“Good old boys and girls congregating, waiting in another world with roller coaster brains we´re all crazy”

-Alice Cooper

How to meet inconsistency

The power is yours for the taking

Set your normal concept of time aside for 5 minutes. Imagine that time circular, not linear. What does that mean? Well, an experience you had 30 years ago is happening right now. Weird? Like we said, just give it 5 minutes. 

Say your parents constantly stressed the value of money. Dollars and cents stood for power, happiness, success, popularity, acceptance, strength. Now say that you were given money every time you got good grades at school, passed a test, scored a goal, etc. Money was your carrot. What did you learn? That money is important and that when you have money, you are important. Now say that your parents didn’t have all that much money, or that one has a lot and one has little. Or that they lost money, going from middle to lower class. Maybe they told you that they couldn’t afford certain things, that they were stressed out about paying the bills, about making ends meet, and they fought about money. When you asked if you could get something, you were told they couldn’t afford it. When this happened, your subconscious interpreted this as being a sign of your own unworthiness. That you weren’t important. You had been taught the equation money = importance. And the subconscious, in all its straightforward simplicity, responds no money for me = I am not important. 

It’s what psychologists call split personalities. Your conscious mind and your subconscious treat each other inconsistently. In the above example, this split looks like this: your conscious mind strives after money, seeing it as a symbol of worth, power, and importance. Your subconscious, on the other hand, doesn’t feel worthy of money – and won’t allow or recognize it.

Power, yo. It’s up to you

Powerless = allowing your subconscious to steer you
Powerful = working side by side with your subconscious

You have around 300 split personalities within you. In each split, one part acts from your conscious mind, while the other acts out from your subconscious. You identify with the part in your conscious mind – this is what you call I. Check this out, though. Your subconscious mind is actually the one creating your life, making your decisions, and steering you from A to Z. 

Another example: when you were a kid, you were never told that you were smart. While other kids learned to read and write effortlessly, you struggled. While they learned other languages and instruments and sports, you lagged behind. How did this make you feel? Bad. Beneath them. Lower on the ladder of kid life. Maybe one of your teachers told you that learning was difficult for you, or gave you a low grade on a test. Then and there, your subconscious started writing a story entitled: I’m not good at reading. Maybe you read out loud in class once and a classmate laughed at you. Someone called you tone deaf when you tried to sing, clumsy when you tried to join the soccer team, slow when it was time to run at gym class. Or maybe just the opposite. You were told that you were smart or cute or nice. Someone reminded you what a good boy you were when you did your homework, how nice you were when you shared your stuff, how pretty you looked in a skirt. Truth after small truth, your picture of the world – and your place in it – took shape. And you worked your hardest to meet that truth, each and every day.

These small, seemingly inconsequential stories landed within us, setting up home in both our conscious and subconscious. At the same time, we learned that being able to read, write, run fast, sing in tune, score goals, look cute, share our stuff, get good grades were good things. Valuable, important, powerful stuff. 

So, what does this personality split thing have to do with all that? Well, whenever you want to identify with something but a part of you won’t allow you to identify with it – boom crack split. Take smart as an example. One part of you wants to be smart, as you’ve learned the equation smart = success, popularity, win win win. Stupid = excluded, side-lined, left out in the cold. On a conscious level, we work hard to be smart. We express ourselves cleverly. But underneath it all, a big chunk of us just can’t accept that we’re smart and complicates life for us. How? Maybe by talking in circles whenever answering a question. One part of you works to be smart – the other part sabotages you every time you open your mouth. Why? Because neither part of me can accept that I am smart, but I know that I HAVE TO BE SMART TO MATTER! In the end, you look like a weirdo – insecure, stiff, and totally out of place. Split personality deluxe.
 

Most of us aren’t even aware of the many splits within us. Once we become aware of them, we can actually hear the two opposing voices fighting in our brains. Confused, we act inconsistently. We aren’t even aware our behavior is inconsistent – it’s just the way we are. Other people see your inconsistencies so much better than you can. It’s true.

What you do know is that you don’t feel great. You work at a mediocre job and make crap money. You stay with someone you’re not really in love with. You hate where you live. You treat your body not all that well. Inconsistencies are everyone. Two distinct parts steer one single person. No wonder you feel confused, stressed out, anxious, frustrated, uninspired, exhausted, and sometimes even ready to call it quits.

Now that we’ve got all that split personality behind us, we can get to the good stuff. Turning two people into one. Mashing your two parts into one superb you. How? For starters, by listening in on your own internal conversations. And here’s how… 

Visit my brand new website, https://theeqgym.com/, and join my meditation sessions at Zoom.

This is a guest post. Any opinions expressed are the writer’s own.