Shut up Nancy!
What a way to start off sounding like a raving lunatic! I am pretty sure we all have it, that little voice inside your head. The one that shows up right when you get what you think is a brilliant idea, it magically comes together into a full blown plan of action, but then…the moment you are ready to implement it…that voice. I used to think that voice was my internal sound of reason, common sense, to remind me of the things i hadn’t considered. Sometimes it does offer things I haven’t considered. I gladly accept that and reflect on the possibilities. but the majority of the time, that voice, that is just noise, negative noise. It’s a noise designed to hold me back and keep me down. It has never kept me from doing something stupid, rather the opposite. What was this noise? It is countless hours of wasted time.
That little voice needs a name, if for no other reason for me to tell her to shut the hell up. At the beginning of this year, I had an idea of something I wanted to do…this blog for instance. I knew what I wanted it to be where I wanted it to go and so I set about a plan to get it started. As soon as I was ready to pull the trigger, there she was insisting that maybe this wasn’t the right thing to do, maybe I wasn’t ready for the world to know anything about me, maybe I wasn’t ready for the possible backlash that could come from my words, my beliefs, that I wasn’t ready for the judgement that would surely come. I have lived a very private life. Very few people truly know me, know what motivates me, know what excites me, know what I cherish in this world or even know what I believe in. She successfully forced me to over think my plan. So here I am almost an entire month later…finally starting the blog.
That voice, I was always told it was my gut. That is 100% NOT true. It’s not my gut, not my true voice, not God, not spirit or my ancestors talking to me. That is little miss negativity. I should call her Sharon, no, maybe Cathy? No. I am going to call her Nancy, Miss Negative Nancy. Nancy sits in my head and replays past mistakes, replays things I have said, reminding me constantly of the fool I have made of myself. Nancy needs to shut the hell up so that I can figure out the best course forward. She is persistent though and it’s been tough sometimes to get her to stop.
So how do I shut Nancy up? We all make mistakes, say things we wish we wouldn’t have, have done things we really don’t ever want to think about again. It’s part of being human, part of learning and growing. Oh but Nancy…she holds on to all the negative things like her life depends on it. After much research and many late nights, I tried something. I burnt them. No, I did not light myself on fire. I took a moment, I reflected on what she was showing & telling me, then I focused on releasing it from my head and my energy. I wrote it down, grabbed a lighter and then lit that sucker on fire. I gave it to God, I gave it to the universe, I gave it to wind to carry away so I never have to think about it again.
This has helped me in more ways than I can count. The death of family members or people that were close to me, having those thoughts of if only I could have have known what to do in that moment, I could have changed the outcome. If I had done this or that differently, haunted me in my grief. It took valuable time away from my healing. For me, it was more than a year of my time. I wont ever get that back. I have no intention of letting that happen to me again.
I took a few minutes to think about all the things that regularly pop up in my head, those lovely moments that I clearly wasn’t at my best and those times I just showed someone I would never admit was me to the world. But I owned it. I wrote those down too, minutes turned into hours of writing things down and really thinking them through, acknowledging each one, what I was shameful for or mistakes I made, the entire situation surrounding it, I wrote it down, it was four pages. FOUR. Front and back. Some of them made me cry, some of them were beliefs I had that I knew in my heart, were not true. Beliefs I had about my self. It was not an easy journey, I had been trying to bury these these events or thoughts down deep for years, but Nancy had a different plan. I lit them all up and watched as the burned to nothing.
The coolest thing about this process, is that now, I spot it rather quickly instead of spending so much time listening to it over and over. Nancy, I see what you are doing. I am on to you, and I am going to get rid of these before I spin into hours and days and God forbid years of having it thrown in my face.
It has made all the difference. I feel so much better. I still make mistakes and I still do stupid shit. Just earlier this week, I shared a story at work, it wasn’t a great story, but a story about something I had done that was probably not painting me in the best light at work. I immediately regretted it, but I was put on the spot to say something and it just rolled off my tongue. It wasn’t one of the countless lighter, funnier stories I could have told, but one that after I spoke it, left me shaking my head saying to myself, why that one? And oh my, Nancy had a lot to say, I wanted to cry, to scream, to just hang my head. Dramatic I know. I opted for a life line, phoning a friend, my best friend, the one who KNOWS ME. After a discussion about that little voice, how awful she is and how I needed to let it go, I remembered what I did before and quickly lit a candle, grabbed a pen and piece of paper and went to work. It’s been a couple of days since that story was told, I am no longer upset about it, it’s not haunting me, it’s not even relevant for any other reason than this blog post.
Nancy isn’t my gut telling me what I should and shouldn’t do, she is my reminder that I need to heal my own negative thoughts, forgive myself for the stupid shit I do, to remind me that it doesn’t define me and that I don’t need to carry this crap around, not for years, not for months, not for days and not even for a few minutes.
I will finish this up by saying…Shut Up Nancy! I’m going to let things go now, in the moment. Just as quickly as I can light them up and watch them burn!
Do you a little voice too? Did you name it? What name did you come up with?