Worrier or Warrior?

No Limits | The Freedom Blog™

Worrier or Warrior?

Written by Steven Griggs | stevengriggs.com

“Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three- all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.”

E.E. Hale

“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”

E. Joseph Cossman

Worry. It’s a sneaky thing. Worrying is just a symptom of fear.

It is actually a very comfortable place for your ego personality to hide out. It becomes consumed and distracted running through all the negative possibilities that it can imagine might happen.

“What if the car breaks down?” “What if I lose my job?” “What if I can’t pay the bills?”

It is endless. Once you have developed the habit of slipping into worry, it can become a part of your daily script.

It can become overwhelming and pervasive. I recently heard someone say they were worried about going out shopping because they might get hit by a car……..  !

You can see how far this can go, it can get crazy.

Sometimes having a bit of worry is OK, it could be just a fleeting thought of concern that acts like a warning signal. It’s telling you to remember something that could come up later or reminding you to take some other proactive action.  This is not really worrying.

The worrying I’m talking about is all consuming. It becomes a filter that you see the world through.

In general worrying is self-indulgent and really very polluting and toxic, first to anyone you are ‘worried” about and then especially to yourself.

By worrying about someone, you place a huge burden on that person. You are taking any fears or doubt they may already have and bringing their focus onto it and then they really start to worry and it expands…..

Not to mention how much you are trashing your own energy by focusing on negativity.

And by worrying and thinking about negative possibilities you are actually attracting the negative results you are worried about! You are sending out the vibration of what you don’t want instead of what you do want as an outcome.

And that’s what you’ll get- the exact thing you were worried about!

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There is a concept called “Pareto’s Principle” or the “80/20 rule”. It says that 80% of the things you worry about won’t happen and the 20% that do happen won’t be as bad as you thought it would be.  

So try to remember that.

But how do you shift from living in fear or worry?  You need to move up a level or two on the emotional scale. It’s difficult to shift in one fell swoop into very high energy level, it is much easier to move up incrementally.

Try this. The next time you feel yourself worrying, sit down and draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper. (This is a variation of an exercise called “Clarity through Contrast”).

On the left side, write down what you are worried about (what you DON’T want).  You can list several things or just the dominant worry you are having today.

On the right side, write down what you would prefer to happen (what you DO want).

Now go down the list of items, which thought feels best? What you DON’T want or what you DO want?

When looking at what you DO want, try to see how it would look and how it will feel when it happens. It feels better, right? I’ll bet much better.

Can you feel the shift?

By focusing your attention on the desired outcome and feeling it, you can shift towards new possibilities instead of being mired in limitation.

So the next time you feel yourself slipping back into worry, try to remember what you DO want. Or since it is difficult to stop some thoughts, (you can try saying “cancel!”, it works for me) tell yourself I’ll think about that later, then when you can, take another look at your list.

Don’t let your mind be sabotaged by fear. 

Be a warrior not a worrier.

www.stevengriggs.com

Understanding Restriction

No Limits | The Freedom Blog™

Understanding Restriction

 Written by Steven Griggs | stevengriggs.com

"Poverty is restriction and as such, it is the greatest injustice you can perpetrate upon yourself"

Stuart Wilde

“It's not just the emotional, intellectual, and physical gaps between you and money. The real gap is always between what you think you want and what you actually want, deep down."
Stuart Wilde 

What is restriction?

Restriction shows itself in many ways, but restriction is simply anything that limits us or blocks us.

We are all born into some type of restriction. These could be the limitations or restrictions inherent in a society, for example the Indian caste system or simply being born into a typical American family living in a small western farm town, like I was.

Both examples have built in restrictions.

In the caste system you are born into a particular caste that dictates what you can do, where you can work and who you can marry. It locks you into your tribe or caste and that’s it.

In my case I was indoctrinated with strong, conservative Midwestern values. You went to school, played sports, graduated, went to college, got a degree and went to work. You were expected to settle down, marry, have children and then start the process all over again with your children.

You probably had a similar experience, as I think most Americans have, at least until recently.

The point is by simply being born we are thrown into a rigid, pre-structured life path. One that, because of the subtle and not so subtle programming we grow up with, locks us into a kind of pre-ordained future.

All restriction manifests itself in our physical circumstances, where we currently find ourselves.

In addition to the physical restrictions we are born into, there are ones we voluntarily take on, although some may argue that no one voluntarily “wants” restriction.

