Story time
Having a conversation with a friend one morning, filled with vision and purpose, I could barely contain my excitement. The ideas I had for my future and the woman that I wanted to create spilled over. I was a woman on a mission! The conversation moved along to talks of a more delightful nature yet I pinned the conversation to an old story. Despite the uplifting tone of the conversation, the headliner was still my dis-empowerment. It took a conscious effort from my friend to forbade me from pinning the story of my empowerment to him.
Telling the same (old) story
It seems no matter how far we come, many of us seem to fall into this trap. And this condition is not exclusive to gender! Constantly and unknowingly recreating our past self in the present moment does not discriminate the sexes. It is an equal opportunities offender and we all have different reasons for doing it. Some of us are stuck in victim mindset which formed our personality and we would feel lost without it. Many use this as a way to connect with others and give them some back story into who we are. Some, like myself, are using it as a way to measure and track results. Of course there are the people with genuine PTSD who would benefit best from some professional help.
Start using a different barometer
The Van Gogh you are creating is you and it’s time to start using a different barometer to measure your results. The temptation is to slip into that delicious old groove of talking about that time or season of life when they were dis-empowered. It feels like putting on a well worn old comfortable slipper at the end of a long day, back away from the slipper!
Neuroscientist Dr Joe Dispenza describes this phenomena in depth in his book, You Are The Placebo. We have neural pathways that are well worn and fire together which are fed by our bodies via our emotion. We are literally hardwired, or “hooked” to the habit of feeling a familiar emotions.
In order to have something you’ve never had you’ve got to become someone you’ve never been. You have literally got to break the habit of being yourself and hit the hard reset on your neural pathways. By challenging yourself to stop repeating your old stories, you are in a prime position to make quantum leaps in growth. If you do not take this step you are setting yourself up to be controlled by your past self.
