“How to Stop the Negative Tapes in Your Head!”
This is definitely one
of the most popular questions I get from my clients –
“How can I stop all the negative programming?” -or-
“How can I eliminate those ‘doubting voices’ in my
head?”
Here’s the
million-dollar answer…you can’t. Stop trying.
J
Article’s over J
Ok, Ok - I’ll elaborate
a little bit further.
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Pre-Frame: We all
have an internal committee of voices, whose sole purpose
seems to be to rain on our parade, to doubt our dreams,
to cause fear and frustration, to say “You can’t do
that!” and “You’ll never be anything!”
Or, am I the only one
that has that committee?
I call them the ‘poopy
committee’.
And isn’t it strange
that this committee of voices so often sounds eerily
similar to people we call…oh, I don’t know…Mom…Dad…Brother…Sister…Honey…!
Hmmm…anyway, back to the
article.
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First of all, doubt is a
sign of greatness. The only people who never experience
doubt are the people who never dare to dream. (Ooooh –
that’s pretty good - I just made that up!) You cannot
have a big, stretching thought without doubting it
first. Why? Because if you’re thinking BIG, you’re
thinking about things you haven’t done before, right?
And you’ll always doubt
anything you haven’t done or seen before. Remember the
old adage, “I’ll believe it when I see it”. That’s
really all the Poopy Committee is telling you. Prove
it to me, and I’ll stop doubting it.
So whenever you
experience doubt, get excited! It means you’re thinking
big!
Now, there’s two ways to
‘prove it’ to the Poopy Committee – reality and
pretend. If you actually do something in reality, the
committee can no longer doubt it because it already
happened.
But sometimes, you have
to pretend. If you’ve never before achieved something
you really want to achieve, you should vividly imagine
it coming true, focusing on all the sensory details –
sights, sounds, smells, feelings, thoughts, etc.
And since your brain
can’t tell the difference between reality and a
vividly imagined event, this ‘pretend’ experience
really does have the power to shut up the committee, or
at least quiet them down long enough for you to get into
motion.
I call it creating a
memory from the future. If you do the exercise
properly, and with enough intense sensory detail, you
truly can create an emotional experience that feels like
a memory. So when anybody, including your committee,
says, “You can’t do that,” your response can be, “What
do you mean I can’t do it, I’ve already done it!”
And your brain,
remembering the emotional experience (the only thing it
understands anyway), has to agree. Pretty cool, right!
But you still have to ACT. As long as you're in motion,
doing the actions that lead to results, you can keep the
committee calm. But when you’re idle, they WILL come
back with a vengeance!
Secondly, when it comes
to stopping those negative tapes forever…there’s bad
news and there’s great news. The bad news is that
you’ll never be able to turn off all the negative
programming from society, which is really what created
the Poopy Committee in the first place. So as I said
in the beginning, stop trying. As Jim Rohn says, “I
suggest you don’t sign up for that class!”
The GREAT news, however,
is that you can easily make them go away simply by
focusing on something else because you can’t focus on
two things at once.
Try this quick exercise
to see what I mean: Focus on some object in the room
you’re in right now – a chair, computer, door, etc. And
try as hard as you can, while you’re focusing on it, to
make it go away. Not working? Just try harder!
Of course it won’t
work. But isn’t that what we tend to do with our
problems? We laser focus on them, from all different
angles, and try to make them go away – impossible.
Now, for the second part
of the exercise – turn around 180 degrees and focus on
something else. Where’s the first object you were
staring at? Is it still there? Yup. But can you see
it? Nope. That’s how to ‘stop’ the negative
programming – focus on something else!
That’s why it’s so
important to STAY PLUGGED IN to your positive
programming. Read books, listen to audio programs, go
to live trainings, both inside and outside of Mary Kay.
You can never get enough positive programming, because
the negative programming from society never stops!
Plus, some of the habits
you’ve created have been around for 10, 20, 50 years
sometimes! You can’t expect them to all go away with
some magical wave of the wand, in one weekend, or even
over the course of one year. But, you can choose to
follow the new, positive and empowering habits if you
want to, as long as you keep them in your awareness.
So sometimes, you need
to keep reminding yourself of your new options, whether
that's with notecards, sticky notes, affirmations,
masterminds, etc. Do whatever you have to do to
stay on the right path.
This is important
because a lot of people will go to a seminar, take a
coaching program, or read a book and feel ‘motivated’.
They’ll do a few things differently during the temporary
excitement, but they often choose not to continue
the program, whether it be follow up coaching,
participating in the masterminds, actually doing
the exercises (what a concept!), etc.
And within a matter of
just a few weeks, they’re usually right back where they
were to begin with. And then they start questioning
themselves, thinking “That didn’t work for me” or worse
yet, “Obviously, I’m not cut out for success.”
That’s crazy. All
limiting beliefs like that are ridiculous because
they’re FALSE! Would you go to the gym for one week and
expect to continue losing weight the rest of your
life? Would you send your kids to school for one year
and tell them they’re done learning? Then why would you
do that with your own personal development?!?! (Can you
feel me starting to get a little Fired Up?)
Cybil (my wife) says
personal development is like a garden. Just because
you’ve planted the seeds doesn’t mean you’re finished.
Those seeds must be watered daily. And eventually
they’ll turn into the beautiful flowers you envisioned.
But the minute you stop
watering those flowers, they’ll begin to die because
they’re fragile. And all that hard work goes down the
drain infinitely faster than the time it took to start
the garden in the first place.
So when you plant
your seeds of greatness, don’t ever neglect
them. Water them often, daily if possible. And very
soon you’ll start to see the flowers of your dreams
appear right before your very eyes.
Here’s to your dreams…
SS
