Ideas, Identity, and Your Timeline | Phoenix Comic Fest
28Humans are meaning-making machines. We get feedback, we search for the underlying meaning, we connect information together and attribute meaning to the events.
Today I'm going to teach you about how ideas get incepted into your brain. How they start small and build on each other until you're left with a person or belief, that you identity as.
Everyone has some belief about themselves. A limiting belief, but a belief nonetheless that has defined who you see yourself as.
It could be...
9 - My efforts won't matter. Don't make waves. Keep the peace.
8 - The world is an unjust place. I defend the innocent.
1 - The world is an imperfect place. I work toward improvement.
3 - The world values a champion. Avoid failures at all costs.
2 - People depend on my help. I am needed.
4 - Something is missing. Others have it. I have been abandoned.
6 - The world is a threatening place. Question authority.
5 - The world is invasive. I need privacy to think and to refuel my energies.
7 - The world is full of opportunity and options. I look forward to the future.
But really, you haven’t always had this idea. At some point, a version of reality, an idea, a perspective, a belief… was implanted in you.
Maybe your parents got divorced and when they sat you down to tell you that, from that moment, your young mind held the idea and carried it with you. But you didn’t know why it happened so you created a reason for it - “you’re not good enough."
You began to pattern recognize in search of the meaning of that event - Your world starts to form around that idea.
Maybe you’re playing basketball with your team and you miss a shot. Your teammate yells at you, says some harsh words, and you go one level deeper into this false perception of reality. You think, “Oh… ok… so my parents are splitting up because of me, and my teammate doesn’t want me on his team. I must be the problem. No matter how angry or upset I am, I cannot give into it. I need to keep low and not cause problems so that I’m safe."
From one initial interpretation of an event, you build a set of ideas like Russian nesting dolls - each one nested inside the other - creating a stronger belief-structure.
What do you do? You need to find that Belief Forming Moment - the original point of crystallization. That first seed that was implanted. That moment in time when part of you wanted to do one thing, and part wanted another. At that moment, you became fractured. You attributed meaning that wasn’t innately there, and found the patterns to support it. And one of those voices, characters, ideas, parts of you, identities… however you imagine them… one of those got more attention than the other.
Envision a timeline of your life from birth to death. It could go left to right in front of you. It could start behind you and go forward. It could be at an angle. Let your mind find a fitting version. You can do this by asking your… unconscious… mind to locate an event from yesterday on your timeline. Even if you feel unsure, trust your unconscious mind to find it. Good. Now again with an event from last week… a month ago… a year ago...
Ask now, your… unconscious… mind to find and plot some events in the future that you know will happen - a birthday, perhaps a sports event, a vacation...
We’re going to travel along the timeline to shake loose the connections and meanings we’ve attributed to those “identity-forming” beliefs. Remember: The events themselves have no inherent meaning in them. We give them meaning and we can change that meaning to fit a more empowered version of ourselves.
Let’s start at the beginning. Where is the original belief along the timeline? It’ll likely be somewhere near the start - in the first 3-7 years of your life.
I want you to leave “now” on the timeline by floating up above your timeline. Up. Up. As high as you feel is right. The timeline could be only a few inches along if you choose to go that high. Then float back towards the initial inception.
Float past it to before it happened and land on or next to your timeline, facing now. Talk to the younger version of yourself and give it the resources it needs to become the loving, confident, safe, trusting, whole person. Reassure your younger self that everything will be ok, and that whatever happened didn’t mean that you were bad, or defective, or unlovable… or whatever your flavor of suffering has been.
Return:
Now, having comforted that past version of you, and having taught your younger self the lesson it needed to know, smile and float back up.
Take that lesson that you taught, and turn it into a magical dust or confetti of sorts. Sprinkle it over your timeline as you return to now, adding an extra bit on each of those connected events.
As you land and return to the present moment, having changed, feel the empowered energy in yourself. The confidence. The joy.
Keep up the life-long questing. Thank you.
www.geekpsychology.com
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Matt Sherman - Geek Psychology presently has 340 views for Timeline across 1 video, with his channel publishing less than an hour of Timeline content. This makes up less than 0.13% of the total overall content on Matt Sherman - Geek Psychology's YouTube channel.