There are many ways to initiate a mojotivity malfunction, and most of us have tried most of them: stuffed our emotions, stifled our opinions, accepted negative beliefs as reality, allowed ourselves to become overwhelmed by circumstances that we couldn't do anything about.

One of the most insidious ways to cause your  mojotivity to malfunction is to allow yourself to be whittled down to size -- emotionally, energetically, creatively or spiritually.

I call this "allowing oneself to be-littled."

There is a Greek myth that is about Being Littled. This myth tells of a young man, Theseus, and of his encounter with an innkeeper named Procrustes.       

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           The Myth of
          Procrustes' Bed
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Procrustes lived alone in an inn at the side of a well traveled road, and he earned his living by putting travelers up for the night. He would feed the traveler a hearty meal and then show him to a room, which was pretty ordinary, except for its unique iron bed - a bed that looked more like a Rube Goldberg machine than a place to sleep.

Procrustes seemed like the most welcoming of innkeepers, but there was a hitch: after a stopover at Procrustes' Inn, the guest would not be seen again.

It was all because of The Bed.

Procrustes, it seems, had designed the bed to exactly match his own length, and his own width.

What's more, he felt that everyone should fit in the bed in exactly the same way that he did, and he was determined to make it so. Therefore, once the innocent traveler fell asleep, Procrustes would lower the bed's iron arms down onto the visitor, clamp him down, and, depending on whether the traveler was too short or too long, too narrow or too wide (compared to Procrustes' ideal, that is) Procrustes would either stretch the visitor till he matched the length of the bed, or, he would cut off the visitor's overhanging body parts (head, arms, legs, whatever) with a sharp knife. 

So, it was true that no matter who showed up, they always ended up fitting into Procrustes' bed. Procrustes was the enforcer of conformity, and, in this case, conformity meant death. 

Until Theseus met up with Procrustes everyone who stayed at the inn was forced to "be like Procrustes," and destroyed in the process. Theseus himself would have been the next victim, except that he had been forewarned - Theseus  knew all about The Bed.

Not wanting to be trimmed or stretched, Theseus devised a way to con the con man. Playing dumb, he pretended not to know how to get into the weird bed, and he tricked Procrustes into hopping into the bed himself - the better to demonstrate how the bed worked.

As soon as Procrustes had placed his head on the pillow, Theseus quickly lowered the iron arms, clamped Procrustes down, and gave him a taste of his own medicine. 

Nip, nip. Tuck, tuck.  Procrustes of course, was never seen again, and future travelers were saved.

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Sometimes, this Be-Littling happens without malice. Who can forget the silence where praise was expected, the roll of the eyes, the harsh word, the bit of overheard gossip, or that critical statement meant for our own good. Inadvertently we've been cut so ar down to size that we couldn't imagine where the rest of us disappeared to.

Sometimes all it takes is no response at all to make us feel just like a deflated balloon.

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Procrusticators come in all shapes and sizes. The media and the advertising industry, in their attempts to shape our beliefs and preferences, are procrustean ... friends, neighbors, parents, spouses and even helping professionals such as teachers, gurus, ministers, therapists, doctors who think that they know better than we do about what we ought to be doing are all procrustean.

I have my own procrustean tendencies, and surely you have yours:  inner critics, inner judges, inner parents, inner shoulds and inner musts are twisting us into a pretzels and turning us away from our true selves.

So, how can you learn how to stop cutting yourself down to size, and start reclaiming your mojotivity?

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        Mend Your Mojotivity:
       Stop Cutting Yourself
        Down to Size
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No one can make you lie in Procrustes' bed without your consent. You have to look the other way, feign helplessness, or collude with the Be Littlers in your own life in order to allow yourself to be minimized. You have to help make your own Procrustes' Bed before you find yourself lying in it.

Here is an awareness exercise that you can do whenever you think that you (or someone else) might be trimming your sails:

1.  Notice how you are holding yourself back, bending yourself out of shape, pushing yourself around, or be-littling yourself in any way.

2.  Look for shouldacouldawouldas:  words like can't, must, should, ought.  And look for feelings like shame, hurt, disappointment, rage or confusion.

3.  What emotions do you feel? Sad, angry, hurt, helpless?

4.  What sensations do you feel it in your body? Knots in stomach? Tight throat? Headache?

5.  Instead of blocking the unpleasant thoughts, feelings, sensations, see if you can amplify them, make them bigger.  Feel them more. If this were a dream, how would it play out?

6.   Now what do you feel or sense?

7.   Ask yourself "What percent of this feeling am I willing to let go of?"

8.  Create a "Letting Go Image":   Imagine putting the feeling in a pitcher, and pour off exactly the percent that you chose. Or imagine the feeling to be like stones your backpack, and toss away exactly the number of stones that you are comfortable letting go of.

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"Joan's work is like having an eraser that simply removes problems.

Once you work on a problem you can easily forget that it was a problem, because it's completely gone!"

Cathy Hedgecock,
journalist