Have you ever faced your saboteur? Did you even know you have one?
Well, you do! We all have one.
Yours will be unique to you. It will have a particular personality, a particular tone of voice and particular things it chooses to speak to you about.
By this ‘saboteur’, I am of course talking about your own internal self-talk of the negative kind.
All of us have internal self-talk. Not aware of yours? Your internal self-talk can be helpful or unhelpful, positive, or negative. Your internal ‘saboteur’, (negative self-talk), will be dragging you down and stopping you from being fully you!
We call negative self-talk a ‘saboteur’, as it sabotages your life, your decisions, your confidence, your self-esteem, your ability to think clearly, ….and well, the list goes on.
What prompted me to write this blog was that recently I addressed one of my saboteurs! This saboteur was doing an exceptional job in diminishing my confidence in marketing my business.
I drew a picture of it and wrote around it all the negative words I was hearing it say. Simply having all of this on paper, increased my awareness of how the enemy was affecting me. Firstly, simply being able to face it and see it clearly written down broke most of the power of it.
I went onto to write truths under each of the incredibly negative and personally damming messages my saboteur was managing to put in my head. The truths weren’t hard to come up with. I instantly knew a truth that contradicted each statement this ‘monster’ was feeding me, because what he was saying was ridiculous! I knew how to counter it.
Drawing it all out on a big piece of paper, enabled me to have a smile and reverse lies before they became my beliefs and I saw the lies as reality. I moved on pretty quickly. In fact, I felt a prompting by God to imagine an angel that He has given me to help with marketing. I took time to sketch her out (the angel is a ‘she’). I meditated on all that she is. God has in fact given me a very experienced and very capable helper in her for marketing my business. Oh and she is somewhat larger and at least 10 times bigger that the horrid little saboteur monster.
This reminds me of the verse whatever is good, whatever is excellent, whatever is noble, think on these things. (Philippians 4:8). Thinking and reflecting on what God has provided for me from heaven to support my marketing of the business is so much more life giving, confidence giving, and hope filling than listening to that nasty saboteur.
So are you ready to face your saboteur?
Imagine the negative thoughts you have, the internal negative self-talk, as coming from a monster. It could be a generic one that just talks to you about everything in a negative way or it could be a monster like mine that seems to specialise in feeding you negative thoughts about a particular subject. (Mine was marketing my business). This monster is your ‘saboteur’.
Take a moment now.
What are the most negative thoughts you hear from this monster?
Things could turn out terribly.
You may lose your job.
Your business is not going to succeed.
Your relationship is not making it.
You’ll never meet our soul mate.
You’ll never conquer that bad habit.
You’ve failed.
You are just not good enough for this.
God doesn’t care.
God isn’t routing for you.
YUK! All lies!
Imagine the tone of his/her voice.
What does this monster look like?
All the thoughts it plants in you, all the negativity it gets you to think about is with the purpose of sabotaging you!
This voice, always criticises you or your ideas, always thinks up reasons why something will go wrong, or someone will let you down, always thinks up why something won’t work out well.
So, what type of voice does your saboteur have?
What atmosphere does it carry?
What is it saying?
Listen to it and write down what it is saying. This is you facing your saboteur!
When you write down the accusations, the discouraging words, you can look at them and realise they are not real, they are not really who you are. The words are not truth.
I like to then write the truth beside the negative. I call the negative words coming from our saboteurs ‘limiting beliefs’.
On the one hand just because we believe them doesn’t make them true, but on the other hand we do tend to be aware that we operate according to our beliefs. So if we have negative beliefs, we can make them become true by acting as if they are true.
EG – If I believe I’m not good enough and I won’t get the job I am looking to go for, I will act accordingly. My demeanour, the way I put myself across will not be confident. I will answer interview questions I’m asked poorly. Consequently, I most probably won’t get the job. If I can’t believe I can do the job, how can I convince those interviewing me I can do it?
If believe I am good enough for the job and that I am the very best person for it, that they could not hire someone better, the way I carry myself into and through that interview will be totally differently. I stand a much better chance of getting the job.
These limiting beliefs that our saboteur works hard getting us to adopt, are a major problem, an obstacle to you being fully you.
When we end up believing what this awful monster is constantly saying to us, then we have allowed these negative words to turn into powerful beliefs.
Beliefs are powerful. They feel real. They feel like truth. But they are not! They are simply a negative view.
From a Biblical point of view, they contradict the truth. They always contradict who God is and what He feels about you. These negative, limiting beliefs are destructive.
So face your saboteur. Learn his/her’s crazy antics to get you to believe his/her’s lies. Learn how to recognise your saboteur’s voice and be able to silence it and adopt the voice of truth, God’s voice.
Things could turn out terribly. / Things will turn out amazingly, because I am God’s child and He loves me and I am blessed.
You may lose your job. / Whatever happens, it will turn out for the good, because God promised this and I know He will bless me in a great job!
Your business is not going to succeed. / God supports my business. He is working to bless it!
Your relationship is not making it. / My relationship is strong enough to get through this. God will give me the wisdom on how to navigate my relationship and work it out for the best. He believes in me and loves covenant relationship.
You’ll never meet our soul mate. / I will meet the person who is best suited to me and in just the right time.
You’ll never conquer that bad habit. / I have the spirit of self-control and can conquer all things with Christ.
You’ve failed. /. I cannot fail. ALL things turn out for the good!
You are just not good enough for this. / I am more than good enough. I can do it.
God doesn’t care / God cares so much for me, He knows how many hairs are on my head, He looks after every detail of my life, and He has as many thoughts about me as there are grains of sand.
God isn’t routing for you. / God is my biggest fan! He’s behind me all the way!