“Yeah … I’m just livin’ the dream!”
This, all too often, is a repeated punch-clock phrase allocated to the emotional-negative-pile, which is almost … NO! … it IS … our national ‘9 to 5’ stuck on the hamster wheel joke-line at work.
Like many of my clients, he was stuck in doubt and insecurity at a vocation he did not love, while in his words: “Wasting his gifts” lingered in the air.
But I believe behind his lighthearted sarcasm, was a spark of truth coming from our inner Champion (buried under trauma, doubt, fear) expressing a tinge of what we’re all too doubtfully afraid to ponder or, ask.
- Is this my life?
- Am I always going to have to just settle for this?
- Can I do what I love?
- Am really that good at ________ (whatever is in your heart)?
- Should I even try what I’ve always wanted to do?
My client continued.
“I read something this week that really bothered me.”
He paused, looked at the floor, and then thoughtfully continued.
“Dreamers may give up on their dreams, but their dreams never give up on them. Whatever you call that…that’s my diagnosis. But Dr. Neecie, do I have what it takes?”
I challenged him with this, and I challenge you too. Take a minute to know … stop reading … and KNOW this deep inside you… “If you’re asking ANY of the above questions of yourself, you’ve entered the starting blocks that every Champion in history started from! So … Pause. Breath. Ask the questions.”
I continued and said to him, “You’ve got doubts? We’re good then. We all do … Let’s go …”
And to you too my precious friend, your whole life (the good, the bad, the ugly) has been about this moment of you looking seriously at your doubting.
Why?
It’s led you to this ‘now is the time’ moment to begin the process inside, telling you, calling you…that it’s time for you to learn the real ‘heart and mind’ skills you’ll need to finally go for it.
I’ve given my life (as an Executive Coach and therapist) to pass on to everyone that I’ve counseled, coached, or mentored aligned brain/mind/heart skills to Champion themselves. To become the Champion of their own giftings and callings.
So, I listened to his doubts in the form of questions to assure him that there was a Champion deep within him. I dared him with this, “This Champion…is really who you were meant to be. But…that real you is buried under doubtful thoughts and beliefs you had little or nothing to do with. But I know what it takes to resurrect this Champion in you. I can equip you with the skills to Champion ‘yourself’ towards the life you’ve always wanted.”
If you are reading this, likely you will have asked yourself similar questions. That means there’s a Champion in you … calling to you too! Let me help you learn the thought re-wiring process that will cancel every doubt, for you to Champion ‘yourself’ to greatness!
1. Can I have a life I love? I feel safe in the same old day to day grind, but I long for a life I want and love. Can I? Dare I?
I loved his question, and I knew I was sitting with a creatively gifted man. Yet another Champion dreamer. Buried beneath voices of doubt echoing in loop in him from early in his life.
I assured him, “We all have what it takes! But our ‘whatever it takes’ gets stuck in a default mode from our early-life programmed filters of guilt and shame. They skew and screw with those gifts in our minds and hearts. Those filters were imposed on us without our knowledge OR permission.
The darkness of that guilt and shame are the fertile grounds for all doubt to sprout (in and out of season, at will) for the rest of our lives. From those dark places, every doubt about if we can … or if we can’t… emerges.”
He was gazing directly into my eyes, and I knew he was making an internal brain/heart commitment to this journey.
Only when we seriously examine and look our doubts straight in the eye, do we ever really consider why we do doubt or have doubts. Especially when we know that we’re good at what we’d really like to do.
That we love it.
That we have a passion for it.
And that we for sure want to try it… before we can’t… before it’s too late.
If we don’t stare down the doubts, they will prevail.
He cleared his throat, fighting back emotion and said, “Okay Dr. Neecie. I trust you. I believe you. Let’s do this.”
What about you? Are you ready for the journey? Are you in? Every doubt you have has a reason. Embrace your doubts. Remember, they’re your starting blocks.
2. Why do I even use this addiction? Can I get to a place I don’t want it…or better yet, that I don’t need it?
“It’s not like I want to drink. Really. It’s a battle that’s complex. It occupies so much of my brain real estate. It occupies/wastes my time as I figure out when I can drink again. Or how much I can drink at a gathering so that it goes unnoticed. It occupies my energy, as I nurse the daily hangovers into feeling good enough to plan my nightly drunk…I want a way out of this!”
Choosing a life that challenges the status quo of the one you’re living, is a “yellow-brick-fork in the road” epiphany. Where our will and our choices meet. Any addiction makes this kind of change easy to ignore. Our best friend (name your addiction) was/is our need to escape our embracing of any responsibility to change.
I responded with sincere empathy and care and said, “This battle is not because you aren’t a good person…it isn’t because you’re weak…it isn’t because you’re not smart enough or good enough…it’s because you’re medicating all of your doubts and questions that keep you in your ‘just good enough’ life!”
He nodded with emotion.
“Instead of facing doubts, we depend on our old ‘go to best friend’ (whatever the addiction is) to drive it away. If you find the Champion in you, I promise, you won’t need your addictive-best-friend any longer!”
I also shared with him that often our drinking (or whatever addiction) is also a response to issues and faulty belief systems that were created/programmed in us from early trauma.
Obviously, I’d struck a nerve.
He immediately blurted out, “It’s a trust issue. That’s it!” (We traced it back to an early event when he was run over by a vehicle as a child. No one processed him through it. No one comforted him. He was left with a trust issue that literally loops inside his unconscious mind 24/7, 365 days a year that… “There’s no safe place…none! You simply cannot trust anyone … or yourself!”)
