Many people who are faced with the task of starting a blog wonder what they are going to write about. And even though I’m a writer (as well as a coach), with a book coming out in December no less (Scrappy Startups), I have had the same difficulty. What will I write about? And my fits and starts of this blog have demonstrated that!
Today I realized that I might simply organize this blog according to my model of Dream, Courage, Action and explain more about myself and how I operate as a coach along the way. Sometimes I’ll be writing about the dream, sometimes about the courage it takes to make it happen and sometimes about the action. And for good measure, I’ll include notions about beliefs, strategies and allies as well as values, interests, passions and strengths - all part of my model for assisting people to move into their lives of full self expression.
Today I want to talk about the courage part of my model. I’ve been collecting names for the part of ourselves that hold us back from what we want - and I thought I’d share with you that collection. When we name this, it has less hold on us.
There’s a part of ourselves that keep us back, even during those times that we want to move forward. It’s a part of ourselves that has a good enough intention - to protect ourselves, but the impact is that it keeps us from what we want to create in our lives.
I’ve been struck recently by all the different names we can call this part that gets in our way. In my coach training through CTI, we started off calling this the gremlin, but more recently have found the term saboteur more universally understood. This is the inner voice that inhibits us, gets in our way, whispers in our ear and brings fear into the equation especially when we start something new.
My gremlin/saboteur is having a field day with me as I write this blog entry. It’s telling me things like, “This is a waste of your time! Nobody is going to read this. You have more important things to be doing with your time. Remember your to do list?” I’m doing my best to ignore my gremlin/saboteur right now.
One of my clients told me that his dating coach told him to call the voice that inhibits him from doing what he needs to do to reach out to potential dates his inner duck. The instruction is to ‘Shut the duck up!’ I really like that! It’s so irreverant!
Other names for this inner off-track-putting voice are monkey mind, little rascal, inner boss and ego. My husband introduced me to another term that’s used inside prisons in violence prevention groups — inner hit man.
Whatever you call the voice that gets on your case and plays havoc with your life, just know that it is not YOU. You don’t have to put up with its nastiness. You can ask it to speak to you more politely. And you don’t have to let it derail your plans for your work/life. It can have its say, but not its way. YOU get to determine the course of your life.
It’s comforting to know you’re not alone in hearing this inner challenging voice. I remember my leader/mentor Henry Kimsey-House making the connection between the inner voice we all have and the voices the character in the movie A Beautiful Mind had to contend with - schizophrenics hear voices - and so do we all!
So spend some time deciding what you want to call your derailing inner voice and then disable it from having sway over you. Recognize you are more than this voice!
Until next time,
Melanie
[...] slam of the gremlin voice telling us how what we were thinking was actually rather ridiculous. I wrote earlier about the various ways in which this reluctant part of us tries to do us in when we make moves [...]