It’s 11.32 pm Friday night, I’d fallen asleep watching an episode of Sons of Anarchy. I woke and realised that I hadn’t done my 750Words for today.
I have religiously done 11 days in a row.
I was going to give in and not do this today, I said ‘don’t be too hard on yourself, you can’t expect realistically to do every single day’
So here I am at my desk at home listening to Ian Brown F.E.A.R. and you know what, I am doing my 750 words, I am not a quitter and it’s not about sheer will power, it’s about a determination to do something because I have a reason and a strong reason.
I know that I am a good writer and I know that if I practice, I will get even better. I have always wanted to write and I want to write a book, may be more than one, but one to start with would be great.
This is all part of my desire to deal with the gremlins in my head, the ‘truths’ that we all tell ourselves. Guess what if we tell ourselves these ‘truths’ often enough. Then they become the ‘truths’ that we believe and start to allow our lives to be determined by.
Well I have had enough of allowing the so called ‘truths’ about me, that I have told myself over many years, continue to stop me doing the things that I really want.
We all have them, those limiting beliefs, that prevent us for getting to the goals and dreams that we want to achieve.
I wrote only a couple of days ago about the ‘why’ power and that if we aligned this with our values then we would continue to do the hard work necessary to achieve our goals.
This is true, but there is one other factor that stands in the way of progress. That is the gremlins, the limiting beliefs, the untruths that we turn in to the truths. These gremlins as you get older become more stubborn and difficult to remove.
So that’s why I am sitting here doing this commitment.
This is one of those days, where the gremlin would have normally taken over and stopped me from going on.
Even though I am tired and probably not at my best for writing anything that will make a great deal of sense, I am here 404 words down, writing.
The longer we allow these so called truths about ourselves to remain unchallenged, the deeper they become ingrained and the more we act upon them without even realising that we are doing so.
The fact is that we can change anything within ourselves, if we are prepared to tackle them and if we are prepared to stick to it religiously to change, what after all is only a habit.
It’s a bit like a path through the forest. The path is the bad path that we walk every day and that path stays free and remains clear through the thick forest undergrowth.
So we decide we want to cut a new path. So we get out our machete and we start to cut a new one. On the first day it’s really hard work and we make a little progress. We start to make a new one. Each day that we go back to the new path and cut a bit more, the new pathway starts to open up and over many weeks of hard work, we get a new path.
The old one is now starting to get a little more overgrown every day that we don’t return to it. Eventually with enough time it will become overgrown and disappear.
This is what happens in our brains, if we work hard and long enough on something, the connections fade and new ones are made.
This is how you deal with removing the untruths, that we have held as truths for as long as we have kept walking that same path.
This is the amazing thing about life and it is the reason that I no longer believe, that we are what we are and some things just can’t be changed. The leopard can change it’s spots, it can become different.
So next time you are telling yourself something about you, that you believe is a ‘truth’, then ask yourself, if it’s really true. If you are not happy with that truth, if it makes you feel bad about yourself, then it’s time to believe that you can change that and cut a new pathway.
I’ve finished my 750 words for today, it took me 23 minutes to do and it has helped me to continue to cut that new path, had I not done day 12, some of the new path would have become a bit overgrown.
Philip Dodson 