Everybody’s

I have a quite a few conversations recently with my clients about the concept of “everybody”. The ‘everybody’ I am talking about is the ‘everybody’ that is in our mind that acts as our internal censor.

The
“What will everybody think is if change my job again?”
“What will everybody say if I stop going to weight-watchers?”
“What will everybody do if I don’t fall in and do what they all want?”

Somewhere along the line we have empowered this everybody panel and they stand in judgement of us, censoring our thoughts, actions and decisions. We need their approval before we will do anything. Most often this is completely subconscious, we don’t consciously hand over our power, but it is what happens.

Once we start to become aware of our ‘everybody’ we can then start to make some changes. Take a moment, who is in your ‘everybody’ panel? Whose approval are you always trying to gain? Who is the person or people in your life that you feel most judged by? Now these people may or may not actually judge you, sometimes we can just think they do. But the main point is whether they do or not you are the one who can change this.

You can fire them from your ‘everybody’ panel. You can decide that you no longer need them to be your approval group. You can decide to take back your power and stand up, responsible for your world. One of my clients realised that he didn’t even have real people in his panel; it was simply ‘the world’. Once he saw this he could also see how it had no foundation, and could start to reclaim his decisions. Becoming aware of this pattern in your life is the first step to change.

If you truly wish to step out from under your ‘everybody’s’, start with the small stuff. Begin with a situation where it doesn’t feel like life and death, but more like testing the water. I realised when I first started living from my heart rather than letting ‘them’ make my decisions, that most often it was fine. If I truly spoke up and said what I wanted to do and owned the decision a lot of people in my ‘everybody’ panel, who I thought would disapprove, actually got it and said – ‘we only want you to be happy’. It was a revelation.

So who are you empowering, who's in your 'everybody' panel? Do you want them there? Or is today the day you start the process of change? Why not make today the day you put only your unconditional cheerleader up there – YOU.