S.T.O.P._I.T. | Stop Beating Yourself Up!

You are hard on yourself? You question yourself often and end up in self-judgment? You blame yourself for not being good enough and making mistakes all the time? You are home in the behavior of beating yourself up?

Beating yourself up is a survival strategy, by making yourself small.

You are judging yourself and think you should be better, even if you just began something you are interested in. Just imagine you decided to run a Marathon. You start training and soon you compare yourself to others. The judging voices start, you feel bad about it and train even more doggedly. How bizarre is that? You manipulate yourself to continue because you are not good enough yet and totally forget why you even started training to be a Marathon runner — because you love running!

And this is contrary to your own Evolution. You force yourself to do something that you originally started because you love it and that is how you lose the flow in what you are doing. That is the moment where you start feeling guilty.

The article ‘GUILT — A Prison of Your Own Making’ is a very practical one on how to escape the self made prison of being ‘the guilty one’. The article, you are reading right now, is a deepening of one experimental doorway, which is to stop tearing yourself into pieces for not being good enough or being a failure. These nagging thought loops are a self cannibalizing food of your Gremlin. He is the King of your own Shadow- or Underworld, meaning the part you are unaware of.

Beating yourself up is a part of the game of feeling guilty, and as you can stop feeling guilty (see Guilt article), you can also choose to stop beating yourself up.

What Do You Chose?

Willpower is not enough to make lasting changes. You cannot simply replace ‘wrong’ decisions with ‘right’ ones. There is not such a thing like forcing or manipulating yourself to make a new choice. Then you are back in the domain of your Underworld, where you try to not beat yourself up, with the result of beating yourself up, because you are not able to not beat yourself up.

To create new Possibilities in life it is inevitable to move into a new way of thinking. It is updating the Thoughtware we are thinking with. Every computer needs a software update from time to time, otherwise it will be outdated, stuck in the stone age, and create over and over the same results in the same ineffective way. New distinctions give you an opportunity to upgrade your own perspectives, therefore create new possibilities in your life on which you can base your new decisions for new experiments and new behavior in order to create new results.

Change requires practice. And when you are practicing, you will make mistakes.

‘Mistakes’ Are How We Learn

This headline you might have heard many times. You already know that or you even repeat that like a mental mantra to convince yourself of being okay. And at the same time, you still avoid making mistakes. How come? Because you are afraid! Afraid of being punished, afraid of being laughed at, judged or rejected for. And because there is a difference between ‘understanding’ and ‘doing’. You are frozen at status quo, without trying something new.

The greatest mistake a man can ever make is to be afraid of making one. | Elbert Hubbard

Making a mistake is the only valuable thing you can do. You can not learn anything from being perfect. Trying to avoid making mistakes keeps you at the same place and at the same time it is a tool to build up huge emotional fear. You develop strategies to avoid mistakes and when you create results, you perceive as a ‘mistake’, you might end up in this dark place of beating yourself up.

So, how can you train to use your fear and to unlearn that there are things like making a ‘bad mistake’?

Go and practice in initiatory Trainings like ‘Expand The Box’ or ‘Possibility Labs’ to be in an environment where you have a safe space to create new results which are in first place neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’, they are neutral. And continue practicing in life. Every action creates a certain outcome and gives you a reality check for where you are in life. An neutral ‘X’ on your personal Treasure Map of your life.

The ‘X’ is neutral like in the children’s game ‘Topfschlagen’ (German for ‘hit the pot’). In the game, you get blindfolded, so that you cannot see anything. Also you get a wooden spoon. Somewhere in the room an upside-down pot is placed, under which there is usually something sweet or a gift. You will now crawl to find the pot by constantly banging the wooden spoon on the floor in front of you. While doing this, the others give clues by calling out ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ as to whether you are approaching the pot or moving away from it. As soon as you have found the pot and knock on it, you take the cloth from your eyes and get the reward.

Both Feedbacks ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ are valuable. They are neutral and bring you both towards your goal — the pot with the treasure. ‘Hot’ is the ‘Go!’ in your life, where you know that what you are doing is working and you keep continuing doing what you do. ‘Cold’ is a ‘Beep!’ in your life, where you know, when you do a ‘Shift!’ and try something else, this might bring you closer to the pot of gold. Just imagine, you would be so scared to receive a ‘cold’ in this game, that you never start crawling and therefore you are stuck at the same place.

Become An Experimenter

A good scientist must act as a neutral observer in his work. You, becoming an Experimenter, need also to focus on Neutrality. Without any evaluation observe the outcome of your Experiments, if they work or do not work. With a thirst for curiosity in which kind changes in your experimental design have led to different results. You make conscious present-moment actions without assuming that you know what is going on, or what else is possible.

Discovering unconscious stuff is time to celebrate! It is conscious now and you can do something about it. Do not fall into the other emotion of “I am not ok” — beating yourself up again. Instead, use your joy of discovery as a driver force to do something about it.