But that is not really true.

Our mind can be our biggest restrictor. It takes on certain beliefs that are not that different from the caste system.

We take on a belief system that dictates what you can do, where you can go, and what your future could be.

These restrictions form into what I call our Comfort Band and that’s what we adhere to. Not going below the lower limit nor higher than the upper limit.

Sometimes, because of our limiting beliefs, we sabotage ourselves.

I know someone who  is one of the smartest men I know. He is very capable and competent. Fifteen years ago he was a multimillionaire but today he has no car, lives in a small studio apartment, and has struggled with alcohol and gambling.

He has been homeless several times.

Because of his belief system, his comfort band, he very capably and competently sabotages himself every time he starts going above his upper comfort band limit.

He just can’t allow it.

He wins $10,000.00 at blackjack, then buys a car, stays drunk and parties for a week, then drives drunk, gets in a wreck, goes to jail, loses his apartment and most of his possessions. Then after 6 months gets out and rebuilds.

He has done some variation of this over and over for the past 8 years.

All the while his comfort band has been getting lower and lower as he has become more comfortable with his life. His days are spent sitting on a bus traveling to required meetings, drug testing, and AA. The problem is that now that he is getting older his health is becoming an issue and his energy is dissipating.

He wants a different life but he is a slave to his belief system.  

This is an extreme example and I sincerely hope he breaks out of this cycle but I don’t think it is uncommon.

Maybe the extreme ups and downs he goes through aren't average but you can see how we do sabotage ourselves.

But most of us do it in much more subtle ways.

So how do you reduce or limit restriction?

First- You have to be honest with yourself about where you are right now in relation to your “dreams” of where you want to be or where you thought you would be.

Can you see a pattern in your life?

You make good money but not really what you “think” you should make. You dream of a bigger house but continue to live where you are. You want a Porsche or Mercedes but continue to drive the car you have.

Look into yourself.

This can be difficult, because as you get older the dreams you haven’t accomplished are more painful to look at. And along the way you may have developed a kind of resignation and acceptance that maybe your dreams were too unrealistic and it was not meant to be.

That may well be true if you weren't really connected to those dreams but it is more than likely that you ran up against your belief system.

How low will it allow you to go? How high? Can you see the pattern?

Can you see how you never go too low or too high? That you stay within your band?

Recognizing your Comfort Band is the first step.

Become clear as to what your limits are.

We’ll talk more about what to do in an upcoming article.

www.stevengriggs.com

Perfection Paralysis

No Limits | The Freedom Blog™

Perfection Paralysis

Written by Steven Griggs | stevengriggs.com

The maxim “Nothing but perfection” may be spelled “Paralysis”             Winston Churchill

“Too late I found out you can’t wait to be perfect, you got to go out and fall down and get up with everybody else”                                                                            Ray Bradbury

I think we’ve all experienced it. It happens when you either can’t start something or you can’t finish it.

You just stop.

But what is happening? Some call it procrastination but procrastination is really the symptom of this effect.

What is it that makes us unable to proceed?

It is fear.

It is the fear of being imperfect, of being ridiculed or judged.

Once we create something, be it an article, a blog or piece of art and we put it out there to be read and seen, we become vulnerable.

Now we can be hurt.

It is a common thing for many artists and writers to reach a point where they can’t complete the project. They have to keep reviewing, rechecking and reediting and touching up. It can get way out of hand.

I have done this many times myself with my writing and art. One time I had the same picture sit on my easel for over a year. It was a water color of a broken wine bottle and I was at the crucial stage of completing the puddles of red wine on the floor and I couldn’t do it.

The picture was great up to that point but I was afraid I would ruin it.

Ruin it? This is an interesting idea because how could I ruin a painting I created? Whatever I created is my creation, right? I painted it this way and that’s what it is, period.

Well it didn’t feel that way.

And that was when I started realizing that I was fearful. I had a fear (limiting belief )  about not being good enough.

This is a paralyzing aspect of the limiting belief of poor or low self-esteem.

There really is no such thing as perfection and if you are striving for perfection, who is the judge? Who is judging you?  Who do you have to be perfect for?

Many ancient artisans including the American Indians would purposely make a mistake in a thing they were creating. Indian women when beading a garment or bag would put a bead of the wrong color in the item to make it imperfect. It wasn’t always very obvious but once you found it you knew it was done on purpose.

