Call Them Out!

I had an interesting conversation with a close friend yesterday. While we don’t get to speak all that much there is such a deep connection between the two of us that I often feel like we’re living parallel lives but not necessarily in synch. Our world views and life philosophies are very much the same and thus our interpretations of what happens in our lives and our reactions to things tend to be similar–she totally gets me and I totally get her.

She is in between a business that she started which dissolved very quickly and trying to figure out what she should do next for work. There are a lot of options open to her, she just has to decide what direction she wants to go in. Of course it’s easy for me, being on the outside of the situation to make a pithy assessment of everything but she’s having a rough time of it. I’ve been down the road she’s on–the road of having to reinvent myself and create something from nothing. Anyone who has their own business is often in the business of creating something from nothing and let me tell you, it ‘s exhausting. My friend being the brilliant writer that she is had a great analogy for what she’s been feeling–she said she’s got too much “drag.” Drag is a technical term for one of the aerodyamic forces that acts on an airplane. When there’s too much drag on a plane, it won’t take flight. Right away I had a visceral sensation of being dragged down as she began to name the elements that make up her drag. I’ve been having my own challenges lately and feeling pretty stuck and got me thinking about what my “drag” is… At first I could not think of one single thing but after I gave it some time here’s what I came up with:

The belief that manifesting anything is difficult.

The belief that I don’t have the capability to accomplish the things I need to and I can’t get anyone to help me.

The belief that there is always something in the way of getting what I want.

The belief that there is always something that I have to fix about myself or some life circumstance that I have to overcome before I can be happy.

I cannot tell you what a relief it was to just name these things. Such a simple exercise yet there’s something about calling these things out into the light of day where I can see them that totally deflates them. I really wasn’t aware of the degree that these beliefs were affecting my life. Knowing what they are is the first step to changing them. When I stopped to think about it, I realized that most of these things aren’t even true. They’re something that my psyche has constructed to keep me stressed out and terminally unhappy–states that I had grown accustomed to living in in the past and my brain was just doing its thing to recreate what’s familiar.

Looking at my drag was like that scene in The Wizard Of Oz when Dorothy finally gets the ruby slippers and is told that the thing she’s been most afraid of (the wicked witch of the west) no longer has any power over her.

My plan for next time I get together with my friend is for both of us to put our drag on the table, out in the open. Name it, look at it, let it go and in doing so take away its power. I invite you my dear readers to comment and in those comments, throw your “drag” on the table as a way of letting go of old things that no longer serve you and while you do repeat after Glinda, “You have no power here, now be gone!”