Your Default Programming vs. Your Potential

The word default is used when someone fails to fulfill an obligation of some sort, like appear in court, uh, repay a loan. That means if you don't fulfill that, you default on it. It is also an automatic computer factory setting. Like if you don't change like the font, those types of things, a program you're running on a computer, it will just automatically go with those settings. And no matter how successful, how put together, how much you have achieved, you too are still running a default system right now unless you've already been educated on this, unless you've already gotten coaching on this, because we're all living by a default rule that we created as a child. This default sentence formed the moment we felt unsafe and our brains did what brains always do. It wanted to figure out, well, what does this mean? So it created a meaning and a story out of what happened. Whatever that event was. And that meaning became a survival rule. And it became a rule so that, like, when something like this happens again in the future, that we know how to deal with it. Your brain knows how to deal with it. It knows how to categorize it. And that rule, that default sentence became the filter in which we see the world, walk through the world, and the guidelines through which we interact with the world. I call this rule the default sentence, and most people, again, don't know that they have one. It took me a long time to figure out what mine was. I got coaching on this because mine was born when I was 6 years old. You see, my parents were divorced when I was 2, and by that time, my father came around about twice a year, usually around Easter and Christmas. Well, this, this one year when I was 6, he called around Christmas, right before Christmas, and he asked to speak to my brother and I. My brother's 3 years older than I am, so my brother talked first and my brother said, "Hey, I want a Tonka dump truck for Christmas." And so because I grew up playing with my brother and his friends, that I wanted a Tonka dump truck as well, 'cause that's what I knew. My mom in that moment grabbed the phone and said, "No, she doesn't. She wants a baby doll. You're a little girl. Little girls play with dolls. She wants a baby doll. Get her a baby doll." Well, of course at 6, I didn't argue back. I didn't talk back. I just learned that in that moment, what I wanted wasn't acceptable. And my default sentence was born from that very experience, that who I am at my core is not acceptable. And from that day on, I lived with, with that thought, that belief becoming truth in my life. I lived as though it was fact. So what about you? Maybe for you it didn't happen like in a big moment, like for me when I was 6. It may have been smaller moments in your life, like, um, you were too loud, you were talking too much, you know, you were drawing too much attention to yourself. It may have been when you were like, you really were having fun and you were corrected for doing something that your authentic, honest self really wanted to do. You were corrected and said, nope, you shouldn't do it this way, do it that way. It may have been something like, you know, you decided that I'm gonna do my mom a favor because she's stressed out and clean the whole house, but when she got home from work, she didn't even notice you did it. It may be you experience needed to, you really wanted to express your emotions, but they're like, don't look weak, hold those emotions in, don't cry all the time. It may have come in so many different forms, but from those experiences and events, your default sentence also may have been created. And even as adults today, that sentence runs in the background. It's like our operating system. It's like our Windows. It's like our, you know, our operating system on our Mac. And it shows up at work. It shows up in our relationship. It goes everywhere that you go. It shapes and molds us to behave and decide and act in alignment with it. And so it may look like at work you second-guess yourself. You— it may look like, um, I need my, my boss, my supervisor to validate me before I present that idea. It may look like I don't know how I want to show up. It may look like just taking a long time to make a decision when we know the decision in your core. It may look like hiding the best parts of yourself like I did for decades. And this matters because when we don't highlight this, we continue to allow it to dictate and determine our actions and our behaviors. Instead of creating a different identity in a sentence, but instead of doing that, ultimately what we're doing is allowing a 6-year-old, for me, to drive our actions as an adult. You see, I spent decades letting that sentence control my interactions until cancer knocked on the door. And in that journey, I made a life-changing decision to go with a double mastectomy without reconstruction, because reconstruction would've meant I was still living in alignment with that, with that sentence. I was still doing things that I thought society that I should do. And in 2020, that was my silver lining. COVID and cancer happened for me because it freed me, and I no longer live by that sentence. I shifted it and was able to free myself from what I believe was shame that I carried since I was 6. And now the work that I do in my coaching, I help other women and men too see their very own sentence that they've been living with, and that insight is everything. So let me ask you, what did you decide about yourself the day that you learned that something that you were doing at your core, something you were doing authentically, like something you were doing freely— what did you decide when you were told not to do that thing? What did you decide when you couldn't do something that you wanted to do? What did you decide when you were not free to be yourself? Let me know in the comments how this has affected your life. And if you wanna dive deeper and learn a little more about this topic, I just did a 4-part video a couple weeks ago. You can find it, as a matter of fact, I'll tag it to this video. Let me know in the comments what your default sentence, what you think it is. And if you wanna dive a little deeper, this is some of the work that I do in The Reset. Let me know if you're interested.