The Secret of the Shadow by Debbie Ford Page B

finish yesterday’s project on time and your Shadow Box thoughtfully reminds you, “Look what you did this time. You really blew it, you’re just like your father.” But what is most disturbing is that no matter how many times you’ve heard it before, you still listen. You listen again and again, actually taking that voice seriously.
    How many of you have spent thousands of hours listening to that box in your mind? Maybe you have even avoided going to a party or having fun in some other way so you could stay home and listen to that box. Some of you have stopped yourself from pursuing a better position or going back to graduate school, basing your actions solely on the feedback you’ve received from your charming little Shadow Box. Someone suggested I invent a Shadow Box: For $14.95, I will program your internal dialogue so you can listen to it 56
    e x p l o r i n g t h e g r e at a n d m y s t e r i o u s s t o r y o f y o u every day. You can carry it with you wherever you go. Or it can act as a talking alarm clock. You just turn it on in the morning and it says, “Good morning. God, you look awful today.” That way you don’t even have to say it yourself. Your Shadow Box will say,
    “Nothing worthwhile is going to happen to you. You don’t have what it takes. It’s never going to get better than this. You might as well stay in bed today, because no one notices you anyway.” You may be up for a raise, but your Shadow Box will scream, “It’s never going to happen for you! It’s not fair. They don’t really appreciate you. Life is tough. What do you know? You’re a loser. You’re never going to make it.” Or “Poor me, why can’t I get a break?
    Maybe I can win the lottery this week. Then I’ll be happy.” Or if you’re on a roll and things are going great, your lovely little companion will chime in, “If you get too big, people won’t like you.
    You can’t have it all. Don’t get too big for your britches.”
    I felt excited and lucky to have had this experience of the fire alarm, because most people never understand that their internal dialogue is like a bad tape that plays over and over, unconsciously, without edit. Most of us choose to listen to that voice every day.
    Most of us listen so intently that we can’t even hear what the people around us are saying. The Shadow Box talks with certainty, and if you begin to ignore it, it will say, “No, listen. This is important.
    Nobody likes you. No, really, they don’t like you.” Or “You’re never going to amount to anything. Really, you’re just a loser.”
    That’s how your Shadow Box sucks you in. Every time you buy in to your Shadow Box, you are buying in to your story.
    To grasp the repetitive nature of your Shadow Box, you might try recording your internal dialogue for a month or so. Then you 57
    T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w can look back and say, “Oh, I’ve heard this conversation before!
    Look, on February 4, 1999, I heard it, and on April 14, 1998, 1984, 1981 . . . I heard it forty-two times this year, sixty-four times the year before . . .” How many hours a day do you think you spend listening to that Shadow Box, analyzing it, bargaining with it? It’s like a maze. You think there are actually some cookies at the end of that tunnel. You think that if you listen to it long enough you’re going to get some reward. But this is the big lie . There are no cookies at the end of that tunnel, and you will not be rewarded if you listen to it long enough. However, your Shadow Box does act as an alarm. The alarm’s recording is saying, “This is a recording. You are living inside the story called ‘You.’ If you wish to turn this alarm off you must take the giant step outside your story. Once you are outside, this recording will automatically shut off. Thank you for listening, and have a beautiful day.”
    Long after the hotel’s fire alarm had been disabled we sat laughing at our Shadow Boxes, which had now been taken