They believed that only the Great Spirit could be perfect and that any human trying to be perfect would be considered arrogant and insulting.

And you don’t want to mess around with the Great Spirit.

But I think they were on to something. They were making the statement that they were less than perfect. They were imperfect.

And that’s what we are. No one is perfect but we are all perfectly imperfect.

Each one of us is unique. We are each one of a kind. We don’t look the same, we don’t do things the same way. We each create our own project, product or artwork our way. We create it like no one else.

I have read that some artists and writers reach a point where they are about 80% done but at that point consider the project basically completed. In other words they know the project is done except for maybe the final chapter or some last minute touch ups or fill-ins on the painting.

They understand that every project reaches a point when it is done. They can’t add one more word or brush stroke to it. It is done and it’s time to let it go.

It’s time to move on to the next project.

So how do we deal with the limiting belief inside that holds us back by seeking perfection, which keeps us from completing our work and moving on to the next project?

If you are a creator, you have to create. If you have to stop because you fear criticism, then stop. Don’t create. Wait until it feels right.

But a funny aspect of this is that probably a major reason we create is because we feel inadequate in some way. We might get some of our creative energy from the very belief that tries to hold us back.

We can’t have it both ways. You can’t derive your creativity from a source and then worry about what that source might say about what you've created?

The answer is you have to create and then let it go. You have to be willing to show yourself to the world. 

So next time you feel hesitant about putting it out there, just do it. Force yourself to take the leap and say: “This is me. This is what I created. I want you to like it and get something from it but I’m only here for a short while and I've got a lot of stuff to do”.Take it or leave it because I don't have time to care.

If you fear a critic, have him bring his writings and his art and then you two can sit down and have a talk. You won't have to worry about that because a real creator doesn't criticize another artist.

Your fellow creators know what it's like, they have been through the same struggles as you so you have nothing to fear from them.

The ones that love you and love your work, they are the ones to care about.

That leaves everyone else and they don't get a vote. 

www.stevengriggs.com

Are You Creating Your Perfect Reality? Part 3- Limiting the Influence of Your Limiting Beliefs.

No Limits | The Freedom Blog™

Are You Creating Your Perfect Reality? Part 3- Limiting the Influence of Your Limiting Beliefs.

Written by Steven Griggs | stevengriggs.com

“A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind” Elly Roselle

“Your conscious beliefs are what you think you believe. Your subconscious beliefs and deepest convictions are what you really believe.”                        Susan Shumsky

In the quest to uncover your limiting beliefs I asked you to listen to your inner critic and to pay attention to your inner dialogue.

Identifying a limiting belief requires paying close and honest attention to your reactions in certain situations.

For example, your next door neighbors decide to put in a pool. What are you feeling? Are you happy for them or do you begrudge them a little? Do you hear yourself saying “Sure they can afford it because they both have great jobs.” Or maybe “Who wants to have to clean and maintain a pool?”

Unless you really don’t like pools, do you hear the negative push back?

Let’s say another good friend buys a Porsche. How would that make you feel? You’ll probably say “Great” ‘That’s fantastic!” “Can I take it for a drive?” and mean it because you are happy for your friend but what are you really saying to yourself on a deeper level?

Are you finding reasons why owning a Porsche would be a bad idea? How it’s not really you? “It costs too much to maintain a car like that” or “Good luck with all the speeding tickets!”

You probably had the thoughts that you can’t afford these things because you don’t make enough money. You may rationalize that you don’t make enough money because you’re not as educated or talented as your friend. Or that Jim is just that kind of guy, he always seems to get what he wants.

These examples of push back all translate to the underlying limiting belief that you aren't good enough.

So whatever the examples are that you come up with, the actual reason is the underlying belief - “I’m not good enough”. The reasons are the symptoms.

So that is the tricky part. Identifying and accepting these truths about ourselves.

You have to own it, and this is the hardest part because actually saying that you have this belief and acknowledging the truth of it to yourself can be difficult.

You have to be completely honest with yourself. This is when you are tested. Can you accept that you have this belief or do you find yourself being pulled back into the belief and then heap on more evidence to prove why it is true.

In my article The Best Way To Change a Habit I talk about how we actually change our beliefs to match our reality.

