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.
~ Article’s over ~
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!
I’ll have more on stopping the negative tapes tomorrow…
