Have you ever walked along, enjoying the view or rushing off to a meeting, just to find a little stone in your shoe?
You start tapping your shoe, first on the toe, while you are in the momentum of moving forward. Then you start to break your gate so you can tap it on the sides. It is gone … you thought, nope it is back again. Again, to the side, then the toe. And when that does not work, let me try the heel. You bend the one knee and you tap the heel of your shoe to move the stone.
Eventually, this tiny stone is now as big as a rock, and only now you stop to take it out.
And so it is with our lives. First, we bump our toe and we do not stop to realise why we bumped it. We are too worried about tomorrow and what happened yesterday, that we just keep moving forward. Then we get sidelined, we do not reach our goal and we start feeling a certain level of depression. Eventually we bow the knee to the belief and we become the servant of the belief.
Until the day we say : this is enough. I want my life back.
Certain events in our lives have taken us on a path because of the beliefs we have formed. Because of those beliefs, we get ourselves into situations that re-enforce the belief. Eventually we become stressed, because we no longer want to live like that and we feel life is unfair.
We now put limitations on ourselves. But, we blame the outside world. We let go of our dreams and our calling, because we believe that we cannot do or achieve them. Life has pushed us around enough and we give “in”. We bow our knee to the believe.
But all along we tap ourselves on the “toe” and it is gone for a while. Then we tap ourselves on the “side” and sometimes the emotions disappear for a short while, sometimes longer. Eventually we are angry at life, we live in stress and we are unhappy. We stop dreaming and planning, why would we, nothing works out for us?
All the time, stress and resentment are growing. Anxiety sets in and then comes depression.
So we hand our lives over to the outside world.
And now the voice is running 24/7. We start to tell ourselves we are not good enough. We do not deserve certain achievements. We cannot do certain tasks. But, we will do nothing about this until it “hurts” enough for us to stop and remove the belief.
The truth : You have the power of every second of every day to make that change. There is nothing wrong with you - you do not have a mental illness. We all, every human on this planet, has or had, certain beliefs that stopped them from achieving their goal. The only difference - successful people made the choice to change long time ago.
How long will you walk with that stone in your shoe, before you stop, bend down and take it out? Take it out forever?
Easier said than done, you say.
Not really. Here are a few steps to get you going:
1. Acknowledge the belief. Until you stop and hear that little voice in your head, that tells you : you are not good enough, you are not deserving, until that day, nothing will change. The moment you hear that little voice – loud and clear - for what it is, only a limiting belief, you will believe, that is what you have been dealt and that is who you are to be in this life.
2. Decide it is time. How desperate are you to stop the pattern? Or do you want to keep on “tapping”? The choice remains yours. No person on this Earth can force you to make the change. You are addicted to your belief and the emotions that go with it. Until you decide that you are now ready to take the stone out of your shoe, it will remain and slowly grow. Make it your priority today, find the help you need to rediscover your motivation and “direction”. Decide today.
3. Take Responsibility. As I said above, decide to stop the pattern today – so it is about taking responsibility. Life does not happen to you – life happens and you decide how you are going to react. Look at your patterns, listen to the recurring voice in your head – what does it say to make you stop living your best life? Take responsibility for your actions and beliefs. You cannot change “something” if you cannot see that it needs changing.
4. Don’t worry about the Outside World. Does the “world at large” pay for your house, car, food, clothing, holidays? The time you deny your family or your passion? When you live a life where you always measure yourself by other people, you will always live in lack. Invest – time and money – in that, which is important to you. This is your life – do not allow yourself to be judged by the “measure of lack” to comply to the World Expectations. If you do, you will always “nearly make it”. The stone will stay, you will tap and the stone will “grow” into a rock.
5. Know Yourself. One of the great causes of anxiety, is the fact that we are denying our dreams and callings. Know what you want in life. Know what is important in your life and the level of importance. It does not help you force yourself to enjoy sport, when your soul is fed by theater. Know who you are, what you like, how much time you are prepared to spend and what monetary value you are prepared to offer to have it. Everything comes at a cost : family, time for self, financial, etc. Everything – are you prepared to spend the “cost” on something that is not truly you?
All the power lies within you to make the change.
When will your stone be big enough for you to do something about it?
Sue Leppan
Transformation Life Coach
NLP Practitioner
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