For example, telling ourselves that eating the grapes in the fruit section of the supermarket is O.K. because we need to test their freshness. We make it O.K. for us to do something we know is wrong by changing our belief about it.

A belief is actually a feeling. There are only positive feelings and negative feelings.

When you are truly aligned with your positive feelings and take inspired action, you can create the results you seek. Conversely you can have a positive feeling about something and take action but the underlying negative feeling or limiting belief counters the positive and you end up going nowhere.

You keep getting the same unsatisfactory results.

That’s why so many people have a problem with the Law of Attraction. They are only getting part of the story. Unless you are clear and able to release limiting beliefs you are just spinning your wheels.

Vision boards and positive thinking are just exercises in futility. You can’t over power a limiting belief by trying to cover it over with positive thoughts and envisioning yourself having what you want. They are simply too imbedded and powerful.

But by identifying your negative programming and getting clear on how you got the limiting belief in the first place, you can begin the process of reducing and eliminating the belief.

In a previous article on Limiting Beliefs I recommend three techniques that work to release limiting beliefs.

Please know that this is a continual process. You can’t just magically snap your fingers and make all your limiting beliefs disappear. They need to be worked on all the time. Some beliefs may dissipate but then show up later in a slightly different form.

It takes constant vigilance.

Here are the three techniques:

Meditation.

A really good method is through meditation.  There are some really interesting healing meditations. You actually have a conversation with your childhood self and help him or her to understand the situation that occurred to give you a certain limiting belief. I will be posting some meditations in future articles.

Byron Katie-The Work

Another method is through the four questions from “The Work” by Byron Katie.

• Is it true?
• Can you absolutely know it’s true?
• How do you react, what happens when you have that thought?
• Who would you be without the thought?

Visit her website www.byronkatie.com to learn more.

EFT

 A third method is called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) or Tapping.  This technique addresses your limiting beliefs by tapping on certain parts of your face and hands. These tapping points are the Ch'i or energy channels that run through our bodies.Visit their website: www.tapping.com. 

Really, once you dig in and get to the bottom of your issues you will discover they mostly revolve around self-worth or self-esteem.

But as you get clearer and consciously work on these issues, you will become lighter and more in tune with your true self.

Then things will start moving faster, things will happen faster and you will be off and running.

www. stevengriggs.com

Creating Your Perfect Reality, Part 2- Identifying Your Limiting Beliefs

No Limits | The Freedom Blog™

Creating Your Perfect Reality, Part 2- Identifying Your Limiting Beliefs

Written by Steven Griggs | stevengriggs.com

“You can have anything you want if you are willing to give up the belief that you can’t have it.”

Robert Anthony

“If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced”                                                                          Vincent Van Gogh

In order to begin to identifying your limiting beliefs, I asked you to start listening to your inner critic’s voice, to start tuning into the way you talk to yourself.

The inner critic’s voice is actually your internal minder. Its job is to constantly remind you and guide you by whispering in your ear. You’ve been listening to this voice all your life. It has always been there. And it seems so normal I’ll bet that sometimes you don’t even hear it.

But it’s there. It keeps up a non- stop running commentary on everything you do.

It starts in our childhood. In order to help us grow up as successful adults our parents and teachers did their best to help us develop our strengths and mitigate our weaknesses.

Or what they “perceived” were our strengths and weaknesses.

They were also very concerned with helping us to avoid disappointment (protecting us from failure) and helping us to avoid shame, notice the key word- avoid.

Some of this “guiding” also came from our parents own limiting beliefs that they projected onto us.  Their intention was to save us from the pain they may have felt when they were growing up.

So if you were not the prettiest girl in your class your mother may have done things to help you cope with your perceived disadvantage, like encourage you to be more personable or funny or studious. Or she could have encouraged you to cut your hair a certain way to reduce the focus on your face or even to cover more of your face.

If you were a strong, fit guy you were probably encouraged to play sports. In my day, almost all boys played sports, even if you were on third string and sat on the bench most of the time. 

This probably did more damage than not playing but there we were, trying to fit in, trying to belong, trying to please our parents.….. .

Not to mention the subtle and not so subtle messages that teenage boys transmit to each other which probably created enough beliefs to undermine most of the team.

Does this sound familiar? Can you see how these experiences could set your limits, how they could create limiting beliefs?

Eventually the underlying belief developed that you weren't good enough and needed to do or not do certain things in order to be accepted.

