How Do I Eliminate Self-Sabotage?
Do you get a box that pops up in your mind offering you an update? 
Today most of us have at least a computer or laptop, a smartphone but some of us have an iPad, a Kindle, a smart TV and even more. We are regularly informed of a software update so that our phone as per see, is more efficient, easier to use, works faster and better. Right?
What has technology got to do with our mind?
A lot. Let me explain how I got around it.
I was told about Matt Hudson’s two-day workshop ‘The Sabotage Game’ by a friend of mine. I decided to take part in January 2016. I didn’t know much about it when enrolling, I just trusted my friend as if she says it was an amazing experience, knowing her, it had to be!
Within 20 minutes of the start of the course, I asked myself….
Why do we update every piece of technology we have, yet why do we live our lives with a mind running on old data?
Don’t you wonder sometimes why you get annoyed with someone or a situation that arises? I do.
We are all unique and special but are also very complex individuals. And that’s because we store everything we experience in our lives from the moment we are born (I will leave the past lives out for today!). It includes all physical and emotional traumas we go through throughout our life. It all becomes part of every cell in our body and also of our unconscious mind.
It makes sense to say that our past has made us who we are but does our past dictate our mind?
Is our mind trapped in our past?
Is our mind mapped out by our past?
It seems to me that our life is limited, built around our beliefs which come from our past.
There is nothing wrong with our past, but it should stay exactly where it is, in the past and stored in our memory bank which we can access whenever we need or wish to. It serves us no purpose to be part of our unconscious mind and tell us how to live our lives without us even knowing it.
Seen from this perspective, it makes me feel that a lot of the time when we react towards people and situations, it’s not us talking or reacting, but a memory from the past.
Are we just living our lives on auto?
It’s scary!
But if we look at what is going on in our world and what some human beings are able to do to other living beings, maybe we are just puppets with an unconscious mind replaying the film from our past.
So many questions to ponder!
How does Matt explain this?
Here is an extract from his book ‘The Saboteur Within’.
Beliefs and Values
Your beliefs and values define everything about you, right now. So, the sum total of your beliefs and values equals who you are and are not today. In other words, they support your identity. Life will constantly be bringing you challenges and opportunities that will enable you to change and update your identity. When you grasp the chance to modify your identity, your beliefs and values will change simultaneously. Equally, if you change or modify a belief, then there will be a shift in your identity too.
Consider a table that has four legs and a top, you can see that it looks like a table and when you sit at it with your dinner plate resting on the surface, and it does the job of a table, then you have a table. If you take away one or all of the legs you cease to have a table, likewise if you only have the four legs, you don’t have a table. The table gains its identity by virtue of being whole.
How can a piece of furniture explain beliefs, values, and identity? Imagine that each component is a strong belief, one leg may represent, ‘I am a teacher’, another may represent ‘I am a mother’ and the design of that top will be composed of all the beliefs and values that, for you define ‘a mother’.
Every belief we hold gives further definition to our identity, and who we believe we are or are not will dictate our actions and behaviours. Furthermore, it will govern our interactions with others and ultimately give us our aspirations and perceived limitations.
Living with a Limiting Belief
The problem that living with a limiting belief creates is that your “I Am…” statements will limit your potential for growth in whatever area of your life it has manifested in. When your parents or guardians gave you rules to live by, some of them were only meant for the playground and to keep you safe whilst you were growing up. “Don’t talk to strangers” and Don’t wander away from the house” were great rules when you were aged 4 or 5, but now you are 42 years old and have never gone out into the world because it’s scary! Your life is being sabotaged by a redundant rule that you’ve forgotten about and haven’t yet upgraded.
An unconscious idea remains fixed until replaced by a better one.
For example, how would you upgrade “don’t talk to strangers?” A brilliant rule for a child.
Upgraded to “it’s ok to talk to strangers, when I choose” or “strangers are friends that I haven’t met, yet.”
Notice that the upgrade allows you more control, more choice and opens up your world to infinite possibilities.
A book well worth reading! It’s packed with practical exercises to get started with upgrading our mind, to remove beliefs which sometimes stop us from moving forward in our life.
Image courtesy of Mark Tyrell