by Janelle Legge | Aug 16, 2016 | Anxiety |
Knowing how to make good decisions that support you is vital to living a fulfilling and self-directed life. It’s how you reach, and then exceed your potential. So if you’re constantly being pushed around by fear-based, anxiety driven thinking, it’s time to stop listening to your Lizard fear-brain and start making decisions from a more empowered place.
Fear-based thinking seems to be on the rise. This makes sense given what’s going on around the world. We’re living in incredibly fast-changing and dynamic times. Change is something that your Lizard brain, the more primitive part of your brain that takes care of fight, flight or freeze responses, just doesn’t like. But when you’re letting this survival-driven part of your brain run the show and inform all of your important decisions, you’re dramatically limiting the scope of your choices in life. And when you constantly do this you end up stagnating. You feel even more frustrated, anxious and uncertain.
Knowing how to make good decisions in life that aren’t subconsciously driven by fear is the antidote to resisting change and getting stuck at your current level of success.
Flipping From Fear To Self Confidence: How To Make Good Decisions
#1 Centre And Ground
The first essential step to learning how to overcome fear is knowing how to centre and ground yourself. This instantly puts you into the present moment. And when you’re fully in the moment, you’re not ruminating on the past or constantly fast forwarding into the future. You’re then able to self-reflect.
Here are some effective ways to do this:
Breathing techniques, moving meditations like yoga, drawing, painting, gardening, swimming, body work – any activity that gets your attention fully immersed and engaged in the now and that grounds your energy is always the first step in disengaging from your Lizard brain’s fear-based, worst case scenario thinking. It’s getting out of your head and into your body and the Now.
#2 Trust Your Intuition and Gut Feel
When you know how to stop getting caught up in negative thinking and self-defeating scripts you’re able to screen out all the noise and tune into your intuition and gut feel on what’s best for you. Often you already know what’s going to bring you the most joy, fulfilment and opportunity. But when you’re constantly letting your Lizard brain butt in and tell you why it’s not such a good idea, you end up doubting yourself, and can’t see the woods for the trees.
That little voice deep down inside of you is there for a reason.
The more you listen to it and take what it’s trying to tell you seriously, the stronger and more valuable it becomes. Intuition is a valuable source of data. An energetic, non-verbal read on what’s going on within and around you. Most successful people totally get the value of it. But it often gets dismissed as ‘woo woo women’s fluff’ in the West because it’s not logical or considered to be evidence-based. Yet the more you ignore your intuition, the more frustrated and unfulfilled you end up in the long run. So stop listening to the limbic-brain, fear-based people around you, and start paying attention to what your intuition is trying to tell you. It will change the quality of your present and future life.
#3 Surround Yourself With Positive Self-Confident People
To maintain a positive mindset so that you’re able to make good decisions, you need to have self-confidence and self-belief. If you’re struggling to take control of your Lizard brain and learn how to make good decisions in life that support and nourish your body, mind, and spirit – then you need to seek out positive can-do types who already know how to do this.
This is the fastest way to learn any new skill. Subconsciously you’ll start to absorb and model aspects of their behaviours, mindset, attitudes, and beliefs. That’s also why you need to be discerning around who you choose to spend the most time with. Because you’re impacted the most by the 3 to 5 people around you each day. So make sure they are people who are positive self-actualizers.
Don’t waste years buying into a part of your brain that’s just not designed to encourage you to seek out new opportunities and growth. Irrational fears, inner-resistance, and anxiety-driven faulty beliefs are the biggest success killers around. They create all kinds of maladaptive, negative thinking habits and behaviours that can be tricky to dismantle and replace with more realistic and supportive ones if you’ve been holding onto them for years. Save yourself time and sort it out now so that 10 years later you’re not in the same spot, feeling frustrated and exhausted.
by Janelle Legge | Sep 24, 2015 | Wellbeing |
Are you sick and tired of negative self talk that at times just seems to go on and on relentlessly inside your head? You know, the critical and dismissive negative voice that picks everything (including you) apart, and is never satisfied. Ever.
If you’re ready to send your negative self talk off on a permanent vacation, then you’re in the right place. Because I’m going to share with you one of my most deft manoeuvres for outsmarting and defeating negative self talk once and for all. Mastering this skill is a total game-changer.
But first of all let’s look at what absolutely doesn’t work when you’re wanting to break free from negative self talk:
1. Trying to debate your negative self talk – and win
This is a common tactic. But trying to debate and argue back with negative self talk to show it who’s really the boss is an ineffective and pointless exercise. It’s a bit like trying to win an argument with a highly opinionated, “know it all”. And when you fall into this trap, the arguments become circular, more and more irrational and ridiculous, and go no where.
2. The “I’m not listening to you” approach
Image by Jan Vašek
Trying to ignore negative self talk and replace it with sweet positive thoughts instead doesn’t work for very long either. As just about everyone who’s tried this finds out. Negative thoughts are simply more powerful and usually win in the end. Often doing this just makes them come back even stronger. And they’ll totally shoot down and crush the positive thoughts you’ve tried to embrace instead.
