? The same old stories go around and around in your head driving you bananas (and definitely not helping with achieving your goals).

All of these negative emotions boil down to three main 'wants':

1. The want for approval
2. The want for control
3. The want for security

Each of these wants create negative emotions in the form of stress and worry, and are completely unnecessary. For one thing, they are all based on false premises.

Approval - if you have this want driving your feelings it means you are looking for validation outside of yourself. You surrender your personal power to someone or some thing (like an award) in order to feel recognised, acknowledged, endorsed. This is a false premise because the more you look outside of yourself without acknowledging your own divinity, your own eternal nature, and your own awesomeness, the more you alienate the things you are seeking. You need to validate, endorse, love and appreciate yourself FIRST. This is the only real source of love anyway.

Control - if you have this want activated it means you have a need for other people and things to conform to your desires in order to feel happy. Again, you are displacing your personal power and making it contingent on circumstances, instead of your own ability to focus and appreciate - no matter what is going on. If you have a want for control, you are ironically becoming more powerless.

Security - similar to control, this want drives the illusion of needing certain circumstances to exist in order for you to feel safe. You know you've got this one activated if you've got the following kinds of dialogues going on in your noggin: "if I make a few more thousand this month then I'll be in a better position." or "if I get married, then I'll feel more safe and secure", or "if I only had a home of my own then I would feel more stable." Well, just ask anyone who has ever lost a partner suddenly, or had their house dissolve in a fire or earthquake, or lose their job - were they ever 'secure'? The truth is that we can never really know what is just around the corner, and we are better to invest our sense of security in our ability to handle circumstances - whatever they are - than the actual circumstances themselves. This takes all the angst out of any situation.

It's one thing to know this stuff intellectually, but how do you actually get rid of those pesky negative fears?

The Sedona method offers a very simple, elegant, and easy-to-implement questioning process that gets you to do just that. You can release them as easily as if you'd been hanging on to an orange for a long time and then you decide to simply turn your hand over and let it drop to the ground.

Here's the process:

1. When you experience a negative emotion, ask, "which of the 3 wants is this - security, approval, or control?"
2. Ask, "can I let go of needing to change this feeling and just let it be there - just energy pulsing through me?'
3. Once you get a yes, you can ask, "Could I let this feeling go?" (the answer is 'yes' - you can always let go of feelings - you just need to choose too)
4. Then ask, "would I?/will I?" (if there's a hesitation that's because you've got a payoff somewhere about staying in a nagative state - the good news is that the desire to feel better will lead you to answer yes to this one too)
5. And the last question is, "when?" (and when you know that relief is sitting right there in front of you, you've got to choose 'yes' - otherwise you are choosing to stay miserable and that's just silly).

And that's it!

Simple, and so effective and calming.

Coach's Challenge: I encourage you to test it out for yourself and let me know how you go with it.