Have you ever felt stuck?
I know I have.
Stuck in a rut, in old patterns, hearing old tapes playing in your head. The tapes in my head are my mother's voice, my aunt's voice, sometimes my father's voice, the voice of an old boss that told me I'd never amount to anything because I didn't have enough guts. You know, those kinds of voices. Haven't we all got some of those tapes playing in our heads? Yes, I believe we all do.
It's human to listen to these people, after all we are impressionable and at different times in our lives different people influence us more or less.
My old boss was chastising me at 19. Instead of choosing to encourage me, he put me down and his words have lingered. Even at the time, I didn't believe him. I knew he was venting on me and that felt very familiar. I'd been vented on most of my childhood. Sometimes I still hear those tapes playing in my head and they feel familiar, but wrong.
The tapes are wrong. Just as my old boss was. I have amounted to something, not nothing. I am who I am today. And that is very significant. And I also have a lot of courage. The courage to stop listening and believing the negative tapes from people who probably didn't mean the harsh and damaging things they said.
There comes a time in all our lives when we know we can choose. For different people it happens at different ages. And whether you are 16, 42 or 70, it doesn't matter. Some event, some discussion, some happening wakes you up and shows you who you truly are. For some people the event is cataclysmic, for others it is subtle. However it happens it's imperative that we listen, that we pay attention and that we choose not to listen to those old tapes in our head anymore.
I suppose some people might call it self-actualization, being true to oneself, listening to your inner voice: It doesn't matter what you call it, it only matters that you do it. I don't want my old boss affecting my life anymore or any of the other voices that I've heard through the years.
If I am not successful in my career, as a mother, as a friend, as a soul mate, it is because of my own choices and not anyone else's words. And certainly not because I listened to the old, negative voices in my head! Some people may try to blame those voices, but that is only fear.
It isn't easy to stop the tapes from playing. They are familiar and the voices are often people we have cared about or care about still. It requires hard work, time, a sincere and genuine effort to know yourself well, but the benefits are so large that they cannot even be expressed in words.
