In the first part, I showed you how to weaken the saboteurs in you. Now I want to present to you another way to accomplish this – by strengthening your inner sage.
You may be wondering, “but is there such a thing?”
Yes, of course, there is.
But this inner sage, unlike the saboteurs, is silent and often ignored by us. Still, sometimes, even without realising it, it gives us moments of inspiration that make us exclaim: Wow, I was so lucky/ what a luck!
Well, this is not about luck at all. It was an unconscious choice to listen to your sage ( or…call it however you want to: intuition, heart, divine inspiration, or any other name which resonates with you. The label doesn’t matter. What matters is how you feel about this part of you.
And I’m talking about saboteurs as if they were some separate entities. But they are actually your thoughts, emerging from the conditioning created to you or created by yourself during your life.
So, to strengthen the sage in you, you can practice and follow the steps of Shirzad Chamin, the one who first brought to our attention the concept of Positive Intelligence, namely:
1. Empathise with yourself,
2. Carefully explore possibilities,
3. Innovate, bring new ideas to your life,
4. Navigate, taking into account the inner map of your being,
5. And because all this would be useless without action, take action.
But let’s take them one at a time and detail them a bit.
To empathise means showing appreciation, compassion and forgiveness not only to others but also to yourself. Empathy and understanding are the antidotes for the judge in you.
And what I observed, it is much easier to empathise with others than to empathise with yourself.
How can you become more empathic with others and with yourself?
Here is an exercise that could inspire you.
I’ve tried it. And you can also apply it yourself to those in your life who do not have a good relationship with you.
So, take a photo of you as a child, when you were no older than 8, or another person you want to empathise with and describe what you see. What feelings did that child have or could have had, how did he look at life, the world, what would he have wanted, what dreams and hopes he could have had.
Look and feel.
You should look and feel more deeply than with your eyes and heart. You should do it with all of your being.
Dedicate 10 minutes to this exercise.
You can repeat the exercise several times.
I’m curious if, after this exercise, you can still judge the person from the photo with the same harshness and prejudice, even if that person is now an adult.