Before starting a journey of self-development, you must unveil the negative things you believe to be true about yourself. Use these techniques to reveal the dark side you must confront.
How do you look at yourself? This is a crucial question to ask before engaging in a self-improvement process. It’s because we all foster thoughts about ourselves that we believe to be true, even though they really aren’t.
If allowed to persist, these thoughts can prevent you from making progress in all areas of your life. That’s why you need to shift the way that you view yourself before you can start your journey of development. To do that, you need to get in touch with your dark side. By shining a light on the darker aspects of your psyche, you can confront your limitations and set the stage for your future development.
But how do you reveal the dark side of your mind that’s holding you back? These three techniques can help.
Technique #1 – List Your Perceived Limitations
Before beginning your self-discovery journey, grab a pen and make a list of the limitations that you believe may prevent you from finding your true self. This list can be as simple as a collection of the beliefs you hold about yourself. For example, you may think that you’re not intelligent enough to be successful. A limiting belief may stem from what you perceive to be a lack of education, which you might believe holds you back from assuming managerial or leadership roles.
Other limiting beliefs may involve your success with the opposite sex or even something as simple as seeing yourself as clumsy. Search your mind and locate every negative belief you have about yourself.
The reason for doing this activity is that you want to get these beliefs out in the open. By listing them, you have something tangible to remind yourself of the limitations you place on yourself.
In this case, your beliefs about your education may prevent you from pushing for a new role at work. Thinking that you’re clumsy may stop you from trying a new activity. And the belief that you’re bad with the opposite sex could lead to you losing opportunities to create fulfilling relationships.
The reality is that before you can confront your limitations, you need to know what they are. Your list places them front and center.
Technique #2 – Recognize the Pain of Staying the Same
As you write your list, your mind may start throwing up hurdles. You may find yourself thinking that it’s easier for you not to change, so you’re just going to stay the same, limitations and all.
It’s a curious form of thinking. Logically, we know that overcoming our limiting beliefs requires us to create change. We also understand that change is a good thing when it leads to us feeling happier and being more successful.
And yet, our minds still try to convince us to stay as we are. Why? Part of it stems from not wanting to change who you are at your core. Your mind is comfortable with the person you are, which is why you’ve stayed the same for so long. And by introducing the concept of creating change, you may cause your mind to start throwing up barriers to that change.
The good news is that you can overcome these barriers. First, recognize that creating change in your outcomes is not the same thing as changing the core of who you are as a person.
Your qualities define you and they’re not necessarily things that you need to change. Instead, the change comes in terms of eliminating the limitations that have prevented you from achieving success. Those limitations, as we established earlier, are things that you think of as part of who you are. But in reality, they do not define you.
Second, remind yourself of the pain of staying the same. If you do not take action to create change in your life, you will stay in the same position you’re in right now. Now, if you’re happy in that position, this is not a problem. However, those who want to achieve different outcomes need to recognize that staying the same will not help them to do that.
Technique #3 – Think About How You Want to Hear Yourself
When you’re away from prying eyes and ears, you will often find yourself engaging in an inner dialogue. When that happens, think about what that voice says.
