What You Never Knew About How You're Feeling, Until Now
What if you there was one thing you could do right now to change your life? You could improve your confidence, and be more excited about your career and relationships. Here's how: listen to a better station.
A dear friend shared with me something he once learned. We all have tapes playing in our mind. The difference between your tape and mine, or between your tape and that of your partner, boss, or parent, is what is playing on it.
In relationships, women often have a tape that plays the following questions "does he love me?" "am I worthy of love?" "Why doesn't he care about me?" "I feel unattractive/ guilty/ judged by others."
While men often have a tape that repeats the nagging questions "Am I successful enough?" or "Am I significant enough?"
The tricky thing is we may not even be conscious of this tape, these deep questions inside of us that and vie for attention and cause us stress and self-doubt. The conundrum is how do you turn these tapes into thoughts that positively serve you.
The first step is to recognize that it is going on in our minds. To understand that the culture we live in, the culture of plenty can bring out inner beliefs of famine. How many times in the last week have you heard someone say a variation of the phrase "not enough" or "never enough"? Researcher Brene Brown writes how people fill in blanks with their own tapes about how they are...
"Never good enough"
"Never perfect enough"
"Never thin enough"
"Never certain enough"
"Never loved enough"
"Never significant enough"
"Never extraordinary enough"
And if it is not about your personal self, it can be about your life: "I never have enough....
time,
money,
sleep,
energy,
good days,
good fortune,
appreciation,
opportunity,
love."
Do any of these sound familiar? Where did it come from that we live our lives in an abundant society, yet in our daily lives we experience numerous things that are "never enough"? Lynne Twist writes in The Soul of Money, that before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we're already behind, already late, already losing, already lacking something... This is the internal condition of scarcity, this mind set of scarcity lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life..."
So, what can I do about this?
One approach to recognize what you do you have, do an exercise where you write down 3-5 areas where you are good enough, where you do have an abundance. It could be in any area: Do you have an abundance of square feet in your house? Do you have an abundance of food options in your supermarket or town? Is your vision or hearing (good) enough? Was there recently a time where you had enough sleep or attention? Was there a time recently when you had enough help and something turned out well for you? Did you have enough money for any recent purchases (big or small)? When you get momentum finding where you have enough in 3-5 areas of your life, you can strengthen your abundance-finding muscles to begin seeing and experiencing life from a place of plenty rather than a place of scarcity.
Whether you have been conscious about these "inner tapes" before, or just begun to realize what is playing, take a moment to ask yourself the following questions:
a) What do you feel you "never have enough" of?
b) Is there an area of your life in which you feel you are not enough?"
c) Are these beliefs really, completely, 100% true, and something you are ready to change?"
