Remember that phrase?  Archie Bunker’s favorite comment to his wife.  It’s iconic, isn’t it?

Somebody used this phrase recently and it triggered a bunch of ideas in my head.   I started wondering how often people stifle us.  How often we stifle ourselves.

The definition of “stifle” is:

To kill by cutting off the supply of air from; suffocate; smother; choke

To suppress or repress; hold back; check; stop; inhibit

Where do you feel stifled?  What would it be like if you could free yourself from that?

And money, you remember money.  How are you stifling yourself there?  Have you perhaps given up?  Have you decided you just aren’t any good with money?  That you, yourself, somehow stifle your ability to be effective with it?

I think being stifled is something to challenge, to fight off, to refuse.   For me personally feeling stifled or being stifled “get’s my Irish up”.  And that’s not an all bad thing.  It’s the right kind of trouble to get into.  The place where you refuse to accept a “less than” position.   It’s a place where you don’t settle.

Stifle is often a message in our heads.  “Who are you to think you can do that?”

“You aren’t smart enough, or clever enough, or just enough”  “Don’t even try”

And if you succumb to it, you actually re-enforce it.  It becomes the reality.

A really great place to look at is where you are self-stifling, and what might happen if you stopped!  It you stopped believing that you are somehow just “bad” with money, and instead decided to change the idea, well then what might happen?

And just for fun, the next time you hear a voice in your head judging, criticizing or stifling you, just picture Archie.  Would you really let yourself be influenced by a guy that talked about going to the groinacologist?