You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”
~Johnny Cash
A Gremlin – an abominable, spiteful, wicked, intolerable bully – lurks in the shadows of your mind.
He wakes up with you each morning and falls asleep with you at night. Your gremlin is shrewd and unscrupulous, convincing you he desires to serve and protect you. His true motivation is much less honorable because he intends to make you unhappy.
He is not merely a critic, but the narrator in your head telling who and how you are as he defines and interprets your every experience.
This devious spirit is not your negative thoughts but the source of them. Like a mental glitch, he uses botched and bungled past experiences against you, then taunts you with your fears. Your Gremlin uses your past experiences to mesmerize you into structuring your life around polarizing and sometimes fearful generalities about you and your future.
Gremlins uses fanatical control to tell a cautionary tale about life and living that is often obsessive. This scheming imp coerces you into reliving the past, worrying about the future and analyzing relationships among all manner of people and things that in fact have no sway over you.
The outcome is frequently hesitation, procrastination or status quo – the thief of opportunity and progress.
Enduring judgmental comments from a Gremlin injures self-esteem and lowers self-worth, fueling the cycle of disapproval. Failure to control the Gremlin empowers this inner critic, culminating in damaging your self-esteem and stealing your peace of mind. An attack by the wicked critic can trigger psychological distress and affect behavior, mood and feelings of hopelessness that characterize depression.
As your anxious worries become more distressing, resist the temptation to pull back. The more qualms embedded in your self-perception, the more resolutely must you reject any thought of running from them.
The better choice is to stretch even higher until you are lifted and borne by dreams and goals inflated as large as a hot air balloon. Stock up on positive possibilities and continue moving forward until you encounter a purpose that energizes and inspires you to the very core. From that vantage point even the scruffiest, most convoluted encounters will look trivial.
Counter-intuitively, your Gremlin has information you need. Psychologist Lisa Firestone tells us that early life experiences originate the inner critic, often drafting a model for how we view ourselves as we grow up.2 To many, the Gremlin speaks in the voice of an angry parent.
Listening to and studying the message from the Gremlin by digging deep to expose and untangle the truth from the trappings, allows you to detach the reproachful voice of the Gremlin from your authentic voice and restore your self-worth.
It begins with acknowledging that the Gremlin is not you, but rather a nagging whisper often cued when you are confronted with a decision, value conflict or unexpected action. When you detect that the voice is inauthentic, isolate it and disconnect. The false innuendos lose power and control, freeing you to act in your own interest.
Eventually, you are able to corral your Gremlin simply by being more compassionate towards yourself.
Let yourself believe that you can always find a positive desire that is even stronger than any doubt. Setbacks are limited and finite. Hopes and dreams that pull you forward have no limits.
The quality of your life depends primarily on what you decide do with it. The Gremlin-speak of extraneous things that discomfort, while they may be intriguing, don’t amount to a hill of beans. What matters most is how you choose to live the precious life with which you are blessed.
Stop for a moment and consider what is stopping you from overcoming the inevitable obstacles you encounter.
Then consider this.
Why wait a single moment longer when you can start now to follow your most gripping passion and attain your most treasured dream? Choose to live with purpose and courage and you’ll detour around every difficulty.
At this time, in honor of reading the entire blog, I raise my pen, knighting each of my readers Sir and Lady Gremlin Slayer.
You may now take a deep breath and laugh at the absurdity of it all.
References
1 Firestone, L. (2016, April 11). How to Tame Your Inner Critic. Retrieved October 26, 2017, from Psychology Today.
2 Critical Inner Voice. (2017, September 15). Retrieved October 26, 2017, from PsychAlive.
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