Are You Your Own Best Friend or Worst Enemy?

We are the story we tell ourselves. More often than not, the stories swirling around in our heads are negative and disempowering. Somehow, we always seem to gravitate to being our own worst critics. These negative thoughts then cause a chain reaction of negative emotions like self-doubt, self-loathing and anxiety. If left unchecked, they will catapult us into a world of panic attacks, depression, and suicidal tendencies. It’s time to get off the self-sabotage express bound for doom and gloom-ville. Did you know the odds of you being born into your exact body as a human with the exact soul and exact talent that you possess is more than 1 in 300 trillion? You are a miracle just by being who you are. You have a divine purpose in this life. Here’s a hint, it’s not beating yourself up until you feel smaller than a flea and hating yourself until you feel like leaving this world unnoticed. You would never put up with a friend who is always putting you down or telling you that you’re not good enough right? So why would you be the worst friend or enemy to yourself? If a thought, emotion, or way of being or knowing is making you feel bad. Let it go…It does nothing for you except to make you feel worst about yourself and to distract you from realizing your true purpose in this life.

Easier said than done right? I know what you mean, I’ve been through the fires of hell and lived to tell about it. If you were unfortunate like me to be brought up in a negative environment, we probably share a similar story. I was brought up with really nasty negative reinforcements. “Is that the best you can do?” “Are you stupid or something, come on try harder!” “ What’s wrong with you, can’t you do better, you’re useless!” These are the things I was fed constantly when I was growing up. Signs of affection were rare and even frowned upon as signs of weakness. “Man the f#$ck up!” seems to be the lead I was supposed to follow and to “not be a baby” I’m also of Asian descent and there is a saying in my culture. Loosely translated it’s ” A man should rather shed blood than to shed tears. Show no weakness” Throw in the constant beatings I got for ” bad behavior” and I could have easily used a victim mentality for a crutch. Needless to say, I can speak from experience that I know it’s not so easy to just shift your own mindset if you were traumatized at a young age. That is, after all, the root cause of self-loathing and self-sabotaging tendencies. We were all traumatized to some degree in our youth. Not everyone has a fairytale childhood. Also, part of fixing the problem is realizing you have a problem in the first place. You have to be radically honest with yourself in order to start the healing process. You have to peel back the layers of built-up defense mechanisms like an onion before you can find the real you. I recommend meditation and constant self-reflection to discover who you truly are. All aspects of Yoga not just the asanas, martial arts,  and all the eastern philosophies are amazing techniques to help in this process. It took decades of self-study, meditation and personal growth for me to release all the childhood trauma I had acquired. My adolescent years were not much better. In fact, I don’t even remember much of them. My mind has protected me by wiping out most of those memories. I’m 44 years old now and have just learned to release and to deal with my traumas. Granted I’m no angel either. I’ve had my fair share of getting off and on the drugs and alcohol bandwagon, dealt with problems in unhealthy ways, and had put up walls and self-defense mechanisms so that no one can reach me to hurt me. This included myself. This is what I learned through the process.

WE ALL HAVE A CHOICE. WE CAN BE THE VICTIM OF OUR PAST, OR WE CAN BE THE HERO OF OUR FUTURE.

1. Choose Empowering Thoughts over Self Defeating Ones

There are two roads you can take. You can blame others, feel sorry for yourself, beat yourself up and be a victim of your circumstances. You can give into your own self-fulfilling prophecy…. or you can choose the higher path. I could have easily lashed back out at the world and become a menace to society. I chose the higher path. I took charge of my own life with a no-excuses approach. To educate myself and to heal from the inside out. I sought out the world’s top therapists and healers online on these topics and educated myself on how to do this. When I adopted this mentality, my circumstances started to slowly change for the better. This can be your story too.

However, despite your best efforts, it seems you always go back to old habits and ways of thinking and being when you are not paying attention. It’s like you have an autopilot mode that keeps activating when you’re not aware. Well, as a matter of fact, that’s actually the case. Dr. Bruce Lipton explains it in his amazing book called “The Biology of Belief” Much of who we are is ingrained within us at a subconscious level when we were very young. From the day we born till around the age of 6, we are in Theta brain wave state. That’s the dream-like state when we are like sponges and we just absorb all the information that is being thrown at us. Mainly by our parents and society. How to be, what to think, what to believe, how to act. All of it is being absorbed into our brains at an unconscious level. Your physical and mental environment can be terrible at this stage. This is when you’re most vulnerable to deep trauma. This leads to addiction, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression negative coping habits, etc, that carry on to adulthood. Your mind also protects you by erasing painful childhood memories in the process. In order to truly heal and move on, you have to access your subconscious mind.

