Letting go sounds lovely doesn’t it?

I mean don’t we all have some baggage that we would love to just ditch from our lives.  Carrying around a heavy load all day every day is exhausting, but how do we really let it go?

The word SURRENDER has been coming up a lot for me lately.  Not in the sense of waving the white flag “I surrender” or “I give up”, but rather in a sense of “I release control”.

I’ve written before about my incessant need to control and predict the future to make sure I have everything all lined up for success, and how this need is so I can protect myself from failure and being seen as a failure. But I’ve also written about the insane amount of stress that this creates for our lives.  It’s overwhelming, exhausting, and well… impossible.

No matter what personal growth topic I’m writing about or discussing the first step always begins with awareness.  When we are consciously aware of what we are doing and patterns we have created then we can start to focus on ways to change it.  Being aware of the behaviors that are self destructive allows us to take the closer look at why we are continuing to put ourselves through them.  And beneath all the self destructive habits and patterns that so many of us engage in, is a deep rooted fear, which most often stems from a belief that we are not good enough.

Let’s look at that from a bottom up approach instead.

Negative Limiting Beliefs

At some point in our lives we have had experiences that have created thoughts in our mind of us not being good enough.  Whether it’s we’re not pretty enough, smart enough, thin enough, successful enough, productive enough… the list goes on but the stem is “NOT ENOUGH”. When we repeatedly think these thoughts they become engrained neural pathways in our brain and strong held beliefs in our subconscious mind.

The Mind Creates the Fear

The subconscious mind’s (SCM) job is to attract and create a reality that reflects it’s programming.  So by nature of its physiology the SCM will ensure both that your reality affirms your beliefs even when they are negative, but that you also stay safe by creating irrational fears to keep you from ever stepping outside of your safe zone where you may experience the same hurt that caused the negative thoughts that created the belief to begin with.  Whoa right!  How counterproductive of our SCM to do that to us right? That’s why we need to start questioning what our mind believes and changing the thoughts and storys we are telling ourselves because news flash… you’re mind doesn’t recognize true reality. Is your head spinning yet? This part is tough to understand because we have been taught that our mind and our brain is the most powerful, it’s where all the knowledge and information is stored and helps guide our actions and this is correct except that it’s much more complex and powerful than we give it credit for.  It wants to be in control of our life and determine our actions and keep us safe but it does so in ways that keeps us trapped in our fears and doubts and far from achieving our dreams. The simple point here is that we can’t believe everything our mind tells us, we need to start questioning and looking deeper for the truth.

Fears Control Behaviors

With our SCM running our background operations controlling our experiences that we are essentially completely unaware of we continually go about our existence displaying self destructive behaviors that will affirm our beliefs and keep us safe from unrealistic fears.  It’s a vicious loop and this performance will continue to play out over and over and over until you, the true you at your deepest core, makes the conscious choice to wake up and start changing it.

Interrupting the Pattern

When we choose to wake up to our life we can start asking questions and challenging the story that our mind has been telling us and begin to make conscious choices to disrupt this pattern.  We can reprogram our minds to create new beliefs about ourselves and overcome our fears by taking conscious action to move outside of our safe zone.  When we repeatedly do this we create new neural pathways and new behavioral patterns that allow us to create a new reality which we are all dreaming of.

Lets go back to the original topic of Control.

Negative Pattern

Belief – I am not good enough.

Fear – Others will see me as a failure and that I’m not good enough.

Behavior – Obsessive need for control.

Result? Overwhelming stress which leads to physical emotional and mental burn out which leads to emotional instability, irritability, physical illness, anxiety, and depression.

Wake up and Change the pattern

So how do we Change the Negative Pattern

1. Awareness – becoming aware of the negative pattern is the first piece of the puzzle. We have to take that long hard look in the mirror and be honest about what we are unhappy with in our lives and what patterns have gotten us here. Start a journal to allow yourself an opportunity to shed your layers of negativity on the page without censor or judgement, just write all that you have noticed, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
2. Make the Conscious Choice to change the pattern – When negative thoughts arise in your mind and you become aware of them, make the conscious choice to say to them “no thank you, that is not true about me, the true story is… “, say this in your mind, out loud, or write it down. Make the choice to start a new story in your mind about who you are, what you’re worth, and how you feel about situations and the world.
3. Practice Gratitude – what we appreciate, appreciates. Make it a regular routine to show gratitude for the blessings in your life.  You can share them out loud or create a gratitude journal where you list 5-10 things you are grateful for every day.  It may start with external things and objects but overtime will shift to deeper more meaningful things in your life, including things you may have thought were negative experiences.  No matter what it is have gratitude for it all.
4. Utilize cognitive healing tools such as Aroma Freedom Technique to dissolve the negative emotional energy tied to the negative beliefs and create space for positive energy to be inputted using affirmations. Affirmations alone are very powerful to create positive energy flowing but their impact is compounded when we can use techniques to first rid us of the negative energy that has been there for the lifetime of the negative pattern.
5. Find Support – Find a support to help you gain awareness and grow yourself and your positive mindset. Remember that you didn’t create these patterns overnight so you also won’t correct them overnight. Give yourself patience, grace, and forgiveness as your journey evolves.

Need to take action

As you work on changing your negative beliefs about yourselves you will also need to be taking action to overcome your fears and solidify the new belief.  These action steps can be seemingly small but as you begin to move in the direction of your dreams and passions the success of this action will affirm your newly planted beliefs and create a feeling of empowerment that will assist you moving forward with more action.

Back to my control example.

Using Aroma Freedom Clearing  I am able to dissolve some of the negative emotional energy tied to the belief that I’m not good enough. I use affirmations such as “I am a strong and capable woman” or “I surrender control of my situation”, and “I believe that my actions will lead me on the correct path when I follow my hearts guidance”, I have many more but those are a couple examples of how I am training my brain with a new belief.  When an opportunity arises that I begin to hear negative thoughts or have negative contracted feelings about because of my fears, I give them my conscious attention and make a conscious choice to tell myself a new story and lastly trust my intuition to take the action guided by my heart.

It’s a very simple process but it’s definitely not easy.  Especially in the beginning when you may have an overwhelming amount of negative beliefs and fears.  But with patience, persistence and commitment the process will become much easier. Your awareness will grow, your self-destruction will cease and your ability to be conscious and confidently choose your path with the trust of your inner guidance will grow exponentially moving you towards a life of passion and true happiness.

Working with a wellness coach such as myself with experience both personally and professionally with this process is undeniably one of the most productive tools you can embrace.  To have the support and guidance of a Wellness Coach will help propel you forward towards your dreams with greater ease.  If you’d like to discuss how I can guide you towards the life you desire then click here   and set up an appointment with me, it’s free and just might be exactly what you are looking for in your life.