By: Ellie Curry
Growing is an awesome experience. You get to experience new things, feel confident in your abilities, and celebrate, however growing also comes with some growing pains. One of those growing pains is when you are caught between who you are now, and who you want to be.
I was sitting with my boyfriend the other night chatting about a topic and he mentioned that I am contradicting myself. I paused and then thought about the topic we were chatting about. I realized I was contradicting myself because this was an area of growth for me and I was caught between my old thoughts about the topic and my new thoughts about the topic.
When we are growing, our mindset is growing with us. We have to think new thoughts in order to fully step into a new version of ourselves. The way I like to describe it to my clients is imagine your mind as a road system. When you think the same thing over and over again the road system can grow from a dirt road to an 8 lane mega highway. If the thought you have been thinking for a long time is a destructive thought and you want to change it you have to start building a new thought that starts out as a dirt road.
As you build your new thoughts, your old thoughts are still competing for your attention. Then you get stuck in the push and pull of where you are now and where you are heading. So what do you do? Below are three tips on how to help you continue to grow when you feel stuck in the push and pull.
Continue to Build Awareness
Building awareness is your biggest asset. When it comes to building awareness keep reminding yourself of the new thoughts that are helping you achieve your goals. There are two different types of thoughts, supportive thoughts and destructive thoughts.
Supportive thoughts are all of the thoughts that are going to help you grow. They are positive and will lead you to become the person you want to be.
Destructive thoughts are the opposite. They are thoughts that are negative and only lead to you feeling worse about yourself. These thoughts are super tricky, they will lie to you any chance they get! They will also distort past evidence to further enforce their lies.
An example of this could be, you currently believe the lie you are a failure. The deceptive lies will then funnel though your history and bring to mind all of the times you have failed at something so that you start believing the lie. It will not also bring up all the times that you succeeded. It wants you to fully believe the lie and will do a good job at proving its point.
Continue to Call Out The Old Thought And Transition It To The New Thought
You want to focus on the supportive thoughts, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the destructive thoughts. Instead, use the destructive thoughts are triggers to remind you to think of your supportive thoughts.
Here is an example, when I was growing my confidence my destructive thought was “I am a loser.” My mind was saying this thought and I had been believing this thought for years. So when I decided it wasn’t supporting me anymore and I wanted to change I came up with the supportive thought “I am enough.” Then as I went through life anytime my mind thought “I am a loser” I would pause tell myself “I don’t think that anymore, I am enough.”
Create A Support System For The New Thoughts
The last tip is to create a support system for the new thoughts to thrive in. Tell your trusted friends that sometimes you will need a reminder of the supportive thoughts. Listen to upbeat music, podcasts, or inspirational videos. Get comfortable letting your mind consume positive materials. The more you consume the positive the easier it becomes for your mind to believe in the supportive thoughts.
Now we are humans and perfect doesn’t exist. This is a life long practice that you can use every day for the rest of your life. I use this practice every time I want to grow out of my current comfort zone. I use this practice every time I want to achieve something new. Your mind is your biggest asset if you let it be.