So why don’t these tactics work?
Because negative self talk is driven in part by your lizard brain that’s been primed to only see danger and threat. It’s primary job is to keep you alive and safe. But it hates change and especially risks, no matter how well calculated – seeing them as potential threats. And it’s this part of your brain that totally backs and supports all of those subconscious self-limiting, negative beliefs you’ve absorbed from other people and your tribe as a child.
In fact around 90% of your negative self talk doesn’t even belong to you, or the reality you’re in. It’s been shaped and formed in a different time and place. So if your ancestors lived through difficult times, negative self talk, and a lack of optimism, can become a way of coping with life. It helps justify how bad and disappointing life and other people can be. Negative self talk usually masks feelings of powerlessness to be able to change the course of your life.
But that’s not you. Right. You’re living in different times.
Defeating Negative Self Talk – Fast
Image by Anthony Delanoix
Okay, so let’s get to the fun part. We’re going to send your negative self talk on a long, well deserved vacation. After all, it’s been working day and night, often going all out to keep you stuck in exactly the same place.
Because this is your time, your life, and it’s time to leave the old version of your inherited ‘negative self talk’ behind.
Now this is going to sound counterintuitive, but hang in there because it works.
The fastest and most effective way to outsmart negative self talk and send it on it’s way is to “thank it” for it’s input. You need to imagine that the part of you that’s driving your negative self talk, actually thinks it’s being helpful and keeping you safe. It doesn’t want you to make any kind of change that will take you beyond where you’re at now – which is the only reality that it knows. And optimistic, expansive thinking leading to a bigger, more exciting version of your life is its nemesis.
So you need to give this part of you some recognition and validation. That’s right. The next time your negative self talk chimes in, you need to dialogue internally with it as if you’re talking to a well-meaning relative or friend. Graciously and politely thank it for all of it’s opinions, and negative cynical advice. After all, it’s just doing it’s job, right.
Then watch what happens next. Silence. Pause. There’s no back-chat, or counter arguments with the usual circular and repetitive scripts going on inside your head. Your negative self talk has suddenly gone all quiet. You can think clearly again, and move forward.
So start thanking your negative self talk and then just feel it melt away. Doing this consistently will bring you more freedom, wellbeing, and optimism, and change your life in powerful ways.
© 2015 Janelle Legge
Title image by Luis Llerena
by Janelle Legge | Aug 2, 2015 | Wellbeing |
Are you constantly other and outer focused? One of the biggest roadblocks to happiness and success I see people struggle with is being constantly focused on what they imagine other people have, do, or think.
What I often refer to as the ‘compare and despair’ or ‘grass is always greener’ syndrome is keeping women unhappy, inauthentic, and feeling isolated. This type of repetitive thinking is toxic to your self esteem, identity, and self-worth.
When you’re trapped in this kind of faulty globalizing thinking pattern everyone else is happier, more successful, luckier, gets everything they want and lives happily ever after. Even when reality glaringly points out otherwise!
This is because you are so fused with this faulty thinking pattern you can’t see the abundance and good already in your life, or what’s possible for you.
And it’s not only hurting you, it’s keeping you stuck and playing small.
So what’s behind this type of thinking?
If you’ve been stuck in these repetitive ‘compare and despair’ cycles just be aware that your subconscious mind will probably not like what I’m about to share, and will try and get you to reject it.
Here’s 2 reasons why:
- Your subconscious mind is designed to keep you exactly where you are. It will do everything it can to stop you moving in a direction that it perceives to be threatening because it is new and different to what you have always done.
- ‘Compare and despair’ thinking is a form of avoidance and distraction from getting on with what you need to be doing to have the things you really desire. It’s stopping you from taking responsibility for the choices you have made, and the results you currently have in your life.
At a core level, these subconscious beliefs and fears are driven by low self esteem, not knowing your value, or not believing deep down that you can get what you want. Somewhere in your past you’ve had experiences that made you feel not good enough, not worthy enough, or wrong in some way.
3 Powerful Steps to Break This Cycle
Image by Demetrius Washington
- Get into the present moment, now. Staying fused with negative repetitive self talk and old stories keeps you stuck in the past, anxious about the future and not in the Now. It’s actually not possible to be in the present moment and feel anxious or fearful at the same time.
- Stop trying to fill every spare minute. Less is often more. Stop, be quiet, connect to your inner wisdom and divine guidance and just listen. Learn to follow your own inner compass.
- Practice daily gratitude. Energy follows thought, what you put out comes back to you. So if your focus is constantly on what you don’t have, can’t have, will never have … guess what you will get more of. That’s right, exactly what you don’t want.
By solving these self-sabotaging patterns you’re going to find yourself moving towards what’s right for you – which is what always brings you more happiness, abundance and success.
Title image by Casey Kiernan
