I don’t mean “where did you come from”, “or your marital status” or “what you do for a living”. I mean what is the message you tell yourself day in and day out about who you are? What is your subconscious tape telling you about ‘you’? What is it saying about why you haven’t reached a particular goal or dream yet?
Our brain sends us beyond 10000+ messages a day and most of them are of a negative “stay safe” nature. Because our brain is a neanderthal that is keeping us safe from lions and mammoths, every time it feels danger it sends a message to your pre-frontal cortex to run from danger. Each time it detects a change in heart rate, sweaty palms, heavy breathing the fight or flight response kicks in and stops you right where you are.
The physical signs for excitement are the same as they are for danger and our brains cannot determine the difference. So it sends us messages to stop us from doing something dangerous. These messages or tapes usually consist of language such as “you aren’t good enough”, “who do you think you are?”, “why would anyone listen to you?”, “you are just a….(fill in the blank)”. So what do we do? We stop ourselves from trying, we stop ourselves from taking that step, why? Because it is scaring our brain, our brain is sending signals about danger when we aren’t in any danger (well at least not from mammoths and lions anyway).
What is your safe zone story? It is usually one of the above or a rendition of it, mine has always been a mix of “you aren’t good enough” and “who do you think you are”. These were planted in my brain early on in life and got stuck there. They sure are hard to get rid of and still when I try something new they rise up to try and block my path. They have helped talk me out of what could have been the best experience of my life, I will never know because they succeeded in stopping me from trying back then.
I would love to say that I have beaten them completely, but I still fight them everyday, second guess what I say, what I write, who I talk to. I have though managed to control them and put them back in their box – literally. Each time they come up I picture a big sea chest type box complete with chains, I look at the message as if it is written on a scroll and I picture myself putting that scroll in the sea chest and locking it shut with chains. Then I swim away into the decision or choice that I was given and give myself a chance to consider the options with a clear head.
Daily meditation practice has helped quieten down the self doubt, has calmed my nerves and given me a clearer head to make choices. A year ago this business and this webpage would never have made it into fruition, because I was paralysed with fear, fear of judgement, fear of failure or success, fear of ridicule. It turns out that all that fear was just fear of my own making, there was no reality in those fears. What’s different between then and now? I still feel the fear, I still have the doubts, I am now capable of putting them into perspective as seeing them as contingency theories rather than reality. I play what if and work through the chances of them occurring and give them no credence.
My stories are a part of me, they make up the who I was, but not the who that I am or will become. They kept me “safe” but not from harm. There is a harm in not trying, a scar to the soul of who we may have been. I want you to feel the fear, embrace the fear and trust yourself to jump anyway. On the other side of fear is fulfillment.
So tell me what’s your story? Have you had success in quietening them down? Would you like to know more about how to stop them? Let me know by commenting below for more information.
Restoring my soul. 