Things don't have to come hard to me so as to feel worthy of them

I always had the core belief that things have to come hard to me in order for me to feel worthy of them and proud of myself.

I always had the core belief that nothing comes easy and that everything long lasting needs sweat blood and tears. If things came easy I did not feel like I deserve them, I did not feel like they were meaningful or valuable. I realized that even if there was an aspect in me that despised when easy things got difficult, I also had another aspect, like a siamese twin, that felt at home in the midst of the familiarity of this pattern of having to grapple with the pettiest of things. This aspect felt good in the misery of the self prophecy of "This can only happen to me", "I have it the hardest, the others have it easier" and felt at home in wallowing in this self pity, self defeating mechanism.

However I knew deep down inside I attracted all of these situations that reinforced my belief. I made them happen, I made my life hard by myself with my own unconscious help, although I loved to blame it on the people or the odds that were all against me. When the odds were against me the most, I was triggered into the "life has to be hard for me" pattern. But then I caught myself one day seeing how I was all doing it myself: I was multitasking things that were very difficult instead of giving each one at a time my full attention. So I was anxious and fearful with all of them like I was juggling and felt they may all slip. I decided the self loving thing to do in this circumstances would be to take one task at a time and focus on it.

It was so bizarre and so out of my comfort zone to make things easier for me, that I obviously became triggered. I instantly observed thoughts popping up in my head like "You're not doing enough" or "You're not fast enough"... I felt extremely uncomfortable working at a pace that was actually good for me. Started hearing a voice in my head saying I was lazy. But this was all new to me because I enjoyed doing my tasks my way, not how it was expected of me, not the "right" way, something which was foreign to me completely . My programming said that the harder it is and the more I hate what I do and the more I go against my self, the more victorious and virtuous and accomplished I would feel at the end, having bulldozed all of me.

I remember the other day carrying too many bags at once and dropping one. I immediately noticed how the programming was activated with affirmations like "Of course I had to drop this. Of course it had to be hard for me". But I caught myself. I made this whole cycle conscious once again. I started a spiritual exercise that I do daily since my new awareness of this core belief. I repeat the affirmation "I make things easy for myself". And I bring my awareness everytime I try to make it more difficult in order to fit this negative narrative about life. It's a process and I need to have patience with myself. I will most definitely slip back into the pattern for a while because I still feel something is wrong when I do things the self loving way, but now I am proud that I am no longer under the spell of the identification with the running program.

This is a learned and internalized belief that I took from my caregivers. I have seen it in a lot of people. We feel like we have to absolutely work the hardest if we want to feel like we deserve it. If it is easy or easier, feels like it's a temporary gratification that our ego does not resonate with.