We are constantly engaged in conversations, whether silent, or spoken out loud. The success of those conversations often determines whether we get what we want out of life. Unfortunately, many times we are unknowingly blocked from our own motivations, desires and goals when we speak. In other words, someone else’s programming comes out of our mouths.
Have you ever asked yourself, “Why can’t they just say what they mean?” Or for that matter, “Why can’t I just say what I mean?”
The answer is, “YOU’RE BLOCKED.” By blocked, I mean stuck in habits, patterns or routines you would like to change. These can even be subconscious thoughts and emotions that sabotage you.
Let me give you an example of an ultimate block that almost shut down my life. In 1985, I owned a multi-million dollar advertising agency that pioneered brand advertising in the health care industry. I had produced and directed over 3,000 TV commercials and was a hopeless workaholic.
Nothing else in my life was working except work. Suddenly, I couldn’t feel my body from my waist to my toes and I began losing my central vision. After 6 months of tests, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and told I’d spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. Doctors suggested that I sell my agency.
Instead, I went on a search for the thoughts and emotions that were blocking my healing – in fact, they were aggravating my physical symptoms. As I found the blocks, one by one my symptoms disappeared. I have now been symptom-free since 1990.
You, too, can make the decision to break free of the blocks in your life that are not only frustrating and self-defeating, but may also be life-threatening.
Here’s a four-step process I created to block-bust my way back to health, financial success and life fulfillment. Like my private and business clients, you can use it to find your own truth and make the conversations in your life help you reach your goals.
The first step is to Change any part of the script of your life that’s not working for you – in 2 steps:
1) Discover where your thoughts and emotions come from and to whom they belong. An attorney client was carrying not only his dad’s anger, but also his insistence that he stay in a business he hated. A fashion designer client carried her mother’s lack of confidence. Her business soared when she stepped into her own sense of self.
2) Change outdated, inherited or absorbed patterns of acting and reacting that don’t express who you are.
One interesting exercise is to try to identify self-sabotaging voices in your head such as:
“They have more experience than I do.”
“No one ever listens to me.”
“There is just not enough time...money...luck…”
“I’m too old, too young, too thin, too fat, too tall…”
Once you have identified your own saboteur voices -- speak their words out loud with the emotion they make you feel. Then try to identify where that voice came from or who taught you to think that way. Once you know it’s someone else’s thinking, you can let it go.
The second step is to confront and conquer the “villains” in your life. When you find patterns in your life you’d like to change, it helps to put a name and face to them. Here are the seven communication and success villains:
- The Saboteur is a chain complainer planting doubts and questions in your mind. Instead of being able to stay present in a conversation, you are pulled into a chain of whines, complaints, doubts and questions.
- The Bandit steals your ability to own or be responsible for your ideas and actions. If you give away your conversation power to someone else, you have no position.
- The Mugger makes it not okay to be who you are. In fact, just when you are about to succeed, a glass ceiling is placed over your head, knocking you back to the place the mugger thinks you belong.
- The Killer murders your joy and self-confidence leaving you speaking without passion, often because you are holding on to thoughts and belief systems in your life that need to die.
- The Monster confronts you with forces beyond your control. Monsters leave you speechless, hopeless and helpless – a victim. Why try?
- The Lost Love villain replaces your ability to ever love again with debilitating fear, making it difficult to voice your dreams and stand up for yourself.
- The Sorceress traps you in a fantasy world of “What ifs,” “If onlys,” and Happily every after “ifs.” It’s hard to get to the point if you’re constantly waiting for the perfect if to happen.
Name your conversation villain, give it a face and confront him or her with this declaration, “There’s not room in my life for both of us.” Learn more about dealing with your villains at www.blockedtoblockbuster.com
The third step is to call forth your own motivation. Always be clear about what you want out of a conversation. Make sure that you have clearly stated your desires, and that the other party has, in fact, understood what you are saying.
The fourth step is to create and enjoy multi-level conversations. Ask yourself a few questions before you speak. Does this action fit into my new script? Are all the villains’ voices silenced? Does it match my motivation? Then proceed with words that express what you really want to say.
Remember, conversation makes the world go round. Make sure you know what lies beneath the conversations that build your world, and you will move from "BLOCKED TO BLOCKBUSTER."
Judith Parker Harris is the expert on getting companies and their work forces un-stuck as they learn to communicate, produce, and create to maximum potential in a way that is meaningful to the rest of their lives. Former owner of a multi-million dollar advertising agency, Judith Parker Harris wrote, produced and directed over 3,000 television commercials for clients like Sears & Roebuck and Shell Oil and pioneered brand advertising for national healthcare chains. Her meteoric rise to the top almost crashed, when she became seriously BLOCKED by the partial paralysis and sight loss of Multiple Sclerosis. Judith grabbed hold of recovery and used it to write an entirely new life for herself. Symptom-free since 1990, Judith has created a 4-step process that she uses to move all of her clients from “BLOCKED to BLOCK-BUSTER.”
Honored with a commendation by the City and the County of Los Angeles as a "Woman of Accomplishment," in 2000, Judith is a strong proponent of giving back. She is the Women In Film Foundation Chair and former Vice President. She has been instrumental in uniting the entertainment community in the production of pro bono public service announcements for local and national charities serving women and children. For this effort, she was invited to the White House and personally congratulated by former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
She recently completed a campaign for the U.S. Department of Commerce to change the image of Information Technology workers in order to encourage teens to pursue careers in science and technology. Judith is the President-Elect and Marketing Chair of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Speakers Association (NSA) and their 2003 Member of the Year, member of Women of L.A./Women of Washington and winner of the 2003 Toastmasters International Communication and Leadership Award.
Also Vice President of Worldwide Entertainment, Judith is currently producing a feature film at Paramount Studios and developing three other feature projects. Her eyes are seldom off her mission, however, of moving as many people as possible from BLOCKED to BLOCKBUSTER. There are many ways for individuals, businesses and organizations to explore the BLOCKED to BLOCKBUSTER process through books, CDs, special courses, teleseminars, keynotes, workshops and personal and group coaching programs.
Judith Parker Harris, film producer and author of three books, is the BLOCKBUSTER coach to individuals and corporations helping them to put all types of projects on track from conception to completion.
Judith uses movie structure and analogies, screenwriting and producing processes and personal experience of becoming and remaining symptom-free from Multiple Sclerosis since 1990 to illustrate how to find your truth, master your story, and navigate change in her keynotes, seminars, and consulting programs.
Find out more about her at www.blockedtoblockbuster.comand www.culturalblockbusters.com. Contact her via email: Judith@blockedtoblockbuster.com.
