Overcome your internal pig dog

Direct translations of phrases from a language to another can be quite funny. In German we have this phrase ”interner Schweinehund”, internal pig dog, sisäinen sikakoira. He is demotivating character braking you down. He’s the one who makes you hesitate and think that you shouldn’t do something for some weird reason. Usually you aren’t supposed to have the time – even if it would take just 2 minutes to do the thing. Other popular things the pig dog tells you are like ”nah, it won’t change anything”, ”that can’t be done” and ”you’ll make a fool of yourself”.

The pig dog lives only as you feed it. Once you give in for the pig dog, he’ll grow and become bigger – with more reasons why things shouldn’t be done. But every time you’ll refuse to give the pig dog more to eat, he’ll shrink. I don’t think you can make the pig dog completely die, but by making him as small as possible you’ll achieve more things than you can imagine.

But always keep in mind that the pig dog is there waiting for a supper. If he won’t get big meals, he’ll change his strategy by saying that things should be done later (instead of saying they cannot be done at all). You know his internal voice saying ”you can do this tomorrow too” or ”postponing this with a few weeks won’t have any effect on the big picture”.

Overcoming the pig dog is a process where you decide every day to do what you want and ignore the pig dog. In the beginning it is not that easy as the pig dog can be really creative with the excuses. But once you start recognizing that the voice in your head is the pig dog, you’re already on the right path.

Let’s take an example: As I wen’t through this blog article before placing it online, my personal pig dog told me ”forget it, this has been written already so many times by far better writers than you””, ”who’s gonna read it?” and ”who’re you to tell people about this issue?”.

In your face pig dog! This is now online!

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