It’s truly hard to believe that it’s mid-December 2019. Nearly the end of a decade. Through all of the holiday madness, we’re also being inundated with intense messages about finishing the decade strong, starting over in 2020, making major life changes.
Taking stock of where you are and where you want to go is a great exercise in self-reflection. However, the messages and the approach in the marketing are mostly just incredibly overwhelming and stress-inducing. We want that new body. That success. That new relationship. NOW. So we make our plans. BIG plans. Something like: I’m going to lose ten pounds by the end of January. I’m going to be a completely new person in 2020. I’m going to make *this* amount of money. But then, come February, the gym is empty, we’ve gone back to our old habits, and all resolutions have gone out the window. Your pushing and striving could only take you so far.
Why? Effort cannot overcome belief. Let me say that again. Effort cannot overcome belief.
In the process of all this pushing and striving, we get uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. And, what happens when we get uncomfortable? We shut down. Or, we try even harder. We feel like we’re walking uphill with a bag of boulders on our back. Eventually, we still shut down.
Why is change so hard? Because deep down you don’t believe what you want is available to you. You have baggage. You are carrying imprints of the past. You are carrying beliefs. You are carrying repressed emotions. You are carrying habits. Your subconscious mind is essentially a database of all of the meaning you’ve created out of the events of your formative life. And, while it feels like you are making change at times, you are rarely touching that deep imprint that is carried in your subconscious mind. You keep looking outside of yourself for answers – the right book, the right teacher, the right job, the right relationship that will fix you. But, you carry that imprint within you. The answers are not out there, they are within you.
Dr. Bruce Lipton has stated that 95% of our behavior is coming straight out of the programs in our subconscious. The majority of this subconscious programming is downloaded by the age of seven. Unless we intentionally access that programming and change it, we carry this belief system with us throughout our lives.
All of the trying and all of the striving doesn’t allow the deeper part of you that knows it is love, that knows it is worthy, that knows it is enough right now to rise to the surface. These are things you were born knowing. But we’ve piled so much on top of this knowing through our life experiences, we can no longer access it. True transformation is not about adding to the mix of resistance and fear. It’s about becoming aware. It’s about letting go. Your creativity, your energy, your authentic essence naturally rise when you become truly present and start to release all of the things that are holding them down.
Most of the time we aren’t even aware of this battle going on inside of us. We only feel our discomfort, our angst, our anger, our challenges when we go through our day to day. These are the signs that something else is at play. Our conscious mind likes to think it has all the answers but it is not aware of the power of our deeply held conditioning. The conscious mind wants to fight. It wants to push against. It wants to overcome. But, when you push and when you fight, you are strengthening your hold on that challenge. You are gripping it. It takes all of your energy to keep fighting it.
Imagine opening your hands. Imagine loosening that grip. Imagine telling your challenge that you no longer want to fight it. You want to know it. Do you already feel more at ease? You can start by understanding that everything – no matter how harmful, how hurtful, how uncomfortable it seems – serves a purpose. There IS a reason it is part of your life. When you approach your challenges with compassion and accept them, you can discover what that purpose is. It truly is possible to acknowledge and have gratitude for a part of you that you don’t like right now. This is the start to setting it free. To setting yourself free. You can’t just bypass it. You can’t ignore it. You can’t wish it away. You have to be willing to look at it. Really understand it. What are you believing? Why can’t you let it go? What is it trying to tell you?
There are powerful methods available to help you access those parts of you that seem to be working against you. What’s most important is that you start with being aware. Anything outside of you that triggers you is something inside of you that wants to be seen, wants to be heard.
When you feel that discomfort again, breathe and remember: this is not the time to give up; this is an invitation to go inside. As you approach 2020, do it with a new mission. Make it the year that you accept that invitation.
P.S. If you are ready to go deeper, it would be my honor to help you. I use Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT Hypnotherapy) and Coaching as a pathway to access the subconscious. Through this pathway, we can identify, process, and release what no longer serves you. With a new-found freedom, you integrate new beliefs, anchor new emotions, and form new habits. Schedule a consultation with me if you’d like to learn how Rapid Transformational Coaching can help you.