Tell me your first childhood memory and I will tell you what is stopping you from becoming who you want to be.

I was having a tantrum. A four year old me, lying on the floor of my parent’s bedroom. 

All I wanted was one small piece of chocolate… I knew my mum kept it in the top cupboard, on the left, next to the window… but it was too high for me to reach. I asked politely and mum said “no”, but what I heard was “the end of the world is near and we are all going to die”

So I cried and asked again…“please mommy, can we save the world just this one time?”

… but it changed nothing, the end was inevitable.

I broke down on the floor - tears, lots of kicking and screaming…

Then suddenly … a hope… my mum started walking towards the magic cupboard… I was going to be saved! But then… I looked at her face, there was something wrong, she didn’t look like a typical hero who was about to save the world, her face was red with fury… she was not happy … she was angry… very very angry.

That did the trick, I suddenly stopped crying, I didn’t want the chocolate anymore.  I just wanted my mom to smile again. She didn’t. She opened the cupboard, took out the whole chocolate box and furiously threw it on the floor next to me. “Have it and stop crying”.

I got what I wanted and more! I just wanted a small piece but here I was holding the whole box… but I didn’t take one bite. I didn’t want it anymore.

I was feeling ashamed that I made my mom angry.  I regretted that I asked for the chocolate in the first place.  I was angry with myself.  I wanted to do something to make my mum happy again.

How has this small innocent event been stopping me from becoming whom I wanted to be?

It wasn’t the event itself - but the messages, the rules, that I learned.  The internal scripts that were imprinted in my brain that contributed to my low self esteem and lack of confidence:

“Don’t ask for what you want”, “If you ask for what you want, you will make others angry”, “When you show your emotions, you will make others angry”, “Control your feelings”, “Even when you get what you want, you won’t be satisfied anyway”, “Don’t make other people angry”…

When we are small, every single day, we learn something new about our world and the people around us. We learn either from our experience (e.g. when I cry, my mum gets angry) or what we are being told (“ stop crying”), or we simply copy others without fully understanding why they behaved the way they did (which I experienced when I became a parent and my child threw his first tantrum - my first reaction was anger).

This learning is a little bit different from a traditional education. You don’t have to take notes and memorise the messages. It happens automatically, without you even knowing it. It goes straight to your subconscious. And from there it starts running your life for you.

Sometimes you may not even remember the events that have shaped who you are today. You may grow up to be an adult who never cries in front of others, or you will notice that the moment you are being overwhelmed with strong emotions, you simply want to hide and be on your own. You just think this is the way you are.

Guess what! You don’t have to be this way if you don’t want to!

Once you discover YOUR internal scripts… the journey to redesigning yourself begins.

You will learn to identify more and more “scripts” that are running your life for you. You will learn how to “catch them” daily and you will learn how to change them.

If this sounds like something you would like to do, please get in touch!