Fit Mind: 8 Weeks to Change Your Inner Soundtrack and Tune into Your Greatness

By Pat Divilly

Thousands Of Thoughts Run Through Our Minds Every Day, Forming An Inner Story Or Soundtrack That Controls Our Lives.
Our internal voice can be critical, sabotaging our attempts to achieve the things we want. By tuning into and becoming more aware of the stories we are telling ourselves, we can free ourselves from the thoughts and beliefs that are holding us back.
Alongside concepts, ideas and new perspectives, this book contains an eight-week practical programme for mental and emotional fitness. Through journalling, meditation and self enquiry we can begin to train our thoughts and mind to support us in the pursuit of our dreams, opening up to a fresh new outlook and appreciation for life as it is rather than life as we feel it should be.
'Fit Mind will change your life for the better.'Geoff Thompson, Bafta-Winning Writer
'Contains simple yet powerful practices that deepen attention and awareness.'Dr Easkey Britton, Surfer And Author Of Saltwater In The Blood
'A transformative guide for anyone looking to make a serious change in their life.'Yung Pueblo, New York Times Bestselling Author

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gill Books
• Release date: Jan 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9780717191338

Pat Divilly

Pat Divilly is the host of the hugely popular Pat Divilly Podcast, as well as an author, speaker and health and wellness coach who has fast become one of Ireland’s leading authorities in that area. In sharing tools to support physical, mental and emotional wellness, Pat’s goal is to provide practical, accessible perspectives and initiatives to promote long-term health in both body and mind.

Book preview

FIT MIND

8 WEEKS to CHANGE your INNER SOUNDTRACK

and TUNE INTO YOUR GREATNESS

PAT DIVILLY

GILL BOOKS

To Ryan Johnson. Thank you for the encouragement and love you and your family showed me in my late teens. It changed the course of my life forever.

In loving memory of Eric Coleman, Chick Gillen and John Creaven.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

INTRODUCTION: Inner Exploration

PART ONE: From Patterns to Presence

The Conditioned Self

React or Respond

The ARC Method: Tools for Change

Integration Exercises (How to Use this Book)

PART TWO: Rewriting Our Stories

Week One: The Happiness Story

Week Two: The Success Story

Week Three: The Confidence Story

Week Four: The Emotions Story

Week Five: The Communication Story

Week Six: The Conflict Story

Week Seven: The Fear Story

Week Eight: The Purpose Story

PART THREE: Building Your Self-Care System

Building the Base: The 2/5/10 Routine

Habits and Behavioural Change

Your Next Chapter

Afterword

Eight-Week ARC Tracker

2/5/10 Routine – 30-Day Tracker

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Author

About Gill Books

Reviews

INTRODUCTION

Inner Exploration

This is a book about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and about the world, and the impact those stories have on our health, happiness and overall experience of life.

We speak to ourselves more than anyone else in this world. Thousands of thoughts, beliefs, stories and assumptions run through our minds every day. For most of us these stories and thoughts go largely unquestioned; we take them as gospel and blindly believe them, often with little or no evidence to back them up. With so many thoughts and beliefs going through our minds all day, every day, we might assume we are ‘thinking’. In truth, we are often just remembering old internal narratives played on a loop. These old stories or beliefs are the lens through which we see the world and serve as the ‘script’ or ‘blueprint’ for the story of our lives.

We walk through life with this largely unconscious blueprint, a collection of ideas and expectations about how things ‘should’ be in order for us to be happy. We then quickly make judgements about our experiences in life, labelling them ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, depending on how they match up to this unconscious script or blueprint of expectations in our minds. These beliefs or stories that make up our blueprint of how the world should look are shaped by our environment, our past experiences, the society and family we’ve been raised in, what we see in the media that we consume and what we’ve been told either implicitly or explicitly by others.

We have stories about how our bodies ‘should’ look, how our partners ‘should’ communicate, how we ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ feel given our circumstances and countless other stories about what we need to experience in life in order for us to be happy. The tighter we cling to these stories, the more conditions we set up for our happiness and the more conditional we become in our love for ourselves, for others and for life itself. It’s rare that we think to question or challenge these stories that run our lives and thus we can begin to feel that life is happening to us rather than for us as we see the same difficult cycles and patterns repeatedly showing up in our lives.

