Re: Pulling yourself together.
1,144 Miles SW of Henry’s Pond
(Buffalo, Ohio) Saturday, July 25, 2020 (06:37am)
Today is as good a day as any to
press pause. Tune in. Dive deep.
Get in touch with your essence.
Notice the filters it must travel through in order to manifest itself in the world. Clear those filters. Get out of your own way.
Pull yourself together.
Deep inside your inner world are psychological structures — individual parts that make up the whole.
They developed over time, during specific stages, and each have their own set of rules, behaviors, fears, and frustrations.
Each part of you wants to keep you safe and wants to live a rich and meaningful life.
One problem is, not all of the parts of you agree with what that looks like.
Another problem is, you might be over identified with one part — making it impossible to live the life you’re meant to live.
Create Coherence
There’s a great animated movie called Inside Out.
It represents the concept I’m talking about here.
Different parts of you fight for control of the being.
If you want to reach your next level and the levels beyond that, you’ll need to understand this.
Last week we talked about self image and lip service. The idea is to stop paying lip service and life you want to live. Be the person you’re meant to be.
Part of the reason we pay lip service to the what we really want in life is the lack of inner coherence.
In other words, the different parts of you are not on the same page.
There are two ways of getting them on the same page. It takes a little practice. And you’ll need to apply both on a regular basis.
The first way is the path of the hero.
You gear up. Go to war. Kill the dragon.
What you need to understand here is that it’s a never ending quest of Sisyphean proportions. The shell identity and the different parts of you will always try to protect you from harm. That’s their purpose, and at each level they will manifest in different ways.
You need to stay vigilant; prepared for war.
Be ready to kill the parts of you that stand in your way.
The other path is less violent.
You create a board of directors.
Give these parts of you a voice. Listen to them. Understand what they need and show them that you’ll get that too.
I find this way much more effective, less exhausting, and quite a bit more enlightening.
Here’s how I do it.
It’s weird, but it works for me.
A few years ago, I bought this tablet on Amazon.
I’m an obsessive note taker, and I have to map things out on a regular basis. Not everything needs to waste paper and ink. After a little research, I found that tablet and a cool pen for writing.
The writing app has several options of “ink” colors and writing styles. It’s like that pen when we were little. The one that clicked and had different colors.
I’ve assigned a different color for different parts of “me.”
I even named them the coincide with the Characters from Inside Out.
This is my Board of Directors
- Angry Tim (Anger)
- Melancholy McAuley (Sadness)
- Timmy the Scaredy Pants (Fear)
- Flippant Phylis (Disgust)
- Mr. Stoked-A-Lot (Joy)
Each of them has different motivations, wants, and desires.
To get what I want in life, I need better self leadership.
For me, it sometimes involves “selling” the next best steps to the different parts of me.
If that doesn’t work, then we go with the other option. War. They die.
I don’t do this every day.
I do this when I feel like I’m being pulled in a million different directions, or when it feels like I’m not being true to my future self.
It’s semi-maddening the number of inventive ways that I create to get in my own way.
When I feel like I’m off track or lost sight of the vision, I tune in deeply and listen to each of those parts trying to take control.
Here’s how that looks.
I start out in black ink
Soul Surfer Tim — CEO — HMFIC — the keeper of the Grail.
The conversation usually goes something like this.
Alright, what’s going on here.
We’re not getting shit done. Production has slowed. We need to shift gears, apply different strategies, and take different actions.
Here’s what I’ve noticed….
Who wants to chime in?
Then, I just sit there and feel.
Whichever feeling is strongest at that moment (usually anger), I switch Ink and give it permission to have complete control of my arm for writing purposes only.
After it rants. I ask it to tell me more. I might do that three or four times until that part has no more grievances.
Then, like a good salesman I find out what that part of me wants to feel and sell it on the idea that feeling will come with the results of doing the work we’ve been avoiding.
When I feel that we’re in agreement, I ask okay… who’s next?
And I repeat that process with each of the parts of me.
Every now and then, I have to kick some ass. Once in a while someone dies. Because, even though these parts are part of the royal court, I’m the King and you listen to the King or you die.
Don’t worry. Those parts never die. They’ll always come back.
That’s part of the problem with self-help programs. We’re sold on the idea that we’ll magically heal our deepest wounds. When that doesn’t happen, we feel broken.
After years of being a self-help junkie and still feeling worthless, I thought, wait… what if that never goes away, how can I mitigate the effects?
Getting the different parts of me on the same page, creating coherence, and getting myself to do the work that needs done today is what works for me.
Because, if you think about it, when you boil your biggest dreams and goals down, you could add… so I can go to bed fulfilled and wake up happy.
The real goal is to live a rich, meaningful life, filled with love and connection.
That’s much easier than we imagine it.
All you have to do, is practice getting out of your own way.
Hope this helps,
Love your face!
Tim