Monday #soulcare: a childhood vow is a conscious or unconscious agreement you make with yourself as a child about how the world MUST be in order for you to be ok. We typically make these vows to avoid pain or seek pleasure. They come out of a wound or a lack in our childhood...
...they serve us well when we are kids, but they restrict us as adults. Like clothes we grow out of, if we don't shed them, they become constricting. When under pressure, or tired or feeling attacked, you revert to your childhood vow and live by it rather than by faith....
...you can uncover a vow by listening to your self talk and listening for superlatives or absolutes or 'singular truths that you make into a universal truth.' Naming and repenting of a vow can be massively freeing and can take time and work...
My friend @Jimherrington spoke eloquently about vows on this episode of my podcast. Jim and @trishaltaylor also host a wonderful podcast well worth a listen. Links below.
We get reactive when we don't get a false need that feels like a real need.
What do you think you need that you don't really need?
We all have dozens of false needs and when we don't wrangle our many false need, they pile up and get the better of us and wear us out.
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Some of my false needs: 1. I need everyone I meet to like or approve of me. 2. I need to be understood. 3. I need to make the person in front of me feel better. 4. I need to always know what to say or do in any situation. You MUST see me as a smart person.
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We end up getting bigger or smaller than human sized.
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Some of us, when we are reactive get 'bigger.' We must have the last word. We no longer listen to learn, we now listen to advise, fix, correct, or mansplain. We get aggressive, we dominate the space. Some of us literally make ourselves bigger.
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Some of us get smaller than human sized. We no longer feel safe to be exactly ourselves in that space. We do not speak up in the meeting, we flatter rather than tell the truth, we get quiet.
Some of course get bigger or smaller, depending on the circumstance and people.
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A gentle reminder that your inner critic is telling you a gospel. It just happens to be a gospel of condemnation and shame.
I fired my IC, but he kept coming to work, like Milton from Office Space. I've learned to quieten it by containing it with God's first and last word.
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This is slow transformation work, not one and done. I started in 2016, noting how often I called myself 'stupid' or a 'moron.
50-100 times per week. Lord have mercy.
I vowed to treat myself the way God treats me. It was harder than I thought it would be.
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It turns out, I believed the gospel of 'self' and inner critic over the gospel of Jesus. And it took much faith and patience to relax into the gospel of Jesus.