Writing a New Script for Your Inner Voice!

Writing a new script for your inner voice! Out with the old, in with the new.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.  You either accept the thoughts, beliefs and speech running through your head, or you decide to change them. Accept or decide, period.  That’s all we do; accept or decide. When you accept, you stay the same.  Deciding requires action. Action is prompted by one of three reasons to look at your life script:  The Crystallizing Moment, The Emotional Jolt or The Choice. 

 

The Crystallizing moment is that moment either in time or over time when you realize you are not living the life you want, being the person you were meant to be, or being your own authentic self.  A person may experience a crystallizing moment sitting in jail for the third time on a DUI charge-  without money, without a job, with quickly disintegrating relationships.  Doing more than contemplating a change, The Crystallizing Moment actually prompts the person to take an action, to no longer accept what they’ve created in their life, but to decide instead of accept.  They are no longer willing to say, “This is just who I am.”

 

An Emotional Jolt launches you into a vastly different universe than the one you now live in.  Suddenly becoming blind, or a quadriplegic, or a widower propels a person out of the life now lived and into an unknown realm.  At this point the reality is you must choose a new action for your life script-  what you knew of your old life is gone.  This jolt creates a paradigm in which you are forced to acknowledge and confront the life you have lived, the person you have been and your own authenticity.  The jolt precedes a vast emptiness and a starting point for writing a new life script.  The question becomes, “Who am I now?” 

Making The Choice to write a new script for your world is optimum; it doesn’t require a crystallizing moment or an emotional jolt.  This is just that glorious day when you realize that, “Nothing happens until something moves.” (Einstein).  You are willing to take a look at your thoughts and beliefs and open up to possibilities.  You are excited to move away from the shore and discover something new.  Your vessel to the new discovery is your script.  You can define yourself by saying, “I am…” 

Writing a new script with the goal of new thoughts and new beliefs is thrilling and challenging.  There are 4 steps. 

1) Become aware that every thought and belief running through your head is an amalgamation of your experiences, society, family, culture, religion and definitions.  You’ve collected and decided which thoughts to claim, which reactions to assign to events and the power it will have over you.

2) Free yourself from serving your thoughts and look at what you have left.  This is a safari to find your authentic you.  You can do this by turning away from comparing, complaining, critiquing, categorizing (people), competing (not talking sports and contests here!), blaming or explaining (commentating on why you do what you do-  who cares! You are the important person here.).

3) Write an actual script for your life or for a specific event (like weight-loss).

The script should be carefully crafted with intention and a positive spin.  The script you write will dominate your thinking, so create something you love. Keep your verbiage positive: Use the words free from instead of I won’t . Replace words like hard with challenging or effort .  Write it as a reality using I am instead of I want.  Let me show you an example of two scripts.  The first is written in the negative.  Picture, if you will, each thought digging a neural trench in your brain that will eventually become a habit thought and then a reality.  Science has proven it to be so. 

Negative script:  I want to lose 100 lbs.  I will work-out every day and not eat more than 1300 calories daily.  I won’t have any bad foods except on a cheat day once a week.  No sodas, except diet cola.  Once I lose weight I’ll look hot, have new confidence and succeed.

 

Let’s dissect this bad-boy script sentence by sentence: First, “I want to lose 100 lbs.”  There you are yearning and yearning and wanting and hoping to lose 100 lbs.  Doesn’t sound like a winner of a sentence to me.  Dig, dig, dig that gray matter trench telling yourself that this is forever a yearning matter.  So you’re saying it might not happen, but you’ll certainly yearn for it.  Second, “I will work-out every day and not eat more than 1300 calories daily.” In my opinion the word work-out is just plain exhausting and to sentence yourself to “not eat more than 1300 calories daily” conjures up visions of prison!  This whole sentence sounds like you should place the words or else at the end along with some damning punishment.  Get out the bullwhip!  Third sentence:  “I won’t have any bad foods except on a cheat day once a week.”  By now you’re probably getting the gist of this.  “Bad foods-” I didn’t know food could be bad or good!  I’ve never seen a food on death row for committing murder nor have I seen one winning a humanitarian award.  Hmmm, guess this is food for thought (pun intended).  And what do you make of “cheat day.”   Does this indicate you hate and are tied to your regular foods like an old ball and chain?  That once a week you have to sneak out with the ever alluring and fascinating food that really understands you like your regular food can’t?  Fourth sentence:  “No sodas, except diet cola-”  back again to crime and punishment. ‘Nuff said. Fifth sentence:  “Once I lose weight I’ll look hot, have new confidence and succeed.”  Before you write a script, contemplate this last sentence first and understand that you have uniquely fantastic aspects about you that already make you “hot”; that you can be confident in your many talents whatever you weigh and that success is defined by you not anyone around you. So, this negative script sure makes weight-loss sound exciting and fun, eh?  Boy, I’m sure anyone would look forward to reading it every day!  Actually most of us don’t need to read it, we’ve memorized and repeated it year after year and diet after diet.  Now let me share a positive script example with you, my positive optimum health script. I wrote this after I made my plan for optimum health.   

My positive script:  I love my whole foods.  I love my veggies, fruits and proteins.  I love drinking refreshing water.  I love training and putting every effort toward the exhilaration of the powerful movements.  I love cardio and the joy of purposeful exhilarating movement.  I love eating just right portions and eyeballing nourishing calories toward weight-loss.  I love and am grateful for my body being back to the authentic me!  I love and am grateful for strength, energy and confidence of mind, body and soul.  I am lean and ripped with a muscular body free from obesity.  I am free from using food as my cure for anything.  I love my body and I love being in it.  I love inspiring others to make habit changes as well. 

This is my script and mine alone; it’s very personal.  I used verbiage that really gets me going.  It includes everything I believe to already be true and some new thoughts taking me up the path to success.  Write your script for you and you alone.  You know what jacks you up, what rings your bell, what motivates you positively, what you have decided to change and how uniquely fantastic you are-  so write the script; run it through your head constantly and dig, dig, dig a positive neural trench. It takes from 66 to 300 days to change a habit (thinking).  So change your thinking, change your weight.

But wait!  What if you believe all this scripting is a bunch of voodoo hoo-haw?!  Well, go back to noticing how powerful your thoughts are and how they drive you to the habits you already cling to.  Start there and see if you love sitting in the trench you’ve already dug.  Let me end with this-  I heard a woman at a conference once commenting on positive self-talk scripts.  She said she created a script toward positive change and read it a few times a day with much skepticism.  Every day she felt foolish reading her script, but she tried to be open-minded and willing.  One day she had a great epiphany.  She thought, “Wait a minute, this really is possible!”  Realizing just that one thing-  that her changes were possible  opened the flood-gates to new thinking and toward her success.  Accept or decide, that’s what you get to do.  You create it all!