It’s a curious feature of human life that there are occasions when we clearly know the best thing to do and then we go and do something completely different! It can seem that part of us wants one thing and another part stops it.
This is obvious in the case of a person who wants to be slimmer yet reaches for another cream cake. But often it’s far less obvious. We are all subject to self-limitations that slip in under the radar.
What happens is we hear an internal voice giving us ‘advice’. It’s like having a narrator in your head. Whatever the ‘advice’, the voice is so familiar that we take it simply as part of our normal thinking.
In the case of the cream cake, the voice might whisper “go on, just one more won’t hurt you”. More limiting still is when the voice makes critical comments like “you’re not good enough” or “don’t be stupid”.
When we hear this, it’s often enough to stop us in our tracks. We take the voice seriously; its power is in the unquestioned agreement we give it.
To neutralise these self-limitations, you can expose them for what they are by personifying them as a ‘gremlin’. This is a neat metaphor from the book ‘Taming Your Gremlin’ by Rick Carson. I’ll introduce you to a gremlin of my own but first here are the key steps to expose one:
1. Notice the voice’s catch phrase.
2. Give it a descriptive name. For example: Donny Don’t-Blow-Your-Own-Trumpet; Miss Always-Right; Dr Fail Again.
3. Imagine the voice belonging to a cartoon-like character. This is the gremlin and you can picture it anyway you want – see what features it has and how it is dressed.
4. Notice the context when the gremlin ‘appears’.
5. Gremlins usually have a positive intention for you – what could it be?
The most insidious gremlins are those that seem the most reasonable. Recently I’ve become aware of a gremlin I often hear saying “C’mon, be realistic” (similar to Sergeant Wilson in Dad’s Army: “Do you think that’s wise?”). I’ve called him Johnny B. Realistic. He is short and stubby, wears a check jacket and pointed shoes.
Johnny raises his head when I’m thinking about the future I wish to create. His positive intention seems to be to keep me from being disappointed but the actual effect is to get me to lower my sights and set just modest goals.
By exposing him, he doesn’t go away. But his power over me dissolves and I’m free to set big audacious goals. Michelangelo expressed it this way:
“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark”
So now you can have some fun with your gremlin(s) rather than being held back.
If this has awakened your interest in overcoming the barriers and obstacles that hold you back, you can see another key technique described in http://www.inspiration-at-work.co.uk/articles/stoppingYou.php
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