Fear is the greatest obstacle to living your best life. Fear keeps you from doing what you want and having what you want. Fear sneaks up on you, because it is stored in your subconscious mind. When fear begins to creep up, your body responds by releasing chemicals to your brain that signal danger. These memories from your past have been stored in your subconscious mind, and they need to be eradicated. Before you know it, you feel fear, which stops you from doing what you need to do to achieve your goals. Fear can prevent you from attaining any goal: having a loving relationship; having warm, close friendships; meeting new people; making more money; getting a great job and doing what you love.
Your dreams are yours alone, and how you imagine your dreams creates your reality. But what happens when you struggle to reach your goals? Your subconscious mind does its job and gets in the way of you achieving your goals, through past programming that tells you, “don’t do this, I’m scared, I’ll look stupid, I’m not good enough….” There isn’t enough room on this page to list all of the excuses and fears that the subconscious mind can come up with. So, how do we eliminate indecision and fear?
Step 1- Set a Goal
Set a goal. Write it down. As you do this, notice how your body feels. Pay attention to what’s going on in your body and mind. Your subconscious mind whispers hidden feelings to you. In some instances, it triggers the fear cycle. Write that down, too. What are your believed fears? What do you feel blocks you from achieving your goal? Why do you imagine you can’t do it? Remember that letting those fears go is a process. Move on to step two.
2- Paint the Sky
Paint the sky. This step means that you must plan as if you had no boundaries or fears. What would your world look like? Imagine that, and write that down. Freely let your dream flow out of you. Say thank you and feel your energy now. You have shifted your energy from fear and being sure that you have obstacles in your way, to being in a state that makes you feel good. Stay there and memorize that feeling. You will draw on that.
Step 3: Make a Plan
Make a plan to pursue your dream. How will you begin? Notice everything that comes up and gets in the way. These things stall your action, stopping you from stepping into your dream. Your subconscious mind is doing what it was programmed to do — keeping you safe –but this is an illusion. It is an illusion that you cannot have what you dream about.
For example:
Let’s say that your dream is to lose weight and get it shape. You visualize your best body, shutting the door in your mind and not considering what society believes your best body to be. This is a personal image held within your mind. Set that image firmly in place and set a goal to lose 15 pounds in 12 weeks. You decide that you will wake up every morning at 6 a.m. to hit the gym. You pre-plan your meals and throw out all junk food. At 6 a.m. the next morning, the alarm goes off and you hit the snooze button. You tell yourself, “I’ll start tomorrow.” As you get ready in the morning, you berate yourself for not getting up, but recommit to doing so the following morning. That night before going to sleep, you set the same goal. You toss and turn all night and don’t sleep. When the alarm goes off in the morning, you wake up cranky, and you hit the snooze button. The night after that, you eat something that makes you feel ill. When your alarm goes off in the morning, once again, you hit the snooze button.
Your subconscious mind is sabotaging your goals. It is keeping you in your safe space and you don’t even realize it. We all have unspoken, subconscious fears of being our best self. We worry that we will look foolish, that others will judge us, that we will fail and if we fail, why try? Before you even set your intention or goal, your subconscious mind knew exactly how to keep you safe and in your place. I call this place being “comfortably uncomfortable.” It’s easier for you to hate the people who work out, eat for their body type chemistry and have the bodies they love. But in reality, you secretly despise yourself, not them, as they mirror to you your alleged failure. How can you fail if you don’t try? Isn’t the “not trying” really the alleged failure? I personally don’t believe that we fail. I think we either do something or we don’t. If it doesn’t work, we get up and we try again. If you want something badly enough, you will find a way. There is ALWAYS a way.
Lesson 1: NEVER give up on yourself. EVER. There is always a way.
Step 4- Set Your Mantras
You will no longer cave in to the things that try to sabotage you from achieving your goal. Your mantra is, “There is always a way.”
Do not put off the program until another time that is more convenient. Your mantra is, “The only time is now.”
Stop talking about your goals to others. This dissipates your energy and the energy behind your dream. Other people’s negative energy and self-doubt can tarnish the very desire and dream you have. The result? You wind up being all talk and no action. Your mantra is, “I can do anything I set my mind to.” And you can. Believe that.
Step 5: Be All In
There is only Plan A. Be all in. Nothing can stop you but you. Set your intention and remind yourself hourly that you will achieve everything that you set your mind to. If you are struggling with believing your own goal, remind yourself that this is normal. Tell yourself to drop the struggle. Struggle only creates more struggle. Let go and let it flow. Where you focus matters.
Your mantra is, “Everything I want wants me, and that is why there is no plan B.” It even rhymes so you can easily remember it.
In the example above, the plan was to lose 15 lbs. in 12 weeks. That’s a totally doable goal. How badly do you want it? Badly enough to shut out the voices in your head, the fear that tries to stop you from having what you want? The commitment is to your desires– NOT to the voices in your head and your fear.
Step 6: You Own Your Subconscious–Act Like It
Your subconscious is at work 24/7. If you tell it to go past transparent obstacles, it will. So what that you didn’t get any sleep? Get up early anyway. Do you think you’ll get sick because you didn’t sleep? Get that fear out of your head—it’s just another excuse. You won’t get sick if you tell yourself that you won’t get sick. Your stomach feels badly? Get up anyway and get moving. You always feel better when you get up and start moving. You know this. Take your excuses and smash them by getting up and breaking the snooze button pattern.
When my clients resist an alarm that goes off an hour or two before they usually wake up, they are resisting changing their subconscious mind. This is the gatekeeper to the subconscious that you need to fire. You are now the gatekeeper. Grab your gatekeeper security guard’s gun, hold it to his head and tell him he is fired. Get up and stay up. Watch what happens. Put your gym clothes on. Watch your mental resistance and the complaining. Show the gatekeeper the gun and remind him that he is fired. Become aware of your resistance. The next morning, you will do it again because you broke the pattern and replaced it with feeling good because you accomplished a goal. You’ll realize that you accomplished something. You broke a pattern.
Do it again. Make. It. Happen.
Tenacity, desire and willingness are your new best friends. You control your subconscious because it is all about you. There is always a way. There aren’t any fears except the fears that you believe. You control yourself. Your subconscious fears and beliefs can be killing your dreams, when you find them lurking in your subconscious mind, silently killing off your desires. Those fears and beliefs were carefully put into place to keep you safe when you were a kid, or so you think. They are old and outdated. They are the dirty socks underneath your bed. You don’t even know that they are there or how they got there. You stumble upon them because you looked under the bed. What do you do? You either throw them in the laundry and wash them, or you throw them away. Who leaves dirty socks under the damn bed?
Examine Your Own Fears
Look closely at yourself. Do you believe that you are being kept from living your dream? You must want more, or you wouldn’t have read this far into this blog post. Something has been urging you to do more, to be you. Complete acceptance of your life’s expression and signature will cause you to thrive and live a life of purpose. A life to be lived is a life that you love. Don’t let anyone ever tell you differently.
Rent the very fabric of the universe. Change by finding within the fears that are keeping you from going all in.
