These days I’ve been blessed with a constant growth in my business. 100% of my customers are perfect. All of them have the pain that I am meant to heal and the courage to run the extra mile to go beyond it.
BUT
Yes, there’s a “but”.
There was something off. Something was feeling not that right. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Until yesterday!
Yesterday I realized that insecurity and fear are visiting me. Old protecting voices are shouting at me:
– Who do you think you are? (Yes, I was bullied at school)
– Shut up, you don’t understand what you’re talking about (You see, I was the youngest at home)
– You’re not allowed to speak (another voice of my childhood)
As soon as I realized that this was going on, I was able to take action and of course now the voices are quiet again. Do you want to know how I did it? I’m ready to share!
Insecurity and fear are the voices of the Ego. They are the voices of our little self. This is the one who craves security, holds the status quo and makes sure you’ll survive. These voices are not necessarily “bad” (well, what is bad? And what is good?). These voices are always born during our childhood and during moments of shock or pain. The moments that generate these voices also generate wounds in us.
I like to see these voices as characters in our own personal story. This time my inner wounded child was the one who wanted my attention. It’s possible that you hear other voices (other characters). Some of them are,
– The inner critic: “you are not good enough”
– The risk manager: “if you do this (quit your job, change target market, launch a new product…), how are you going to pay the mortgage?
– The image consultant: “Your website is awful”
So, Blanca, what is your solution to deal with these challenging characters?
Having a conversation! Yes, as simple as that. Don’t try to ignore these voices, they will shout louder and louder. Even worse, they might sabotage your plans when you dare to do (or even attempt to do) what they fear.
Before you have a conversation with them, you need to change your perception of them. They are not here to hurt you. They don’t hate you. On the contrary, they love you! They love you so much that they want to protect you from being wounded again. These inner voices are your protectors.
When I was a child I was criticized for speaking. Now my protectors want to save me from the pain of the criticism. By listening to the concern of your inner voices, you will be able to comfort them and go beyond their wounds, while respecting their safety.
You can have a conversation with them just in your mind. You can have a conversation with them during your meditation or your dreams. You can also have a conversation with them by using two chairs. Your protector (you, pretending to be your protector) sits on one chair and you sit on the other one. All these methods work.
My favorite method to have this conversation is the old-fashioned pen and paper. Write like Shakespeare. Write a play, where your protector is one character and you are the other one. Follow the normal way of communicating with someone you don’t really know. Introduce yourself. Listen to how the other introduces himself. Ask questions with curiosity and respect. Close the conversation with an agreement and gratitude.
The more conversations you have with your voices, the easier, faster and uplifting they will become.
Maybe you’re curious how my conversation with my inner child ended. Well, the agreement we made was that I (the adult one) shall give her back her voice. She was so reassured. I was so empowered. I can give my inner child her voice back. I can help my customers to find theirs as well.
Go for it! Give it a try! Have a conversation with your inner voices. They love you, they adore you! Once you have a good relationship with them fear will no longer be an issue.
Can you imagine your business impact when fear is your friend? Go for it! Have this conversation!
Thank you Blanca for share this Gestalt technique with us. It does really work to keep me unstuck when fear comes along and tries to stop me for going where I am called.
Thank you very much, Laure! xoxo B
Great blog Blanca – in my work as an Inner Child Therapist I know what this method can achieve. It sounds simple but is indeed so empowering. Great that you worked on it – it would be a pity to miss that enthusiastic voice of yours!
Thanks, Faye! Great to hear this from you! The world needs your gift. So many Inner Children need healing. Thanks for your blessing!
Thank you Blanca, I just needed that this morning, I was going to have a conversation with God this morning, but I will change that to have that (screen script0 conversation with my inner child. Thank you. PS ‘but’ is an acronym – Believing Unhealthy Thoughts! – pass it on! Hugs, enjoy Amsterdam – I miss this time of the year there now, Hoppe, de Pieper, Kalverstraat, Dam, Vondelpark, Albert Cuyp – oh well. We have 115F today – 90 more days and than the good season starts again!
I love it: Believing Unhealthy Thoughts! Awesome!
Indeed, Amsterdam is a great joy these days. Time for a picnic at the Vondelpark!
Blessings, B
Hello Blanca, an interesting blog this one. Imperfect actions and love them. When I thought about it a bit deeper, that is what life really is, one imperfect action, that is so imperfect, that it is perfect. And yes you better love is, because this is the only life we have and the only reality we are in. If we like it or not, things are the way they are. Most of my problems and struggle in life come from wanting things to be different, trying to get away from it. Instead of embracing it. The funny paradox is, the more I embrace (read love) my imperfect life, and give up fighting it, the more perfect it gets. I also discovered that the perfectness is almost always a state of mind of my inside world towards the outside world than it has to do with the circumstances in the outside world. Also as soon as expectations show up, the perfectness shatters down.
for example this week, I went out three times. First on Wednesday, I was planning to go, because of my headache, but one of my friends here, pushed me a bit, shower, extra dosis painkillers and so I went, I head a great evening, probably because I wasn’t planning on going anyway and expectations were zero. Thursday I had a kind of maybe app. with a friend, also harma headache wasn’t sure to go. But I decided well only for a couple of hours why not? He had invited another friend of his to come along and I decided at the last moment well why not invite one of my best friends here too…I was home at 2 in morning!!! Had an amazing evening.
Than yesterday I had organized an event in a place where I also had a wonderful evening a month ago. So I expected to be a great evening again. From the first moment everything went wrong, the friend that was supposed to pick me up couldn’t find (walking around in Arab city with your going out dress believe is no fun, unless you are desperate for male attention, also I was waving at any four wheel drive, thinking it was my friend, the guys in the car probably thinking I was looking for a “customer”), than another lesson, Amman is not Holland, you have to make reservations here, what I didn’t do, another nightmare showed up, having a group of 15 people and no idea where to go with it, and in the end, the group did not really mix very well (age difference, different type of people). I didn’t enjoy the evening at all, mainly because I was stressed out about everything. I just did not love my imperfect actions yesterday (was inside yelling at myself, stupid cow how on earth can you forget to make reservations, felt responsible for my close friends I invite to such a boring drink etc). But the evening was mainly imperfect because of my expectations of it and how I thought it should have been, worrying etc, instead of being present in how it was (and you know I can already start blaming myself of that last part).
But the most important lesson for me, the less I try to plan things, organize things (well some of course some things need to be planned, but only the main things, not worrying about details), the less expectations I have, the more things just happen.
So yes blanca I totally agree with you, be inspired and love our imperfect actions.
(one of the imperfect actions to do, do ot read this message three times over, to make sure all the spell and grammar mistakes are out, its the inspiration of the message that counts and that may be soooooooo imperfect :-))))
Thanks a lot, Harma! Indeed, the new perfect is imperfect! Blessings!