The Stone in your Shoe - You - 5 Ways How to Free Yourself

Have you ever walked along, enjoying the view or rushing off to a meeting, just to find a little stone in your shoe?

You start tapping your shoe, first on the toe, while you are in the momentum of moving forward. Then you start to break your gate so you can tap it on the sides. It is gone … you thought, nope it is back again. Again, to the side, then the toe. And when that does not work, let me try the heel. You bend the one knee and you tap the heel of your shoe to move the stone.

Eventually, this tiny stone now feels as big as a rock, and only then you stop to take it out.

And so it is with our lives. First, we ‘bump’ our ego and we do not stop to realise why we bumped it. We are too worried about tomorrow and what happened yesterday, that we just keep moving forward. We hardly realise that we have ‘received an early warning signal’ that there is something that triggers us and might become something big. Then we get side-lined, we do not reach our goal and by now we start feeling a certain level of depression. Eventually we bow the knee to the belief, and we become the servant of the belief. Now we believe that we are not good enough. Or that things will never work out for me. What about ‘nobody loves me’?

This will continue until the day we say: this is enough. I want my life back.

Certain events in our lives have taken us on a path because of the beliefs we have formed. Because of those beliefs, we get ourselves into situations that re-enforce the belief. It happens so gradually that most often we are not even aware that we have taken a belief onboard.

For example: As a young teenager you ‘fell in love’ with the popular boy in the school. You do everything possible to be noticed. He one day makes a ‘nasty’ comment - remember her is also young and his people skills are also still developing. But for you, it is embarrassing and humiliating. So, you snug off to the back of the room and you start questioning yourself. At the next event you are a little rattled and, you are a bit weary. Because you are over attentive to the one thing, let’s say you were told that you were perspiring too much (admittedly it was hot and you had come off from a hockey/netball game), so now you have put on any and every product you can find to ensure that you show no perspiration on your clothing. But in the process, you overkill on deodorant. So as life would have it someone makes a remark about the ‘cloud’ of deodorant that follows you and someone else says it is because you perspired too much. In the moment you say to yourself; see it is true - I perspire too much, and people can see and smell it. That story you start telling yourself is beginning to find some very fertile soil and it is rooting.

Our next step is to put limitations on ourselves. But we blame the outside world. We let go of our dreams and our calling, because we believe that we cannot do or achieve them. Life has pushed us around enough and we give “in”. We bow our knee to the believe.

But all along we tap ourselves on the “toe” and it is gone for a while. Then we tap ourselves on the “side” and sometimes the emotions disappear for a short while, sometimes longer. Eventually we are angry at life, we live in stress, and we are unhappy. We stop dreaming and planning, why would we, nothing works out for us?

All the time, stress and resentment are growing. Anxiety sets in and then comes depression.

So we hand our lives over to the outside world. We accept the belief we formed as a 3-year-old, as a 12-year-old, or even as a 35-year-old.

This belief with its own soundtrack is now running 24/7. We start to tell ourselves we are not good enough. We do not deserve certain achievements. We cannot do certain tasks. But we will do nothing about this, apart from the odd talk to a friend to gain some support or to go out and buy a new dress or car, until it “hurts” enough for us to stop and remove the belief.

The truth: You have the power of every second of every day to make that change. There is nothing wrong with you - you do not have a mental illness. We all, every human on this planet, has or had, certain beliefs that stopped them from achieving their goal. The only difference - successful people made the choice to change long time ago.

How long will you walk with that stone in your shoe, before you stop, bend down and take it out? Take it out forever?

Easier said than done, you say.

Not really. Here are a few steps to get you going:

1. Acknowledge the belief. Until you stop and hear that little voice in your head, that tells you: you are not good enough, you are not deserving - until that day, nothing will change. The moment you hear that little voice - loud and clear - for what it is, only a limiting belief, you will believe, that is what you have been dealt and that is who you are to be in this life.

You are so much more than the limiting and self-sabotaging beliefs you create for yourself.

2. Decide it is time. How desperate are you to stop the pattern? Or do you want to keep on “tapping”? The choice remains yours. No person on this Earth can force you to make the change. Because there is some form of payoff with this belief, negative or positive, you have become addicted to your belief and the emotions that go with it. Until you decide that you are now ready to take the stone out of your shoe, it will remain and slowly grow.

Make it your priority today, find the help you need to rediscover your motivation and “direction”. Decide today.

3. Take Responsibility. As I said above, decide to stop the pattern today - it is about taking responsibility. Life does not happen to you - life happens, and you decide how you are going to react. Look at your patterns, listen to the recurring voice in your head - what does it say to make you stop living your best life? Take responsibility for your actions and beliefs. You cannot change “something” if you cannot see that it needs changing. You have to own it to change it, why would you want to change it otherwise?

We are all seeking freedom, and your freedom lies in your taking responsibility.

4. Don’t worry about the Outside World. Does the “world at large” pay for your house, car, food, clothing, holidays? Does the ‘Jones’’ help you recover the time you deny your family or your passion? When you live a life where you always measure yourself by other people, you will always live in lack. Invest - time and money - in that, which is important to you. This is your life - do not allow yourself to be judged by the “measure of lack” to comply to the World Expectations. If you do, you will always “nearly make it”. The stone will stay, you will tap, and the stone will “grow” into a rock.

You are a beautiful, unique, and loving person. You have your own unique spot to fill here on Earth.

5. Know Yourself. One of the great causes of anxiety, is the fact that we are denying our dreams and callings. Know what you want in life. Know what is important in your life and the level of importance. It does not help you force yourself to enjoy sport when your soul is fed by theater. Know who you are, what you like, how much time you are prepared to spend and what monetary value you are prepared to offer to have it. Everything comes at a cost: family, time for self, peace, happiness, the love we have within to share, to name but a few. Are you prepared to spend the “cost” on something that is not truly you?

It is only through self-knowledge that you can start to focus on where you want to go. You are special, know yourself.

All the power lies within you to make the change.

When will your stone be big enough for you to do something about it?

Sue Leppan

Transformation Life Coach

NLP Practitioner

Qualified Energy Codes® Facilitator

Qualified BEST® Practitioner