Who are you talking to? Meditation for 5/13/14

Isle of Hope; GA

(For today's article, click Here.)

“As long as the critical voice in your head is your authority, you will not be able to hear the voice of God.”  -  Anon

“Be sure that your worst enemy is not residing between your ears.”  -  Unknown

     I was talking to a high level athlete today about his game.  He works hard at clearing his mind before he plays so that he can perform at a higher level.  He said if he allows “self-talk” to interfere with his thought processes his game suffers.  To combat this he listens to self-affirmation tapes prior to play in an attempt to clear his head.  He also tries to combat the self-talk by inserting positive thoughts rather than negative ones.  He readily agreed that all of the “negative” thoughts were fear based and the “positive” ones were based upon “winning.”  But, he said, his best performances ever were when he could play intuitively – completely without the “negative” or “positive” self-talk.  He referred to this state of intuitive play as being “in the zone,” a state athletes all desire.  I asked him if he had ever thought about rooting out the fears that drove the “self-talk” to start with.  This was a foreign concept to him.

     You don’t have to be a high level athlete to know that self-talk inhibits performance.  Many folks call these various voices “the committee in my head.”   If we will take the time to learn to detach a bit from our thoughts, we come to find out how many of them are nonsense.  They are about assigning blame, justifying actions, plotting imaginary future conversations, worrying about next month’s bills or next year’s events, rehashing old tapes of situations in the past – it goes on and on.  And the thinking is almost always circular – when we get all done with it we end up back where we are and the only new thing we have to show for it is a headache.

     Unless we are taught different, we come to think these voices constitute who we really are – after all, if we are not our thoughts, who are we?  And why wouldn’t just inserting positive thoughts rather than negative ones be the best solution?   Well, we already know everything we know.  Rehashing the past is usually a futile exercise unless we have some fresh input that is worth considering.  And the future – how often are our projections accurate?  The majority are doom, and when we are projecting something good it is usually because we are refusing to deal with the situation at hand.   And all are rooted in fear – fear that we won’t get or will lose something we want, that we won’t get rid of or will get something we don’t want – even rehashing the past is usually rooted in the fear that if we don’t re-write the script that others will think less of us.

     Getting out of the negative self-talk and learning to live in intuition takes work – and a lot of courage.  It requires rooting out our deepest fears and shames and exposing them to the light.  They don’t hold up to scrutiny, and each time we do this there is one less thing that will trigger the “committee in the head.”  It might take a bit more time and effort to root these things out now, but it is the only way to eliminate the bickering between our ears and start living at our potential.  And the hidden bonus?  We are much more effective while spending a fraction of the energy we do otherwise.

Today, may I do the work.

If you would like to contribute to this journey or to the foundation, just click Here.  If you have no idea what this is about, Click Here and Here, and click Here to email me.  Thanks for your interest and support !!