You are not broken! There is no need to ‘fix’ anything!
How to deflate self-defeating beliefs with a unique, potent technique
Many people struggle with this belief about themselves. Myself included. For years, I struggled with low confidence, an imposter complex, and the belief that everyone had more to offer than me.
BROKEN
For such a long time, I had the irrational assumption that the world is divided into two primary groups of people: healthy and talented people, and the rest of us sick, unhappy, and incapable!
Yet despite these beliefs, something pushed within me, an oppositional urging derived from the struggle and the desire to survive, succeed, and thrive. I comprehended that invisible energy fueled me through need, desire, and even beliefs from deep within me.
BLESSINGS
Luckily, I was blessed with the support of my loved ones, and this helped to fuel my achievements. I pushed through, but not without stress and dis-ease, the doubt and fear of being discovered as utterly incapable. I co-founded several successful companies where I was leading, respected, and admired. Yet, profoundly inside, I never felt even partially responsible for these successes, even though I was!
HAMSTER WHEEL
Like so many, I set about on many self-improvement projects, exercise routines, diets, and many other self-help schemes and trends in an attempt to either rationalize away my beliefs in being broken or fatigue them into submission by physical exhaustion.
While some of these self-improvement goals helped me grow, others required too much effort to continue regularly. Instead of accepting this as it was, I called them ‘Failures,’ though in reality, just doing and achieving some capability in these was a huge success; my belief that I failed was still blinding me to the truth.
THE ‘OX’ GOAD
Over time, my intuition surfaced the idea my teacher suggested to me as a young adult: “The energy within you will go where you go. While it is as dumb as an ox, it is powerful when yoked to plow the field. Left alone, it will furrow the ground”.
Several years back, I started giving much more time to meditation and yoga. These made me feel the best of all the self-help trends I tried. I began to meditate on this idea from my teacher of this powerful inner energy and how to ‘yoke’ it.
THE YOKE
“Yoga” from the Sanskrit derives from “yuj” meaning to yoke or unite. From a few books and courses, I learned that yoga is not only physical, the postures we are all familiar with, but also encompasses breath, mind, and meditation.
This yoking idea led to a discovery. I found that when in meditation, If I focused on a belief about myself as just an idea, without emotional energy attached, then my intuition, through imagination, would play out this belief in a fantasy, like watching a film. Meanwhile, while watching, I was separated from this belief as I was watching it. In my mind, I saw that the belief was a bubble blown up by a lot of painful emotional energy inside that could not get out.
LETTING IT GO
I could feel the pain in this bubble, the frustration, or fear, and then since I was watching, I realized it was illusionary, not something real at all, and at once, the bubble collapsed as if the air was let out. The emotional energy keeping it puffed out simply dissolved.
The amazing thing was that this process, while all in my head, really reduced my “real” emotions about the situations I was visualizing!
So, I looked in this way at this belief I was broken, sick, fake, and needing fixing.
A REVELATION
What was revealed was nothing short of miraculous! The very life force energized this belief of being broken, which makes all things grow and evolve but misdirected by my own thinking. Just like the ox left in the field will ruin it. Always following where your attention goes, your ‘yoke’ directs your life energy to GO WHERE YOU WILL IT! Or mis-will it, meaning if you think you’re broken, it will keep hurting you. Be it in negative beliefs, manipulative emotions, physical addictions, or all three!
I realized I was repeatedly misdirecting my life force like a fresh gasoline spray on smoldering embers.
This was a revelation; I was continually directing my life energy to re-building and perpetuating these beliefs, continuing my ignorant thinking. Literally a self-fulfilling prophecy! A downward spiral of my own vitality.
RELEASE
Now, it gets even more profound! So, I was directing my own energy into these inflated, damaging ideas about myself. What do they have to do with the events and circumstances that spawned them in the first place?
Nothing! It was myself GIVING THE MEMORY MORE EMOTIONAL ENERGY under my ignorant direction! Because of that initial pain, every time it would come to mind, I would fuel it with a fresh dousing of fear, anger, jealousy, or grief. So even though the event was long past and gone, it LIVED ON as an influential, emotionally energized bubble of belief since I continued to fuel it!
So I realized there was nothing else or more to do than forgive it, forgive them, and forgive myself for energizing that false belief all along.
Then, an even more amazing thing began to happen. All by itself, I began to feel gratitude and love well up within me as I released these beliefs and let those charged emotional bubbles deflate.
UNITY
A grace from deep within myself welled up, tears of joy streamed down my face as lightness and peacefulness swept through and over me, deep wisdom took root, and the experiential understanding that energy goes, where your thought flows, was the ultimate catalyst for growth and development.
From then on, I became better and better at directing my thoughts in a positive, constructive direction, focusing on what was essential: gratitude, grace, love, and unity. Then, similar events in my life that echoed the issues I had that once would have impeded me no longer happened; they disappeared!
STEP-BY-STEP: DEFLATE NEGATIVE EMOTIONS
About a year ago, I discovered the teachings of Joe Dispenza and his wisdom in his statement, “Where thought goes energy flows,” echoing precisely my realization. Now, I have consolidated the steps to evaporating charged emotional bubbles in a few easy-to-follow but powerful steps:
Prep
Find a comfortable place to sit where you won’t be disturbed for ten to twenty minutes.
Sit and take a few deep, slow breaths through your nose. Relax and bring your awareness to the present moment.
Bring the negative belief before your attention.
Acknowledge first that this belief is a thought and not a permanent truth.
Memory
Bring up the earliest memory of this belief, and if you cannot remember exactly, make up a circumstance.
Be in that situation that occurred, and how do you feel?
Again, affirm this bubble of belief is not a truth but simply an idea with emotional weight.
Take a step back
Now, with your imagination, step back, out, and away from the memory and see it in a bubble; you are looking at yourself in that bubble in the situation; now, how does this make you feel?
What was your younger self’s reaction?
Do you realize something new from that situation?
Empower the situation
From your perspective, imagine sending your younger self-admiration, love, and tenderness; give yourself what you need to overcome the situation.
Use your in-breath to help send the energy; as you exhale, allow the emotional energy in the bubble to dissipate.
See yourself overcome the situation, mastering it.
Deflate the bubble
Allow the sending of gratitude, love, and tenderness to shrink and push the bubble away, reversing all the negative energy that filled it, allowing it with your compassion to deflate away.
Forgive anyone who may have been involved, and forgive yourself for holding on to this negative belief.
Release
As the bubble disappears, take a deep breath and relax, come back to the present, and notice what insights you have brought back to the present.
Allow the vacant space the release of this bubble has made to fill with love and gratitude.
Affirmation
Now, affirm the new positive feeling replacing the old, and write it down as an affirmation.
Any time you feel your thoughts becoming too much or negativity slipping in, say your affirmations, take a moment to breathe, and come to your center in the present moment.
Please apply this process and tell me how it worked for you!
OM
Duncan Pond - The Divine Presence Collective