While I’ve always been a big proponent of turning desires into burning intentions and focusing on their attainment until they become physical realities, it is important to understand that we have limiting beliefs and programs running in the background of our subconscious mind that often block their achievement.

As you learned in previous articles we have all been conditioned by well-meaning people who tried to protect us, teach us and guide us. Remember, they couldn’t give us what they didn’t have and they didn’t know what they didn’t know. They did the very best they could, according to their level of awareness. However, that doesn’t change the fact that we all have painful emotional scars, traumas, limiting beliefs and negative programs running in our subconscious that keep us from having the results we desire.

My own life offers a good example of this.  I’m sharing it with you so you can see how negative programming comes about and understand how important it is to overcome it.

I was born in Cuba, the day after Fidel Castro went into the Sierra Madre Mountains to begin the revolution. The mood in the country, and in my family, was one of apprehension.  My parents we so concerned about guerilla fighting breaking out, they went to the hospital early.  Would the fear and instability that surrounded my family when I was born affect me later in life?

Castro took over the country in December of 1959, when I was three years old.  Shortly thereafter he started taking people’s homes, land, belongings and property. In my parents’ neighborhood, the military came to take one of their friend’s houses and when he refused, they just shot him dead, right in front of his family.

Imagine the turmoil, negativity and violence that happened during the first years of my life. I was surrounded by uncertainty and fear as my parents tried to figure out what to do.

They applied for visas to Spain, the United States and Costa Rica, intent on getting out as quickly as possible. The visa from Spain came first, so they prepared to leave.

My parents, my sisters and I left everything behind and fled from Cuba with only the clothes we were wearing, one suitcase and a $1000 bill my father had smuggled out in his shoe. We began a new life in Spain and subsequently came to the United States a year later.

I’ve interviewed my parents in the past several years because I wanted to get to the bottom of all the “garbage” in me.  I could see the effects and wanted to know the cause, so I asked them to go back in their memory banks and dig it all up.

My mother said that as soon as the airplane left Cuba, I started throwing up liquid bile. I understand now that my body was reacting to all the fear I felt coming from my parents, all the worry I was absorbing but, being a little kid, didn’t know how to release.

These experiences affected me negatively for years and years without my realizing it. I was too young to understand but I knew I had to leave everything behind and move to a strange place.  My parents saw everything they and my grandfather (who had labored for over 50 years) worked for taken from them, literally overnight.  This sense of insecurity became part of my consciousness, although I didn’t realize how powerful this deep-seated fear of loss was until years later.

Those fears were a motive for my working hard and striving to get ahead in life, but at the same time produced an unconscious sensation of fear that somehow I could lose my wealth the same as my grandfather and my parents had.  They believed—and unknowingly taught me to believe—that no matter how hard you work, or how much wealth you are able to accumulate, someone can come along and take it all from you.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, I experienced that type of loss in my life because I was conditioned and unconsciously trained to expect it.

I had attained all of my success in business by totally focusing my attention on my dreams and excluding everything else from my view. But, as I attained more and more financial success, I still felt an emptiness inside, which prompted me to seriously start searching for my true purpose in life. As I became more dissatisfied, I allowed myself to focus on what was wrong with the situation, again using the old familiar fear of loss to motivate myself as I had done in the past. The results were disastrous…

After having made many millions of dollars in business, I went through a time where I experienced tremendous financial losses from things seemingly beyond my control. I lost millions from foreign currency devaluations, dishonest business partners, bad investments and malicious attacks on my businesses. I lost my multi-million dollar house on the water and my wife, daughter and I were actually homeless for almost a month.

What I couldn’t fathom back then was how I could create so much value for others, and still lose so much. In hindsight, it is evident to me that I didn’t understand how much buried fear I had. Knowing what I know today, I realize that a series of events triggered these deeply buried fears. Drastic political and governmental changes in various countries affecting my global businesses activated my hidden fears and fear-based advisors influenced me to make poor business decisions.

The fear of loss engrained in me during my formative years was sparked and blended with my current fears, creating a financial whirlwind in my life. Ironically, I used the very same power I’d used to create success and wealth (the power, consistency and intensity of my focus)—except now in reverse (focusing on what I didn’t want to happen)—and the fears that were buried deep in my subconscious mind attracted what I was fearful of into my life.

Remember that thoughts, beliefs and emotions are the cause of all experiences and conditions, even if they are buried in your subconscious (this is how the Law of Attraction works… every time). However, once I realized I had this unconscious limiting program, it actually started me on a whole new path of learning at a much higher level of consciousness.

In my family’s case, the one thing they didn’t focus on was the fact that if you created success once, you can do it again. Thank God my study of principles led me to create a belief system that said: You might take my material goods but you can’t take what created my success, which is my mindset and faith in my unlimited Source, which is God within me.  My attitude was, I’ll just recreate it, only this time it’ll be bigger than ever and built on an unshakeable foundation!

In actuality, it was a blessing in disguise because it made me realize that although I knew many powerful principles, there was still something lacking, still something I needed to learn in order to be able to fulfill my purpose of empowering people to know their inner power and use it to be free and live their dreams.

Finding and living your true purpose can be very challenging because most of us were taught that we must work hard to make money and then, if there’s time left over, we can have fun. The presupposition here is work is something difficult that you hate to do and cannot have fun doing. The reality is that making money is really not a problem once you learn that money is just a measure of the value you are providing, and then giving more value than you’re paid for. Making money when you live your passion is actually easy and fun. Consequently, from that time forward I have been on a search to truly master the universal laws at the deepest level in order to live my purpose in life.

In my next article we’re going to dig into what is blocking you from having the things you really want so you can eliminate them (and by the way… just like with me… they’re not your fault!) so until then…

Please leave me your comments and questions below and share this post with everyone you care about. Also become a partner in my empowerment community at http://facebook.com/carlosmarinlive and promote it to everyone you love and care about and I’ll give you all some very powerful free content to transform your life. The world needs YOU and your contribution so we can help millions of people raise their consciousness and get free in 2012! God bless and live your passion!