{"id":3118,"date":"2011-08-23T10:11:57","date_gmt":"2011-08-23T14:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=3118"},"modified":"2011-08-23T10:11:57","modified_gmt":"2011-08-23T14:11:57","slug":"a-man-who-stands-in-his-own-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/08\/a-man-who-stands-in-his-own-way.html","title":{"rendered":"A man who stands in his own way…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’m thinking today about Thoreau’s wise and entirely accurate statement: “A man who stands in his own way will find the whole world is in his way.” How often do we bind ourselves and close off the paths of possibility by parroting self-limiting beliefs and negative mantras, like<\/p>\n

– I’ll never be any good at this<\/p>\n

– I’m not young enough, or good-looking enough<\/p>\n

– I don’t have the money<\/p>\n

– I can’t speak in public<\/p>\n

– I never remember dreams<\/p>\n

You might want to take a moment to make your own list, of things you say to yourself that put a block in front of you or put yourself under your personal cloud of misery or defeat. Then make a second list, of similar statements you hear others delivering. Some of these are repeated so often that they really do become negative mantras, with the power of a mantra to move the mind – and then \u00a0the world the mind helps to generate – into a groove it is hard to exit.<\/p>\n

I am not going to say that “you can’t afford the luxury of a negative thought”. Bad things happen, challenges come up, and we need to appraise these situations with a hard cold eye. And then get up and move on and not hold closed the doors that may be open if we’ll let them open.<\/p>\n

So: if you find yourself guilty of making a statement, spoken or unspoken, that limits you and shrinks your world of possibility, go outside and spit it out<\/em>. I mean literally. Get it out of you. Do it right away, and move on.<\/p>\n

If you hear someone else trying to shrink the world and its opportunities, you don’t need to argue with them. You can simply withhold your consent from any statement that limits what the world can be for you. If you know the person well, however, you can do more. When you hear them playing Eyeore for the Nth time, telling you yet again what’s wrong with them, you can say, gently but firmly, “If I were you, i would take that negative mantra outside and spit it out.” They may goggle at you, or feel offended, when you first say this, but if they follow your advise, they’ll be grateful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m thinking today about Thoreau’s wise and entirely accurate statement: “A man who stands in his own way will find the whole world is in his way.” How often do we bind ourselves and close off the paths of possibility by parroting self-limiting beliefs and negative mantras, like – I’ll never be any good at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,26,21,8],"tags":[393,297,505,504,187],"class_list":["post-3118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conscious-living","category-life-direction","category-psychic-health","category-synchronicity","tag-inspiration","tag-negative-mantras","tag-positive-thinking","tag-self-limiting-beliefs","tag-thoreau"],"yoast_head":"\nA man who stands in his own way... - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/08\/a-man-who-stands-in-his-own-way.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A man who stands in his own way... - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’m thinking today about Thoreau’s wise and entirely accurate statement: “A man who stands in his own way will find the whole world is in his way.” How often do we bind ourselves and close off the paths of possibility by parroting self-limiting beliefs and negative mantras, like – I’ll never be any good at…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/08\/a-man-who-stands-in-his-own-way.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-08-23T14:11:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/files\/2011\/08\/prison_door-293x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Moss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"A man who stands in his own way... - 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Robert Moss","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/#\/schema\/person\/941740e4115cce34706832d06aa76b6b","name":"Robert Moss","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/777\/7770e3a2cde4458084d9a31237336b92x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/777\/7770e3a2cde4458084d9a31237336b92x96.jpg","caption":"Robert Moss"},"description":"Robert Moss describes himself as a dream teacher, on a path for which there has been no career track in our culture. He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3118"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3121,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3118\/revisions\/3121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}