What’s holding you back? – Ditch the pebble in your shoe

I promised I would tell you about the 10 Days Writing Challenge for Conscious Leaders run by Tara Nicholle-Nelson http://www.taranicholle.com/writingchallenge/. It’s been such a whirlwind couple of weeks that this is the first proper chance I’ve had to sit and write this. But, a promise is a promise, so here goes…

The idea of the Challenge is simple: you are sent a series of daily prompts, which you then use as a basis for writing 30 minutes a day, for ten days.

I expected the prompts to be challenging, uplifting and thought-provoking. What I didn’t expect is what happened next.

A lot of the prompts were focused around the idea of creating a better vision for yourself. For the first day’s challenge, we had to create inventive titles for ourselves, using descriptions that fitted what we like to do and how we liked to be seen. I enjoyed that one. On Day 5, we were asked to write as if we were speaking to a younger version of ourselves. To my surprise, my ‘inner child’ turned out to be a disaffected teenager who was disappointed in me:

‘It could've been so different,’ she said, ‘You had so much enthusiasm, so much potential. Where did it all go wrong?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I should've listened. Real life got in the way...’

‘It’s not too late,’ she said, ‘Come here’.
She offered me her hand. I don't know why, but I took it. She walked back over to the dustbins. She sat on one, I sat on the other. Swinging our legs. Writing.
‘See,’ she said, ‘It’s not so difficult. Not once you begin...’
I turned to reply, but there was nobody next to me, only a small indent on top of the dustbin lid, where she had been sitting. Her notepad was gone too, but mine was filled with strange, unfamiliar words. I went on writing and writing. I haven’t stopped.'

But the biggest surprise came on, I think, Day 3, the title of which was ‘Breakthrough’. We were invited to write about any limiting beliefs or toxic messages we had absorbed through others which was keeping us from fulfilling our true potential. I sat down still and silent for about fifteen minutes, let my mind drift…and then it all came flooding out.

Back when I was on maternity leave, I was made redundant. Losing my job with a young baby to support was bad enough, but the manner in which it was done was deeply humiliating. As part of the rationale for ‘letting me go’, my boss had put together, in my absence and with no consultation, a document assessing my abilities. Despite having an unblemished track record and having been nominated for a national award, under the column headlined ‘Future Potential’ were the words…13 per cent.

I challenged the decision, but got nowhere and in the end, I settled for a small redundancy payout and enjoyed the chance to spend as much time as possible with my beautiful daughter. One day, when I was at the bank negotiating an overdraft, the woman cashier asked if I worked. When I told her I’d lost my job when my baby was born, she scowled at me and said ‘Oh, you’ll never work again, then’. I went home in tears, feeling an abject failure.

As soon as my daughter was at school full-time, I began freelance writing and editing. I had a steady trickle of work, and I honestly thought I had put everything behind me. But when I started on the writing prompt, out it all came….

Thirteen per cent. That figure. Somehow, in the back of my mind, that total had become lodged, like a stone in my shoe I couldn’t get out. So I looked at it. I took it out. I examined it some more.

I thought about how ridiculous it was that I’d carried that stone – for almost a decade – and allowed it to grow and grow and fester until it had molded itself to my sub-conscious. I had actually started to believe that I was worthless, that I would never do well again.

And then I thought about how ridiculous it was. How on earth could anybody put a figure on another person’s potential?!  I thought about my beautiful daughter, the moment I first saw her newborn face and perfect tiny fingers and fingernails, and of all the amazing potential she held within her – a whole life’s worth! I thought of how each one of us is a miracle of infinite potential. I realized that this number that had been limiting me for so long was just that - nothing but a random number on a page – and bore no resemblance to who I was as a person. And I made the conscious decision to throw it away.

Since then, something rather magical has happened. I have stopped saying ‘no’ to projects just because I thought I wasn’t worthy of them. I have stopped thinking of myself as a failure, limited by past hurts or disappointments. I have started valuing myself, and in the process, properly valuing other people (because they have unlimited potential too!) And the work has come flooding in – so much that I can barely keep on top of it!

I had heard of the power of positive attraction before, but I’d never really realised that my own self-doubt was the very thing that was holding me back. Once I had plucked that painful stone from my sub-conscious…I found I was able to dance!

So my message to others reading this and perhaps holding onto past hurts or feelings of disappointment or failure is this…don’t let others limit your potential. Don’t let others put a percentage on your abilities, because you have within you all the resources you need to do whatever you dream. 

Wishing you peace and blessings, always x