EVERYONE'S STORY (IMAGE OF SELF)

I LOVE THIS DRAWING! It says more than words. I have looked to find out who drew it but, I have had no luck. It tells us that no matter what we go through at any particular moment, it will eventually become stories that are expressed as an experience when we revisit it with others. This brings up the questions…is it our past that defines us or, how we choose to think about our past? 

My tumultuous life story of resilience is not a one-time miraculous moment or event that forever transformed my life, but several pivotal events leading to a life-journey of ongoing transformations. You can read one of them in the co-authored book Resilience, Turning Your Setback into A Comeback. If you want a free eBook version, please visit my website at www.pivot2change.com. On the home page, you will find a request form.

I’ve come to learn in my own experiences, that achievements can only be realized by addressing our childhood triggers that disrupt our emotional self. That is when true success can be found.

We are not what we think about, but rather what we subconsciously feel. Without development, we tend to hold on and identify with the negative ones.

A low self-image is usually not based on fact but on mismanaged memory.

Orrin Woodward

Imagine a seven-year-old child who finds out his single mom lost not one, but two jobs and he overhears her on the phone speaking to family and comments. “What am I supposed to do with my son?” Ironically, she may not have said those words, but for a 7-year old boy who was battling with prejudice, bullying, and an absentee father...he would translate the conversation into an emotional imagery of a burden. That was me! Let's be clear, I am not saying my mom felt that I was a burden. I know she didn't, so mom, if you read this, know...that I know how much you did to keep us fed! What I am saying is, as a 7 year old boy, who is more in-tune with emotions, not logic, you can see how I would interpret the stress of having to feed me as a burden at that time. Those emotional triggers is what I call the Determine Emotional Memory and it's Output (D.E.M.O) in our lives. We all have them...including you.

Many of us will let moments like that define who we think we are and it can last for decades. Words shape our identity and what we feel we are capable of, and are worthiness for our entire lives.

It takes on average six seconds for the brain to create a memory like the one I described. That means every six seconds your brain is generating a story that is ready for you to use for future events. 

• The subconscious uses visual pictures from the words we think, hear, and say to create chemicals within the body. 
• The body becomes addicted to those same thoughts and chemicals, so will look for those same thoughts to reproduce them. 
• The subconscious processes over 40 million bits of information every second. 
• We have between 60,000 to 90,000 thoughts a day, and 90% of those thoughts are the same ones we had the day before. 

Looking at the facts above, it stands to reason how our subconscious can continue to play and rewind negative thoughts. We are always reminding ourselves of who we think we are and it’s all based off past emotional defenses. 

This is the reason our experiences have such a strong hold on us. These short six-second moments are those experiences that defines our persona and much of our outcomes in our lives. 

I can confidently state, from my own personal observations and history, this is one of the major reasons so-many celebrities are self-destructive and struggle. Growing up in Hollywood, CA, working as a talent agent, road manger, to movies sets as a celebrity trainer, I have witnessed firsthand, the effect childhood persona of self has on a person in conflict of the imagery associated with being a celebrity. In the world of psychology this is called cognitive dissonance

By the time we reach the age 30, we have an image of ourselves that will be reinforced by automatic programming which becomes our identity. 

What can be done?

If someone is believing they are a burden, there is an emotional need to please and over achieve in order to feel worthy around others. Through self-examination, you can understand why you may have chosen to believe and project these emotions and misinterpret people’s comments. However, you have to take a conscious step to rewire the subconscious emotions. Here are a few ways to do that.

1. Ask: Asking questions by a coach will allow new imagery of persona and the power to change it. My first original coach/mentor Jim Rohn asked me a point-blank question. He asked “How would your mother describe you as a person she had to take care of?”. I said based off of my translation, “It was hard for us, so I know feeding me was a burden" . The next question is “Why?” You know the image that pooped into my head, which was really one of many. If he had asked me “How would your mother describe you?”. My ego and the desire to protect my existing belief system would have directed the conversation away from the root of my image of self and allowed me to avoid discomfort. Jim Rohn knew the power of clarity. Asking the right question, the right way, is key to getting to the truth.
2. Acknowledge: Speak out-loud what happen in your past with a coach. A good coach (like me??) will ask you the right questions to help you determine/discover your self-imagery. Every question that is asked should challenge the story you tell yourself. Important to note, you may hear the same question asked several times in different ways. This to help you become more honest about how the imagery makes you feel, not what you felt. To go into what you felt (past-tense) requires a different type of therapy session…one a life coach should not be involved with unless, they are licensed.
3. Write it down: In the study published in Psychological Science, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles shows that The best way to truly get a new persona of self is to use the power of physical writing. The study shows that this could be on a computer, but hand written actually creates a pathway in the subconscious of realism and helps memory. 
4. Re-frame: When you write from the person that may have hurt you, infusing best intentions (regardless if it was good or not), it allows you to see perspective and believe it to be true. The example above with my mom, I wrote, Freddie (my original name), I love you so much, you are my world, when I lost both of my jobs at the same time, I was so worried about trying to figure out how to get assistance and reached out to people I knew trying to process options. I was asking people what to do with you and me, because I had no idea at that time how to take care of us both. I must say, the trail was the one thing that taught me how much of a man you were at that time. You were such my hero as you tried to help-us by becoming the man of the house by doing odd jobs for neighbors for money. Grown men at that time could have taken lessons from you.

Ironically, these comments I just wrote are not my own but hers. My mom and I have had many conversations about our past struggles together and her super-hero powers in providing for us both.

1. Speak it out load: According to a new study published in the journal Memory, we are more likely to remember something if we read it out loud. The power is reading what is written (your story) out loud with your coach is one of the most powerful ways to enforce this memory into truth. This does amazing things to the brain as it creates a new pathway and neurons that allows you to have new images of your worth and story. Any six-second moment that you address like this will change your subconscious over time as you reply your new persona of that past moment.

We all live life with a collection of positive and negative 6-second moments inside our sub-conscious.

What negative 6-second moments might you be allowing to define your worth? Are you ready to consider that any of them that oppress your spirit and keep you in limiting expression are misinterpretations, opinion and projections of others? The opinions of others are not your truth.

I’ve developed a program taught in my seminars/workshops called Redo-the-DEMO (Determined Emotional Memory Output). It’s a way to clean up the looping sounds (thoughts) and smooth out some parts of our song (life) that does not mix with the theme we want to live.

www.pivot2change.com