What Are The Stories You Tell Yourself Today That Hold you Back?

What is Your Subconscious Mind

Your subconscious is the part of your mind that you are not consciously aware of. It underlies all your actions you are taking. For instance, in this very moment, your conscious mind is reading this article, but underneath your unconscious mind is making value judgements about it. Depending on the stories you have yold yourself in the past, it is saying twaddle, or makes sense, or if you have had a severe brain injury it may be the story you are telling yourself is,

"TheCatherine is brilliant."

If you think that, then you have my sincerest sympathy.

Every action you have taken today has been governed by the stories you have told yourself since you were a child. Your subconscious self drives your actions. Nothing can change that until you examine the stories you tell yourself.

Why Do I need to Look at those Stories?

Well, the primary reason is the fact that they aren't your stories. Up until the age of seven, your mind, that is, the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, acts like a sponge. It absorbs everything without a filter.

It didn't have a filter because you had no experience to have created a contradictory belief. In other words, you had no real idea what you were seeing or hearing or, in fact, any information from your senses. Your subconscious was hypnotized because there was no contradictory information of any kind. You were a blank slate.

I hope you can now see a glimpse of why this information is a handicap as an adult. Every time you were called stupid, or an idiot, or you would never amount to anything, lazy, a dolt, slow or you just .......................carry on and fill in the blanks.

Every time you heard those stories, your unconscious mind filed them away in its endless storage cabinet.

Other information came in regarding your ethnicity, skin color, gender, and economic status. Believe me, at seven, you don't have an economic status, but your subconscious has already formed one that is still affecting you today.

I have been teaching Internet marketing for twenty years, and I always start with a mindset, your mindset. If you have been here a while and you can't get any real traction, it may be worthwhile examining your stories. Do you believe affiliate marketing works? Of course, you do. There are too many success stories here of people literally changing their lives. it doesn't mean you think you can do it. It may well be your subconscious holds the belief you are stupid, can't write, or are unacademic. You fill in the rest of the gaps.

You have old programs and patterning in your head which are in direct conflict with your desire to have economic freedom. Fortunately for you, it is perfectly possible to change those stories. I can guarantee every single member here who has been to Vegas, everyone that has created their own success, has changed the stories in their head. That, by the way, includes Kyle and Carson, although they are free to contradict me.

You are STILL programing your mind and creating new neural pathways, and your brain is not set in stone. Okay, you are no longer in a hypnotic state, but you can be in control of your thoughts. If you don't learn to control your mind, then other people will do it for you, as simple as that.

You are absorbing and reacting to the people around you. That is why you should limit your contact with negative people.

"You become like the five people you spend the most time with. Choose carefully." Jim Rohn

If you began today with the idea that you are going to research and write an article and you haven't done it, and it is too late in the day, then there are two distinct stories going on here.

Story Number 1

I can't understand keyword research so there is no point in starting

or

I never get an article ranked so there is no point in starting

Story Number 2

Drumroll please

You do not have a strong why. I am going to be harsh here, bear with me, please, it is necessary. If you don't have a strong why you will not succeed, full stop.

Business is tough, and it means making sacrifices. You have to give it everything in the early stages. Irrespective of whether or not your subconscious mind is sabotaging you. Being successful means changing your mindset and plowing through the tough times.

When I worked in a physical business, I was a chef, and for seven and a half months a year, I worked a seven-day week and seventeen-hour days. I sent a meal out approximately every ten seconds, that is, six meals a minute. That is 60 meals every ten minutes and 360 meals an hour during busy periods. There were only two of us cooking and four of us prepping, but we send out 1500 meals a day on average.

I was mentally and physically exhausted at the end of every day. Often I wanted to cry at 2.00 am because I hadn't had time to eat all day. I was tired, hot, and hungry, and my kitchen temperature was between 59 degrees C and 60 degrees C every day.

Why did I put myself through that every day, day in and day out? Well, I wanted to travel for the other four and a half months. For four and a half months, I could do anything I wanted, wherever I wanted.

I used that time to sail around the Pacific four times, North, South, East, and West. In other years I traveled around one country in South and South East Asia.

I had a really strong why and that allowed me to forge ahead and create the businesses I wanted. To do that, I had to change the stories I told myself and change the stories my husband told himself. In the seventies, no one believed that you could literally carve your life out of thin air. Least of all me, but I wanted to travel more than I wanted to do anything else. So that meant changing countries and creating a new life.

Okay, I made the huge mistake of assuming that I didn't have any limiting beliefs regarding the business. I came from two parents who were both entrepreneurs. I did believe that you could be responsible for your own destiny. I was well equipped to create a new life.

I did not at the time understand the importance of a vision board, but I did have a plastic picture of Sri Lanka on my fridge. I lost count of the times that picture saved me when I was exhausted. I just imagined myself walking along that beach at dawn to see the turtles come in or watch the elephants walking down the beach.

