Clearing Headspace
“Don’t let anyone live in your head rent free”
- CC
I was speaking to a good friend the other day. She is an amazing person. Intelligent, talented, driven, well liked. The kind of person when you meet them, they seem like they’ve been your friend for years.
We hadn’t talked in a while, so I asked, “How are things going.” There was a pause, and a sad look crossed her face. We’ve known each other for quite a while, she knows I know when she’s not telling the whole truth.
I saw this and asked, “What’s going on?” She started to build her case. She stacked all of her strengths on the table right away. “I’m really intelligent. I am deeper than most people give me credit for. I’m well read. I listen deeply when people talk to me and then work to understand what they were trying to tell me. You know I don’t trust many people, though I have a lot of “friends”. I’m a lot smarter than people think I am.”
I listened patiently, knowing she was setting up her case. And I kind of knew where this was leading. Then she got to the “issue”. She was fighting demons from the past. Her mother, her siblings, her habit of dating bad guys. This wasn’t new. I’ve heard this story from her 3-4 times in the past.
She stopped talking and just dropped her head. I then asked the “hard” question, “How much do you charge for rent?” She was staggered. “What?” She replied, “What the f*#k does that mean, what rent, I’m living in my house?” I chuckled and said, “Rent for the room that these people are taking up in your head?”
She stopped and looked at me for a long time … and then clarity came over her eyes. “I don’t think that’s it …”. I shrugged and said, “I’ve been wrong before, and I might be wrong here … or maybe I’m not.”
We then talked for the next hour about all the things in the past that she went through. At the end of the hour, I asked again, “So do you get paid in cash or in check for the space these people are inhabiting.” She laughed again and said, “So, maybe you’re right.”
How many times do we do this. We allow events in our pasts to stop us from living our future? We can’t change the things that went on, but we keep going back to them thinking we can make them turn out different, or try to understand them. It’s the whole idea of drinking poison hoping that it will kill your nemesis.
We keep these things alive, so we can blame them for our not achieving as much as we would have liked to. We blame them for our mistakes. We blame and blame and blame. And then we feel better because we told them off … in our heads … and then we close the door to the room that they are taking up in our head. We don’t evict them. We keep them there for the next time, stuff doesn’t go right.
It’s so convenient. They’re always there to blame. But they’re also there to hold you back.
I told my friend that I was going to give her the answer to her problems. But that she wasn’t going to be able to use it until she came to grips with the fact that I might be right … because it’s too simple. “Here’s the answer … Dump the baggage. Throw it away. Evict them from your room you have given them for years in your head.”
I know it sounds so easy.
I came from the profession (coaching) that if you lose you better get over it quick, because if you held on to it too long, you’ll lose again. Same thing with winning. If you keep taking victory laps after you win, you won’t be able to go on to your next game.
It’s easier for me because of my background. I remember the wins and loses but they don’t dictate how I go about my life now. I learned my lessons from each event. I added what I needed to and deleted that which did not help us be successful. But that was it.
In, Move or Die, I talk about getting over a win and getting back on track. We had just won the Super Bowl and twelve hours later we were on a plane waiting on the tarmac waiting to head back to Seattle. While the rest of the team was sleeping off the post-party or laughing with other members of the team, I was working on the off-season program that wasn’t going to be used for 4 months.
I took the win, the game that I had been working for my whole career, I thought, and started preparing for the next chance. And yes we did go to the Super Bowl again.
So let me walk you through how one gets past the past and starts to take control of their life.
Steps to Dumping the Baggage
· Assess where you are in your life: Where are you at?
· Measure that against where you want to be: Where should you be?
· List all of those people or event that adversely affect you: Why are you not where you want to be on your life’s journey?
· Beside the name or event, write down why it is still in your head: How did this person or event affect you so much?
· Quietly – to yourself – thank them: In your mind thank them for making you who you are, but you won’t need them anymore.
· Tear up the list and throw it away – evict them and the baggage they left from your head: Evict them from your life - FOREVER!
· Never give them another second of your life: You get to move on without them. You get to be you! Without their influence.
· Caution: You must now accept you might be to blame for the bad and good: Take responsibility for everything that happens Bad or Good!
· Move on to be who you have always wanted to be: Use the hard lessons to get on with your journey so you can live your best life.
It’s your choice. How do you want to live YOUR life?
