Are You Ready to Quit Your Doom Loop?

For as long as I can recall, I’ve allowed self-doubt to hold me back from opening up to all the possibilities for my life.   I confused proving myself, as a way of feeling like I was pushing past  self-doubt, with actually confronting my fears.  In truth, I was often just working very very hard to push self-doubt away. (see “Are You Ready to Quit Your Doom Loop” )

Resistance is subtle. It’s about control. Proving ourselves is still very much about maintaining a sense of control. As long as I stayed in that mode stepping into all of whom I was here to be was going to be difficult.

I had become so good at resisting, that my mind often went into “auto-pilot” mode .  Rather  than actually opening myself up to new experiences, I was playing it safe.  So, resisting became a habit. A harmful habit.

Resistance keeps us playing life from the standpoint of fear. As a result, we end up playing not to lose, not playing to win.

Resistance blocks us from stepping into our own power and value. We become very attached to it, like a warm blanket on a cold day.

The problem is that as long as we are in resistance, we remain disconnected from our voice and our essence.

During the retreat, my particular brand of resistance was given the name the “Doom Loop.” At the time, it caused me to wince because of the realization of how much self-harm I had done by jumping on the Doom Loop.  Had I really done all this work on myself to still have a Doom Loop in place? 

The name reflected my propensity for staying stuck in my head and assuming the worst possible outcomes so I wouldn’t be disappointed.  (see this BLOG post) It was a form of self-protection that kept me stuck in limbo.

The truth is we all have some version of a Doom Loop going. Recognizing it is the key to our liberation.

Resistance takes on different forms for each of us including, illusions about the truth of ourselves or others, outdated belief systems & understandings or unconscious patterns of programming that keep us stuck. 

The reason I climbed the mountain on my birthday was to remind myself how much mental resistance to playing bigger I had managed to overcome. With each “false plateau” we summited, and each steep ascent we traversed, I was saying goodbye to my old ways of thinking that had held me back.

By quitting the Doom Loop, I’m finally open to receiving my Second Chance (See this blog post and this post ) by letting go of the hold of disappointments from the past.  

I still see the Doom Loop, very clearly in front of me. But its hold is lessening.

The key to releasing resistance is developing awareness about how and where it resides within you.  The second step is developing the willingness to let it go and step into the unknown. For most of us that means letting go of the past and having faith in the future, or at least mustering as much enthusiasm as we can. (see this post)