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By Frosty Wooldridge
12-7-16

You’ve got them. I’ve got them. Everybody’s got them. They haunt our dreams. They foment our insecurities. They make us doubt ourselves. They play with our subconscious. They cause us to make silly choices.

What are they? Answer: our demons.

How do we get them? Reply: mostly from our childhood experiences.

Growing up, if you enjoyed good parents who loved, respected and gave you ample security---you enjoyed fewer demons. But even with great parenting, certain moments in your life created demons that haunt your subconscious 24/7.

As a farm boy, I milked cows near dark with my grandfather in LeRoy, Michigan. At the end of my work time, I walked down a 150-yard dirt road headed toward home, carrying a gallon of milk. With every step on a moonless night, I figured “monsters” of every description would grab me, bite me or kill me. They flooded my imagination. Talk about demons!

As a teenager, I disliked my Uncle Scott because he proved a mean drunk who beat the dogs and cows with sticks. I couldn’t figure out why anyone would abuse defenseless animals. Later in my teens, my mother, in a fit of anger yelled at me, “You’re going to be just like your Uncle Scott.”

“No,” I said. “I will never be like my Uncle Scott. I will never drink.”

To this day, I remain a teetotaler. I didn’t want Scott’s demons invading my life.

In my college years, I cut hair for a buck a head on weekends. I listened to guys tell me about their insecurities. They told me how they got bullied, but were afraid to stand up for themselves. I discovered that many young men endured horrible teen years. I knew many college kids afraid to ask a girl out on a date. I’m sure many coeds questioned themselves when never asked on a date.

My roommate in college suffered terrible abuse by his dad. From the age of 15 to 18, his farmer father disciplined him by loading two shells into a 12-gauge double barrel shotgun, click the hammers, and point the weapon at his son, “You’ve been really bad today. You’re going to sleep with the pigs tonight for your punishment.”

I never figured out why my roommate suffered so many insecurities and so much distrust. Years later, he admitted to me why he was such a terrible roommate. When he told me, I cried. He cried. He suffered from PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as a teenager. It colored his self-concept his whole life by causing him to suffer low self-esteem.

One of my clients in the haircutting business endured a father who made him eat everything off his plate whether he wanted to or not. The poor guy felt obligated to eat and eat. It cost him dearly in obesity and finally, diabetes. All of that caused low self-esteem from being fat and unattractive to women.

So, if you look about you, everyone walking around carries specific demons that impede if not degrade their lives. Everyone carries his or her own secret hurts. Girls may not feel attractive. Boys may not feel athletic.

I’m sure you, the person reading this vignette, possess your own demons and you’ve heard enough of them from your friends.

So, how do you learn to fly above your demons? How do you extricate them from your mind?

In his book, Power of Your Subconscious Mind, author Joseph Murphy shows how your subconscious mind “runs” about 90 percent of your life. He describes how your demons affect your well-being, your choices and your reactions to life.

When you allow your demons to dominate, you suffer self-fulfilling prophecies. You drain away your good. You cause your own unhappiness.

Some of the ways I dealt and deal with my own demons:

---I practice to rewrite my mental scripts of insecurity and uncertainness. If someone can do something, I tell myself that I can do it, too. I read affirmative quotes daily.

---Trust your unfolding good. Look on the bright side of life. Rewrite your former scripts to create a whole new “positive hard drive” in your brain.

---Adjust your sub-consciousness to think of your highest and best in all things you do.

---Hold a higher view of living and hang with “highest and best” kinds of people.

---Trust your unfolding good in your life. Expect everyday to be a winner for you. It’s a mental choice to override your demons.

One day, my friend and I backpacked in Canyonlands, Utah. We got to arguing about some inane political event. After much heated discussion, we came upon Druid’s Arch. A 100-ton rock with vertical slits in it rose 150 feet into the blue sky with the sun shinning through one of the slits. We stood beneath it—awestruck.

Exactly what were we arguing about?

In the end, live your life as if you feel awestruck by your greatest good fortune to be alive, healthy and passionate on your life journey.

What about my roommate? He used his demons to write two best selling horror novels before turning to write a fabulous romance novel. He’s writing another novel as we speak. May the Great Spirit bless him and bless you.