Gremlins

Image taken from gizmo

There is indeed a Gremlin in your head and he's out to make you miserable. Left to do his thing, he'll zap your health, foul up your relationships, ruin your disposition, dampen your creativity, hamper your productivity, drive you into low-down funks and wind you up into fits of anxiety.

How to Tame Your Gremlin

• Breathe! Your breathing is both a barometer and a regulator of your level of contentment.
• Remember that feeling good is primarily an inside job. Events occur around you. Your experience of those events occurs within the boundary defined by your skin.
• Simply Notice. Notice your thoughts, feelings, fantasies, memories and assumptions and notice that these are all different processes.
• Relax your pact to keep your act intact. In the words of Terry Allen, "Your ego may not be your amigo."
• Worry is a cerebral house of mirrors into which your gremlin ushers you. Worry and constructive thought are different processes. Worry is fraught with anguish, feels lousy and results in shallow breathing. Constructive thought involves knowing where you want to be, and taking the steps to get there.
• Your past is not attached to you. You may be holding onto it. But it is not holding on to you.
• A belief is just an opinion to which you've developed loyalty. Notice your opinions.

Excerpts from Taming Your Gremlin