I want you take a minute and think about this question before you continue to read or write it down on a piece of paper; Who are you? If you need a little help, think about what makes you, you. How do you define yourself? Ok, have it! No if you are a parent you probably added that, possibly your your job (even if you like it or not), maybe a sibling, a good person, outdoorsy, ect… We probably consider these things as positive. Now we don’t just add in everything that we feel is good. What about what we consider to be disabilities, depression, anxiety, ADHD, feeling lost, unfulfilled? Did any of these come up or did other things come up that you feel are negative?
So that was just a short exercise that I wanted to start off with to show internalization. Many of the positive things are great because they serve us and define us in a positive way. We make meaning in our lives from these positive things such as what we do for work, how we interact with people and what fulfills us in life. Now the aspects of ourselves that we consider to be negative; how do they serve us? How many times have you wanted to do something but thought, “I can’t do that because of…” fill in the blank here. Does the narrative sound something a little like “I wish I was good at something but I will never be good at that thing because I am have a problem.” This is internalizing, we view the world and our place in it, and define all the good things and all our limitations that have been imposed on us to create an internal understanding of ourselves. Positive and negative.
We can unbind ourselves from this though externalizing our problems. Here is an example of what I am discussing here before we move forward. So, I want you to go back to that list “who are you” list and draw a circle around it, mentally if you were thinking about it or literally on paper. The circle represents you as a person and everything that makes up who you are and what you believe of yourself. Now try this, all those things that you feel are negative aspects, I want you to write them outside of your circle and cross them off from within your circle. This is externalizing. This was just a quick way to understand the process, but this takes work. The issues are never gone, you can still see them, but they are not part of who you are. You are no longer confined or limited by these beliefs. We all have aspects that we don’t like about ourselves or things that have internalized because people have told us something about ourselves and we chose to believe it. When we believe it to be a part of who we are we are bound and restricted, as opposed to seeing this a something that exists in our lives, we acknowledge its existence, be we figure out how to work around it. Here is a visual, think about the limiting factors in your life. Mentally you feel in a box with doors, just windows, able to see the outside but not to break free. On the other hand, what if we change that visual to something like forest. You are free to move and go where you want, the trees still exist as part of the landscape, we acknowledge them, but we can accept that and move around them.
Limiting factors in our lives are always present and no one can tell you to just forget about your problems or beliefs. This is a conscious process that takes work because you must understand it and make sense of it yourself. Limiting factors in your life are like programs on a computer that run on autopilot and effect the flow of positive energy into your life, even if you feel good. Negative beliefs do not serve us and stop us from being the best that we can be