The gift of your possibilities

Ask, “When did I last feel everything was possible?”

Once you’ve brought yourself out of the whirlwind of your thoughts and savored a positive moment, you may find that what’s lurking underneath your awareness has risen into your mind. You’ve found the core belief—the story you tell yourself about yourself—that you need to challenge. “Core beliefs that are deeply ingrained contribute a lot of pain in our lives because they go unquestioned,” explains Dr. Ferretti. In other words, we just blindly accept the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves because they’ve been there for so long that, well, they must be true.

How do we go about questioning these beliefs that are so entrenched, we don’t typically even know they’re there? “You want to go slow because this is difficult territory,” suggests Dr. Ferretti. “Be gentle and kind, tenderly prodding at the story, like, Is it true that I’m unlovable?”

One way to challenge these stories is to go back in time to a moment before you believed that story about yourself…a time when all your possibilities were still open.

For example, if a small rejection has activated your core belief that you’re unlovable, bring up a memory—or find a photo to look at—from a time in your life before you became convinced of the truth of this belief.

“You might have memories come up of an early wounding,” says Dr. Ferretti. “And then maybe another memory arises and points you in the direction that you are lovable…some contact you’ve made, someone who has looked at you with loving eyes.”

“Shining the light of awareness on our experience in all its complexity can really start to free up some of that old patterning, some of those story loops that run automatically outside of our awareness,” she assures. “We can then begin to sense what’s possible outside of the prison we’re stuck in.

“By connecting with a time when we really felt just how limitless we are, we can return to that sense of beautiful possibility,” says Dr. Ferretti. “We can remember, I’ve been there;

I’ve been that way; I know I’m a continuation of that person, and I have all those possibilities still.”