Last week I introduced you to the Gremlins in the “Let’s Talk Gremlins” post. This week, I want to tell you about “Echo“.
Get A Clue
My first realization was that I was not being true to who I thought I was. I recognized that my values and virtues were tarnished by the things I thought, said, and did.
“Who do you think you are?” bounced around in my brain, sometimes giving me a headache.
Sometimes that question came from people close to me. It was a clue that something was off, but I didn’t recognize it.
When people are “not themselves”, just who are they?
When I was so angry and hostile, often spurting rudeness and sarcasm, I honestly did not think that was me.
But it was.
The actions were mine.
I had to realize that what I did, no matter why, indicated who I really was. That’s the “me” that was showing up in the world.
It mattered less who I “thought” I was than how I behaved.
We Are Our Actions
Maya Angelou said, “When people show you who they are, believe them.”
That’s why Echo is the name of our Gremlin who represents our self-concept.
It’s important to recognize that how we behave is who others believe we are.
We cannot be settled in our minds until our actions and values are aligned.
Echo helps us when we pay attention to our values and then measure our days next to them.
There is a phenomenon called “cognitive dissonance”. This refers to that disconnect we feel when we act in a way that is not true to our own values.
To resolve this dissonance, we are compelled to either change our behavior or change our belief about who we are.
