We all have different parts of ourselves, different sides to ourselves, pieces of our personality that we don’t necessarily see as positive. Like the Gremlin, the inner critic, the ego, the victim, the saboteur, the protector-controller aspects of ourselves. And a lot of current teaching focuses on taming those aspects, or getting rid of them, or ignoring them.
Min herlige engelske kollega Donna higton,
bedre kjent som Donna on the beach, har
skrevet en gjesteblogg her hos meg.
Den er på engelsk, og jeg håper du liker den.
And I subscribed to that view myself for a while – I agreed: just tell your inner critic to shut up. But then I started reading about ‘the ego’ and how ‘the ego’ was bad and we had to tame the ego or get rid of it, and I started to feel pretty uncomfortable with this view. Kick out the ego? Get rid of it? Really? Kill your inner gremlin? Lock up your inner critic? Hmm.
It’s a part of you. This part that is ‘bad’ is a part of you. So to me, this attitude of cutting it away, denying it, getting rid of it is kind of weird. You can’t ‘get rid of it’. But you can retrain that aspect of you and put it in it’s proper place. Not by locking it away but by seeking to understand it.
Every part of every body has a positive intention. The self-destructive part of you, the inner critic, the ego all have a positive intention. They may not be fulfilling that intention, but they’re doing the best they can. For me, the inner critic’s positive intention is to motivate me. Honestly, I can’t think of a worse way to motivate me.
I am not motivated by criticism – it’s damaging, hurtful and actively de-motivating. But that’s what my inner critic was trying to do. It’s like a person put in a job with no training and no real job description – they do the best they can, but they’re often quite ineffective (we’ve all worked with that person, right? Perhaps we’ve even been that person.)
Once you find out what the positive intention is of your ‘bad’ parts, you can retrain them, let them know what to do instead, and a better way of motivating you, or keeping you safe, or helping you to enjoy your life. I had a client who was trying (without success) to get rid of their ego. I asked the positive intention of that ‘ego’ and the answer was ‘to help you have a great life’.
The way the ego was going about it was not helping. But with a bit of retraining, that aspect of my client piped down and let their higher self take over the reins of the ‘great life’. Sometimes rather than needing to retrain, we just need to put the right part of us in the right job. The ego or protector/controller aspect takes over running our life because no one else did.
I only discovered a few years ago that the creative, connected aspect of me needs to be in charge of my vision…and the inner ‘doer’ is in charge of making it happen. That made life easier. Now, the inner creative comes up with the ideas, and the doer creates fun ways to keep on track and sit me at my desk (and loves creating spreadsheets and graphs to mark progress).
Put your inner child in charge of having fun in your life. Put your inner saboteur in charge of finding everything that might get in the way of you having an awesome life. Put your inner doer in charge of doing stuff (not dreaming up creative solutions, that’s not its strength). Put your inner victim in charge of alerting you to when you’re giving your power away to others or not taking care of yourself.
Don’t demonise any part of you, because it’s still part of you. It has a positive intention – and it either needs training, or needs to be put in its right place – not by rugby tackling it to the floor and tying it up, but by allowing each part of ourselves to play to our strengths. Once you do, it’ll be a lot easier to love your life because you’re not constantly fighting yourself and feeling like a split personality.
Donna, better known as “Donnaonthebeach” helps women who KNOW there is more to life to fall in love with their lives, and make their Dreams a Reality along the way. If you enjoyed this article, make sure you go to http://www.donnaonthebeach.com to get a free copy of Donna’s new book “Fall In Love With Life”.