What we say to ourselves is often an echo of what other people said to us that we accepted as true. I’ve accepted a whole bunch of things over the years, some of which has served me well, like ‘I’m sporty” and ‘if she can learn to be good at that I can too’.

My tactics for letting go of the unhelpful ones

1. Decide what characteristics I want for myself
2. Start developing the skills needed for the new characteristics.
3. Look for evidence that the old message is false.

We only took on the old messages because at some level we believed them. Maybe because there was real evidence of our stumbling’s when we were younger or just because someone powerful said so and nothing at the time contradicted them.

It is harder to let go of a belief without evidence that it is wrong. To get this evidence sometimes you need to learn new skills first. You say to yourself ‘I cannot sing’. If you decide you want to be able to sing, even at a simple level amongst friends, get singing lessons. Singing is a learnable skill even if you are tone deaf. Record yourself at the beginning and again after 10 lessons. Then you can hear just how much you can sing. Decide if you want to be an even better singer and how much more training you will need. Learning to be a new, singing, you is a very simple mechanical journey. Or at the end of the ten lessons, you can at least edit your old message from ‘I cannot sing’ to ‘I didn’t learn to sing’.

Choose who you want to be and start learning to be her.