In addition, during our childhood and adolescence the process of our parents teaching us right from wrong pretty much kept us in some kind of conflict with them and eventually that tension  created the feeling that something was wrong with you, that somehow you weren't “all right”.

So you can see how the double whammy of not meeting your parent’s and family’s expectations and not being able to do things right is enough to undermine you completely!

Sometimes it wasn't even words or comments but just subtle signals like a certain disapproving look from your mother or father.

But you can see how it began and how it slowly but surely inserted a belief system within you.

The difficult part of understanding or discerning a limiting belief is that when we took on the belief our mind then worked very hard to conform with the belief and soon the belief disappeared into the finished product- you.

We became who we believed we needed to be. And eventually we became who we are today.

Photography by Gina M. Billino

So it can be hard to separate the voice from the belief that this is you, that this is just who you are.

The answer lies in paying attention to your inner critic’s comments and judgments.

Listen to yourself when you comment to yourself. Hear what you say when you look at a car you like or a house you like, just anything that you don’t currently have that you wish you had.

I use a lot of examples such as cars and homes because they are symbols that our society values as badges of success.  I don’t personally believe in these symbols anymore but I sure did once upon a time. 

I had them all.

So begin listening and test yourself by watching your reactions when you see certain things in a magazine or TV show.

Watch how you react, watch what thoughts come up. If you notice yourself saying anything that sounds like a criticism or a justification or a negative remark or comment, you’ve probably hit on a limiting belief.

Really, any comment that pushes against the situation or issue is a clue.

Start to make a list of the things you notice that you have resistance to, things that you push back against.

Once you have this list you’ll be able to see a pattern and then you should be able to break it down into a few areas that you’ll need to work on. Just remember, the examples you'll see are just the symptoms of the belief and not the actual belief.

In my next article I’ll talk more about getting clear on what you need to work on and how to do it.

www.stevengriggs.com

Are You Creating Your Perfect Reality?

No Limits | The Freedom Blog™

Are You Creating Your Perfect Reality?

Written by Steven Griggs | stevengriggs.com

“To understand the limitation of “things”, desire them” 

Lao Tzu

“The wise man is one who knows what he does not know”

Lao Tzu

How many dreams that you've dreamed of have come true? 

I’ll bet many of them, in fact I’ll bet all of them.

Some may be saying “No! I rarely get what I wish for”.

But when I say that, I am referring to the belief that lies beneath the dream, the underlying belief you have about that day dream.

Some will answer “Wrong! I didn't want these circumstances, this terrible situation. I didn't ask for stress and never ending financial struggles”.

But you did.

You may say “No, I dreamed of having a beautiful house and a new sports car and hitting the lottery!”

Yes, but you believed more that you were unlucky and never win anything, that you could never have a million dollar house or ever own a Porsche or Mercedes.

These thoughts aren't a loud nagging voice or really even a voice at all. This is your inner critic. It is just a tiny persistent whisper that keeps reminding you of your reality. 

Your beliefs.

I've talked about this many times. We create or attract what we put out there. Good, bad or whatever.

It is the subconscious “under-programming” that gets heard not our wishes, wants or day dreams.

It is what your unconscious mind really believes in that happens.

So what do you do? How can we change it or at least begin to change our under programming?

The first step is to get clear on what you are really believing. To do that you have to learn to hear those little internal whispers that reflect your limiting beliefs.

How do you do that?

This is where it can get tricky.

The critical part about identifying our limiting beliefs is being able to separate them from our definition of ourselves or our self-view.

This is because in taking on these beliefs we “agreed “to believe them. We actually became comfortable believing them.

So identifying them and taking action to remove them can sometimes be a challenging process.

We began to believe that this is who we are, that we were born this way and this is our lot in life, etc.

The most common limiting beliefs all revolve around self-worth or self-esteem.

“I’m not good enough”

“I’m not smart enough”

Therefore most of your limiting beliefs will be sourced from these basic beliefs.

"I don’t make enough money, because…...."

"I don’t have a good job because……."

"I’m not successful because……."

"I don’t deserve this because……."

So your homework for this week is to listen to yourself. Watch how you talk to yourself.

Hear your inner critic's voice when it gives you those little hints or clues about how you are really feeling about yourself.

Next time we’ll talk more about getting a clearer picture of your limiting beliefs and how to begin to change them.

www.stevengriggs.com