Those 3am Wakeups
For decades my 3am scary voices woke me up to share all the worst case ways that my life would soon turn to shit. They shared my worst nightmares, vividly, heartbreakingly and quite consistently.
I spent years in therapy discussing their conversations centered around my worst fears. Bag lady, alone, my beloved horses and dogs ripped from me, no one in this world caring enough to help me.
They still came. They got even stronger and more vivid as I gave them more of my attention.
Maybe you recognize them?
Who do you think you are? You can’t do that.
You can’t afford to do anything, you’re going broke.
You’re going to look like a fool if you try that.
Or my personal favorite,
Nobody will care if you die at home alone… They probably won’t find you for days.
The Scary Voices We Create
In the light of day these voices don’t sound rational. They never were rational. Yet these voices drove me for more than half of my life.
Some mornings I woke up and knew they weren’t true. Other mornings, I wondered if they knew something I didn’t.
But then there were the daylight voices, the subtle ones, deeply embedded in my being. The little worrisome thoughts came so naturally to me that I didn’t notice them - until they impacted my life, limited my dreams and left me wondering why the heck am I such a wreck.
Here’s a tip.
Those voices come from our unconscious minds. From the lessons it has learned listening to our internal conversations with ourselves, from the conversations with others as well, and from our experiences.
We created them. We can silence them as well.
How We Create Those Voices
Our unconscious mind learns from our experiences, listens to our thoughts, and follows our attention and focus to understand what we want in life. It listens without any judgment, so when we say we don’t want something, it only notices the something, and ignores the negative that we don’t want it.
Read that again.
When we say and think what we don’t want, our unconscious mind accepts the focus of our attention as what we do want. It ignores the negative.
That’s one way that scary voices are born.
When we pay close attention to our fears, we create those voices. They don’t appear overnight, it takes a lot of attention to create them. Yet, when we focus repeatedly, we get what we pay attention to.
So how do we get rid of them? The same way we created them - with our attention and focus. We focus on a positive perspective, again and again and again.
The challenge is that we spent a lot of effort creating those voices, supported by our world, our experiences, all the negative commentary we’ve heard in our lives, the media, pundits, luminaries and more.
In today’s world there’s a cacophony of scary public voices on a mission to fuel our personal ones. After all, that’s how you sell the news, products, people and more, right?
Begone Scary Voices
Given the world we live in, what can we do to silence these voices?
Pivot, pivot and pivot some more. Protect ourselves from the naysayers and the sensationalism by looking away from the media and all the energetic despondency it creates. And most importantly, focus on what we want. And ONLY what we want.
How do you pivot?
When you stop paying attention to something you don’t want, then start paying attention to what you do want, that’s a pivot.
Another way is to simply Stop what you’re focusing on and Shift your attention to what you do want. Create a living breathing sensory reality in your mindseye of what you want, right there, and focus on it.
Here’s a simple example. I caught my scary voice grousing about a rather unsettled situation in my life while I was mopping my floors. Like I said, pay attention to that idle mind time! I simply stopped, laughed and shared with my unconscious mind that it was a funny idea that I wanted that, then pointed out that what I truly wanted was peaceful flow.
I quickly created a sensory place of peace and calm (what I call an Unstoppable Place) around my home in my minds eye. Then, I stood there with my mop and smiled and enjoyed those sensory soothing moments. Then I went on mopping.
When the voice came back, I did the same. The voice became smaller and smaller, and eventually it just gave up. I ended up feeling absolutely empowered while mopping my floor:)
