{"id":2828,"date":"2013-09-10T03:00:41","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T07:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/lettinggo\/?p=2828"},"modified":"2013-09-07T20:59:15","modified_gmt":"2013-09-08T00:59:15","slug":"happiness-cant-grow-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2013\/09\/happiness-cant-grow-here.html","title":{"rendered":"Happiness Can\u2019t Grow Here"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Question:<\/strong> I lost a great deal of money to a dishonest business partner. I can&#8217;t believe I could have fallen for such an obvious scam or that a person I thought was my friend could have stolen from me what I had hoped to be my children&#8217;s legacy. I&#8217;m burning up inside with rage, guilt, and concern over what my children will do now. I know this is killing me. What would you do in my position?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Answer:<\/strong> To begin with, I would muster everything I could find in me and, whatever the personal cost, I would refuse to be self-pitying. Self-pity and regrets about the past are born out of being identified with the idea that you could have done differently than you did. If you could have, you would have. Give up the regret. It only ties you to the old life-level that didn&#8217;t know better and keeps you from the one that does.<\/p>\n<p>Then I would start over, right from the beginning, whatever that may be &#8212; or wherever that may take me. There is no power on earth that can interfere with this intention and act.<\/p>\n<p>Next, instead of falling into despair over my losses, I would deeply examine what it is inside of me that feels all I am worth is money, or whatever it says to me I&#8217;ve lost, and then I would get busy losing interest in that nature that calls itself by my name.<\/p>\n<p>Hatred of anyone, or anything destroys the one who hates. This is unequivocal spiritual law &#8212; so I would do all that I could to lay down my resentments by seeing that all I&#8217;m doing is burning myself up with wasted energies that could be put to productive purposes.<\/p>\n<p>And lastly, I would seriously consider, not what it is that I think I won&#8217;t be able to leave my children, but what it is that I&#8217;m giving them with my current attitudes and example. Then, as tough as it may be to act it out, I would make it abundantly clear to them through my revised actions that a man is not what he possesses, but is, rather, what possesses him. And since it&#8217;s possible to choose what possesses you, which you start doing by refusing to be possessed of self-pity and other dark spirits, this means you can choose in favor &#8212; over and over again &#8212; as many times as necessary &#8212; what&#8217;s authentically good and True for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: I lost a great deal of money to a dishonest business partner. I can&#8217;t believe I could have fallen for such an obvious scam or that a person I thought was my friend could have stolen from me what I had hoped to be my children&#8217;s legacy. I&#8217;m burning up inside with rage, guilt,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[580,682],"tags":[1730,1729,598,70,147,152,698,99],"class_list":["post-2828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dark-thoughts-2","category-hatred-resentment","tag-being-an-example","tag-dark-spirits","tag-despair","tag-happiness","tag-loss","tag-regret","tag-self-pity","tag-starting-over"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Happiness Can\u2019t Grow Here - Letting Go with Guy Finley<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2013\/09\/happiness-cant-grow-here.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Happiness Can\u2019t Grow Here - Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Question: I lost a great deal of money to a dishonest business partner. I can&#8217;t believe I could have fallen for such an obvious scam or that a person I thought was my friend could have stolen from me what I had hoped to be my children&#8217;s legacy. I&#8217;m burning up inside with rage, guilt,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2013\/09\/happiness-cant-grow-here.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Letting Go with Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-09-10T07:00:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-09-08T00:59:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Guy Finley\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@guy_finley\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Happiness Can\u2019t Grow Here - Letting Go with Guy Finley","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/2013\/09\/happiness-cant-grow-here.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Happiness Can\u2019t Grow Here - Letting Go with Guy Finley","og_description":"Question: I lost a great deal of money to a dishonest business partner. 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His ideas cut straight to the heart of our most important personal and social issues - relationships, success, addiction, stress, peace, happiness, freedom - and lead the way to a higher life. Finley is the Founder and Director of Life of Learning Foundation, a nonprofit Center for Spiritual Discovery. He is the acclaimed author of \"The Secret of Letting Go\" and more than 45 other books and audio programs that have sold over two million copies in 26 languages worldwide. His work is widely endorsed by doctors, business professionals, celebrities, and religious leaders of all denominations. Through Life of Learning Foundation, Guy has presented over 5,000 unique self-realization seminars to thousands of grateful students throughout North America and Europe over the past 20 years and has been a guest on over 700 television and radio shows, including national appearances on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and NPR. The Foundation's popular Key Lesson e-mails featuring inspirational quotes by Guy are read each week by a hundred thousand subscribers in 142 countries. Guy speaks four times each week on inner-life principles at Life of Learning Foundation's home in Merlin, Oregon. These meetings are ongoing and open to the public. For more information about Life of Learning Foundation, Guy Finley, and their life-changing messages, visit guyfinley.org. \"Guy Finley is...one of the leading experts at the forefront of human potential.\" -Nightingale Conant \"Guy Finley has helped millions live fuller, more peaceable lives.\" -Barnes and Noble","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.guyfinley.org","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Guy-Finley-260924340633\/","https:\/\/x.com\/guy_finley"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/author\/gfinley"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/232"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2829,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2828\/revisions\/2829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lettinggo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}