“That every happiness is earned and, if given to you, it’s merited,” Milton Erickson
When we complete something, we feel a sense of accomplishment especially when it’s a difficult task. But sometimes, we get in the way of completing a task. Erickson would call this conscious interference. For example, self-doubt is one of the techniques that our conscious minds use to distract us from completing tasks because it’s based on a belief that some tasks are just too difficult to complete. Therefore, we say to ourselves, “I can’t do it.” We have these tapes and pictures in our heads that keeps us from doing what we want. Tapes we play over and over like “you’re not good enough,” “you’re not smart enough,” and “this is too difficult for me to do.” We also make the image of a task in our mind enormous that we get paralyzed and feel overwhelmed by it.
However, we all can think of a time when we’re in the middle of a task, we’re very much congruent in that moment. Our minds and bodies are one. There are no internal conflicts. And sometimes it’s a difficult task, but somehow we learn to break the enormous task into smaller tasks. We divide and conquer.
Exercise:
You can sit quietly alone or if you’re where people are, you can close your eyelids and start to think about a particular task that you want to complete that you find difficult for you to start. That’s right… Let yourself see it. Ask yourself how do you see it? Is it an enormous task? Is the picture of the task enormous? If you visualize an enormous picture, then shrink it down. Do you see it in color, or, in black and white? If it’s in black and white make it in color. If you were to stand next to the image how big is it compare to you? If the picture is bigger than you, shrink the picture or make yourself bigger than the picture. With this exercise you may experience some of the different sensations in your body.
Eugene Morgan