I surrounded myself with one successful person - my husband. I didn't have time for anything else. That meant I didn't have any negative influences. We had to bolster each other up when the going got tough. We had no choice when you have orders flooding into a kitchen; you can't waste time on the thought I can't do this. To make sure that never happened, I had only one rule. I was never to have more than 150 meals in front of me at any one time because I could panic if I did. There was a shoe box outside the kitchen that had the rest of the orders in.

If your mindset is not yet in the right space, spend fifteen minutes a day, daydreaming. Imagine;-

exotic holidays,

quality time with your family and what you are doing,

having sufficient money to pay your bills

an expensive car,

a beautiful home

Whatever it is you want money for

After you have seen yourself doing the things you want, then set yourself a question

How can I create this?

This is not woo woo. This is neuroscience, and your mind reacts to wondering

"I wonder how I can get the money to buy ...............................

Allow feelings of gratitude, love, joy, and peace to flow through you as if you were truly experiencing your vision. Allow your mind to be flooded with endorphins as though you have the experience. This allows you to bypass the limiting messages, as these images can be replayed later.

Your subconscious mind will absorb the messages as if they're real! This is the true beauty of visualization – the power to bypass limiting messages and focus on

pleasing images, all of which are being absorbed right into your subconscious to be replayed later.

I personally don't like affirmations, repeating things over and over. These things work for some people, but they have to be in the present tense.

"I am self employed and happy."

I can do this

I am immeasurably wealthy

etcetera etcera

The stories we tell ourselves influence the voice in our heads, and if the plots are consistently putting us down or they are demoralizing, that voice will certainly tell us we're not good enough, that we are imposters who will never get anywhere. These stories are super powerful, and they have a big grip on our realities.

First Steps to Self Realization

Catch yourself in the act.

The difficulty here is that we don't realize we are telling ourselves stories. The process is so automatic we just don't realize we are doing it. One of the ways I succeeded in getting over this barrier was curiosity. Every time I had a thought I kept asking myself

"what story am I telling myself here?

I still ask myself that question about 50 times a day, it has become an automatic response to my thoughts. This practice of asking what the story I'm telling myself is, makes me more mindful. It draws attention to what I'm actually thinking.

Analyze your stories.

Before you can change any stories you're telling yourself, you need to be aware of whether coming from. I clearly remember, as a teenager, telling my mother about my exam grades. I told her I had four "A's, two B's, and a C. Instead of telling me that most people exams only get three advanced level classes and I had seven, she actually said

"Shame about the C"

That was the final story of perfectionism. It started as a small child. I mean, as soon as I went to school at the age of four. If I did well, I was allowed to choose which chocolate I wanted.

I think it was only when I started to work online that I really became aware of the story I was telling myself.

"I had to be perfect."

I now realize that you just have to get things done.

Luckily I had a mentor that explained to me the concept of paralysis by analysis. Don't over think things just get things done.

"You don't have to be great to get started, but you have to get started to be great."

I needed to understand where that story was coming from before I could change the story I was telling myself. First of all, I asked myself whether that story was true. Did I need to be perfect? I realized that the stress attached to perfectionism was actually holding me back. When I learned Spanish while living in Spain, I didn't speak until my Spanish was correct. It took me far longer to learn the language than it should've done because I was concentrating on perfection, not practice.

Choose a Different, more appropriate story.

There is a flip side to every story you tell yourself. Find the flipside and hang onto it for dear life. Sometimes just one motivational quote is enough to negate those destructive memories. The hardest bit was analyzing those stories and being aware of them, and actually changing them is not as hard as you think. What is the big you, the adult you want to say to the six-year-old child?

Integrate your new stories. Once you've chosen your new stories, you start to tell yourself that story often. If you repeat your new stories at critical moments, they do become your default story.

I am not saying that this is a quick process. It takes lots of practice that can be done. Am I perfect? No, of course not. I am a human being with all frailties, and I am a work in progress. Sometimes the original story pops up in my head, but I can honestly smile and say, "I have a new story I can tell myself. The old one no longer serves me!

So, how do I construct a good self-story?

There are four elements to a good story.

A character you recognize,

a gut emotion,

a specific moment in time,

the Gory details, in all their splendor.

Make sure the new stories have all these elements. Think of how good you felt and how powerful these new stories made you feel. To override the old feelings of guilt and shame, and rejection, you need a really empowering emotion. Who made you feel that strong positive emotion, how did they do it, and what were the circumstances?

Get to know the new you - the empowered you. If you really understand who you are, you are more likely to know what you can achieve. It is easy to set realistic goals you will achieve.

Today when someone tells me I can't do something, I always reply,

"that is your perception. That is not my reality!"

It works for me.