If we think of this one precious life we’ve been given as our very own movie, are we playing the role of the scriptwriter and director, creating the film and making it our own unique masterpiece, or are we the actor with no creative control who’s playing out a script written by others?

We often think that it’s the events or circumstances of our lives and relationships that cause our stress and problems, when in fact it’s the stories we tell ourselves about these events or circumstances that are so often the source of our suffering. The stress or suffering we associate with our relationships, our health, our finances or our career are really a result of the disconnect between how things are and how we think they ‘should’ be. As a result, day-to-day life can feel like an emotional rollercoaster and we can spend much of our lives trying to change the outside world to match the pictures and expectations we have formed in our heads.

When we begin to become more aware of our stories we can find appreciation, gratitude and freedom from our expectations and can be with life as it is rather than life as we feel it ‘should’ be. There are a great number of things outside our control in life and all too often our attention is focused on those things we can’t control. Taking responsibility in life involves bringing our attention back to the controllables – our thoughts and our actions.

In my younger years I had stories playing over and over in my head about not being enough, about not fitting in and about not being of value. I had stories about who I needed to be to be loved, stories about what I needed to achieve to feel successful and countless other stories and expectations – for myself and others – that made living with myself difficult and exhausting. It might surprise you when I tell you from the outset that all those stories that I used to live with still go through my mind frequently. The soundtrack is still there; the difference is that now I don’t believe everything I think and I have a simple toolbox that helps me quickly find perspective in times of stress or suffering – to help me change my internal tune.

This toolbox not only enables me to question or challenge the stories, thoughts and beliefs that surface in the present, but also to look back on past experiences and become aware of the origins of my beliefs and stories. It also helps me to see that thoughts and emotions I previously deemed ‘negative’ are actually where many of my lessons and much of my potential lie. I have learnt through the consistent practice of the tools in my toolbox to go from identifying with my disempowering thoughts to instead being aware of those thoughts, recognising the impact they have on my feelings and actions and then choosing whether I’m going to blindly believe the difficult thoughts or take some time to explore their purpose and origins. I have also learnt to accept and work with the ‘negative’ thoughts and emotions I once tried to dismiss.

I look forward to sharing this toolbox with you in the coming chapters.

Self-care has become a real buzzword in recent times. It is often used in the context of looking after yourself through diet, meditation, exercise, or lighting some candles and having a bath. There’s merit in all of these, but I can’t think of any greater act of self-care than actively choosing to improve the way we speak to ourselves.

We improve our relationships with ourselves, not by achieving more to fill voids or wounds that we feel within, but by accepting parts of ourselves that we’ve yet to accept, by coming to more intimately know and understand ourselves, our fears, our values and our drivers.

How we talk to ourselves matters the most.

As a kid I’d often arrive home from school and announce that I was ‘stupid’ or that I didn’t ‘fit in’. Without skipping a beat my parents would quickly challenge these stories by shifting the perspective to things I was doing well or to the groups I did fit in with. You’ve probably done something similar with your own kids or your friends, helping them to find perspective beyond the narrow lens of their inner story.

This book invites you to begin challenging the thoughts, stories, beliefs and assumptions that are causing you dis-ease in life, and it arms you with the tools to do so. Alongside concepts, ideas and new perspectives, I will share an eight-week practical programme of journalling, meditation and self-enquiry techniques that offer a chance to immediately begin implementing these new ideas and practising mental and emotional ‘fitness’. I encourage you to pick up a journal that you can use alongside this book as you go through the eight-week self-enquiry programme. You can also find guided versions of the book’s meditation exercises, along with other bonus material, at patdivilly.com/fitmind.

Despite the comforts of the modern world, there’s an overwhelming collective experience of disconnection, isolation, addiction and depression. Our connection to others starts with our connection to ourselves and so it’s in the work that we begin to do in this book that we improve every relationship in our lives.

In the coming chapters I will share how you can:

1. Become aware of the meanings you are giving to your external experiences.

2. Learn to go from believing your difficult thoughts to finding perspective and choice.

3. Recognise how your memories and origin stories influence your current worldview.

4. Understand the ‘characters’ in your head that seem to want to hold you back.

5. Implement a simple daily practice for improving self-talk and emotional awareness.

I look forward to going on this journey with you and helping you ‘take back the pen’.

