“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
~ C.G. Jung
I have accomplished a lot in my life. I have also failed countless of times. I have coached people who have failed and who have succeeded. All I can tell you is the two are not opposites instead, they are synonymous in many ways. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot succeed unless you fail and usually, fail a lot! On the flipside, there is success in trying and failing. You learn what not do and you start thinking about how you can do it better the next time you try. It also has a strengthening effect on several aspects of your being such as your mental toughness, emotional stability and body if it’s a physical endeavour.
The only real lasting failure is quitting. Quitting is not in our nature. As described in ‘So You Screwed Up, Now What?’, babies never give up on trying to walk. They fall many times, sometimes experiencing pain because of it and yet, they keep on getting back up and trying again. Why? Life has a natural tendency to grow and expand itself. Grow and success are programmed into our subconscious or instinctive mind.
If we are programmed for growth and success then what’s getting in the way of you reaching your goals? There must be another program or programs (learned belief patterns) interfering with this natural success program. Therefore, success isn’t about learning something new that we don’t already know. Success is about unlearning or removing any programs that are self-defeating. This is going to take quite a bit of introspection.
In order to remove self-sabotaging programs, we need to raise our awareness of our inner-dialogue through practices such as meditation and journaling. This is not easy at first, but with a little practice, you will be able to start recognizing these programs popping up more often. You are shedding light and exposing your inner demons so to speak. Here’s a hint – these programs like to show up especially at critical moments. Why? Well, the more stress or resistance increases, the more likely we tend to automatically react instead of mindfully or thoughtfully respond. In other words, the bigger the goal or challenge, the more we trigger and expose these faulty, self-defeating programs that lie within us.
After the awareness stage, the next step is to remove the program and put something better in its place. Be patient with yourself. Many of these programs have been running in your mind for years. Whether it was a parent, teacher, sibling, boss, movie, advertisement, etc., someone passed these programs down to you. The longer they have been there, the more effort is required to replace them. Also, don’t beat yourself up for carrying these programs with you for so long and don’t be angry at others for passing them down to you. It’s just wasted energy. For the most part, people pass these down with the best of intentions. Instead, focus on catching them when they appear and calmly snip them out like a weed in your garden (mind). Remember positive thoughts are seeds with creative potential and negative thoughts, beliefs or programs will strangle them.
If you want to start reaching the goals you set out for yourself, you need to get out of your own way. You need to start acting like a baby (didn’t think you would hear that one now did you?)! I remember, on two separate occasions, when my son was a baby, I made the mistake of telling someone that he couldn’t do something yet because he was still too small. Of course he made me look like a fool both times. I quickly learned to never say he was not capable of achieving anything from that point on.
Your V10 Health Coach,
Sal Crispo P.S. If you are interested, I also make a coaching video for each of these posts on YouTube. You can subscribe to my YouTube channel so you do not miss out on any of the valuable content I share. Here is the link for this post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrtCsP3cOCo
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