DB Bootcamp - zig and sgctxok, and various

[zig]

i'm going through some huge thing right now - it's transforming me, and i am not sure how to write about it.

It's about exploring and uncovering one's most deep-seated beliefs. inspecting them and discarding the ones that have always sabotaged my efforts without me understanding why life went the way it seemed to.

i was always puzzled - that even though my conscious intentions were always good, and i felt as if i made my best effort at everything i did, somehow somewhere down the line in all my endeavors (work, r's, living), something always went seriously askew.

so a friend - who is also a therapist, offered sort of jokingly a few weeks ago that she could help me quit smoking. i've vaguely wanted to for a long time, but could never really get past the thought of doing it, into the action of doing it.kept saying to myself i wasn't ready, something was holding me back, i had to work through something to get to the right place to attempt it , etc, etc (oh the things we come up with)

so finally today we got down to business.

boy, i had no idea what technique she was going to use. i didn't have a clue. we did something called belief management exercise - i was on the phone with her for 4 hours!!

by the end of it , i had pages of "my beliefs" written down - and i was astounded to find out how many of them seriously impeded any real development within myself. I had to mark them as 'helpful' beliefs and 'impeding' beliefs

it was really really interesting - because the moment i recognized them as 'impeding' , just the very act of recognizing them - the result was to let them go and recognize that they were not helping me reach what ever goals i had.

then we went through this really intense exercise which uncovered something deeper at the next level - what she called 'transparent beliefs" and these are ones that operate at a really deep level, and we don't even know that they exist, they are so deep-seated. but they are very debilitating to a person and also cause them to self-sabotage constantly.

and wow - was that an eye opener for me. they didn't come easily to the surface - i had to do a lot of work to get to them . i couldn't even see where i was going in the middle of it and then suddenly through the exercise it would pop out and we would both go wow. and then there would be silence as i just sat there staring at what i had written and flashes of my life would come before me as i saw how that belief had shaped so much of how i'd been.

so here i am with all this new info about myself, and i haven't even begun to digest it. but what i can see is that reaching any sort of goals - personal or relational - has just gone into a completely different place for me.

i wasn't really able to start because deep deep down i didn't believe that i was capable of it, or capable of succeeding at accomplishing what i was setting out to do. so i will take the next few days to absorb what i have learned about myself and how my perspective has changed,, as well as my perception of who and what i was

if there's any goal i want to pursue seriously now, is to keep on at exploring this within myself. it's not an easy one to measure - but the measure is there. the more i am able to focus away from external things that are not mine to worry about and turn to things that are truly mine to care about, then i know i am continually taking the correct steps in the right direction. i know it sounds a bit vague, but it's all i can see right now.

i'm marking this day for myself - it's a step in a direction i didn't know existed. how cool is that ?

zig