Grá mór,

Pat

PART ONE

From Patterns

to Presence

The Conditioned Self

‘Give me a child until he is seven and

I will show you the man’ – ARISTOTLE

GOLD BENEATH THE CLAY

The tale of the clay Buddha sets the context of the origins of our own internal narratives.

In 1957, at a monastery in Thailand, a number of the monks decided it was time to move a giant clay Buddha that sat outside. The statue stood over ten foot high, so the monks needed a crane to move it. As the crane began to slowly lift the giant clay Buddha, a small crack appeared in the statue and it became apparent they had underestimated its fragility. They quickly instructed the crane operator to gently lower the statue so that they could rethink their plans. Worried about damaging the statue further, they decided to defer relocating it to the next day.

That night, one of the head monks came outside with a flashlight to inspect the statue. As he scanned the Buddha with his flashlight, he saw, in the crack, reflected light shining back at him. Intrigued, he got a hammer and chisel and began to chip away at the covering of clay. As he worked, he began to see bright gold light shining back at him. Over a number of hours, as he continued to chip away, he came to see that what he’d thought was a clay statue was in fact a golden statue that had been covered in clay.

Historians believed that the golden Buddha had been covered in twelve inches of clay three hundred years earlier when the monks in Thailand (Siam at the time) got word that the Burmese army were set to invade and attack their monastery. Eager to protect their beloved statue, they covered it in clay to hide its value and beauty. During the attack by the Burmese all the monks were killed and it wasn’t until years later that the clay Buddha was discovered and assumed to be just that, a clay Buddha, the gold hidden for so long that it had been forgotten about.

This story of the clay Buddha serves as a metaphor for our own experience of life, the gold representing our potential and wholeness and the clay being the layers of stories, masks, fears, defence mechanisms and beliefs that we have built up in our unconscious efforts to ‘protect’ our gold, the authentic self.

This clay is what prevents us from connecting honestly and openly with ourselves and with others and prevents us from allowing our potential to shine brightly in the world. As the years pass and we continually add layers of protection, it isn’t surprising that we sometimes forget the gold beneath and see ourselves as the collection of ideas we have accumulated, not the golden potential we once were.

The more stories we build about who we are and how we fit into the world, the smaller our world seems to get and the more limited our options in life seem to be. Our labels and judgements put us in a box that seems to get increasingly smaller. The tighter I cling to who I have decided I am, the more I limit myself in who I could be. Rather than look inward in our efforts to reclaim our gold we often go outward and look to gain external achievements and validation largely based on societal conditioning and other people’s dreams.

Take the example of a child who comes into the world with pure potential but develops a belief as a young person that they are flawed in some way. In their efforts to find acceptance and approval, that person might go on to chase material success to prove to themselves and the world that they are ‘good enough’, forgetting in their chase that there isn’t anything actually missing. This person might achieve every goal they set their sights on in life, but they unknowingly hold on to the clay exterior, the belief they are in some way inherently flawed. Our efforts to accumulate more or be given external approval for our achievements or position in society are based on the belief that there is something missing within us, and as a result many of the things we seek and efforts we make to ‘improve’ ourselves come from a place of wounding rather than a place of worth.

When we become aware of the stories and beliefs that cover our gold and come to see that our potential and wholeness lies beneath the clay exterior, we can begin to approach life with the aim of seeking fulfilment and authenticity rather than trying to compete with or challenge others in a game we can never win.

When I achieve the thing I thought I wanted and am left unhappy and unfulfilled it is likely I have come from this place of wounding and wanting to prove myself to others. When I find my flow in life and experience fulfilment in the journey, I am coming from a place of worth and living a life that is authentic and true to myself.

The golden Buddha in our story represents the full expression of ourselves that is born into the world open and judgement-free, full of potential, hope and possibility. The clay Buddha is akin to our ego or conditioned self, who has learnt who we think we need to be to survive and win acceptance based largely on the information we received in our earliest years. As human beings we enter the world pure gold, without fear, expectation or worries about being judged for who we are or what we do. Watch a carefree young child dance and play without any fear of judgement, happy to be the centre of attention and admired in all their glory.

