Sacha — First of all, thank you SO MUCH for sharing so candidly what’s coming up for you this week. I also have to say, YOU ARE NOT ALONE in this way of thinking. Not even a little bit! You got these views about “appearance = your value as a person” honestly because that’s how our society operates. Amplify that by 100 for women, since women’s societal value has been connected their physical appearance since the beginning of time. So please don’t be hard on yourself for being “judgmental” or fixated on this — it’s nearly impossible to NOT be affected by this in our culture!
It seems like your gremlin has an arbitrary idea of what constitutes the “perfect” amount effort into your physical appearance — except, there is no such thing as the “perfect” amount, and so you always feel like what you’re doing is either not enough or too much. Remember, the gremlin only gives you these messages out of fear, so it could be helpful to try a gremlin dialogue where you ask what it’s so afraid of. Is it afraid of you not being accepted? Loved? Comfortable in your own skin? Is it afraid of rejection, or failure, or disappointment? What is it protecting you from? Once you understand the deeper fear, you can respond from that loving, soothing way, the same you would to a scared child.
The thing is, you know how to do this. You’re already responding lovingly to your daughter’s gremlin, and yours is just the same. Imagine how you would respond to your daughter saying the things you hear in your own head, and respond to your gremlin from the same unconditionally loving place. It’s going to feel weird and uncomfortable at first, and you may not totally believe what you’re saying to yourself (that’s normal), but eventually you WILL start to re-write your neural pathways so you condition yourself to respond differently.
And please, please don’t use this concept of the gremlin to be even HARDER on yourself! By that I mean, don’t judge yourself when your gremlin takes over and you don’t know how to calm it in that moment. That’s like judgment on top of judgment! Remember that you’re practicing this and it’s going to take a while to learn a new internal response, especially when the world around you is going to try and re-install all those old beliefs about appearance = worth. This isn’t an overnight change, but you’re absolutely on the path to flipping some of these beliefs on their head. The fact that you’re even aware of these thoughts is HUGE! Most people are thinking the SAME thing, but never recognize it as a GAIL, so they can’t ever change their mindset. You’re way further along than you’re giving yourself credit for.
I want to end by quoting you back to you (lol): “In a way it is letting go of the blueprint for past successes in order to achieve future results that are not prescribed using that template.” YES!! Beautifully said. That’s exactly what we’re doing in Week 1. You’re totally on the right track.
Thank you again for being so open and sharing what this is bringing up for you this week. Keep updating us along the way!