2. Change Your Subconscious Programming

Dr. Bruce Lipton explains that 95% of who we are was programmed in us till the age of six. Since you have all these automatic negative programs ingrained in you since you were a kid. You can’t just use your will power to get rid of all that trauma and unconscious thought patterns and behaviors just like that. It’s not that simple. They are hidden deep in your subconscious. You have to release them the same way they were put in. You have to put yourself back into theta state. There are two main ways to change your subconscious mind. They are Hypnosis and Habituation or a mixture of the two. I will first discuss what I learned about Hypnosis. There is a new modality now which is called energy psychology. It is the best and most efficient way. It activates the brain to be in a state of superlearning. If you engage superlearning, you can rewrite subconscious programs in about 10 minutes. So years of negative destructive thought patterns and behaviors can be rewritten in no time! This is a list of 20 companies that use this new science here. (*note, I’m not affiliated with any of these companies and do not receive any financial reward. I only provide this as an act of service to my readers*) A really good hypnotherapist can do the same thing but it does take a lot longer.

A more economical way is to apply the principle of habituation. Simply put, the practice of constant repetition to change a thought pattern or behavior. This is when you practice diligently to acquire a new skill or when you hone your talents until you become an expert for example. You can use the same process to change yourself on a subconscious level. The trick is you have to do this when you go into Theta state. You are in this state when you are drifting off to sleep. This is when you’re not quite asleep yet your brain is most susceptible to suggestions. This is the best time to put in positive reprogramming. There is an amazing series on youtube I recommend called Daughsey Meditations. These are numerous meditations designed to change your thought patterns and behaviors on a subconscious level. There’s a wide selection of topics such as self-esteem, discovering your inner genius, learning to let go of failures., just to name a few. This is one of my favorites:

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Another series of great guided meditations is by Dr. Joe Dispenza. More details on techniques for changing your subconscious mind can be found here in Dr. Bruce Lipton’s book, “The Biology of Belief.” I also recommend the advice and books of Dr. Gabor Mate or doing Dr. Stan Graf’s holotropic breathwork to release trauma as well.

3. Shift Your Mindset

Jim Kwik my favorite memory expert/brain enhancer coach has a wonderful acronym for a solution to this. He calls it “ getting rid of A.N.T.S or (automatic negative thoughts) the minute you notice these little pesky critters crawling around in your mind, you have to get rid of them. You have to stop them dead in their tracks before they take over your mind. They’re wiley buggers and always try to sneak by you and rile you up and invade your mind. You have to constantly be vigilant and guard your mind and get rid of them until they stop coming. Notice them, acknowledge them, then let them go. Free yourself of Automatic Negative Thoughts (A.N.T.S!) Also realize that you are not your thoughts. Don’t get hung up on them and don’t let them highjack your emotions.

4. The Power of Forgiveness

You will never truly heal if you cannot forgive those who have hurt you. It will always be like salt on a wound every time you relive the painful memories they caused you. Time heals all wounds but they will never heal if you keep picking at them. You can never change all the bad things that happened to you but you can choose how you process that information. You can choose to see that every one of those wounds are like battle scars. That when they heal, they will make you a much stronger person. You can choose to see that those dark times had mold you into a much more resilient and tougher person. You can also show compassion to those who hurt you the most. You can realize that they are the product of their environment and you can try to understand why they had become that way. This is how I was able to forgive my father. I realized that he had a really hard life himself. Both his parents died young and he was forced to be the man of the house. He had to work almost all his life and never had a childhood. He grew up with a lot of hardship and poverty. So that was all he knew. It made him a hard man and he was pretty stressed out trying to raise 9 kids. So he ruled with an iron fist cause he had no time to deal with us getting out of line. But deep down inside, he really cared for us. He just didn’t know how to express it the proper way. He did his best to provide food on the table and to give us shelter over our heads. When I was able to see all the sacrifices he made for us, I was able to forgive him. Therefore letting go of my own trauma in the process. The moment I had this shift in perspective, was the moment I started to heal. Now we have a much better relationship.

5. The Power of Gratitude

Finally, the best way is also the simplest way. When you find yourself having self-destructive thoughts, shift your focus. Did you know that if you have access to clean drinking water, shelter and an abundance of food, you are among the top 99% of the world’s population within regards to a higher standard of living? A little bit of gratitude goes a long way. Also, every day if you wake from your sleep, smile and be grateful. About 3/4 of a million people die in their sleep and don’t even get that gift of a new day. So be grateful for that. Also, if you can see that all your loved ones also have that gift of a new day, give thanks again. Concentrate on what you have not what you don’t have. You will see just how much better your life is compared to most of the people in this world. Your life may suck, but at least you’re not dodging bullets daily in a war-torn country. You might have nothing but at least you don’t have to walk for hours just to fetch clean drinking water. A series of unfortunate events might have left you in a financial or emotional crisis but at least you are not paralyzed in a wheelchair or living with a chronic debilitating disease. Even if you are, there is always someone worse off than you. So be grateful for what you have and not what you don’t have. Furthermore, the more you look for things to be grateful for, the more they magically appear. Shifting your mindset to gratitude is the most effective method you can utilize to change your perspective on life. It’s better than any expensive therapies, and procedures out there. Then you can really enjoy the magic and beauty this world has to offer 💓💓💓

So what are you grateful for today?