What Holds You Back?

Feeling held back and powerless to change it can be maddening. There are so many ways we spiral into disconnection with ourselves and lose our authentic voice and personal power. This split is disempowering!

If your wisdom – your inner knowing and vision, what you notice, place as a priority, and value, and what matters the most to you – is without power you don’t possess the willingness and ability to make the changes or create the work and a life you most want.

The only way to shift this is to begin to speak. To break through the isolation. To value the voice of your wisdom. It’s hard to make changes when you are in the grip of internal controlling images or patterns. Until you see them – you don’t know how to change your own experience from deficiency to sufficiency.

We often spend the first couple coaching sessions exploring this. One of my clients, a corporate lawyer, broke out of isolation in our first meeting, by speaking about her own spiral into disconnection with herself and the ways she lost her authentic voice and personal power at work.

We opened the portal to change as she felt and gave voice to her controlling images. It was the first step to shattering her repetitive internal dialogue of “something is wrong with me, I’m the problem and I need to be different”. I really appreciated her courage as it’s difficult and uncomfortable to do.

Over time, we worked together to find new body anchors, refine her images to include those that empower, and develop new patterns. She made new agreements with herself. Her effectiveness naturally increased along with the results she longed for.

One big change was that she stepped out of certain ongoing and escalating relationships once she started to speak truthfully about the hurt or disconnection. Rather than adapting to fit in and not make waves, she learned how to bring her authentic wise self forward in all types of social and work engagements.

It’s true for all of us. Once we listen to our wisdom, give it personal power, and link it to our leadership we began to make the difference we long to make in the world.

How do you identify these pesky internal controlling images or patterns that derail you? Is there one that is still stuck? I’d love to know.

BTW: This great phrase “Controlling Images” was introduced to me by my colleague Dr. Kum Kum Malik who spoke at the recent Women’s International Networking conference and applied it to restrictions in the self-realization of women and specifically motherhood. While Controlling Images can and do surround us and reinforce certain behaviors I find those we internalize are particularly deadly. Jean Baker Miller brilliantly applied this concept to psychology.