What’s stopping you making the personal changes to your life that you’re looking for?
So, you really want to make a change in your life. Maybe to lose weight, to stop smoking, to stop feeling so anxious, to stop all the negative self-talk or something like that.
But every time you try, there seems to be some invisible force holding you back, stopping you from making the changes that you’re striving to make.
Of course, this could be because you’re not fully committed to making the change. You certainly can’t expect things to change without being fully committed, especially as you might have to go through the possibly uncomfortable transition period.
More often than not though, even if you are fully committed, that invisible hand still seems to be stopping you. This is because there is something going on in the background of your mind, something called ‘secondary gain’.
‘Secondary gain’ is some benefit, often hidden, for staying just as you are, for NOT making the change that you really want to make.
So, for the smoker, the secondary gain might be that one of the reasons he enjoys smoking is that he enjoys the social aspects of it. Similarly, for the woman who wants to lose weight, the secondary gain might be that she secretly likes being overweight because it stops her attracting unwanted attention or helps her feel protected in some way.
Often these barriers to change are unconscious, hidden from your conscious mind, which is why they can be so effective in making change difficult. In the face of this type of resistance, people often give up and let things remain in the unsatisfactory way that they have been in the past.
However, the ability to make personal change is a really important aspect of your personal growth as a human-being and one of the ways that you make your life better for yourself and those around you.
So, it can be very important to find a way of letting go of these secondary gains so that you can effectively make the changes that you are looking for. But the fact that they are often stored in your unconscious mind presents a bit of a difficulty.
While you might have some success working on the conscious aspects of these secondary gains by yourself, you can’t really work on unconscious issues by yourself, because, … well… they’re unconscious.
So, this is why it is often best to work with an experienced mindset coach who will help you get in touch with these unconscious barriers helping you to quickly let them go so that you can more readily make the changes that you are so eager to make.
If you want some help letting go of your unconscious barriers, we should chat.
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