Zombie Slayers Anonymous: How You Can Battle Brain Blurts

Or... Slay the lies you believe.

The other day, someone on Substack Notes asked me if I ever regretted the path not taken. I confidently typed, “I don’t think so” (as confidently as you can type, “I don’t think so”). I think I was lying. But not on purpose. I’ve been pondering this question ever since, and the problem is... I’ve been lying to myself.

Ever since I could remember, the allure of the stage had me dreaming of the swish of the curtain. I wanted to be an actor. I spent two years in a performing arts high school with other theatre nerds and then headed to Mason Gross School of the Arts before continuing my training with my mentor at a studio in New York City. For seven years, I pursued my dream of an acting career.

I worked for a toner cartridge company in Queens during the day, wedging my auditions between sales calls and hunting down grubby payphones on city streets, when my pager beeped with a message from my voicemail service (I know. The world was inconvenient back then - agents called actual people who’d copy down the message, then beep us. We’d then call our service back, and that person would read us the message the agent had called with).

I traveled the US on national tours (oh hello, Red roof bedspread I've seen in the last thirty states), made my first visit back to my homeland on a UK tour, booked many voiceover commercials (including one as the voice of Victoria’s Secret), produced off-off-Broadway productions, and spent many months away on Regional Theatre contracts. But in the end, I failed. I failed because I quit.

I left acting behind for many reasons too complicated to unpack here, but I regret one of those reasons. A constant bitchy travel partner on my acting journey was that little voice in my brain that kept repeating,

“You're no good at this acting stuff. You're just faking it.”

I remember attending my college annual review with my mentor; she was praising my work, and I burst into tears and said,

“But I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just pretending I do!”

Yeah, I was hard work. I’ve apologized to her since.

I have somewhat of a defense. Did you know that 90-95% of our beliefs are pre-programmed? Our brain creates our beliefs by drawing from our past experiences, or worse, the way we remember our past experiences — all this is mostly unconscious. After formation, these beliefs are constantly fortified because our brains ignore anything that doesn’t conform to our established worldview. Even the worldview you didn’t know you had.

Authors know this because when we write a novel, we create these experiences (you might read about them in the back story) to explain our protagonist’s worldview and flaws.

But, what if I told you there’s a way to apply this secret of story to your life and make the unconscious conscious? Then, you could fight these pre-programmed beliefs and chart a course to your extraordinary life.

The pre-programmed way goes like this: Your experiences many years ago cause you to believe something (that you don’t even realize you believe), and that belief creates your actions (which you are not consciously deciding upon), which in turn create your life.

Let’s apply this to my bitchy inner voice travel partner, shall we? Many years ago, as one of four children, I was the “flighty one.” The ditzy one who looked for fairies in the garden. The child who made up stories and was so emotional that once (when I was about 13 years old), my siblings and Mum seriously questioned if I was on drugs (and once questioned, I immediately convinced myself that I was on drugs. Maybe I took them by accident? Maybe someone slipped them to me? Maybe I took them willingly and had forgotten I took them willingly because I’m on drugs!). I was the one who “could never finish what she started,” and I wasn’t smart like my older brother. Any success I had must be a fluke. I took action on those beliefs when I quit acting. Like I said, it wasn’t the only reason. But it was a reason - and guess what? I didn’t consciously know it at the time.

When crafting a story structure for a novel, this belief (or set of beliefs) is an essential element of a character arc. It’s called “The Lie Your Character Believes.” And, in a story, it’s the lie your character believes that gets them into trouble.

It’s the lie they must prove wrong to get their happy ending.

Maybe you love everything about your life… cool. Maybe you had an amazing upbringing or are magnificently self-aware. You are also probably rich, good-looking, privileged, and popular, and we all hate you.

(I could never hate you!)

Maybe, like most people, and like our protagonists, there are things about your life you’d like to change. The most effective way to change is to choose (a lot) - but it’s pretty darn hard to choose differently when you’ve got this thing in your head (your brain) making choices based on things it thinks that you didn’t even know were thunk.

To change, you must make conscious choices based on clarity around your true beliefs and where these beliefs came from. Just like our protagonists must do before they can fulfill their character arc, you must uncover the “lies you believe” so they can’t hijack your brain and turn you into a non-choosing zombie. The beliefs that shift us away from the path we’re supposed to walk are those of fear, loathing, or self-doubt. Yeah, it sucks we allow these kinds of thoughts to live in our heads, but we do. Not only do they live in our heads, but they take us over like some sort of “Last of Us” creepy mycelium (although, as a zombie movie lover, I have to say they are the best zombies I’ve seen.)

It’s time to fight the zombies.

Jung calls these virus-like thoughts “shadow stories,” Julia Cameron calls those who allow this virus to turn them into zombies “shadow artists”. Well, it’s time to shine some light. Luckily, Julia Cameron provides us with a way to do just that in her fabulous book, The Artist’s Way (I’ve read this book annually over the last thirty years).

Julia calls these imposter beliefs, blurts. It’s the perfect description. I always imagine a little goblin sitting on my shoulder, waiting until the last second before I make an authentic, value-based choice and blurting out a negative imposter belief… “you’re too scatter-brained to be successful doing that… stop!” (yes, that’s one of my real blurts).

Here’s Julia’s assignment. Start with affirmations. Write a list of positive things you’d like to believe about yourself. For example, “I, Lisa-Marie, am a skilled author.” And listen for your blurts. Oh, they will come fast and furious. My inner saboteur just sneered, 'Oh please, you're just another hack churning out cliché-ridden fiction!' (Are you this mean to yourself?)

After you have captured all your blurts (or shadow stories), convert them into positive affirmations. Mine would be, “I am not a hack. I have a Ph.D. thesis to prove it.”

Acknowledging your shadow stories, uncovering them through this exercise, and creating positive affirmations to battle them is the cure for the zombie virus. And you won’t need to quarantine or smash your own zombie head in.

And who knows, maybe one day, when we settle down in one place, I’ll start a theatre and give myself some juicy roles. After all, I’ve long shut up that bitchy travel companion and learned how to get things done.

JOURNAL PROMPT

It's time to crush your zombie brain and grow flowers from your skull (gross, but relevant). Grab that journal and make three columns: new beliefs, blurts (lies you believe), and positive affirmations. Capture them all and mark that page in your journal. Every day or two, head to that page and recite your affirmations. Remember, they are only magic when you say them out loud!

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One of my Ultimate Whys is to help as many women as possible find their Extraordinary Lives. If you believe in this mission, please restack, like, comment, or share this publication. Thank you!

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