At a given point something changes. The child whose dancing was once a source of entertainment and affection is now ignored, shamed or frowned upon. The child is told to grow up, and gaining approval and love isn’t as easy as it once was. Acceptance and love become conditional, it seems, at least through the eyes of the child.

In subsequent years we see that same child begin to collect countless implicit and explicit messages from their parents or primary caregivers as to who they need to be in order to receive love and acceptance and fit in within their family structure. Certain emotions, behaviours, hobbies or beliefs are frowned upon, shamed or criticised while other emotions, behaviours, hobbies or beliefs garner praise and acceptance. Of course as children we do not have the ability to understand context or find perspective and thus we often misinterpret our experiences and come to the false belief that we are in some way flawed, not good enough or not deserving of love.

Though we come into the world curious and open, our ego begins to emerge as we form judgements about ourselves and others and judgements about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in life, largely as a result of what we learn at home. When the young child follows the rules at home and meets the expectations of their parents they are labelled a ‘good’ boy or girl and are given praise and approval. When they don’t follow those rules or meet the expectations, love is temporarily removed, a frightening experience for a young person completely dependent on the support of their parental figures. This conditional love leads to the child editing, filtering and conditioning themselves to act in certain ways and repress or deny other parts of themselves which have been deemed unacceptable.

Imagine a child is scolded when they refuse to eat their vegetables at dinner. As grown adults with perspective and logical understanding of the importance of eating healthy foods we can see why the parents insist on the child finishing their dinner. However, through the naïve eyes of the child their interpretation of the same experience is perhaps that love is removed or withdrawn when they say ‘no’ and refuse to meet their parents’ expectations.

When the child goes to school they encounter a new set of conditions as to who they need to be to gain and maintain the approval of their teachers and peers. Slowly, the carefree, spontaneous, expressive child becomes self-conscious and ashamed of the aspects of themselves that others deem unacceptable. Now they wear a collection of masks in order to fit into their environment. Maybe when they are laughed at because they stumble over their words while reading from the textbook in front of the class the child comes to the belief that they ‘don’t fit in with their classmates’.

Taking just these two examples – a child coming to believe they aren’t supposed to say no to their parents and that they don’t fit in – you can start to see how our earliest memories and the meanings we give to our experiences start to shape how we see ourselves and how we think we ‘should’ act in life.

As children we are like sponges absorbing implicit and explicit messaging from our family structures, society, teachers, friends and other influences. Certain judgements are implied, while others are explicitly spoken. Of course, at this time in our lives we don’t have the tools or the capacity to find perspective. Because we aren’t responsible for anyone else and because so much of our world centres on ourselves, we tend to make things all about ourselves. We don’t understand that our parents are tired or stressed after work and we take their lack of engagement as a withdrawal of love. Harsh words said (or kind words unsaid) by others when they are stressed or overwhelmed can be internalised and taken to heart, further shaping our identity and adding layers of clay above the gold, limiting our potential and possibilities.

It is said that every inner voice was once an outer voice that has become internalised; the voice in our head that tells us we’re not good enough emerged from something we perceived or heard from someone else in our younger years. Maybe when you think of your own ‘inner critic’ it reminds you of a voice from your youth?

Acceptance over Authenticity

Public speaking is often said to be one of the greatest fears that people experience in life. It isn’t the actual speaking that is scary, of course; we do that all the time. It is the fear of judgement and potential rejection.

Growing through our childhood and into our early adolescent years, after we have passed the stage of feeling unconditionally loved, we do all we can to avoid rejection and negative judgements. As a result we all experience the battle between the desire to express ourselves authentically and the desire to be accepted and stay connected to those around us. As young children who are completely dependent on the care of others, in this battle between authenticity and acceptance the desire and need to be connected, supported and loved by others usually wins. This means that our authenticity takes a back seat and we begin denying, repressing or filtering parts of ourselves that are deemed unacceptable by the ‘tribe’.

In years gone by this tribe will have been relatively small. In the modern world, social media and larger communities have opened up a much larger audience whose acceptance we hope to win and maintain at all costs – the ultimate cost, in fact, when we reject ourselves in the pursuit of acceptance from others.

