Life occurs between the ears. You don’t become what you want, you become what you believe.

Katie L. Woods

Week 2 of The Jourse tackled the first of the four buckets we discussed last week (Physical, Mind, Soul, and Relationships), namely our MINDSET and was all about paying attention to the voices in your head.

Katie identified two primary voices battling in our minds: The Critic and The Mentor. When we let The Critic control most of our thoughts we suffer. This is an obsession about yourself when you do so.

You are not your thoughts.

You are the thinker of them but they are not you. Your relationship with them determines your happiness. As an example think of The Critic and The Mentor as two wolves. One is good and one is bad and both are battling inside your head. The one that wins is the one you feed. It is by using self-awareness that you can feed the good wolf.

Ways to Feed the Good Wolf (aka The Mentor)

1. Feed your mind: help it grow through study and activities your mentor guides you to and that is how you will gain awareness. Shockingly, 50% of people never pick up another book after they are done with their education.
2. Break Through Fear: First assess the fear. Assess whether it is a real fear or one you have created for yourself. The only way to face those self-created fears is to just do it. Once you just do that ONE thing you fear you will realize you can do it. That will push you to keep going.
3. Identify your ego: That is your inner critic. Once you can hear him/her speaking to you, you can dismiss it. Remember the death of the ego is the beginning of your real life. (Suggested Reading here: Thinking Big, by Tara Mohr). Pay attention to your jealousy because that is a way to identify something that is lacking in your life (ex. jealous of Beyonce’s legs? Figure out how to get them). This will help you to reprogram your thoughts.

If you hear a voice in you say, “you cannot paint.” Then by all means paint.

Tara Mohr

4. Have a strategy in place: When The Critic comes out change the story in your mind. Ask if the story limits or empowers. If it limits then change it. (ex. tack on the word yet to the end of the sentence. i.e. I am not a ballerina, yet) Shift the story to try and help others, make it about someone else and NOT you.

At the end of the presentation Katie said stop trying to be enough. It might very well be that you are never enough. But that will be ok. You were meant to be something different and the point is to figure out what that is so that you can live the life you were meant to.