I know that there’s a better connection inside.

Besides focusing on abundance, I’m using intuition to connect to my own voice, and what feels right. I was ready to set an intention and prime my brain. Below are words that I recorded and listened to twice a day, for 67 days, to build new beliefs about myself and generate true confidence from within. Beliefs I knew to be true, based on facts about myself: no tricks, just stuff I could not refute.

This was my first “Brain Prime”: a task I completed following a Live neurocoaching session run by Joy Foster of TechPixies.

Reframing those ants (Automatic Negative Thoughts)

Up until now I’ve lived a life by default. Now I’m choosing to live by design.

• I’m a success because I learned to drive, gained IAM certification in advanced motorcycling, qualified to RIBA Part II level in Architecture, and left school with an I.B. certificate of 90% including a +2 distinction for writing about madness in literature using Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
• I’m fine because I worked at a day centre for people with severe and enduring mental health problems and found my sense of humour.
• I’m reliable because I alone, kept website banner messaging updated for 65 stakeholder markets during the 2020 pandemic for a global tech company while working from home.
• I know what I want because I chose to work at a day centre for people with severe and enduring mental health problems, where I managed the art room, and invented activities that included a piece of communal art. I know what I want, because I learned how to meditate, accept adversity, manage stress and listen properly. I led a weekly anxiety group, saved a dead plant, and bought gardening items to encourage mindfulness and confidence for members.
• I’m clear because I came up with the latest TR Christmas card, and spotted next year’s theme: apathy. I’m clear because of the German story I poured into my final exam. I’m clear because of my sugar-paper bulldog collage, and my pixelated La painting. I’m clear because of my three-dimensional New York skyline, viewed from the inside of a car. I’m clear because of my batik reveal of a flower.
• I have space because I take time out to do The Wake Up, meditate, journal, and avoid blue screens before bed. I have space to practice my Hoponopono prayer that heals my mind, body and soul – to receive rest and refuel my energy levels that give me space the next day.
• I can breathe because I once set up a coastal celebration with a bunch of London friends, lured to Whitstable beach by a mysterious shark invite. I can breathe because we now have our kitten Oscar, thanks to my persuasion.
• I’m efficient because I was one of four who built the responsive web pages that launched a new £50million hair dryer product across 46 countries localised to 30 languages, on the 27th of April 2016. I’m efficient because I was the only woman on that team and nabbed the post on the back of a fifteen minute phone call.
• I’m amazing because I challenged a French conversation at the next table while on holiday that got my family feeling all emotional and special, thanks to my translating it for them in real time. I’m amazing because when I was sixteen, I painted a desert scene on a classroom wall during lunch in front of my peers. I’m amazing because I jumped in to play Scrooge’s nephew in my final year after the main actor dropped out, and overheard someone say afterwards that my part was their favourite.
• I’m organised because I plan, shop, prep, and cook one evening meal five times a week, with the ultimate goal of reducing food waste in our family.
• I’m brave because I took care of my nine year old sister on an unaccompanied flight to visit my grandparents one summer when I was twelve. I’m brave because took an eleven hour non-direct route from Vienna to tiny old Bingen when I was just sixteen, and figured out when to get off. I’m brave because I rode pillion around Scandinavia in 1998 for four weeks, reaching around to take daring roads’ eye view photos with an SLR.
• I’m funny because I thought up the Blitzen-sneeze gag on this year’s TR Christmas card. I’m funny because I set my cute little unfinished amigurumi unicorn to an inappropriately heavy beat on Instagram. I’m funny because I wrote ‘etcetera’ and ‘utilise’ on the kitchen chalkboard to amuse my husband with buzzword bingo while he Zoom-called the new company. I’m funny because I once ate and strategically spat out an entire chocolate bunny into the toilet bowl of my student house, to scare the first person to wake up that Easter morning, in an effort to do something random and unexpected.
• I am enough because I’m alive. I’m enough because life chose me.

Take stock, reframe, reset

What happens when you stop? Do nothing for an hour: in total silence. Do you wonder about your identity? Notice what unfolds when you let your inner voice pipe up.

ANT task 🐜 🐜 🐜

1. Write down any automatic negative thoughts (🐜 🐜 🐜) that come up. Spend time writing them all down until you’ve got most down on paper or a digital notepad, out of your head. Ants make up that little voice beating yourself up and putting yourself down, when you think you are no good, can’t do something, etcetera.
2. Spend some time reframing each one. Reverse it to think of an opposite situation when that was not the case. Limiting beliefs are never fixed absolutes, even though we may treat them like that in our minds’ eye. We can usually think back to a moment or event where we know that opposite was true. We just need to recall those events. For example, if one of the ‘ants’ is “I’m terrible at finances.” Think of a time when you maybe waitered all summer, saving up your tips and were able to buy a state-of-the-art camera with the money, and even budget for the taxi ride home after a busy shift and not lose out.
3. These remembered facts that refute the ants our undeniable tangible proof that the limiting brief belief isn’t true!