Why Play Small?
Have you ever made yourself small?
I did. For over a decade. I made shrinking myself an art form.
After being told all my life that I was TOO MUCH, I finally gave in and made myself small.
It wasn’t conscious. It was oh so subtle, as my unconscious mind began to believe the programming of the world, of those who said I was just TOO MUCH.
How did that happen to someone steeped in knowledge about our minds and their power?
I got overwhelmed. Shit happens when you’re underwater blowing bubbles to find the surface.
First it was neural Lyme disease, after two years of missed diagnoses. So sick I could barely get out of bed. Then back-to-back nightmare clients—conmen who tried to run me and my ethics out, a CEO who had me write his book and launch his company, then never paid me. Then I was threatened at gunpoint in my little town because I was from California. So I ran back to the blessed safety of CA. Where I partnered with a friend to save his ranch and ended up with black mold toxicity that almost killed me.
There was so much more. But those are the highlights.
I grew smaller and smaller as I fought for my health, my mind, and frankly, my soul. I forgot about being too much. Instead, I became a shadow of me. Afraid, living in expectation of the next blow. And they kept coming.
I got smaller.
Until a friend called me on it. No holds barred.
I couldn’t avoid it, couldn’t wipe it away. So I dug in and actually paid attention to my mind and my thoughts in the midst of feeling like death warmed over.
What I found scared the hell out of me.
Almost every thought had become negative, expecting the worst. My idle mind was FILLED with dark expectations, a deep knowing that more was coming.
I’d accepted it, programmed it, agreed to it as I became smaller and smaller. And I never noticed.
I know better. I teach this stuff. I know that idle mind chatter is where we go negative, where we grouse and complain and expect the worst. I know to watch for it, constantly.
I forgot to do just that in my smallness.
So I stopped. Started clawing my way back to me.
At first it was brutal. I’d never been this negative and my unconscious was fighting to stay that way. It had been programmed to expect the worst. It thought it was protecting me.
I stuck with it. Every day. Watching. Listening. Catching myself. Redirecting. Again and again and again.
Then one night, I was planning my week. I was finally healing enough to do a few things.
That’s when I realized I was still planning my days around the known fact that I WOULD BE SICK IN BED. Like I always had been.
I had accepted the sickness and become SMALLER AND SMALLER to live inside it.
THAT was the day I seriously started my return to being my TOO MUCH self.
Three months later, here I am. Back to being me. In full force. No more small.
TOO MUCH AND DAMNED PROUD OF IT.
The mind methods that brought me back work for anyone. More on that soon.