Reaching Your Potential by Letting Go of Your Past
There’s nothing that will keep you from stepping into your greatness, reaching your potential and pursuing your passions without feeling guilty than taking on other people’s negative stuff.
When you’re falling short from going for what you want and getting it – it’s often because your self image was distorted growing up around self absorbed narcissistic or addictive personality types who projected their emotional baggage onto you. Making it difficult if not impossible to get a clear sense of who YOU really are and what you really want.
And until you understand the origins of what shaped your blurry and distorted self image and how it’s continuing to impact you in the present, you won’t be able to shift this faulty self-image and start getting what you really want in life. It won’t matter how many positive affirmations you say each day or how many coaching and success courses you undertake, you still won’t have a clear sense of who you are because you’ll still be subconsciously seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes.
So let’s take a look at some of the most common ways that growing up around narcissistic or addictive personality types negatively impacts your self image and undermines your self confidence and self belief so that you can get the insights you need to release your past and step into your future self:
5 Toxic Behaviours That Damage Your Self Image And Self Worth Growing Up
- You’re forced into a prescribed role as the confidante / good listener / problem solver for the narcissistic / addictive personality parent. You’re basically a parentified child. You learn to dutifully and stoically listen to all of their problems, hurts, perceived slights and frustrations. You’re basically a garbage dump for all of their emotional baggage and they feel so much better after energetically dumping all over you. But you’re then left with a frazzled nervous system and all of their angst still inside of you which takes you up to 48 hours or more to detox from your system and psyche so that you can recalibrate and get your own equilibrium back.
- You’re scapegoated, ridiculed and talked about behind your back when you don’t comply with their view of the world and how they expect you to behave. When they don’t want to hear what you have to say because they’re not needing to siphon off you emotionally, they dismiss and rubbish your opinions or advice. Putting you back where you belong in their version of the family hierarchy. Because you’re never allowed to step out of your prescribed role.
- If you’re not making them feel special and making a fuss when they expect it, you cop it. They tantrum, they cry and they tell ANYONE who’ll listen. And – you’ll keep hearing about this major disappointment for months, sometimes years after the event.
- When you’re sick or needing a bit of empathy yourself it’s nowhere to be seen because they’re not capable of tuning into anyone else’s world and needs.
- Your accomplishments are never acknowledged or celebrated unless they benefit them in some way. Your achievements are basically ignored or minimized. Because the focus always needs to be on them. Ultimately your achievements and personal evolution are seen as perceived threats to the family hierarchy that they’ve spent years shaping to suit their needs. And if the rest of the family is dysfunctional and in sync with them, they’ll see you through a similar lens. Meaning they won’t give you recognition for who you really are and will show little to no interest in your dreams, your ambitions and anything that you achieve. Particularly if you’ve chosen a path that’s different to them.
So if you’re serious about reaching your fullest potential and being the architect and builder of your own life, it’s time to release what no longer serves you {without loads of judgement and blame which lowers your vibration and keeps you stuck in a victim, done-to mode}.
You’re no longer under their spell. Right.
And if you’ve already made the life-and-destiny-changing decision to invest in your own personal growth so that your past is not determining your future life, you already know that it’s not a smooth seamless linear 6 step or 6 session process. Because that’s not how real change works. Some days you forge ahead and are impervious to any attempts to drag you back into old relational dynamics from your past, and other days you’re caught off guard and momentarily relapse. But each time you catch yourself doing this it makes you more self-aware, so it starts to happen less and less.
Lasting change is about believing in yourself and consistently backing yourself and your dreams. And not everyone’s going to like this. At times you will get a stroppy backlash because the people who are invested in you NOT changing just won’t like it. But that’s just part of the change terrain, particularly when it involves rigid unconscious family dynamics. Give other’s permission to be where they’re at, knowing that you’re looking after yourself and surrounding yourself with people that ‘get’ who you are, want you to succeed, and have the expertise and tools to help you become the person you’re meant to be.
If you don’t break these patterns they’ll get replicated in your business, your career, your relationships and other areas of your life where you’ll find yourself experiencing the same patterns again and again. You won’t make the money you deserve. You’ll keep self-sabotaging opportunities to step fully into your zone of genius and you’ll keep defaulting to people pleasing and putting everyone else’s wants and self-serving needs before your own, often without even knowing that you’re doing it. You’ll be trying to succeed based on a faulty, negative self-image that will vibe to others ‘low self-confidence and low self-regard’ no matter how polished and perfect you look on the outside.
Success is always first and foremost an inside job. Your self image is constantly shaping and determining the results that you get, whether you like it or not. High self-worth, healthy positive self-regard and self-belief are essential for reaching YOUR GREATEST POTENTIAL and fully stepping into what you’re been sent here to do.
