The Daily Battle You Must Win

I bet if I asked 100 people if they wanted to know one of the big secrets to living a life filled with passion, purpose and positivity that all 100 would respond with a resounding Yes! And you’d probably say yes too, we’re all interested in that so let’s jump right in and expose it.

What many don’t know is that there’s a continual battle going on every day in your life. And it’s a battle you must win daily if you want to create and live your life with passion and purpose. I use the word battle because this ongoing issue is so serious, that it’s really the difference between living and merely existing. It’s the ongoing battle that is between your ears. It’s the battle between fear and courage.

If you’re able win this battle consistently you can live an amazing, inspired life. If you continually lose this battle, then really, you die a small kind of death that gets added to the small death of yesterday and so on until the buildup smothers all of your potential. The result is as the saying goes that you die with your song still in you. And that my friend, is nothing short of a disaster.

We’re all human and that means we have doubts and negative self-talk, some of us have more doubt than others. In my experience you generally have more negative self-talk than you think you do.  And listening to and believing your daily negative self-talk is the most destructive thing going on in your life right now. Think about it, if a stranger talked to you like you talk to yourself, you’d hit him in the mouth!

Byron Katie, a very wise woman and personal favorite, has a great quote that goes something like this: “The problem isn’t that we have all these thoughts. The problem comes when we start believing them.” The reasons your self-bashing thoughts are so destructive are twofold. Firstly, as Katie says, most people tend to take negative self-talk as the gospel truth and aren’t accustomed to questioning its validity.

Secondly, this negativity can be so insidious and ever present that unless you make a conscious effort to change your habits, it can strangle the actual life out of you. Are you willing to let your own mind ambush the inspired life you really want? Think right now of someone you know who is very negative on the outside and you can bet it’s even worse on the inside. So the questions become, where does this negative self-talk come from and what can you do about it. How can you win the battle between your ears and be free to be and do what you were born to do?

The Source of Negative Self-Talk

Negative self-talk has many sources based on what your experiences are, but the root source for all negativity is some type of fear. Fear comes from your limbic system, or lower level mind, that wants to keep you safe and secure. Physiologically, that’s the seat of our fears. Seth Godin calls it the Lizard Brain since it is very primitive. It’s sole purpose is to keep you alive or out of harm’s way. And just because you’re not fighting a saber tooth tiger doesn’t mean your limbic system takes a rest; it’s always working. So by recognizing that place from where fear emerges, we can counteract it with our higher mind (the neo-cortex) and create the habit of moving through fear.

Years ago when I left the corporate world and decided to become a professional actor, do you think my limbic system was working overtime raising fear after fear? What if you don’t make it? You can’t make money as an actor? You’re too old to start that now! People will think you’re crazy, you can’t just do that! Of course it was; my Lizard Brain was screaming at me on an almost hourly basis.

How to Overcome Your Negative Self-Talk

The answer to overcoming your negative self-talk, which is a habit, is to create a new habit in its place. Sounds easy, but as you probably know, it ain’t necessarily so! However it is very doable for anyone. The key ingredient to forming new habits is identifying your “Big-Fat-Why” as I call it.

In other words, you must define not only your goal (or new habit), but you must define why you want that new habit by looking at what your life will be like if you succeed, and just importantly, what it will look like if don’t succeed in developing that new habit. Once armed with your Big-Fat-Why you can begin to challenge the Lizard’s hold over your actions. It’s like suddenly filling your gas tank with premium gas when you’re normally running on empty.

Creating a new habit and challenging an old one takes courage. And what you may not know is that courageous action is also a habit, it builds on itself. Dare to take a step toward the life you want, toward a new habit of action, and you’ll be rewarded. The reward is that it becomes a little easier each time you step forward. And when you do step forward (and you don’t die like the limbic brain says you will), you’ve overcome a little bit of that negative self-talk that is utterly toxic. Acting courageously, even a little bit, leads to more confidence. More confidence leads to another courageous action, which again leads to even more confidence.  That’s what we call being on the road to freedom.

Back to my example of trying to become a professional actor: the more I stepped forward into the unknown and tried something new, the more courage and confidence I built. Do you think in the beginning that I knew how to audition, or was any good at it? Of course not, I was an absolute beginner, a time when negative self-talk can wipe you out if you’re not careful. But I was totally clear on my Big-Fat-Why and that was the driving force behind my actions. That was the premium gas in my tank.

As my courage and therefore confidence built upon itself and added up, my negative self-talk diminished, just like a children’s see-saw – as one went up the other went down. And here’s the great part: taking action to build new habits gets easier, I swear to you it does. Courageous action becomes a habit. And an amazing benefit to you is that this new habit applies to all areas of your life. The more little steps you take forward, the greater your courage and rewards become. Don’t make the mistake of trying to be perfect or even good at first, just simply take some action.

To create and live the life you’ve imagined, a life full of passion and purpose, you have to be courageous. Get clear on your Big-Fat-Why and take a step forward into the unknown. The more steps you take the more you’ll win the daily battle going on between your ears; and that my friend is everything.

Remember, it’s later than you think, live the life you were meant to live.

Cheers, Michael Van Osch

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