Dealing With The Devil Within...

Lucy, she’s the one I can count on in challenging times!

She’s my self talk.
​
Recently she did some of her best work on me.
I was facilitating a mindfulness session and right next door, workmen were cutting concrete preparing a new shop. And here I was about to talk about mediation.


My first thought was this is ok, I can work with this to teach focus and I did, and the noise went on and on and on.


My participants were listening to me and Lucy was working on me to be heard by her. She was playing on the insecure parts of me, doing her best to knuckle her way in to my thoughts, she was hanging off my discomfort in the situation, concocting stories and having a field day.


There were a couple of times I had to take a deep breath and come home to me, taking a breath,  feeling my feet on the floor and acknowledging the difficulty I was feeling of being heard over the noise.


I allowed myself to feel my embarrassment and discomfort and reminded myself it I was OK.


This action settled Lucy down, but she found her way back on the drive home playing the scenario over and over.


I knew what she was up to!


Telling her to STOP empowered me in that moment and provided me with a choice to continue to dwell or to label what I was thinking and feeling and choose my actions.
And that’s exactly what I did, I accepted my thoughts and understood my mind was busy obsessing and criticising and this intervention took Lucy’s power away.
 

When I am pushing my comfort zone or having moments of self-doubt she is right there. Providing me with every reason not to do it. I can count on her to be telling me things like “you aren’t smart enough” or “you will mess it up” and “you will look like a fool”. She’s there dancing a silly jig to the pounding beat of heart.


Some kind self-talk with words like “you’re ok, you’ve got this!” and acknowledging the feeling of anxiousness is a powerful strategy that works wonders for me.
What works for you?
​