The Journey

To have two voices inside your head; it’s excruciating. A loud, relentless voice that insists on smashing your self-confidence to pieces. There it is reminding you that, “you’ve never been good at anything”. Over and over it sneers, “why did you even think you could do this?” It’s taunting, “you’ll never excel at anything.” That annoying voice has a LOT to say.

The other voice, quietly reminds you, that that’s not the case. So quietly, in fact, you want to call out like the damn teacher everyone dreads, “you in the back! Come on now. Speak up.” And like any student being called out it gets quieter and quieter, totally unsure of what they were saying in the first place. That voice; it becomes so quiet you begin to doubt that the reasonable thinking is even there. Like the embarrassed student it sort of grumbles, “never mind, I forgot.”

It’s like making your way through a foggy sidewalk within your brain searching for the version of yourself that your like 25% sure exists.. “Yoohoo, anybody home?”

Here you are jumping down the lanes of the brain trying to catch up to yourself but that turbo chook is power walking the opposite direction, pretending they didn’t hear you.

It’s one bad comment. A criticism. A single setback, or twenty. Logically, you know all this means is your dream requires more work, fine tuning even. That’s a normal aspect of building a passion. Obstacles are a fact of life. We all know this, right?

But that vindictive voice inside you, at the first sign of weakness, is clawing through the strength you’ve built up and you can’t help but wonder do I have it within me to push through this pain?

Why is this voice so loud when it seems so quiet for everyone is? Is that voice quiet for everyone else?

Probably not.

Are we talking about it?

Not that I’ve noticed.

But we could talk about it. We could find strength from each other.

Here’s the thing. It’s so easy to be brought down by a negative moment. We build up situations in our head, romanticise them, and then feel utterly disappointed when they don’t meet our unrealistic expectations. I’m so guilty of this. No seriously, really guilty. I’m literally the reason they came up with the term off with the fairies. I’m daydreaming what I think everything should be rather than what it most likely will be. It’s why I have to spend so much time doing yoga and meditation to get my thoughts back in order. Forget grounding in the earth, I’m cementing my feet in and then adding a boulder for good measure.

We’re all so wrapped up in what we think the world is supposed to be that it takes physically, mentally and emotionally stepping back before we can see something for what it really is. It’s just taking that first step (backwards) and allowing ourselves to release ourselves from expectations before we can truly be free.