How Your Inner Game Can Sabotage Your Success

When we want to create more success most of us focus on our outer game, rather than our inner game. In reality success is a combination of both.

It is easy to ignore the inner game and focus on creating compelling mission statements, setting goals, marketing or taking massive action. What do you do when you have done everything right and you are still not as successful as you wish to be?

Read on to learn the importance of your inner game. Understanding your inner game can be the missing key to success in every area of your life.

What is your inner game?

Your inner game is made up of your relationship to the world and your relationship to your self. We normally think of these relationships as personality and identity. Your beliefs are a big part of your inner game.

We think our inner game is deeply hidden and hard to find. I want to give you a different way to find your inner game.

How to discover your inner game

Think about your life for a moment. What is working? Where do you struggle? Are you living up to your potential?

Your life is an outward expression of your inner game.

For example, if your inner game tells you to play small, it will be difficult for you to take your business or career to the next level. If your inner game tells you to always be safe, it will be difficult to be innovative or start the business of your dreams.

Your inner game can affect relationships. If your inner game tells you that you are not lovable or not good enough, you may settle for less than you deserve.

Where did you get your inner game?

When we grow up we learn what kind of person we are. Our family and life circumstances set the stage to create our personality, identity and beliefs.

A few examples may help. If you grew up in a family that had a lot of money problems, you may learn the belief that it is hard to make money. If you were ignored you may struggle to feel good enough to have a spectacular life.

These childhood messages become a part of who we are. This is not our true self but a mask self. This mask self keeps us from knowing how wonderful we really are.

What can we do?

The first step is recognizing that our negative self perceptions and beliefs were learned in childhood and are not true. Take a deep breath. All of those negative beliefs – we are not good enough, we are unlovable, we can’t be a success – are false.

By examining your life you can begin to discover what is holding you back. Is it negative beliefs, a false personality or a mask identity? Do you have dreams of a wonderful life and you don’t know how to get there?

Once you have identified your blocks, you can release them with the poetry of emotion process. Instead of working through painful childhood memories, you will be working with emotional memories. Emotional memories come from the part of your brain that dreams each night. These memories are a lot like your dreams. They are symbolic, metaphorical, or use imagery and stories.

Once you have released inner blocks, your outer game will become so much more effective.

(Image: tian yake @ Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/tianyake/4862210792/)