Remember the movie gremlins?
You may not know this, but you have gremlins inside of you… probably quite a few.
I had a couple of gremlins pop their nasty little heads just this weekend!
You can learn a lot by paying attention when they pop up. In fact, it is only by paying attention that you can deal with your inner gremlins.
Let’s remember the 3 rules for dealing with gremlins (from the movie):
Don’t expose them to the light… it hurts them and can even kill them.
Don’t get them wet… they multiply.
Don’t feed them after midnight… they become evil.
Turns out, these rules also apply to your inner gremlins!
So what are your inner gremlins?
They are your subconscious limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging identity.
Have you ever paid attention to those inner gremlins? Your limiting beliefs?
Unless you’ve delved into self-improvement, conscious empowerment or done hypnosis, you probably haven’t explored your limiting beliefs much.
There can be countless limiting beliefs, but they can sound like this…
I’m not very good at ________
High cholesterol runs in my family ______
I have a bad back ________
Money is the root of all evil _______
I’m struggling with ________
The voices they speak inside our heads can be very varied. They make us focus on doom, gloom, lack of possibility and challenges.
Here’s a deeply personal story in order to illustrate…
This weekend I saw the nasty little heads of some of my old money gremlins. These gremlins said, “I don’t think I have enough money to pay my credit card bill this week”... “OMG! Do I have enough money coming in this month?”
These voices popped up when I woke up in the middle of the night at 3:00 am. I call the middle of the night the darkness hours. Some of you probably know what I’m talking about. Everything looks darker and bleaker at 3:00 am.
I now know enough that I no longer let myself go down the panic rabbit-hole during the darkness hours. Instead, I took notice that they were there; I used a powerful affirmation to calm down, and I revisited the gremlins when I woke up.
In the morning light, they were not so scary. Things are not quite as bleak. But noticing how these voices had popped up, I took advantage of the opportunity to dig into what was behind them.
I used some of my EFT and NLP tools and I found some very powerful, very entrenched limiting beliefs that were behind these voices.
Not having money is shameful.
I inherited deep lack-of-money shame from one of my grandmothers. She and her siblings were illegitimate orphans, and they were poor. My grandmother was adopted but she was always made to remember the shame of her origin.
I also grew up surrounded by rich girls. I went to a very good private school that my dad paid for. But with my parents being divorced, I lived with my mom who was never well-off. I lived in the contrast of being surrounded by girls who had everything, and my home life where my mom did not have a whole lot. I unconsciously worked hard to not let the difference I saw between them and me be evident to anybody.Asking for money is bad and shameful.
I remember as a little girl once asking my dad how much money he made. We were at the theater waiting for a concert to start. Obviously in my innocence I had no clue this was NOT the place to ask my dad if he was rolling in the dough. I got a stern look and never asked again. That was one memorable lesson.
And over the years I always felt uncomfortable asking for money. Talking about my allowance with my dad always got me feeling that I had to justify myself and that I was losing love because I was asking for money. I never felt good about asking for money.
Can you see the huge conundrum it presents for me as a self-employed woman?
Dammed if you don’t have money. Dammed if you ask for it.
I have managed to provide for myself for 10 years, and I am very proud of that. But realizing that at my core, my whole life I’ve felt really uncomfortable about money explains a lot about how energetically I always flew under the radar.
Can you see the power that limiting beliefs, if gone unchecked can have on us?
Limiting beliefs are definitely are like gremlins.
#1 The light will hurt them and even kill them.
The only way to destroy your limiting beliefs IS to bring them to the light. Listen when they show up. Write down what they say and be curious about where they came from.
Ask yourself, is this really true? Is it an irrefutable truth?
This is where EFT and NLP are invaluable. They will help you quickly drain the power away from your gremlins.
#2 Watering them will make them multiply.
It’s funny because in many schools of thought water is symbolic of emotions. Your emotions will fuel your limiting beliefs and make them feel more real. They’ll also manage to find evidence that your beliefs are true. The result is that your gremlins get stronger and multiply into variations of the same belief.
Observe your emotions and the stories you tell in your life as proof of these beliefs.
Can you look for evidence that they are not true?
EFT is also very powerful in working through the emotions accompanying limiting beliefs. As the emotions subside, the beliefs start to feel less real.
#3 Feeding them after midnight will make them evil.
Those 3:00 am panic attacks come with some nasty fangs. If you feed your limiting beliefs when you’re laying in bed, you can guarantee that they’ll start looking darker and nastier. It’s incredible!
So if you do wake up in a panic in the middle of the night, use calming affirmations or find a soothing meditation to have at hand. Don’t give in to the dark voices.
The affirmation I used this weekend is a powerful one. It’s from A Course in Miracles and it says…
“There’s only one problem and it has already been solved."
The point of this statement is to remind us that the only problem is the illusion of our separation from the Divine. And the only solution is to return to the knowing that we are always one, and always in the perfection of God/Spirit/Oneness/Universe.
This statement resonates through my core and lays to rest any fear, doubt or even panic.
So remember…
Bring them to the light.
Don’t water them with your emotions and evidence
Don’t feed them at night.
And if you’re ready to bring some of your nastiest gremlins to the light, feel free to set up a Discovery Session with me.