Page 124 - Taming Your Gremlin A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way (Rick Carson)_Neat

REVISIT AND RE-DECIDE

If you take a good look at your outdated concepts and self-limiting habits
and reflect on their origins, you will probably notice that you have formed
beliefs and behaviors from your trials and errors as you’ve boogied and

bungled through life, from what you were told as a child by those you
thought knew more than you, and from what you witnessed in the attitudes
and actions of prominent players in your world.

Way back when you were an innocent, eager slip of a pup, your mind
thirstily lapped up experiences. You slurped down beliefs and behaviors
from the folks you spent the most time observing—your mom and dad
among them. I hope you had the gift of parents with a wealth of honorable
intentions and common sense, but even if they were top of the line, they

were human and therefore probably periodically trotted out some of their
more unflattering traits right before your little peepers. You drank in the less
than admirable along with the terrific, day after day. Here’s a simple
experiment to help you gain some insight into some of the impressions you
may have unthinkingly gulped down.

Unveiling Your Veil of Concepts

Based on your past experiences, your gremlin has mesmerized you into
forming concepts about self and the world. He then wove these concepts

into a veil of hypnotic convictions through which you view everything,
including yourself. He did so and does so to limit the vibrancy inherent in
your having your own fresh experience of your natural self.

Make a list of ten words and short phrases that describe your parent of
the same gender as you experienced him/her when you were a child. (You
can learn a great deal from doing this with either parent.)

Imagine, as you create your list of adjectives and descriptive phrases,

that your goal is to give me a feeling for the kind of person that parent was
when you were a child. You might, for example, reflect on how your father
presented himself to the world; what was important to him; how he
managed his emotions of anger, joy, and sadness; how he expressed or