Your Inner Dialogue Matters 

In the early 1970’s some of you may remember the Watergate political scandal during the Nixon administration. This led to Nixon resigning after winning a landslide election. It wasn’t so much the break in to the Democratic headquarters but the cover-up of the crime that brought the President down. It was discovered that the crime led back to the office of the president after he denied playing any part in it. What brought all this to light was the discovery of secret tapes in the oval office. 

Most of us have secret tapes playing constantly in our mind. Often these tapes are not helpful to us. They feed our unconscious mind with negative and untrue thoughts about us, our abilities, and our character. Because most of the tapes are playing in our unconscious mind we aren’t even aware of what we are saying to ourselves. 

Over time these tapes create our core schema or core view of ourselves. They are embedded at a deep unconscious level so we develop a strong emotional bias. This core schema will give birth to other lies we tell to ourselves. ANTS (automatic negative thoughts) are constantly running in both our conscious and unconscious mind. These tapes are working against God’s design for your life constantly trying to sabotage the better life you could have. 

We need to be aware of what these tapes can do to us and how to deal with them. They are the silent enemy within us that quietly play in the background of our life to steal our life potential. We need to understand what is going on and why your inner dialogue matters. 

1. They determine how we think about ourselves on both the conscious and unconscious level. We need to become aware of the conscious level of these ANTS. We need to pull them up from the unconscious level to the conscious level. We will start by attacking them on the conscious level. We will expose the lies and counter them with truth. 

2. We will follow these ANTS backwards to discover our core schema. You do that by identifying the thought and asking yourself; “If that is true what does it say about me?” You then ask the same question to that answer. When you can’t come up with any more questions you are at the core. Let’s illustrate: 

• “My husband never listens to me.” Which says about you? 
• “My husband doesn’t value my opinion.” “Which says?” 
• “My husband doesn’t value me.” Which says? 
• “If he doesn’t value me he must not love me.” Which says? 
• “ I must be unloveable as a wife.”
• Core schema – “I am unloveable. It is not ok to be me because no one will love me. This schema is destructive and will fill you with shame. What will you do to cover this shame? 

3. My core schema and my ANTS will determine my behaviour. We can’t act in a way that is inconsistent with how we think and feel about ourselves. The first time we experience the shame of these negative schemas and ants we are usually little children. We will develop a defensive mechanism to protect ourselves from shame. 

There are many of them but as a child they will be based on acting out my behavior. That is all kids can do. It will protect us for a while but these defense mechanisms will not work in healthy adult relationships. This is why as adults we at times act like a child, because we feel the shame of the little child. We revert to our childhood defence mechanism. This will work against us having healthy adult relationships and achieving the full potential of our life. 

Why do these schemas, thoughts, and feelings have so much power in our life? 

Even when we are aware of the thoughts and feelings and realize they are not true – they are lies. We can’t seem to fully shake them. They continue to control our life and shape our decisions and result in unfavorable results. They are like goggles we wear that make it impossible to see anything positive we do. All we can see is the negative. I call these life results external evidence. As humans we all make mistakes and we all do some right things. But people with the negative goggles ( negative schemas and ANTS) only see the negative evidence never the positive, 

• They get a good report card that proves they aren’t dumb but can’t believe that.
• They get a good job review and raise; proof the boss is pleased with your performance and the value you add to the team. They still have imposter syndrome. 
• Several unrelated people pay you the same complement but you can’t accept it. 

All the good evidence is screened out and only the negative is accepted to confirm your negative self-bias. This becomes a negative self-perpetuating cycle. It is how people self-sabotage. “I don’t believe that person really likes me (Why would you? I don;t like myself.) so I’ll break up with them because I know they are planning on breaking up with me (ANT – mind reading). 

There are two reasons why these negative thoughts and feelings are embedded so deep in our unconscious mind and so hard to clear from our mind and soul. One is because of who put them there and two is how long they have been there. 

Who put them there? 

Your first attachment base or caretakers put them there. This is usually your parents. But it could have been another extended family member. In adolescents other friends or enemies add to this. These attachment figures keep you alive because as babies we are helpless. Also we see them as our

first God figures. Not only are they supplying my physical and emotional needs but I see them as perfect. Eventually we will discover they aren’t but by then our self-image is set. I will interpret the data they send me; how they talk to and treat me in either a positive or negative way. I will draw a positive or negative conclusion about myself based on my conclusion. 

As a child I will generally assign any negatives either theirs or mine to myself. They are the God figures and perfect so any problems must be my fault.These conclusions become the tapes I play and the goggles I wear. I haven’t figured out yet they aren’t perfect. Some things are their brokenness they grew up with and are passing on to me. 

How long have they been there? 

These tapes usually have been around for several years, maybe even a lifetime. They won’t change until I finally quit seeing my parents or caregiver as a God figure. I must see them as a normal person with good and bad parts and see myself as an adult in the same way. Now I can see my past accurately. I can accept my past, the good and the bad. This was the hand I was dealt, now as an adult what will I choose to do with it. 

What is not mine to own. What are lies about me that I will no longer accept as true. I refuse to be a victim and lose control of my future. I will choose to forgive those who have wronged or hurt me. I will learn from my past successes and failures. In being responsible for myself I will consider how to move my life forward from this place as a healthy, mature adult would. I no longer allow my past to define me or my future. This is my commitment to remove the old tapes and renovate my mind with new, true, and positive tapes. A renovated mind produces a new person who is able to discern the good, acceptable and perfect design of God for my life. 

