De-Clutter Your Mind To See Your Authentic Truth
This morning, I woke up and was feeling very grateful for my life.
I took a look down memory lane and saw how much I had overcome.
As someone who grew up in abuse, I saw life through a very unhealthy lens for a long time. Always looking to please others, saying yes to drugs/alcohol to belong somewhere, and selling myself short. All topped with the need for perfection and control.
As I lovingly glimpsed at past Kacy, I realized that while she played out certain narratives in her life, she wasn’t born with all that.
I mean, as a baby, I didn’t make choices about my worthiness. I just was. I existed in the world, soaking up all the information around me like a sponge.
That childlike innocence and clean slate over the years became a murky swamp as I moved through life taking on other people’s limitations and beliefs.
What really stood out to me this morning was all the unlearning I’ve done over the last decade.
Choosing to be self-aware, conscious, and clearing out old programs and patterns that I realize I didn’t even CONSCIOUSLY choose.
As I was talking to my husband about this, he mentioned the term Bloatware, and that’s when everything made so much sense.
Bloatware: The Junk You Don’t Need, But Are Given Anyways
Ready to get a little nerdy? Let’s do it. 🤓
Bloatware is all the crap that comes pre-installed on your phones and devices and can take up a significant amount of storage space and system resources.
It usually includes apps, games, or utilities that the device’s manufacturer or carrier installs. Aka, things that you really don’t give a shit about. This junk is unnecessary and, in some cases, pretty intrusive.
Bloatware can slow down your device, reduce available storage, and, in some cases, even compromise your privacy.
To deal with this, some users choose to uninstall or disable bloatware to free up resources and customize their device to better suit their needs.
But…not everyone knows it’s there.
Some people NEVER learn about all the bloatware that’s taking up precious storage and energy in their devices. They just take it at face value, never really experiencing the full potential of their device.
This often shows up in life too.
But Kacy, how does this relate to me?
Here’s something to think about and chew on — as children, we pick up habits and thought patterns and carry this around in our minds, like “mental bloatware”.
The interesting part is that these beliefs are shaped in moments that could be considered seemingly insignificant. One person’s traumatic experience may look incredibly different than someone else’s. But, for the human brain, body and heart — trauma is trauma. Big T, or little t, it’s still significant.
Regardless of the external circumstance, as humans, we are meaning-making-machines. And if there is a circumstance that causes us even some distress, it locks in as something to be avoided and a way for survival.
A lot of these survival programs are installed during childhood because of the primary focus on survival.
As much as parents can do their best to love their children, somewhere, somehow along the journey a parent may say or do something that seems like it wouldn’t cause trauma, but it’s all up for interpretation from the child’s mind.
The Significance of Mental Bloatware
Very similar to bloatware that comes pre-installed in our devices, mental bloatware comes from how we were raised and our experience of the world in our formative years.
Just like bloatware makes a computer slow, these patterns within our mind can stop us from growing to our full potential and feeling good on the journey.
These thoughts of mental bloatware often stop us from being healthy, having money, and feeling truly happy and free.
They’re like apps that we don’t want but keep running in the background, using up our mental energy. The interesting part is this: many people don’t even KNOW that they’re running mental bloatware. Very similar to the bloatware on their phones.
They just think that’s how they are. It’s their identity. It just IS. They don’t realize it’s a programmed pattern or behavior.
This is dangerous. Because without the awareness that it’s a pattern, it cannot be transformed and healed.
Just like bloatware takes up space on a computer and makes it hard to add the programs we really want, these habits and thoughts we got from our unconscious teachers and parents can hold us back from being our best.
They take up valuable real estate that cannot be used for anything else.
How do we “clean-up” our mental bloatware?
Getting rid of this mental bloatware is a bit like doing a digital cleanup.
By finding and clearing these patterns, we can make room in our minds for better, more empowering beliefs and actions.
This helps us use the “programs” we choose, like having a healthier body and mind, making and keeping more money, and living a happy life with personal freedom.
Something that’s important to remember is that unlike a computer, we cannot simply ctrl+alt+delete our mental bloatware in one shot.
It takes time, love, compassion and presence to uninstall these programs that don’t serve us anymore.
Working with hundreds of beautiful humans over the years, I’ve realized this: the more we resist our mental bloatware, the more it persists.
If we “hate” something about ourselves, while at the same time trying to get rid of it — it doesn’t work. It may feel like it’s gone, but in fact, it’s buried itself deeper.
It’s through compassion and connection to our hearts and removing the layers of suffering that we can get to the core and unplug these self-sabotaging patterns from the root.
And, this is often not an easy task. It takes a lot of courage to be the kind of human being who even wants to walk this path.
Knowing that we have mental bloatware is key
The first step is really just recognition. Awareness of the fact that there are aspects of yourself that aren’t really you.
They’re just patterns you picked up along the way as safety, and now, as an adult, you can powerfully choose to let them go.
So, what mental bloatware are you seeing? And, can you feel gratitude for knowing that it’s there?
Let me know in the comments below.
Originally published at https://coachkacy.com on November 8, 2023.
