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  • Home
  • About
    • The Happy Fan Club
  • Offerings
    • Redesign Your Life 2.0
    • Get Creative
    • Personal Coaching
  • Creativity Conversations
  • LET'S CONNECT!
  • Blog
    • Live Free Your Way
    • Seeing Things Differently
    • Mistaking Assumptions for Truth
    • How Humor Keeps Us Sane
    • Know Thyself
    • Peach Pie for Breakfast
    • Explore Experience Express
    • Should You Be Downshifting?
    • Stop the Hustle!
    • Do Your Habits Serve or Sabotage
    • Settle Down? Down Where?
    • What Lights You Up?
    • Saying Yes When Your Mind Says No
    • Independence From What?
    • Letting Ourselves Off the Hook
    • Letting Go of Assumptions
    • Is Kindness Allowed?
    • How to Throw a Wrench in the Works
    • Happiness
    • Daring to be Lighthearted
    • What Happens When You See Things Differently
    • Find Delight in Everyday Life
    • Are You Saying What Needs to Be Said
    • Is Your Life in Alignment
    • Are You Trapped by Your Past
    • Can You Love Your Life
    • The Hallmark of Creativity
    • Out Of Ideas?
    • Waking Up to a New World
    • Are You a Possibilitarian?
    • Want to Love Your Life?
    • Is Creativity Necessary
    • What's Stopping You?
    • An Unexpected Discovery
    • Free Your Mind
    • Is Your Creative Genius Hiding
    • Empty Headed or Clear Minded?
    • Is Stress Really Necessary?
    • Will Creativity Improve Your Life?
    • Is Creativity In Your Future?
    • Replace Fear With Love
    • How to Get Out of Your Own Way
    • Just Take A Moment
    • You Don't Have To - You Get To
    • The Good News About Being Stuck
    • Interested in Inner Freedom?
    • Are You a Hoarder?
    • What Remains
    • Co-vid 19 Free Pass to the Roller Coaster
    • Grace Under Pressure
    • Now is the Time To Notice
    • Hanging With the Wrong Crowd
    • Make Your Life Simpler
    • What Could Be Different For You
    • Everything is a Miracle
    • Do You Have A Negativity Bias
    • Are You Really Seeing Or Just Assuming?
    • Happiness and Resilience
    • Wherever You Go, There You Are
    • Is Stress Making You Sick?
    • What I Wish My Humans Knew
    • Looking Backwards
    • Daring to Change Course
    • Lost in Thought or Taking Action?
    • Still Can't Focus?
    • Do Your Thoughts Get Dark and Gloomy?
    • Can't Focus?
    • An Instant Formula for New Ideas
    • Talk Yourself Out of Another Great Idea?
    • Is Your Busyness Keeping You From Getting Things Done?
    • What's that Feeling In the Pit of My Stomach?
    • How Cool is This?
    • How to Make Your New Year Happier
    • Why Be Open To Life?
    • Simple Ways to Transform Your Life
    • Get Clarity and Confidence
    • Are You Driven by Fear or Love?
    • The Number One Way to Keep Your Vision Alive and Well
    • Why Stop Trying to Figure it Out?
    • What Are You Trying to Prove?
    • Do Your Goals Reflect Your Hearts Desire
    • Why My Cat is My Spiritual Teacher
    • Surviving the Holidays
    • 3 Convincing Reasons
    • 3 Secrets to Enjoying the Holidays
    • 5 Quick Steps to Get Your Mojo Back
    • 3 Ways to Keep Your Energy High
    • 5 Reasons to Do Good
    • Pain Relief for the Soul
    • Tired of Living by the Rules? Go Rogue!
    • What? You've Made a Mess? Excellent!
    • Why You Need to Be Inspired Now
    • Change Your Life in Just 48 Hours?
    • The Cure For Mental Overload
    • 5 Infallible Ways to Stay Inspired
  • Newsletter

How to Get Out of Your Own Way

10/5/2020

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Have you ever noticed how much time can be spent thinking about what’s in the way (and why it shouldn’t be) before you take action? Sometimes, of course, the thoughts are subtle and hard to pin down, but that doesn’t stop us from having unsettling or distressing feelings that freeze us in our tracks. We’re all prone to it, but there are characteristics of this kind of thinking that, once we notice them, will help us to stop  paying attention to them and focus on what we really want for ourselves

I was speaking with a client recently about how our mental chatter gets in the way if we’re feeling even slightly uncertain. A zen saying came to mind which I shared with her and seems to be a great first step in getting out of our own way:

"Leave your front door and your back door open. Allow your thoughts to come and go. Just don’t serve them tea."

So many of us have become accustomed to not only serving our thoughts tea but providing them an all-you-can-eat, 24-hour-a-day buffet and encouraging them to stick around.

This was definitely true of me. Whenever I paid too much attention to the thoughts that pointed to a reason why I couldn’t do what I wanted to do,  I ended up just being distracted and unable to think clearly or to act decisively. Until not too long ago, my most frequently entertained thoughts went something like this (if I was blaming myself):       
                  I’m not good enough
                  I should know better
                  I don’t have the resources       
                  I’ll get into trouble                   
                  No one will like it.


But if I was blaming others for my lack of taking action, then I’d hear these opinions in my head:                                                   They should know better                   
                 This is going to be more trouble than it’s worth                    This shouldn’t be happening to me.


Where did we get the idea that paying attention to repetitive, negative thinking is going to help us? It’s endemic in our world, and a throwback to a time when negative incentive was considered an effective means of forcing action. But as most of us know, that kind of “incentive” keeps us out of any sense of flow or inspiration and keeps us locked into a continuous feedback loop of negative recrimination. And really, who needs that?

A second way to get out of our own way is to realize that the mental chatter that can seem so obsessive and so debilitating is actually only as flimsy as the smoke and mirrors the Wizard of Oz cranked out behind the curtain. You don’t have to take them so seriously. Or at all.​

Thirdly, as Dorothy and her companions discovered, we all possess innate intelligence, creativity and courage that automatically rise to the surface when we’re no longer bullied by the thoughts that have kept us small and afraid. That built-in facility for responding to life is available regardless of the challenge, whether mundane or extraordinary.

What could you accomplish if you saw through the smoke and mirrors of your old, unhelpful thinking?
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