Feeling Like a Fraud

Listen to that voice within you that says
"Yes, I Can and I will."

Recently, one of my students shared this message:

”I feel like there is a whole part of me that I just can't access.  I go through the motions (and the emotions) but there is always a chasm I'm not getting over, or a wall I'm not getting through. I can physically feel this border between who I am and who I'm capable of being.

Strangely, when I step into working with a client, a part of me says "What the heck am I going to do for the next 75 minutes?" But then I connect, I ask Spirit for guidance, and healing happens! I'm just guided and I realize I am a vessel for this.  But why can I open up and accept for others, yet not accept this healing or enlightenment for myself? There is so much that resonates with me, that there is an awareness of, or a knowing. But I block it.”

Can you Relate to This?

I know that for the longest time, there was a part of me that felt deeply conflicted. I loved performing and thrived on it. I loved singing for an audience and lighting up the room. But before I walked on stage, I would go through waves of anxiety, worried about what would come out when I opened up my mouth. Worried that maybe nothing would come out when I opened up my mouth! Later, when I first began playing bowls for clients in private sessions or doing group sound experiences, I was afraid I had nothing to offer anyone. I was exactly like my student, wondering: What the heck am I going to do for the next 75 minutes?" And just like her, despite all the self-doubt, I would close my eyes, tune in and let Spirit do its thing. Afterwards, people would tell me about their extraordinary experiences and shower me with appreciation. Despite these assurances, I continued to harbor a niggling feeling within that I was really a fraud.

Too many of us accept the mantle of “I’m not good enough” from the voices in our head.

Unproductive thoughts and words keep us chained to self-doubt and hesitancy. Sometimes for years. They are often echoes of the voices of our parents or teachers or remnants of unprocessed emotions we’ve experienced. When we hold onto them and accept them as true, those words or reactions begin looping, over and over, in our mind. We become used to the loop playing and hearing the voices, feeling the emotions. They becomes part of us. We take them as a given. As fact. Once the old voices and feelings are locked in, they crystallize into beliefs through consistent conscious and unconscious reinforcement. All those beliefs hang out together in our heads like old ghosts stuck in the bardo that refuse to move on into the light and a new life.

After years of coddling and making excuses for my ghosts of self-doubt, inadequacy and “not enough”, I finally figured out that NIKE was right all along.

YOU JUST DO IT.

At a certain point, you simply have to stop paying attention to those voices. You know they’re there. You’ve had the therapy, you’ve taken the courses and the workshops. You’ve done the self-reflection. You’ve processed the pain and the angst and the tears and there’s nothing left but that tired old story, grinding itself out again and again and again.

So what do you do now?

You paint. You sing. You write or you research. You take the job. You follow the path unfolding in front of you. You hear your resistance muttering in the background and you keep going anyway. You take all the tiny steps that walk you smack dab into your fear and you keep going until you’re out the other side. It’s step by step by step by step. Day after day, one day at a time. The voice that says you can’t keeps nattering away and after awhile you get really, really skilled and practiced at withdrawing your attention from it because you’re way too busy focusing someplace else. You focus on the music. You focus on receiving the energy from your Team in the etheric realms. You focus on what you’re doing and allow yourself to become fully absorbed in it. Sometimes you focus on improving your skills so you increase your confidence. If you can’t think of anything else, you focus on your breath. At some point along the line, you look up in astonishment and say to yourself, “wow, that was really cool!” And then you keep going. Again. Rinse and repeat, until that voice gets softer and softer.

(Here’s something you can do right now. Write this on a sticky note and post it where you can see it to remind yourself to be True To You. Three simple words: JUST DO IT. And see what happens.)

I think self-doubt and resistance go hand-in-hand, like a matched pair of gloves. Eventually, you just gotta take them off, wiggle your fingers and get your hands good and dirty. It really is that simple. Mind you, I did not say it is easy. You just do it.

“If you hear a voice within you say, ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

~ Vincent Van Gogh

I love this quote from Vincent Van Gogh. I love that he said this because you know he was talking about himself. This magnificent artist, who created astonishingly sensuous worlds with color, texture and depth of feeling, struggled deeply with self-doubt. So much so that he ended his life because he was so lost in his own pain.

We don’t have to torture ourselves with self-doubt and resistance. Despite what it may look like in the news, our collective consciousness is at a whole new level now than when Vincent was alive. We are brighter. We have fantastic tools, guides and mentors to support us, far beyond what was available a generation ago. We understand frequency and vibration and we have a myriad of directions we can follow to be creative, expansive and express ourselves in divinely inspired ways.

So the next time that ancient ghost of a voice wheezes those musty old words in your ear, say “thanks for sharing,” pick up your paintbrush and get to work. You know, just do it.

Here’s to your glorious expansive self …

~ Ashana

Use this link to experience music created to help you tap into your soul and the voice of your heart’s desire. Sit back, relax and discover sounds that will guide you home to your own luminous light. Or if you’re ready to take your creativity to the next level, consider 1:1 mentoring with Ashana in the Crystal Bowl Mastery™ program. I work with sound healers, musicians, artists, singers, healing practitioners, yoga teachers and anyone ready to step into their personal transformation with healing sound. Let me help you go boldly where you’ve always wanted to go. Email me here and let’s chat about it.