the Enemy Within

The homework for the Zen Super Boot Camp tonight is to write about the people who sabotage our goals and what you are doing to combat that.

Looking through my past and present, I have to admit that I have had very few people that have tried to sabotage my well being.  Thankfully I have had others in my life from whom I have drawn strength enough to turn away from the bad influences and focus on the good.  However, there is one person that has been a part of my life from the beginning which has influenced me in both the good and bad.  That is person is myself.  There are many times I have found my inner voice criticizing me far greater than any outside influence on the planet.  Part of its power is that it is extremely hard to get away from.  There is not room in my head to run away from it.  If I set goals for myself, the inner voices prods me to make them grand and in some cases too grand.  When I fail to meet those goals, it is the first sound I hear criticizing that I should have done better.  That, even if I tried everything in my power to accomplish something, that there was more that I could have done, but was just not strong enough to do it.  Over time this critical view gets stronger and stronger to the point where it starts to interject its will well before the goal has been set resulting in stagnation and apathy.

Recently though, I have found a renewed peace in what someone (external of my brain) told me.  “Life is a journey and not a destination.”  This is simple to say, but in this busy life that I lead it can be forgotten pretty easily in between the goals (or destinations) that I set for myself to show progress along the journey.  In order to combat the negativity that my inner thoughts throw in my path, I choose to literally set myself apart from the stressful situation that I am faced with.  When I start to feel stressed about a situation, I consciously step back and take a look at my life as a whole.  I flash images through my brain of my beautiful wife and son, my parents, my brother and his family and remind myself that this stress (in the long run) means nothing.  What matters to me in the long run is that my wife and son has food on the table and a roof over their head and (most importantly) that I am still breathing.  Remembering these images and reminding myself of what is truly important, frees my mind to tackle the problem at hand.  I know that even if my family and I fall onto true hardship, the network of close friends and family that we have been blessed with will come to our aid and enable us to be truly be strong in order to persevere.

Now this approach did not and has not come easy and you may want to roll your eyes and say "that never works!"  I was not able to really employ and benefit from it until I had a major life change recently.  Nonetheless it has helped me stay calm and approach my inner negativity with patience and confidence.  Confidence in knowing that I am only in control of my personal actions and thoughts, which empowers me to press on to do things that I have always wanted to but was frozen with the fear of failure.  I am not cured from my inner critic in anyway, but by reminding myself what is truly important in life has helped me gain a few precious first steps in enjoying my journey that God has given me.

Now I ask you, when you look around your life, what do you see that truly matters?  If you focus on these few truly wonderful things or ideas do you feel happy? Focused? Freed?  If the answer is ‘yes’, then I would write those down and remember them.  If the answer is ‘no’, then I would say you have not truly found what is truly important.  Your inner voice will tell you, like mine has.  Sometimes the voice inside your head tells you more through silence, then through noise.  Focus on this and see what you come up with.  You may be surprised at what you learn about yourself and what you have been missing that truly makes you happy.