He was visibly relieved, and I could see that dots were connecting in his brain that had never made sense to him previously. And scattered dots that made his life not make sense to him throughout the years. (Or to anyone else who loved him and had tried to help!)
He struggled to put the words together as the dots connected: “It’s hard to not trust part of yourself. And to completely let go of entire areas of your heart and thinking. That I’ve always perceived I could control when I wanted to. Like my drinking. I thought I wasn’t an alcoholic, because I thought I could trust the part of me, that told me, when it was and was not a problem.”
He paused to put more pieces together and continued.
“When I wanted to drink, I told myself I couldn’t trust the part of me that said I had a problem. When I didn’t want to drink, I told myself I couldn’t trust or control the part of me that wanted to drink. You should never go there to begin with. That area that’s edgy, selfish, unmanageable, that burn down hour upon hour of life, real life and become a graveyard where dreams are only babbled about, never pursued.”
Wow! I thought. Wisdom was pouring out as a result of the truth connecting dots. As I saw more dots connecting in his brain I nodded, and he went on.
“But you always go back to it when you need to. Do you really control it if you have need to go back to it-for anything? Isn’t that ‘really’ addiction?”
I nodded.
He had a moment of epiphany as he said, “Answering this question in total honesty is really the issue. And unwillingness to answering it in rigorous honesty, is the roadblock to any freedom.”
Almost tearfully, almost whispering he said, “The hardest thing to admit is that I cannot trust parts of me that are me…but are they? Isn’t that the insanity of addiction?”
Then finally, he wound down with, “The doubt that it’s addiction…isn’t that called denial? And then it turns us back to the addiction. OH MY GOD! Not only did I learn as a boy that the world was not safe and could not be trusted, but I learned that my brain was not safe and could not be trusted … driving an addictive pattern my whole life!”
The revelation settled in.
In addressing the trauma, addressing his doubts, he found sobriety.
What addiction, masking as a ‘friend’ haunts you? If you will embark on the journey of facing your doubts, addressing any trauma, and resurrecting your Champion within, you will find your next best right step away from addiction, formerly known as a best ‘friend’ …now known as ‘your past.’
3. Why can’t I get the confidence or belief to just do it? To just jump into my dream?
I understood both his excitement about the dream and shaky confidence about making the leap.
But I’ve coached thousands to re-program and replace their trauma driven, underserved, self-doubting, limited thought lives with new empowering ways of thinking, to conquer all the negative noise inside their heads and outside their hearts.
Including, shaky confidence.
Confidence is inherent in the Champion within, those truths you were meant to dream with. If you want to build confidence, spend time with your dreams. Spend time with your doubts.
Yes, spend time with your dreams.
Validate your dreams.
Envision your dreams.
See yourself “doing the dream.”
Yes, spend time with your doubts.
Tell them that they are being identified and rejected.
Tell them that your dreams are greater than they are.
Tell them that your dreams will crush them.
BELIEVE IT! Identify where they’re coming from (usually early programming). Write them down and stomp them!
Yes, literally stomp them. Sometimes I have people write them. Tear up the paper they’re written on and literally stomp them while playing loud music.
And by the way, I use music because the Champion in you loves to dance. Whether you have rhythm or not, everyone loves to move to music. So dream. Dance. Stomp doubts.
Your best days…of living the dream…the REAL dream are ahead!
********
Gratefully and humbly through these gifts (that I believe God has given me) I’ve been able to ‘disrupt’ that lostness of buried purposes and Champion spirits. I’ve watched, in grateful astonishment, Champion style thinking resurrect in heart after aimless heart.
Where there once was nothing but doubt, there was now destined ‘possibility’ thinking! There was now a self-accepting-freedom directed- mindset, every dreamer was/is meant to know to navigate and conquer their doubts, fears, and live in the abundance of their life!
I love this quote from Bishop T. D. Jakes I discovered in his new book, Disruptive Thinking…
“So why do we need disruption now? Because we’re all infected with different kinds of trauma. Herein lies the brotherhood of man. No tribe in the world has escaped it. We are desperately in need of something to be solved, inside or outside.”
It’s our ‘doubts’ that start these inner wheels of truth turning, speaking to our hearts and minds. Calling out yet again to our Champion within, to come and learn the soul skills it takes, to rewire and awaken the dreamer Champion spirit within … to rise up and go for it!
Buried?
Yes…under some kind of trauma that had nothing to do with me/you/us. Those moments, known or unknown to us, contain ALL the toxic reasons for all our doubts and excuses for us to never try. They keep us trapped in our heads, and never knowing how to live from our hearts…where dreams come from.
That’s our Champion.
It’s our one passion-thing.
What we’ve got to try before we die.
It’s indeed the churning of our buried Champion spirit, the rumbles of resurrection rising through the haunts of our trauma-doubt, calling out for us to do, to dream, to create, to build, to give.
Can we really do what is seemingly free of effort for our job?
Can we really provide ($$$) doing what we love?
Can we do what easily joyfully flows out of us?
Is lost ‘in the moment’ peace filled living-ok?
That my friend is the spirit of abundant life!
And to my point I thought of this Martina McBride lyric…
You can spend your whole life building
Something from nothing
One storm can come and blow it all away
Build it anyway!
You can chase a dream
That seems so out of reach
And you know it might never come your way
Dream it anyway!
You may have given up on your dreams,
but your dreams will never give up on you!
LET’S DO THIS…it’s your…CHAMPION TIME!