Next time you receive a ‘Beep!’ in your life, S.T.O.P. consciously beating up yourself. Instead, celebrate! It is not a mistake — it is a certain outcome in life. It is simply an accurate ‘X’ on your map and you can adjust what you are doing to get closer to your Treasure in Life.

Get Out Of Your Lonely Wolf Strategy

Beating yourself up only works well because you can do it secretly by yourself in the back of your mind. (Despite that, the others see the results you create.) And just as you have gotten into the habit of withdrawing and judging yourself, you will probably find it just as difficult to ask for support in the beginning.

‘I am not good enough!’ is a very powerful story, which can run your whole life. You are giving all your attention, and therefore your Energetic Center, away to this belief. You are giving your own power and authority to your Gremlin to continue living in a World of Low Drama.

How about, if your next goal is to create more space for Possibilities for yourself, more freedom where you do not automatically go on the Hook of your own stories (or the stories of others)? Also here, when you start researching your own Underworld and creating a relationship with your Gremlin, become a neutral observer of every grotesque or evil, or genius that he does. And be in a team! Go through processes with other people who have more space from the Thoughtware ‘Gremlin is bad’.

Experiments to S.T.O.P I.T.

Experiment 1: Have A Showdown With Your Inner Voice That Tells You: “I am a horrible person”

For one week, in your Beep! Book, write down ALL the reasons and evidence that proves that you are a horrible person: from the smallest to your biggest failures, why you are not lovable, and not good enough.

This is what your Gremlin sounds like in your head. Do not give your life to your Gremlin. And this is a starting point to distinguish between your Being and your Gremlin.

Once the week is up, enter Matrix Code YOUGREML.22 in your free account of the StartOver.xyz game.

Experiment 2: Throw The Creature Out

When you detect that you beat yourself up again, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and look closely. How does this look like? Is it like a hammer that hits you right after a specific situation, knocks you out and you just feel miserable? Or is it like a little snake, sneaking in after a couple of minutes or even hours, very subtle start nagging on your neck, and you lose more and more of your energy?

You got a picture? A hammer smashing you? A snake nagging or another creature sucking at you? Look at it closely. Turn around and spot with your energetic Flashlight and say “I got you.” And then you have every ability to handle it. You could just step a step aside, so the hammer does not hit you anymore. You can just take the snake out of your neck and throw it into the next drain. Or you kick the creature in the butt and throw it out of your personal space.

When you have done this experiment, enter Matrix Code GUILTxxx.06 in your free account of the StartOver.xyz game.

Experiment 3: Nine-Tailed Whip vs. Sword Of Clarity

Next time, when you catch it that you are beating yourself up, try this to make the insanity of this Survival Strategy visible and at the same time to transform the destructive energy into an energy to create Clarity and Possibilities.

Stand steady on your feet, shoulder width apart. Hold both hands in front of you, imagine you would have a nine-tailed whip in your both hands. Then move your forearms upward toward your head, as if you were beating your back with this whip, passing by your left ear. Then move your arms all the way down and up again, this time passing aside your right ear. The energetic whip hits your back again. While doing this, say out loud what you are beating yourself up for: “I am not good enough. I’ll never amount to anything. I’m such an idiot, I should know better.” Do not stop until you can really feel the pain how it is, when your Gremlin is punishing you like a slave or a prisoner of your own underworld. Strike on the left side of your back, swing the whip down, speed the whip up strike on the right side of your back, strike out again and smack on the left back side. (Please do not hurt yourself physically! Do this only to feel the energetic pain of your action!)

Make a shift when the pain of beating yourself up has landed in your experiential reality. Make a new decision, that you are not willing to let your Gremlin feed on you anymore. Your arms are continuing to do the same movement as before. Do not stop the movement. But this time, you are focusing on the movement forward down. Stop insulting or shaming yourself. Keep doing the movement. Focus forward. Let the nine-tailed whip dissolve and replace it with your energetical Sword Of Clarity. Keep moving and let Clarity come through you. What does it have to say? Speak out loud: “For Love and Accountability. I am taking a stand for…. I am Radical Responsibility in action.” Do you try to take this step from your mind? Guess who is on the steering wheel again in your life? It is your Underworld manipulating you into being perfect or doing it ‘right’. Do not do this from your mind — this is not about positive thinking or manipulating yourself into another direction. Let the Wisdom speak from your heart.

When you have done this experiment, enter Matrix Code GUILTxxx.07 in your free account of the StartOver.xyz game.

Experiment 4: Do Reality Checks

Say to another person in your team that you want to do a Reality Check. Ask them how they think or feel about you, after you have done something for which you are condemning yourself (again) right now. Let their answer sink in.

If there is no one you can do a Reality Check with. Just imagine, what you would feel or think about another person or a friend, when he or she would have done what you just did. Would you say to her exactly the same words you are using for yourself right now?

When you have done this experiment, enter Matrix Code GUILTxxx.08 in your free account of the StartOver.xyz game.

Welcome back to reality!

Love,
Lisa

For more information about Guilt & Shame Trainings & Coachings, feel free to contact info@lisaommert.com.