Children are happy because they don’t yet have a file in their minds called, “All The Things That Could Go Wrong.” ——Marianne Williamson
Are you sometimes (perhaps often) aware of thoughts zooming around the periphery of your mind that put you on edge? Quick critical blurts that remind you of how: inept, short, old, selfish, ignorant, childish, overweight, weak…blah blah blah you are ? Or those messages that you’re too: homely, unrealistic, inexperienced, ordinary, boring…to even think of attempting some goal or dream you long for.
This is the language of our internal saboteurs; I sometimes call this entity a gremlin. Understanding that these messages are just faulty, limiting beliefs we hold about ourselves—not objective reality at all—can be one of the biggest breakthroughs I see my clients make. And, by the way, every living being (okay, maybe not the Dalai Lama) is either suffering from these boogers or at best working to manage them. And I mean everyone: Martha Beck, LeBron James, Brad Pitt. Yup.
It takes some peeling away of long held ways of thinking to begin to notice when these limiting beliefs crop up in the background of your thinking. (And they always do–for everyone I know) You can begin to recognize when this subtle damage is being done by noticing your feelings. Your internal saboteur (s) make you feel small, disheartened, maybe hopeless, or overwhelmed. These critical monologues always make you doubt yourself and are expert at stirring up fear and anxiety. As you take a clear look a these messages—you can usually recognize pretty quickly tha this shit isn’t true. It’s sometimes a good exercise to picture how you’d react if a friend said these things to you.
Neuroscientists have doen remarkalbe wok in recent years uncovering the influxes that