We have great wisdom within us. This wisdom has many names, for now, let’s call it “the sage”. The sage lies in the more evolved parts of our brain… the middle prefrontal cortex, the empathy circuitry, and parts of the right brain. The sage motivates you through positive emotions like happiness, empathy, curiosity, gratitude, creativity, rapture, and passion. The sage has intuition and reads energy. The progress made by the sage part of your brain will bring you positive emotions when you succeed like feeling proud, accomplished, fulfilled and content. Also the success will be more sustained.
The problem we face is that often our brain doesn’t trust this wisdom. We are more used to listening to the negative little voice in our heads. That little voice filters everything through our memories (past constructs = not reality) and our ingrained “saboteurs”, “inner critic”, “automatic negative thoughts” or “inner voice”, which is more interested in surviving, not thriving. When I work with clients on this topic it turns out they are very familiar with this negative voice and trust it more than they trust the sage. The saboteur voice is well ingrained and practiced many, many times, we even look for evidence to support it. The saboteur voice is not evil, it just wants to protect you from making mistakes or being harmed, however it is often misguided and working on over-drive.
If you want to access your sage more often try this:
- Listen to your inner dialogue: if you notice your “saboteur voice”, acknowledge it, thank it for protecting you
- Then take command, do a mini mindfulness exercise
- Tap into your wise sage. Ask this part of you what is right and what you should do.
So I urge you to tap into your sage more often, listen to the wisdom from within and learn to trust it.