My client Julie is trying hard to Recover her Inherent Self-Esteem (RISE). She’s been to see me sporadically over the course of the past eighteen months, getting close to empowerment with our work together and then dropping off my calendar for months at a time.
Julie is incredibly competent. She works for a major international communications company (you’d know them) as a high-level executive; she’s on call one week a month which means she has to travel into the city or even jump on a plane at a moment’s notice to put out a corporate fire somewhere. She is a clear example of the rewards of hard work and dedication to her career.
The thing is, Julie feels like an imposter who will be found out at any moment. She surfs a constant wave of low-level anxiety, awaiting the inevitable moment when her boss will recognize her complete fraudulence.
“If I could only get the courage to leave my job, I’d open my own tea room and bookstore,” Julie said. “I can just see the customers sitting at little chairs and tables, pulling books off the shelf and reading while they drink their tea. I’d even have a cat, and a fireplace that would be burning in winter. There would be an enclosed garden in the back with benches and fountains, little reading nooks off the brick pathway where people could sit in the summer.” When she described her vision Julie’s face would transform. Her hands, usually knotted in her lap, would move gracefully as though she were pointing out the flowers.
Doesn't that tea room and bookstore sound inviting? Julie painted an inspired and gorgeous picture of her dream, indicating she’d given it much thought and love. I could see that she had truly explored the most creative expression of her idea, and I believed that such a passionate description, accompanied by an obvious physical transformation, couldn’t be denied no matter how many obstacles lay ahead.
Over the year and a half that I worked with Julie, the tea-room/bookstore dream was the fourth that she shared with me. Each previous vision of a different life was as richly examined and portrayed. She would create a giant community garden dedicated to organic fruits and vegetables that residents would pay a membership fee to grow or purchase produce from; it would be accompanied by a town-wide pick-up of compost material. She would have a small farm of her own and take in rescue animals, providing an educational opportunity for school children, internships for older students, places to work for people down on their luck; she’d even filled out grant applications.
Each idea was an expression of her natural compassion for people, animals, and the environment; each idea had her at the creative helm of the business; each idea had been broken down into action steps needed to get the ball(s) rolling.
So what happened to these quite innovative and plausible ideas?
Julie’s belief in her limitations is what happened. She’d get right up to the threshold of the proving ground… and then back up and start another project. She has great dreams and ideas, can see their fulfillment, but just can’t get them out of her head and into the three-dimensional world.
One important driving force in any human being is the subconscious mind’s immovable determination to keep us safe. We can see this in action whenever we sabotage ourselves. That looks like this: in our conscious awareness we have a desire to create a new behavior, change a habit, or bring a dream to life; yet despite these rational plans we continually engage in the old ways or exhibit stall tactics. We might even be aware that at the same time we’re saying “I’m going to begin the first step today,” we’re simultaneously surfing the internet or wasting time on Facebook. One part of the mind says “Let’s go!” and the other (subconscious) part of the mind says, “Oh no you don’t!”
When the two parts of the mind are at odds with each other we are not of one mind, and the subconscious mind almost always wins. Consider that this part of the mind feels your very life is at stake if that behavior changes. That’s like stemming the tide with a teacup! The strong undertow of ones subconscious motivations emanate from a profound incentive to survive.
That can seem counter-intuitive when the habit is something deadly like smoking, but at some point in the smoker’s past smoking was a clear (though irrational) answer to other, worse experiences like social isolation, being different from the parents, or dealing with deeply troubling emotions. As far as the subconscious mind is concerned, you are more likely to survive if you are similar to your peers, reflecting the behavior of the adults you rely on, or not awash in emotions that feel disempowering. Once that association is set in place, it can be very hard to change course because the inner mind senses actual danger.
In cases like Julie’s, her beliefs about herself as a faker or imposter in her subconscious mind were so powerful that even the obvious evidence to the contrary was immaterial. Her subconscious mind is chugging along with this idea: “You know you’re an imposter, and that you didn’t achieve this career success because you’re any good at it. You’ve got them all fooled, and if you want to stay secure, continue to have money for food, water, and shelter (survive), you better just keep faking it and don’t call anyone’s attention to yourself. They’ll find out you’re worthless after all, and then where will you be? So forget sticking your neck out for an idea like a bookstore/tea room. It’s going to fail because you’re a failure. Better not start at all and prove everyone right.”
With each inspired idea that her conscious mind was ready to get going, a much stronger pull in the subconscious mind was resisting. So how does a person like Julie finally get to cross that threshold she’s come up to multiple times in the past?