Our stories and beliefs about who we need to be in order to fit in, be accepted and loved accumulate over time and the more conditions we collect about who we need to be, the further we can feel ourselves drift away from our authentic selves and our potential.

Defence mechanisms and roles we have taken in younger years to keep ourselves safe from abandonment can bleed into our adult lives and, like the clay on the statue, we can feel fragile and unstable, forgetting that at the core we are pure potential, masked by self-doubt, fear and stories. We see glimpses of the gold, our authentic self, at times – when there is a crack in the clay and we temporarily forget the story about who we need to be to fit in. It might be in a moment of play, connection, love, joy or even grief, when we ‘lose ourselves’ and show up in the present moment without judgement.

Watch a group of grown men cry and embrace as they watch their favourite football team win the championship for the first time in years, or a stadium full of people singing along without shame or self consciousness, losing themselves in the moment of watching their favourite band. Notice moments of vulnerability, when the hard edges of how we see ourselves and others begin to soften and allow us to communicate from the heart (love) and not the head (fear).

Outside these glimpses of our potential, we often quickly revert back to protecting ourselves and steering clear of being judged negatively for being seen in all our glory. As a means of protecting ourselves from hurt, abandonment or disconnection, we continue to cover our gold in layers of clay in the form of further evidence that protects our limiting beliefs, societal masks and fears.

PLAYING OUT PATTERNS

The tens of thousands of thoughts we have every day throughout our lives would perhaps more accurately be described as ‘remembering’, as we form this fixed identity and conditioned self with a rigid perception of who we are and how we fit into the world.

In my own life an early experience of bullying led me to believe I didn’t fit in. ‘Being an outsider’ unconsciously became a part of my self-image and it was something I believed for years as I replayed the same thought in my head without ever questioning it, repeatedly finding evidence that backed up my existing belief. In efforts to avoid further rejection from other social groups I became like a chameleon in school and college, drifting away from my authenticity and changing aspects of my appearance, personality or attitude to win the approval of others and avoid risking further rejection. This craving for acceptance from others often led me to abandon my own internal voice and self and go on a relentless and exhausting journey of ‘achievement’ to prove to others I was lovable. Needless to say, this self-abandonment had a dramatic effect on my self-esteem. It led to a journey of looking outside myself in pursuit of anything that would bring about validation from external sources that I hadn’t found internally.

This can start to point to the importance of exploring some of the meanings we gave to our earliest experiences and how those early experiences have shaped us.

•A young boy who is told that ‘boys don’t cry’ becomes the man who cannot connect to his own emotions or be vulnerable with others.

•A child who rarely sees their parents because they are always out working becomes a grown-up workaholic and struggles to be present with their own family.

•A child who is not allowed to make their own decisions has a hard time expressing their needs or putting down healthy boundaries later in life, as they have been implicitly taught to place the needs of others above their own.

From my early teens to mid-twenties I read every personal development book I could get my hands on in an effort to find the secrets to success and happiness. I learnt lots of strategies on time management and goal-setting, but I found nothing that explained why, irrespective of my accomplishments, I never felt good enough. I wasn’t ever going to find a book that would show me directly how my own early years had shaped my unconscious blueprint of the world which was running my life in the present.

There won’t ever be a book written that does this work for us. Personal responsibility is required in doing the work of shining a light in the dark, a process described by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung as ‘making the unconscious conscious’.

By becoming aware of our stories and beliefs, we allow ourselves to show up as the capable, mature, brilliant adults that we are. However, when these stories stay in the dark, we often feel ourselves reverting back to the scared child within, irrespective of our current age. In the work that I’ll introduce in this book I will invite you to walk back to earlier life experiences with a new perspective and adult eyes to see if you might come to a more empowering understanding of experiences you may have previously resented or deemed negative.

CLEANING THE FILTERS

My own personal work in recent years has been to slowly chip away at the clay exterior and protection I have built up over many years to fit in and be accepted. By going back to my past and exploring the meanings I gave to my early experiences and how those meanings have played out since, I’ve been slowly able to reclaim aspects of my natural state. Revisiting childhood experiences and viewing them with a new perspective and through adult eyes has allowed me to understand and override much of the conditioning I lived with for many years.

It’s important to note that the nature of conditioning is that our past experience affects our present and our present thoughts and actions affect our future. In