Do you listen to your inner critic or your inner wisdom? (Read Time: 2 min.)

I'm working on a chapter about judgment calls and the top 10 that, far too often, we hearken to. In speaking to people about their lives, I often find that even when you remove a negative person from your life, while their presence is no longer there, the judgment calls they made about you continue on in your internal chatter.

Abusers can be dead for years but the abused take over where their abusers left off. It can be a vicious cycle. When criticism is what you were raised on, criticism becomes what's comfortable. While you might want badly to change that, if you're not conscious enough to know the difference between your inner critic and your inner wisdom, you'll find that what you listen to and respond from are the negative thoughts you grew up on.

There comes a point where we have to make a conscious choice about who we believe we really are.

Remember:

"The thing always happens that you really believe and the belief in a thing makes it happen."

-Frank Lloyd Wright

Do You Have Purple Walrus Syndrome? (Read Time: 3 min.)

If I looked at you straight in the eye, totally serious and full of faith and said, "You're a purple walrus", what would you say?

Would you agree and sell all your household goods and jump into the ocean to be with other walruses... or would you look at me like I've got three heads and six eyes and completely dismiss what I just said?

That's the topic I just wrote about in Chapter 3 of Not Built to Be Broken and, quite honestly, I went off on the topic. It amazes me how we will believe the lies that other people tell us about ourselves and, yet, those negative comments, ideas or opinions are as untrue as me telling you you're a purple walrus.

There comes a moment when you have to decide who you are. It's not up to anyone else to tell you who you are. In fact, they really don't have a clue and if you live your life people pleasing, being someone that you're really not, guess what? They really have no clue because those people haven't even met you yet.

It's time to get over the mental trauma we cause to ourselves when we choose to believe the "good" opinions of other people about who we are and about what we are capable of doing. I make it a point to deal with people in a "you speak while I do" sort of fashion. I don't have to convince you of who I am. You can speak and tell me who you think I am and you can really live your life believing that. Go ahead, do you. But, at the end of the day, I don't live by what people say I am or even who I say I am. I live by who I am choosing to be in my everyday actions.

We all can talk the good talk: "I'm compassionate." "I'm loving." "I'm adventurous." But, if you don't walk the walk, your talk means nothing.

So, here are two clear things I talked about in Chapter 3:

1) You're not a purple walrus so stop living like you are

2) Anytime you put more faith in other people's opinions, you turn over your power to them. Is that really who you want deciding your destiny?

Nuff said...