Day in and day out I see- from my vantage point – wonderful, creative, talented, beautiful, skilled clients of all shapes, sizes, origins and walks of life unwittingly claiming “ownership” to every thought transpiring in their mind. To assume that if you are having a thought that it is “your” thought is the ultimate hubris of the mind. It is the most common – and undermining – erroneous assumption we make about the thought process. This ownership of “my” thoughts about things is what impedes the experiential progress individual’s so desperately desire to make in their lives.

In truth, you experience (witness) the thoughts occurring in “your” mind but you do not necessarily give birth to the nature of their content. The assumption that “my” negative thoughts about my sense of insecurity, doubt, fear, criticism, inabilities, so-called shortcomings, are “holding me back from greater fulfillment” – is only half right. The negative thoughts (perceptions) are not holding you back it is the unconscious ownership of them you insist on claiming that holds you back! The brain absorbs ideas (thoughts) from both internal “cues” and external ones. Internal cues, such as interpreting hunger as a sign to eat or external cues from external negative experiences of which the negativity is internalized.

One client I work with, we will call her ‘Sue’ – has made tremendous strides in self-confidence and self-esteem through our therapeutic hypnosis work however she becomes frustrated when the same, familiar refrain of doubt about her purpose arises whenever she begins to get traction on her focus and follow-through. Sue’s self-doubt is like a broken record playing in her mind (oh, for you ‘young folks’ reading – a long, long, long time ago in ancient history there used to be this machine with a needle that would detect and amplify sound from a little plastic round disc called a record – a recorded account of  played music – if there was a scratch on the round plastic disc it would cause the needle to get stuck in the grove of the scratch and repeat over and over the recorded expression at the point of the scratch – got it?) [I tease because I love – haha!]  Anyway – Sue would get distracted from her resolve and focus because the familiar refrain of doubt would be triggered by sometimes the slightest hint of un-sureness in her creative pursuit. The self-doubt thoughts triggered – like an old familiar acquaintance- would consume her interest out of concern that if she is “having” these self-doubt thoughts they must be a reflection of “her” self-doubt, this erroneous assumption would then throw her into a familiar tail-spin of anxious insecurity.

I have often said that because one heals from debilitating alignments with negative experiences doesn’t mean they get a lobotomy along the way! (See my book, “Confessions of a Therapists”, page 86). In other words you will always “recall” the alignment you once had with the consequences of negative experiences however that does not mean the issues are still active within you. It just means you recall them. This “ownership” of negative thinking is what keeps those thoughts cycling as part of your mind’s rhetoric of thinking.  Again, ownership occurs when you erroneously perceive that if you are having a thought it must necessarily be “yours” simply because it is occurring in your head.

In truth, any negative thoughts occurring in your head are not “yours” (do not originate from you) by virtue of the fact you have no inherent desire, or motivation to experience a thought that would cause detrimental feelings or behaviors (as a biological organism you instinctively recoil from any stimuli that would cause pain.) To recognize that negative thoughts by their very nature must not originate from “you” is to empower yourself to disengage from the credence you give those thoughts and thereby neutralize the negative strength of them that causes constricting and debilitating consequences in your experience.  Most of the fear, doubt, insecurity, and feelings of abandonment experienced are sustained by the very erroneous context of “my” being attached to those undermining thoughts and ideas.  You cannot let go of anything while simultaneously attempting to maintain ownership! This is the simple, yet, profound realization that can end the unwitting victimization of negativity your brain absorbs. By “disowning” the proprietary claim you have on all negative thoughts occurring in your head you dismantle the self-imposed narrative of inability about yourself. (I am frequently correcting clients in session when they unconsciously use “my” in explaining a dilemma – ‘my’ issue, ‘my’ problem, ‘my’ negative thoughts, etc., admonishing them to use the word “the” instead of “my” – ‘the’ negative thought, ‘the’ problem, ‘the’ issue, etc. – not as a matter of semantics; but as a potent way to begin the disengagement process of ownership of negativity.) From this context you are not in denial of constricting dynamics, but rather, you are profoundly putting them in emancipating perspective.

To be clear, disowning negative thought is not the same as ignoring them (to wit: you can ignore your pet, however you still subjectively know you “own” the pet). To disown negative thought is an act of realizing that as they occur they are not “yours” and therefore you do not give the credence of relevance and importance to them that would unconsciously validate them as reflection of your identity.

The freeing emancipation of no longer identifying with the negative rhetoric the mind rebroadcast in your head is to have access to energy that can now be invested in remaining focused and on track in strengthening undaunted self-esteem and progress.

You are not what has happened to you; you are the means of using your experience to transcend it. Be the real you: full of the capacity to soar into the stratosphere of your unlimited viability and possibility.