Don't Come Near me With your STD!

Yuk! Those nasty little bugs that you can pick up from careless interaction with other people!! We all fear them, we all do our best to avoid them - and yet some people seem blissfully unaware that they have them! And worse, they freely spread them and still some people happily and ignorantly catch them!

Still with me? Still intrigued? "Where the F*** is the honesty, vulnerability and authenticity going now Whitton?"

Well I want to share with you an STD issue, I've only recently got rid of - and my God was it painful!

I'm actually talking about SOCIALLY TRANSMITTED DEMONS!

As we go through life, we can't avoid being influenced and coerced into beliefs, values and ideals that society or culture expect! And as a Speaker, a coach and now founder of a movement that is attracting a lot of people wanting to reach out and talk, I can tell you these STDs are rife! The socially transmitted demons that sit, often subconsciously, that drive our belief in ourselves and our thoughts of who, what and why we are!

I'll give you an example! I was talking to a young lady recently, I explained about [M]enable and what we're doing and how men, but not exclusively, struggle to talk about their issues - yet are wired to put themselves under pressure! (Cutting a very long explanation very short there, but you get the gist!) - Her response "OMG, I need you to talk to my fiancé - we're planning our wedding and he's already fretting about having a certain house, a certain car, a certain bank balance and a certain lifestyle by a certain age (they're both mid twenties) - I'm worried the pressure is going to impact on our relationship!" - what do you mean is GOING TO, it already IS!! So, where has that come from? It sounds like a disease (dis-ease) he's caught from somewhere - and it's become a Demon! And, if not now, it will slowly eat away at him until something pops - he'll be in the lucky minority if it doesn't!

So, that's a deep and complex example, but what about all those little micro demons that add up to make us doubt ourselves, question what we do and hold ourselves back?

"That'll never work here!" "That's not how we do it here" "Customers here will never buy that" "Oh don't listen to him he's....." or "take no notice of her, she's always....." "girls don't go out with fat boys that wear glasses" (thanks to my own Mum for that one! - Oh and she was right, or rather the demon she transmitted to me was) etc etc.

So, you see these demons are totally invisible, undetectable till much later and can easily be carried without you knowing - oh and without you realising are VERY easy to pass on! But, where are they from? They are those thoughts, doubts, fears and anxieties that we're all prone to - but that without care, can become the subconscious barriers that drive who we are, our behaviours and our sense of self-worth.

On any day of the week there are people attending presentation skills courses who doubt they'll be any good (where did they contract that demon?), there'll be people not wanting to strike up a conversation with that person they like, because they have the "they won't like me" demon AND more worryingly there are people who won't be striving to be at their full potential because the "you'll never be good enough" or the "be careful you don't run out of money" demons are having a field day in their subconscious!

So, the STD I've just got rid of - the inability or fear to be completely honest about who and what I am! The fear of being THAT honest, had the "you'll be rejected and be alone" demon running riot in my thoughts! Well that's been banished to the prejudices of the 1980's and so I'm now free to make the choices I want and to accept the consequences! And it's made me conscious too of the views I'm inadvertently projecting onto others - which is why, obviously, I'm still cautious with strangers and always play it safe!