Usually one of two things happens. Either the stress of fighting herself gets so exhausting she gets sick, or the fears associated with the idea become a better choice than the fears associated with staying the same.
Consider my client Shelley, whose case I discuss in Chapter One of my book Fix Your Screwed-Up Life. Shelley so hated her job in the public school system that she became deeply depressed and anxious. She had dreamed of other careers and she longed to change, but her salary and benefits were so inviting she hadn’t been able to seriously consider making a switch. For years she fantasized about a different lifestyle in a different place, and even went so far as to work out a new budget and look at real estate options. Yet she stayed at her job, hating it more and more, and getting sicker and sicker. It was only when she actually blacked out behind the wheel of her car on the highway to work that she knew it was time to go.
Consider another client of mine named Ron, who longed to get out of his marriage to a woman who treated him like dirt. Ron was afraid if he left his wife that his family would be upset with him, his children would suffer, and he would never find “love” again. Ron’s wife Terry was probably suffering from some mental or emotional disorder (though I never worked with her, nor am I qualified to make such a diagnosis); according to Ron she had unpredictable rages, had manic episodes when she’d stay out all night or spend huge amounts of money on an impulse, and seemed to medicate herself with alcohol and prescription drugs. His low self-esteem kept him believing that Terry was the best he could do, and leaving her would let the whole world know that he was such a failure he couldn’t even keep his family together.
Finally, when Terry came at him with a kitchen knife one night in the midst of one of her rages, Ron knew he had to get out, and get his children out, too. The fear associated with being a failed husband became a better choice than the low self-esteem-based (LoSEr) fear that he would never be worthy of love again.
I believe Julie was ultimately heading for one of these ends. We cannot live at odds with our inherent self-expression; we cannot go through the motions in our waking lives without the heart rebelling.
The first step in Julie’s recovery of her inherent self-esteem (RISE), was addressing that subconscious fear that she was and always would be a failure. Through a series of hypnosis sessions, Julie began to believe that she wouldn’t have those strong desires if she wasn’t meant to bring them into being. Julie began to agree that the very force of life itself is always evolving, always expressing, and to stymie it is futile. She began to agree that her own self-expression, as given her by God, was perfect and sacred, and because it was given by God it would not result in failure. She believed that God wanted all of his children to be happy, and wasn’t so cruel as to give them dreams only to mock them as they tried and failed.
If God was the source of her creative inspirations, nothing could stand against her for long. Safety and security lay in following the drive God gave her, and not in staying small and quiet, hiding away from the world lest she be discovered as a fake.
I’m happy to say that Julie is working now with the owner of a tea shop to learn the ropes while she takes baking classes; she has begun applying for small business loans. She is still working at her corporate job, but knows that it is a tool to build savings while she prepares to cross the threshold she’s come this close to so many times in the past. She is satisfying her subconscious mind’s desire to keep her safe by budgeting carefully and making sure she is getting as much knowledge under her belt as possible before quitting her job and opening her business. She is also letting the passion for her idea burn brightly and motivate her through the tough days at work. As of now, she plans to leave her job at the end of the summer — and has even informed her company.
Julie says for every moment of fear that sweeps through her now that there is no turning back, there is also the thrill that she can only go forward now. She likened her LoSEr mindset to getting to the edge of the diving board so many times and not being able to jump off. After RISE-ing, sure, she was a bit nervous, but jumped off anyway and now feels liberated and thrilled as she flies through the air.
I remember hearing somewhere that the mind takes the shape that it rests upon. If you regularly “rest” your mind on feelings of inadequacy, then your thoughts will echo the shape of inadequacy, bringing experiences of inadequacy into your life. Then, because the brain will develop the neural structures and dynamics of those thoughts, a person will experience a life that is also not quite good enough, and will go on to see this reflected in health, career, finances and relationships.
But we also know from stories like Shelley’s, Ron’s, and Julie’s that the mind that shapes our brains (and lives) is composed of two parts, conscious and subconscious. When we are “of two minds,” the result can be frustration and self-sabotage; being “of one mind” is the most efficient way to express our inherent self-esteem and all the creative inspirations that originate there.
If you too get right up to the edge of the diving board and back off time and again, consider addressing first (and honestly) what you believe about yourself. You can only RISE to the level of your belief in yourself, so check in to see where that level sits. Begin to recover your inherent self-esteem first and foremost, because when you know deep down inside that you have those dreams and drives for a reason, and that the most perfect reason is the expression itself, you will know that the world has made a special place for you. You will do us all a favor when you fill it with your uniquely beautiful ideas.
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