My childhood bully has been living with me ever since I can remember.
Is that weird? Well, how long would you let some obnoxious and terrorizing freeloader leech off of your life?
I allowed this to happen to me for 26 years.
We have all had thousands of experiences with bullying, but how many of us continue to put up with it well into our adult lives? As your cursor was so hesitantly placed above the link to this blog, however brief those seconds may have felt, your bully had you cornered. It was during that moment, as you decided to explore the content of this blog, that your “bully” surrendered all control to your auspicious self and so began the renewal of your mind. You had correctly identified the presence of your ego and challenged it. From victim to victor with one light tap of your finger.
So, how did that feel?
I’ll wait for you to finish basking in the glory of your Rocky moment before we continue…
Back? Ok, champ. You see, when we feel so passionately about taking advantage of an opportunity (one that we will learn, grow, and prosper from) then it becomes easy to challenge our outdated way of thinking and to usher in the “new”.
You may have easily defended yourself against this force as you so courageously swung for the fences, but the brute is bound to make a comeback. It makes perfect sense to learn a move or two to keep your ego in its place, don’t you think? Here’s how keeping it simple will keep your bully humble.
Know that you have a choice to seize control or to surrender control during all of your daily decisions. Avoid the temptation to tap into the whims of your hypothalamus, which is the ego’s “command centre” located in the brain. What this means is that the next time you are stuck behind an elderly woman with 29 items in the express lane, become aware of your ego’s programmed response and then breathe. Break the connection for just a moment. The swirl of frustration that you feel in the pit of your stomach will cease as you create space for your thoughts to relax into the moment. Affirm to yourself: “I am comfortable and relaxed in the present moment”. Life is easier when we have options.
The goal here is to interrupt your emotional response. A great way to do this is by having a short list of “go to” affirmations. Become aware of your ego’s response by acknowledging your thoughts (initiated by the situation) and then tread down!
“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” – Henry David Thoreau
The more you read and write these affirmations, the more times you are going to default to healthier emotional, mental, and physical responses. Stronger form, technique, and confidence will manifest out of repeated and practiced decisions to walk the road less travelled. I will include a master list of affirmations that I have created myself and have gathered from other great sources in a later post.
Every day your ego waits for you in the metaphorical “schoolyard” that is your life with the sole purpose of taking what is so vital to you and to your successes of the day. By now you know that I am not talking about your money – this bully is more advanced. I am talking about the freedom to act and move persistently toward our goals which are too often deferred by the harsh criticism of our egos. It awaits the arrival of our cleared and rested minds the second we rise from our sleep each morning and lingers well into the seconds before we shut our eyes each night. All of these encounters are a fight for control. What we can take into each battle, however, is our game plan.
During each moment of total awareness of your true desire to triumph over this negative force is the option to stand broad-shouldered, strong, and prepared to confront your bully.
I’ll share with you why I am now dedicated to confront my bully during all of my decisions. Simple or complex, they are all important decisions. My goal is to identify my ego as a “bad friend”. Do you have someone in your life who continues to be an example of bad decision-making to a point where we act opposite of them simply out of fear of becoming like them?
I was exhausted from all of my defeats and with newfound purpose, every day I am able to stay ready to create my desired results through my daily victories until the war is won. Not only did I want to stand up for my true self more, but I wanted to use this pre-existing force within me to act as a boundary in which I would know not to overstep. I became aware of the ancient battle between my ego and my true self and also of the right to choose a side to fight for. I knew that the motives of my ego were to fool me into acting cocky and prideful instead of feeling confident and being productive. The egotistical mind pumps its chest while the confident mind stands up for itself and for others.
It was time for a paradigm shift and to consciously change my ideas from ignorant and self-righteous thinking to thoughts of empowerment.
For those that have stumbled upon my all-about-YOU blog, I hope that you allow the ideas within this first post to bloom over time. They will find their formation mostly by following the same stages of personal discovery that I had experienced. My words come from a place of love and respect for others and I intend to share with you practical applications for these experiences and how they helped me battle obstacles that I had encountered.
It was during the most humbling and fearful period of my life that I decided to apply these solutions as if my life depended on it, because for many reasons it did.
What I will cover in an upcoming post will be the event of my lifetime. Every moment of ego driven thought, action, and reaction that had affected the world around me, had manifested its byproducts within me.