How To Change the Tapes 

Here is a step by step process to change out the old tapes from your mind and soul and install the new positive, healthy ones. 

1. Accept the reality of your past. Don’t pretend the past didn’t happen or minimize it. You can’t change the past. You can’t pick your parents or your family. There is no question that some people have had a better family than others. This headstart can be a huge blessing and one less thing to overcome. Everything you experience in life 

impacts you in some way. But no matter how negative or traumatic it was, don’t allow it to define you. 

Accept no excuses no matter how rational they may appear. You are not your parents or anyone else.You are you, unique, one of a kind. You may have come from a long line of horse thieves but you don’t have to be a horse theif. You have been designed by God for his divine purpose, born at this time for such a time as this. You are not an accident or a mistake; God doesn’t make mistakes. You may share some genetic

material with others in your family but you are not doomed to become like them. You are not in competition with any other human. You are only in competition with your potential and the person God designed you to be. You were born with free-will and can choose the path your life will take. 

No one is self-made. We all need help in life and could use a teacher, a coach, a mentor, a therapist or spiritual instructor. People to guide our life, help us work through the wounds of our past, teach us life skills, train us in developing our abilities and the gifts God has placed in us. People who will believe in us, help open doors for us and instruct us on how to find these people for our life. 

2. Forgive those who have hurt you in any way. You are not a victim. If you are reading this it means you are a survivor, an overcomer. You have resiliency, the ability to bounce back from adversity. You have come through the war and are still alive. That makes you the winner. You are now ready to break the chains of past generational curses. 

You can start a new positive generational cycle. It can flow as a new path for generations. You can be a source of blessing for descendents you will never meet in your lifetime. You also may be privileged to see the blessing and goodness your life brings for three or four generations. 

You forgive others for your benifit because it sets you free. Forgiveness is the key to breaking the connection to the old generational cycles. You become what you focus on. If you don’t want to become like those who hurt you, you need to break the emotional bonds that keep you tied to those who harmed you. This is how you stop thinking about and focusing on them. 

You accept them for who they are or were. You accept that you couldn’t change them or get them to be what you always hoped they would be. You grieve any losses you suffered because of them. If they are still alive you learn to set healthy boundaries with them so they don’t continue to hurt you. You don’t justify any of their actions but now as an adult you realize that hurting people hurt people. 

3. Focus on becoming the person you want to be and God designed you to be. This starts by surrendering to God’s design for your life. Chances are you won’t know what it is when you surrender to it. You are trusting God is wiser than you. You believe whatever he has designed for you is superior to anything you have designed for yourself. 

Understand that once you surrender to his design it is God’s responsibility to enable you to discover that design. God is so powerful and interested in you that he will move heaven and earth to reveal his design to you.

4. Change the tapes – renew your mind. You must begin to think and feel more accurately about yourself than the previous lies you have believed – Romans 12. 1-2. 

• I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 

Verse one is the surrender part. Whatever the design is you will do it through your earthly body; so we start here. 

• Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. 

Verse two is how you renew your mind. Renew is a word that means to renovate. You have life experience in dealing with people who are conformed to this world. Their mind is not renewed but rather conformed to this world. These are selfish people who only think of their own pleasure. They act out of pride and self-will rather than what is good for others and pleases God. 

Your life is about to be transformed. This is a Greek word, metamorphosis. It is how we describe the caterpillar who goes into its cocoon and after a while emerges a beautiful butterfly. Your life is about to be transformed into something beautiful that will inspire and bless others. 

You are going to renew your mind, change your tapes. You will start to see yourself as God sees you. You will see the finished product God is turning you into. Once you see yourself correctly you will be capable of testing and discerning your thoughts as to what is the will of God or God’s design for your life. This design is good, acceptable and perfect. 

You will understand why you were put on this earth at this time. As you live your life on both a personal and professional level you will experience the joy from knowing this is what I was made to do. 

5. How to change the tapes. We said your current tapes were put inside you by other humans. We called them caregivers or attachment figures. They were your first God figures. They weren’t really gods but were supposed to represent God to you. However, because the best of us are flawed we don’t always do a good job of representing God. Through our words and actions we can plant wrong thoughts, feelings and ideas into young, impressionable minds about God and themselves. Some do more damage than others.

So to change these tapes we will bypass the humans (who were also programmed wrong) and go directly to the original source – God himself. We will get the truth from our heavenly Father. He will tell us from scripture how he truly thinks and feels about us. The process is this: 

• We identify our ANTS – the lies. In another blog I will give you a list of some common ANTS. 
• We use the ANTS to trace our thoughts back to our core schemas’. See 

number 2. On the first page of this article for my illustration of this. 

• Now we must replace these lies with truth from God. How he actually thinks and feels about me. In another blog I will give you a sample of some. 
• I must identify the lies as I am thinking them. Then take a true affirmation that God says about me and keep repeating it until it kills the lie and changes how I feel and behave.I keep practicing the reprogramming of my mind with truth. This will create new neurons and neural pathways in my brain. We call this neuroplascity. Eventually I will create a new positive default thought pattern. This will renew my mind and transform my life. 

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. 

This is a simple concept but it works. It is how the lies got there in the first place. You are now going to a higher source of truth, God, to overrule the lies. To experience success you must be intentional and consistent in practicing. You may have believed the lies and played the tapes for 30,40 or more years. It won’t take that long to change the tapes. Just practice 3-5 minutes a day and you will see results. 

Your self-image impacts many areas of your life. Your inner dialog or tapes set your self-image. These come out of our mind and the mind is something we can control. Your brain is very powerful. Learn to train and use it for good in your life