"I've gotten a chance to really get connected to my own life sentence and own it rather than it owning me.”
-Dan Tocchini
Question: Who or what is in control?
I used to think that "I" was in control. After attending Breakthrough Training (founded by Dan Tocchini) and many years of introspection and study, I learned that there is not one easy answer.
There are a multitude of motives, sub-personalities, perspectives, beliefs, emotions, outside forces that are vying for control of your life at any given moment. It's not simply just You.
However, if you dig way down inside of yourself, you will discover a thematic belief system that tends to dominate (although it may be hard to detect). Dan Tocchini calls this your Life Sentence.
Every one of us has a Life Sentence; a particular collection of core wounds which influence our lives unconsciously.
For instance, in Dan's episode, he shared that his Life Sentence was a belief that he was a fraud — a liar. He could trace the origin of that belief back to age 7. As a child with a terrific imagination, his dad flippantly remarked that he exaggerated, calling him a liar. It stuck.
That belief began shaping his life. It informed his feelings, his choices, his relationships, and became his reality — he became a lying fraud in many areas of his life.
That may not be your core wound, but perhaps some of yours are on this list:
I'm not lovable.
I'm not enough.
I'm not smart.
I'm not worthy.
I don't do it right.
I'm a screw-up.
I'm a nobody.
When your Life Sentence is in control, your world becomes a series of compensatory strategies to try and get your needs met, usually in some inauthentic way. And it generally doesn't work.
One of my clients carried a core wound that she wasn't lovable for who she was. So, she excessively focused on trying to please others in order to get loved or feel that she was lovable.
Yet, all that effort didn't work. She didn't feel more lovable for who she was because ultimately she wasn't being authentic enough to find out. Instead she became resentful.
Whenever her Life Sentence would start to emerge, she would
shove it down, ignore it, or deny it, which also didn't work. Eventually it would resurface. Why?
Your Life Sentence really wants and needs to be healed. I believe this is part of your life's work on your Hero's Journey.
Once you become aware of the underlying beliefs that are controlling your life, a possibility opens for that healing to begin.
Step by step, layer by layer, you can begin the journey of rewriting your Sentence.