You have a choice. Each little decision will make up your identity, bit by bit.
There are points in life where you have dealt with so much, you can’t handle more pain. You need to walk away from an awful situation. You don’t think you can, or you feel guilty for doing so. But maybe walking away isn’t the overwhelming endeavor you’ve thought it would be.
Each day, we make thousands of micro-decisions. Most of them are done on auto-pilot, because we have to simplify reality somehow. When it comes from walking away from old, painful patterns though, it’s not enough to go on auto-pilot.
If you want to change, if you want your life to change, you have to learn to embrace your decision power. There are always factors beyond your control, but there are always factors within your control that you can use for leverage to be empowered.
I hear people say all day that they would like to do something, but they can’t. Saying you can’t do something is simple. It doesn’t take any effort to tell someone you can’t do what you wish you could, but you end up losing out by making excuses for yourself.
It’s a common phrase to say someone is “shoulding” all over themselves, and usually the person saying it has a bit of a smug smile on their face. It’s also easy to pick apart someone’s speech when you think they are being imprecise, but have you ever done this with yourself?
There’s a quote somewhere by Theodore Roosevelt where he says, “ Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‘em, “Certainly I can!” Then get busy and find out how to do it”. Now, I don’t know that we need to go this far, but it’s fun to flirt with the idea of cutting out “can’t”.
There are lots of words that can be disempowering, and we have all heard of being bullied by others before, but we need to learn also how to stand up for ourselves to ourselves. Why do we cut ourselves down and cruelly dictate what we can’t, shouldn’t and fail to do?
It’s interesting to experiment with how we can be more precise and more empowered in our speech. Similar to thought building, (you can find that post here) we can begin to formulate our speech in such a way where we become inspiring, kind, intelligent and loving.
Changing from a victim to a survivor is not one sweeping motion or decision, but rather a series of micro-decisions that we must continue to make. The more small decisions we make in one direction, the more our identity slips into one we can be proud of. A victim can transform into a warrior, a sage, a professional. Your choices are your path to freedom whether you know it or not.
So how do we start our walk to freedom? Well, first take stock of your thoughts. Maybe take a week to just observe what you are thinking about others and about yourself, but mostly about yourself. Take this time to just see what you’re thinking, instead of judging. Chances are, after this week you will know what your vices are in terms of the negative thoughts you hold.
Once you understand more about your internal insults toward yourself, you can take the next step. Just try picking one that you tell yourself a lot. You could try cutting this thought out altogether, scolding yourself when you think it or simply telling yourself it’s not true. This is not as difficult and will get you a little further down the path for sure, but what I suggest is that you just hold that thought in your mind. Think about what triggered it, why, and how often you have been saying this to yourself.
Our thoughts can be kind of like code sometimes. Our minds use trains of thought to shoot off into one direction or another, and if they can find shortcuts to get us to where we tend to go, they will use them. With negative self talk, you will find that many, even most, of your phrases are actually shortcuts to other stages of being.
Let’s use an example. Maybe you tell yourself “I’m stupid” a lot. This could be a shortcut to a couple different behaviors. Maybe you’re triggering yourself to pull back from a conversation that you’re uncomfortable in, maybe you want to go and research something to create a more informed opinion before you speak out, or maybe you are looking for others to comfort you, and validate that you are, in fact, an intelligent person.
Once you understand your shortcut, you can take a different route to get to where you’re subconsciously trying to go. I’ve heard depression explained in a similar way by doctors once upon a long time ago. They said to imagine your brain is like a big wheat field (or any other field with long grasses). Once you think a particular string of thoughts, the grass gets bent down a little, making it easier to go that way the next time. Each time, it becomes easier to think a series of thoughts, and depression is like having footpaths worn through negative thought patterns.
Using this process of evaluating our thoughts and searching for the message behind them, we begin forging new paths that are healthier, more productive, and surprisingly more direct ways to get us what we long for. Slowly, we become more and more like a person we admire instead of one we’re ashamed of. And eventually, that person who we hated so much doesn’t exist anymore. It’s pretty amazing our capacity as humans to transform.
Now, overcoming depression isn’t as simple as finding and using new thought patterns, but doing this is extremely beneficial for anyone who needs to get something done in their life. If we begin eliminating our negative self talk, then we can build a cheerleader in our minds who helps us achieve our goals, rather than belittles and paralyzes us.
What do you think? Inside of you is there the potential to be amazing, to be someone you are proud of? Leave a comment about what you are going to eliminate from your mindset. Be sure to share this post around to help others rise from victimhood, and click on to my post about thought-building to read more on this subject.
