Battling With Demons.

A case to be made for the value of our demons?

The nagging voice of our inner doubts can either provoke propulsion or inertia – depends on your self management choices.

“Bloody hell, one day they are going to find out I’m just a standard bloke from Tyneside who has had some crappy jobs, who did not go the best school, who doesn’t have an MBA or an IQ of 190 and knows little  about structural engineering.” (Blah, blah, blah).

 

Energy and effort go into self-preservation and the pursuit of lying low, playing small. What a brilliant confidence building empowering thought pattern that isn’t.

I note that Tiger Woods just slipped back into place as world #1 golfer.  I hear he said he listened to his inner tormentor telling him he was finished personally and professionally, a loser, had no way back and his time was over. So he set out on a mission to beat the demons, motivated by knowing he was ‘bigger than that’ he is now in better mental and physical shape than ever before.

On the surface, some people look as though they never face self-doubt – except you don’t see them at night staring at the bedroom ceiling talking themselves into getting up and ready to fight another day.

I know this because I work with super smart, confident, energetic people who have the bottle to confide their occasional self-doubt. Accordingly there is a huge difference between acknowledging our demons and indulging them. You have to acknowledge them before you can get past them; failing to confront is just a recipe for pushing another skeleton into the cupboard only for it to reappear down the line. Indulging them is the tactic of the emotionally immature. Acknowledge – move on.

We have demons – but we are not our demons. That is the point.

It may not be true that rather than finding a way to conquer and shut up our demons that we could grow to embrace and leverage them for their inherent platform to betterment.

However, we could hold the notion that we can learn to love the demons and see them for what they are – the hard ass 24/7 personal trainer you don’t have to pay a penny for.

Or, you could simply settle for letting the inner tormentor beat the spirit out of you.

Back to ‘it’s all a matter of choice’.