A couple weeks ago Mom called and told me she was going to Tuscon in May to attend a workshop hosted by our close friend Sharon Cruise.
“I need to send a picture of myself and write down five words that describe me,” Mom said. “What five words would you use?”
I paused, thought for a second, and squinted. “So…you want me to do your homework for you?”
After we laughed and Mom saw the words weren’t supposed to be what how she thought other people saw her (and she did come up with some surprising words to describe herself, which was beyond cool) the conversation of homework drifted into learning and school. I had mentioned I was working on the company tax stuff for the accountant.
“I never thought you’d ever be doing anything remotely related to numbers.”
I agreed. Me and numbers never mixed. Math was always a struggle for my creative, non-linear mind. I had to take algebra three times…and still to this day, don’t get it. For me, I had no way to apply it to practical purposes. Show me why I’m learning this and how it works in day to day life and it’ll make sense. Other than that, at least as a kid, why do I need to use it?
This struggle led to the belief that I was a poor student, that I was crap at learning, that I barely passed every subject in grade school and beyond. I believed I wasn’t any good at learning at all.
Then Mom made a confession that shocked me to the core. “I was never good in school either. Especially with math.”
Whoa. Hold it right there, Babalooey. What was that? MOM wasn’t any good in school either?
“Mom. Seriously? Why on earth could you have not told me this back then? Good lord, we could have bonded!”
And I wouldn’t have felt like such a loser, like I couldn’t do anything right at all. You know how it is when you’re a kid, especially a teen. You think you’re the only one to go through the struggles and emotional upset. At that age you never stop to think that your parents were kids once too and went through everything you went through.
When I told this to Wendi she asked how bad were my grades. Math, of course, was pretty bad, barely passing, but then I went on to list several subjects I did well in. Art, biology, English, Home Economics (yay cooking…though sewing not so much) and French. Always did love languages.
Well, gee, look at that. One class out of how many others ruined my outlook?
That started me thinking of other learning scenarios outside of the school system. After High School I took a lifeguard certification course and passed with flying colors. I studied martial arts for ten years and excelled, becoming a regional gold medal champion, and earning a brown belt. I also became a certified personal trainer back in the mid-nineties.
I wasn’t the “bad student” I always believed I was. I’m a GREAT student. I’m intelligent and learn quickly. I can do anything!
How different would things have been had I had the ability to focus on the positive instead of seeing only failures?
Think about it. I’m sure you’ve had the same experience. One bad experience ruined everything and that’s all you saw for the rest of your life. It colored everything you did and thought. You believed you were crap, you told yourself over and over you’re crap, that you’d never be any good at X at all. Then that one thing slowly evolved into never being good at anything ever.
You created a belief and over time, with all the negative self-talk, you’ve ingrained that belief right down to a cellular level. And sadly with that comes a sense of hopelessness, that you’re stuck with this and you’ll never be able to change it.
Not true! There’s another belief you don’t need! You can change it. You are perfectly capable of rewriting history. Think about it, it’s like having two parallel universes going on. On the one hand you have the failure scenario you’ve obsessed with for most of your life, but there was also the grand success scenario happening. Right along side the defeats there were many times you had major achievements and accomplishments. You had minor ones too. I bet if you sat down and made an inventory of every success you’ve had you’d be surprised at what you come up with. The cool thing is that once you get started on that list it’s hard to stop.
Focus, my dear friends, that’s what it’s all about. True, at first focusing on the positive is difficult. Our society finds it so much easier to sink into negativity. Positive thinking takes work, but it can be done. Like anything else, it’s a habit. And you know what? It only takes three weeks to change a habit.
Three. Weeks. Twenty-one days. Think of how short that is compared to how many years it took you to get where you are now.
So, how do you start rewriting your history?
Get to the root. Make a list of everything you believe. Choose one and keep asking yourself “Why?” Each why takes you to a deeper level. When you get to a point where you can’t ask why anymore, you’ve found the root. Then you can look at it and ask yourself if it’s really your belief, your truth. Often times you’ll find yourself blindly following a pattern everyone else before you has followed. No one can say why they believe it. The only available answer is because that’s just the way it is. There’s no truth at all to it.
Everyone gets a “do over”. Remember that as a kid? I call Do Over! That cleared the slate and you started the game over fresh. Felt good, didn’t it? You’re allowed do overs. Let go of the negative and embrace the positive.
Be kind to yourself. Listen to how you talk to yourself. Would you tell your best friend they’re stupid, ugly, or not worth anything? No, you wouldn’t, so why speak to yourself that way? This kind of self talk has deeper repercussions than you may think. Recently I ended up in the hospital because my body decided it didn’t like my liver anymore. It was like all those years of low self-esteem and self-loathing ended up concentrated on a physical level. The organ responsible for ridding my body of toxicity couldn’t do that job anymore. How symbolic is that? Before this happened, I had been working on mindset changes for the past couple of years with Wendi as my coach. I was the guinea pig for the whole Journey to the Center of Your Heart program. It’s easy to say I was lucky, but luck had nothing to do with it. It took some deep coaching and a lot of hard work.
I had the tools I needed to turn my negative, hateful thoughts to kind and loving ones. I dove into healing meditations and visualizations, listened to my body when it craved clean, whole food, started exercising and rediscovered my love of the gym. The doctor was amazed with the last round of test results and remarked how quickly the levels had returned close to normal. I’ve still got a long way to go, but there’s nothing like immediate validation to keep you focused on the positive.
Be aware. You can’t unsee what has been seen. Once you wake up and become aware you stop going through life on auto-pilot. Sure, you’ll still slip and want to relax into the familiar comfort zone again, but it won’t be as easy as it was before. You’ll spot the triggers. While you may temporarily fall off the wagon and have that piece of chocolate or catch the negative self-talk, you can be more forgiving and say, it’s okay, it’s not the end of the world. You’re human and imperfection isn’t a death sentence. Finish the chocolate, enjoy it and move on. The difference this time around is you know why you were eating that chocolate, you were conscious of it rather than scarfing it down, barely tasting it and using it to squash emotional overwhelm. You can stop, take a breath and acknowledge what’s going on in the moment instead of seeking out the substances and habits that made you numb before.
Now, while it takes three weeks to change a habit, it may take you longer to learn how to change your lifestyle. This is where our Six Week Journey to the Center of Your Heart Self Study course comes in. This course is designed to jump start your awareness. Over the course of six weeks we dive deeper into the tips above and go beyond that.
You want to rewrite history? You can do it. Discover your own personal Tardis. We’re all much bigger on the inside and have the capability to change the past…and the future. Click on the link above today. The Journey changed my life for the better and it can do the same for you.
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