That insidious little voice inside of us all…

Hey Beautiful, how are you doing?

We’re almost halfway through April, Spring is defiitely sprung even if we are still getting hailstones and ice some mornings. But this time of year it gets easier to get up in the light, bright mornings and I love that.

A couple of weeks ago I started a selfie month on Facebook, it was a challenge issued by another hypnotist to see if we could increase audience participation and collaborate with the Facebook algorithm to be seen more.

Because you may not know this, but Facebook does not like to help small businesses without paying an arm and a leg for ads that show up when you are scrolling, even though you’ve already liked my page and indicated you want to hear from me

Anyway, I decided to accept the challenge for a couple of reasons, the first being that I did want more people to see my posts, and hey if we’re not already connected on Facebook join me here or here.

The second reason was that I have always hated getting my photograph taken, from I was a teenager and started getting really self conscious about how I looked. I have so few photographs of myself when I was younger and that’s such a shame because when I look at the few photos I have, I love that young woman, she was beautiful, vibrant and glowing with health.

And today, I watch young people snap a picture on their phone and post it without even checking how they look – that’s amazing to me!

So, selfie month started and I think I took about ten maybe 15 photos the first few days trying to make them the least horrible as I could. Until one day I took one and I couldn’t believe that was my face looking back at me and that was the one I posted, sharing how awful I thought I looked.

And people were so kind about it which was lovely but more importantly, I started growing a thicker skin about how I looked. And I also started appreciating how I looked. I am still judging myself but I accept myself and am being gentler in my judgement which is a great result.

Until yesterday when I was going out and had done my hair and makeup and thought I’ll take a quick selfie now of me looking fabulous. Well, that voice inside of me returned full force, ‘would you look at yourself, you have make up on now and you look like crap, at least you had the excuse of no make up for the other photos.’

I had gotten complacent about the selfie judgement and here it came roaring back.

Now, yes that seems fairly low level in terms of importance in how we live, but my example illustrates perfectly how we find ways to to work around our core judgement/ soul wound while it continues to fester inside of us.

My no make-up selfies were awful to my judgement but I found a way to keep taking and sharing them by telling myself I had the excuse of having no make-up on so I wasn’t as ‘not good enough’ to stop doing it.

Then when I took the selfie with makeup, I didn’t have that excuse so I experienced full on not good enough judgement.

But here’s the thing. That part of me that’s judging me?

Its doing so out of misguided love. Truly, that critical voice that keeps cutting you down, telling you things you would never say to anyone else? Its a part of you that loves you but it was trained by the people who hurt you and gave you those words and judgement in the first place and its simply repeating what it learned to keep you safe.

The problem is that we listen to it more than the parts of us that are telling us everything is going to work out, that everything is good and it doesn’t matter whether you’re perfect or not.

We create a steel cage that keeps us stuck in place and its made out of nothing more than thoughts.

Your comfort zone is the death of you. Small imperfect actions pushing your boundaries out over and over again will do more for you than waiting for one big perfect action. Because that never comes.

You have to be your own rescuer. One step, one day at a time.

The voice inside telling you you’re not good enough is real but it isn’t true. The voice telling you that you can’t is real but not true. The voice telling you that good things don’t happen to you is real but not true.

Start telling a new story to yourself, become the hero of your tale, and tell yourself, ‘everyone said I couldn’t do it and I proved to myself I could!’

The easiest form of hypnosis is repetition. Just keep repeating to  yourself, ‘Yes I can.’

And breathe, deep, calm, slow.

Interrupt the voice that criticises and undermines you by standing up and doing a silly dance. By singing as loudly as you can. By simply changing your posture, sitting up straight, tilting your chin up a little and put a smile on your face.

Yes, I can. Repeat.

Yes, I can climb the mountain in front of me.

Yes I can get clean and drop drugs out of my life.

Yes I can drop excess weight and get healthy.

Yes I can write a bestseller.

Yes I can get promoted and build a great life for myself and my family.

Yes, I CAN…

Cheer yourself on because when you start to believe in yourself, the world starts to believe in you too.

Love,

Cynthia xx

PS. I’m showing both photos of me you can see see just how perfectly ok these pictures are. I’m not a model nor am I a monster. And I’m okay with being perfectly ok