Welcome back to the 49th episode of the Thursday Meditations show!
This is the show that helps you overcome average, and step up above mediocrity.
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Hello friends.
As always, we are setting out on our hero’s journey. You, the hero, will be challenged in physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual ways. Sometimes you’ll be challenged in many aspects at one time.
I believe today is one of those days.
Jordan Peterson, the famed psychologist, has studied many stories looking for meaning as it applies to psychology. He proposes that each “hero” must delve into hell to conquer the beast, only to then return to the world bearing the fruits of their conquest.
I was speaking with some friends recently, and a friend clued me in on some serious depth within the story “The Hobbit”.
For the uninitiated, “The Hobbit” is a tale about a hobbit (or halfling) who is called on a long adventure through the mysterious workings of an aged wizard and a troop of dwarves. This adventure takes the traveling band through dark forests, the clutches of trolls, the webs of giant spiders, the dark caves of goblins and finally to a dragon’s lair.
My friend illuminated my understanding when he explained that Bilbo, the hobbit, eventually finds himself in a very deep dark hole, having 1v1 faceoff versus a nightmare, aka Golum.
Here’s what I never realized before though, Golum represents everything wrong with Bilbo, the hero. Golum once was a hobbit, but was corrupted by an evil force.
Bilbo in essence plunges to the darkest and deepest depths of the story, only to find himself face to face with his own nightmare: himself, amplified to the worst aspects of his nature character.
Bilbo eventually bests his nightmare, but doesn’t vanquish it. This in turn allows the nightmare to return for his descendants, but that should be left for another episode.
My point is this. During this month, you and I will plunge to our deepest darkest caves within ourselves and find ourselves 1v1 versus our nightmares. We are going to be talking about our own insecurities. This will challenge yourself emotionally and spiritually.
I believe it’s important to identify, assess, and overcome our insecurities precisely because that’s what our minds and bodies are telling us to do. Often, these insecurities come from parts of ourselves we aren’t comfortable with, parts that we try to hide. Yet, they still manifest themselves in our actions. Almost like our insecurities are piles of slime and instead of trying to clean them up and find the source, we just box them up in wooden crates. Eventually the slime leaks through and we wonder what happened.
Today, we are going to work on identifying. Today we look for the source of the slime.
In my experience, there are a handful of ways that insecurity manifests itself. These are general terms and I might miss one. If I am, please reach out and let me know what you think.
Freeze
Our first manifestation of insecurity is a general freezing. This can look like paralysis or stagnation where we don’t change all that much. This is a neutral way of living that leads to doing nothing rather than making a choice. You can see this most often in people who don’t like to make decisions. They instead choose to let the decisions pass, making a decision by choosing to do nothing.
Fight
The second manifestation is the fight response. Here we are overcompensating, acting maybe like an animal backed into a corner. This could show up as over-agression, or even just forced positivity. While the freezers don’t make decisions, the fighters often make aggressively
