We have all been in situations where we felt implicated, side-lined, or victimised by someone in our professional circles or even social circles. Sometimes it feels as if nothing goes our way, one bad thing after the other. Live is difficult for everyone. Everyone had experiences stopping us in our tracks and maybe you have been in a place where you had to ask yourself: “Is this how hard life actually is?” Then I happen to stumble across the short powerful anonymous article that just helped me to snap out of self-pity and a victim mentality – making excuses for all the things that are wrong in my life. An article that focused my attention on the things that I can control and should be practising daily.
We get overwhelmed. At times just keeping up with our obligations can feel like an insanely heavy burden. If you’re like most people, there are also people around you who make your task even harder.
- There are people who criticize you.
- There are people who ask more of you than you must give. You try to be a good friend or brother-in-law, or daughter and you exhaust yourself trying.
You give them time and energy and moral support until you’ve completely depleted yourself and you have to ask “How can I possibly keep this up?”
The people around you are a huge factor in your ability to keep your mojo fuel tank full. You have a lot on your plate, and you need a full tank of fuel to get there, but sadly there are people who will suck away your mojo.
You know who I mean… I’m sure you’d be wrong when you guess who they refer to in this article.
“The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.”
-Samuel Johnson-
Biographer and poet
1709 – 1784
The three mojo-sucking people you need to get out of your life right now, are all living inside of your head! You will lighten your load by shedding them without creating drama or making anybody hate you.
Just recognize that the three most destructive voices in your life are:
- Your critical self,
- Your complaining self, and your
- Fearful self.
As soon as you can become aware of their negative voices playing day and night in your brain, you can start to recognise them, isolate them, and tune them out.
Your critical self keeps telling you: “What’s wrong with you?!”.
Your complaining self-laments: “Everything happens to me! This isn’t fair!” and
Your Fearful Self asks: “How can I cope with everything I have to do? I can’t. I’m helpless. I’m not up to this!”. I’m sure you recognise their scripts!
The thing is, they seldom confront you when you are busy making difference, and things work out in your project, or relationships or body… But when life happens, as it always does. When things go wrong, when the bad news comes, when unexpected challenges that seem unbearable appear unannounced. When you’re tired, overworked, sad or under the weather, their signals will come through loud and strong.
We need to stop expecting that the difficulties of life will at some stage in our world end – they won’t. Instead, we need to become so resilient that we’ll be ready for them when their tiresome and familiar songs start playing. We need to train our minds to be ready with a strong affirmation with something like: “I’m feeling tired and really negative right now. I know why. I’m sleep-deprived. That’s no good.” This week I’ll make sure that I go to bed earlier…
We know that eating the wrong foods gives us indigestion. We can put two and two together. If I ate too much of the wrong stuff for too long; I won’t feel well. But practice not to say: “I am fundamentally flawed. There is something terribly wrong and defective about me because I have an upset stomach.” Or: “I am so useless; I have no self-discipline! I will never be able to sustain a healthy lifestyle. When our mojo tanks get depleted, we tend to jump right to “I am a screw-up. I’m not that great at my job. I have so much to fix about myself.”
In this article, I was reminded that that’s false. Your personal mojo fuel tank is just low. If the oil were low in your car, you’d get some oil. You wouldn’t beat up on yourself because you’re an irresponsible oil-wasting loser.
If we succumb to them, the voices in our heads will flog us and wear us out.
Learn to recognise them, and simply tell them to “SHUT UP”. Find someone who knows your true value and ask them to remind you of this good intention. Discount them, as well as you should. You need all the mojo you can muster for your adventures ahead!
Love and Respect!
Stefan Lessing
(Learn more about ThinkLead Ecosystem at https://thinkleadecosystem.com/)
(Refine your leadership skills with our programs at https://www.mcatraininginternational.com/#programs)