How To Overcome Your Inner Gollum

How do you stay on track with Big Thinking? For starters, it means staring down your inner gollum or gremlin. At least that's what went down with me this past week. Gollum, gremlin, boogie-man, nay-sayer--any of these names can represent that voice or persona inside you that keeps you from being or doing what you dream of when you dare to think big.

I, for one, have a gollum girl. I met her one night in a dream. In this dream I was given an unreal fantastic opportunity to do something. But before I went off with the initiator of this opportunity, my Gollum Girl was crouched down in the corner showing me her fangs and hissing out a "Don't Even Think About It."

My G.G. gets her name from the second Lord of the Rings movie. My favorite part of the movie is when gollum and his better self Sméagol have a little back-and-forth interior battle that goes something like this: "Master goooood, master goooood; no master baaaaad, master baaaAAAd!" Do I even need to explain how just right-on this is, in capturing that inner nay-saying boogie-man?

So, this past week I got to face my gollum*! Hooray for opportunities. (That's the voice of my Stupid, Positive Self--and that negative adjective was the voice of my gollum self.) See how sneaky?

*Truth is, my gollum shows up every day at some point. Pest. So. I had a lot of Gollum Girl visitations this week--a settling in of that rhapsodic voice whispering many seductive versions of "no."

Versions of No sound like this: "Uh-oh, what have you got yourself into?" "I'll never make a living again." "It's too late, I'm doomed to failure!" "You'll never Make It." "Give that dream up, it's unrealistic." "Here you are again, out of work, a student, all aloooone in the world."

In the Gollum vs. Smeagol face-off Voices of No went like this: "Master's our friend." "You don't have any friends, nobody likes you." Here's a little scene of how the good Smeagol fights off his Gollum.*

*I have to say straight up I am not a big Lord of Rings fan but a big fan of this aspect of the story. And the fact I have to note this shows my gollum is present whispering, you better cover your ass girl!

So, it's been a week with all that gollum bullshit.

So what do you do when your gollum or gremlin shows up overtime?

"Master bad," your gollum may whispering--to you, about you.

Ruh-roh, trouble incoming. Photo courtesy Gage Skidmore.

And you may fight back with a mild, "No, Master gooooood. Has lots of friendses."

"Master good!" he insists.

Stop it right now. Don't feed the gollum beast. Don't engage, don't enter conversation and if you do keep it short. As short as possible.

Next, just see how unwise this creature looks. If you were to conjure up a face or a physical identity for your gollum/gremlin voice what would it look like? I bet it's not the kind of person or thing you'd approach in the grocery store to ask about picking out the perfectly ripe mellon. No, you'd probably just notice it and move on.

Thinking big could be moving past the gollum/gremlin voices by facing them down. Shine a light of recognition on a gollum when it shows up that says, "You are so busted. Now go to your room!" Then move on. Quickly, the same way you'd move past the crazy lady talking to herself in the grocery store.

And start putting your whole attention on what you really really really want as crazy as you may think it is. And if you find yourself thinking it's "crazy" that may be a bit of "master bad" creeping in there.

What else is a gremlin/gollum-busting version of THINKING BIG?

Here's something that tells us just how uncool it is to be self-deprecating and small-acting. Much wiser than anything I can offer. It's my Marianne Williamson.

Read on and enjoy living in your Big Thinking today:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory that is within us. As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people the permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Written by Marianne Williamson, and read by Nelson Mandela in his 1994 Inaugural Speech.

For a fun read on Gremlins, and taming them check out this book.