Is there lurking at the door of your mind wanting to snatch you away from anything that is good.

“Don’t become a victim of yourself. Forget about the thief waiting in the alley; what about the thief in your mind?” — Jim Rohn

We’re bad at catching this thief

We live our lives alongside this thief — whose sole mission is catching up with us and make us less than who we really are. We eat. We work. We sleep. All the while — this thief is right there alongside us like a shadow that never leaves our side.

How ‘this thief’ looks like

Here are a few ideas:

· The things you tell yourself. Every time you hear yourself say you can’t do that, you don’t have that, you are not good enough, you are sabotaging yourself. What we tell to ourselves hurt us more than any other thing and it creates an invisible barrier that makes us a willing prisoner in our own minds.

· Your tendency to envision the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario does not prepare us. It makes us fearful.

· Thoughts that hurt us. I like to see a movie where the hero conquers all his struggles and comes out to the other side a winner and a much stronger person. I see him thinking thoughts that are building his confidence and makes him a winner yet in real life I forget that my thoughts are what is making me do things or not do them.

· Worry, anxiety, and guilt. All these emotions are useless and make us unproductive and are circular. And yet we have allowed these things VIP access inside us and they are feeding the thief inside our mind with every necessary nutrition that it needs.

· Lying to yourself. I lie to myself when I make myself believe that I am happy in a relationship when in fact I am not. I lie because the lie makes me feel safe. And I don’t observe that I am giving ammunition to the thief in my mind.

· Remaining friends with people you no longer like. You have stopped liking being with these so-called friends and yet you hang out with them because the invisible thief is convincing you that you don’t deserve good ones.

· Pretending to be someone you are not. The thief is busy making you into a person of this or that personality. Every other personality is touched and being tested for your sake or it seems — except the one thing that matters. You. Your unique personality.

· Getting in a relationship with someone for the sake of others. You don’t want to be in a relationship and yet you are in one — because there is a voice that whispers to you at night and talks to you in the day time that what you want does not matter and you have got to trade it for what others want from you. This thief in the form of that persistent inner voice is relentless and won’t leave you alone. So you give in.

There is no progress when there is a thief inside

“There is a thief inside you,” A friend from out of the city told me a while ago. And I was flabbergasted and said ‘What?’ 

He pointed out the reasons to my face.

You say you want to have an international audience for your blog. But you don’t think you can have it. What is stopping you? (For context: I have asked him for advice on how to increase my Email list subscribers for my blog)

He told me in plain English words how my thoughts are my enemies because I am saying repeatedly ‘I don’t think I can do this’ and my belief that I am never going to have an international audience that reads my content.

I got this advice about 6 months ago from the dear friend and it was like a wake-up call. I felt something unclenching from my heart.

I promised myself then and there that I would punch this thief on the face that is standing in my way every time I see it daring me to take the road that leads to my downfall.

Since then, I have gotten what I wanted — through relentless work and also not listening to the voice that lulls me into thinking and believing that I can’t possibly achieve what I want.

How to catch this thief

· Become self-aware.

· Be conscious of your inner talk. Here are hints: Are you judging yourself? Are your thoughts full of complaints? Are you talking to yourself in a manner that is destructive to you?

· Be conscious of your emotions. How do you feel? Take a moment to track your emotions in your body. Perhaps you have this sick feeling in your tummy because your self-talk has immediately affected your body.

· Change your thinking or change the way you think about something. Imagine you are in a room where there is only one window and you have not looked at it. You have only been looking at the walls surrounding you and you feel suffocated. Where is the light? If your self-talk has been negative so far you will feel something inside you lose its hold on you when you start changing your thoughts and the way you talk to yourself. It is like looking at the window. There is something beautiful out there and you have just started looking at it.

· Create a routine. To make the change permanent you have to make it into a routine. Otherwise, it will be like a house made on the sand. It will be washed away by rain or the storm.

Stop allowing this thief access to your mind

As prince EA so eloquently said,

“There is a thief in your mind, who is after your dreams. His name is doubt. If you see him, call the cops, for he is wanted for murder and has killed more dreams than failure ever did. You cannot go back and create a new beginning, but you can start now and make a brand new ending.”

To your inspirations,

Banchi