Your Only Limit Is You
Lack of forgiveness causes almost all of our self-sabotaging behavior – Mark Victor Hansen
When I first read this, it took me by surprise. I thought but self-sabotaging behavior is what I am doing to myself. Why would lack of forgiveness be behind it? So I went to my earliest memory that created the pattern of “it isn’t safe to be seen”. Okay my logical mind threw into my face, how is this created from lack of forgiveness?
I had walked into my mom’s room after I woke up from my nap at 4 yrs. old and unknowingly exposed her adultery by finding her in bed with a strange man. From that experience came the life self-sabotaging pattern “it wasn’t safe to be seen”. Bad things happened according to my 4 yr. old little girl deep inside of me, because soon afterwards my parents divorced.
What did I have to forgive myself for?
For years I had thought that I was responsible for the divorce.
As an adult I finally learned that what caused the divorce was that my mom got pregnant and my dad had gotten a vasectomy, partly because he thought my mom might be betraying him and partly because there were four little girls and he thought that was as big a family as they wanted.
When she got pregnant, it was pretty apparent that he was right. I had wrongly assumed responsibility for the divorce, as my walking in on her had nothing to do with the reason they divorced. So what had a lack of forgiveness to do with the continuing self-sabotaging pattern of being invisible?
Self-sabotage is the proverbial hammer over the head that finally wakes us up, demanding that we pay attention. For most of us, it takes something devastating to crack us open, to get us out of our minds and into our hearts – Debbie Ford
What I discovered as I dug into this thought, was that this had layers and layers of lack of forgiveness.
Unfortunately, what you will discover when you unwind your own patterns of self-sabotage, it that it is never a “one and done” kind of journey.
Every single time I think that I have unwound the tangled mess around fear of being seen, a new thread of yarn appears and I am again unwinding some small aspect of this pattern to discover another thought, such as this one. If the pattern is still showing up, then something is still attached waiting for me to find the end of the thread and being unraveling it.
Entwined within the pattern of “it’s not safe to be seen” is fear of failure. I find fear of failure is like that weed that you can’t get rid of. It sneaks into everything.
A lot of people think that fear of failure is simply what it says, the fear to fail.
But hidden within that weed is another noxious substance that feeds into my “it’s not safe to be seen”. It is fear of success.
The fear that if I am successful, it will put me into the spotlight and that spotlight will follow me around like a hidden camera just waiting to expose some defect. It invites attention like the circus barker with the mega phone calling everyone to come under the big tent and watch as Sheryl tries to fly to high on the trapeze and falls to her sudden death. All of those people will sit on the edge of their seats just waiting to find a flaw with my performance. To tell me in detail about my inadequacies. To in short, put me back into the comfort zone never again to explore my hidden potential.
Like most other creatives, I struggle with self-sabotage, self-doubt, and feeling like an imposter more often than not. I struggle with expressing myself, because it does sometimes feel easier or safer not to – Jeff Jarvis
Everything is negotiable, you have a right to stand up and say, “this doesn’t work for me”.
If you want to make changes in your relationships with friends or family; lay down rules at work to how you are treated; get out of the debt that is ruining your life, or any other situation that has become just too much – you have to do a reality check on yourself. It is an inside job.
I know that it sounds like that isn’t the answer, but our self-sabotaging patterns set us up to get the same experiences over and over, designed to keep us in our comfort zone. You might think it is the “other” person who is making us miserable. But you have to stand up and start asking for what you want, not what the self-sabotaging habits are telling you that you deserve.
I spent my entire childhood both trying to be the perfect child and trying to do whatever my mother was failing to do with my siblings. I became the mom I thought we should have. I was the “one” my mother would constantly tell me she could count on.
The hidden message that I had gotten from my mom was that if I was too much trouble, if I made any waves at all, she might divorce me too. She was married five times, so that was my social proof my fear was real.
Your create self confidence by
doing instead of procrastinating.
doing instead of over-planning.
doing instead of self-sabotaging.
doing instead of complaining.
doing instead of feeling sorry for yourself.
– unknown
One day I decided that wasn’t going to buy into my story anymore. I changed my expectations one inner dialogue at a time.
Whenever I felt the spotlight, I turned into it instead of away from it. When I got the criticisms, instead of letting it beat me up, I said “today I am a mirror to their problems and they are finding their own faults in me”.
I looked critically at what was said or done (like if the silver spoon had any spots that needed polishing) and thought, ok – “if one thing in this dialogue might be even partly true, what would it be”? Then I would see if I could find that thread in myself sabotaging pattern and work on just unraveling that single thread and let the rest of the editorial go into recycling.
This is a reminder to myself that I don’t have to be negative, or worry, or argue, or self-sabotage.
It’s ok to be happy and to have fun and to just enjoy life.
Seriously – Hanna Anerod
I started creating self-confidence and owning who I am, and that who I am is a “perfectly imperfect” person. I will make mistakes. I will have failures. Spellcheck will fail me. My grammar will drive someone crazy. Even though I read through this blog 20 times, it will still have some mistake. And someone who isn’t putting themselves out there like I am, will catch it for me. And I will say thank you, because I still want this to be perfect, even if I’m not. I will grow by stepping outside my comfort zone. I will have huge successes. I continue to worry about loving myself and I will keep letting go of the feeling that everyone else has to love me too or I am not worthy.
Interpret this quote only to how you treat yourself – amazing to put a different spin on something that was written for those outside of you. Demand your inner voice, your patterns, your self-sabotaging habits start listening to what is acceptable in terms of the inner you. To actually completely engage in a life of self-exploration, you need to get curious. To ask questions that dig deep into the soul level. To unravel one thread after another.
