Holding onto what isn’t good for you

What are you holding onto that’s not good for you? Here are a few likely suspects:

1.??????? Ways of thinking that give you low energy -

ALL of us do this at times and it’s rotten for business (and your family). These ways of thinking immediately make you feel badly. They are the:

*Repeat phrases you use on yourself (e.g., “I don’t have enough money for that”),

*Many inaccurate beliefs (“I’ll never be one of those people”),

*Worldviews (“People like me are never going to make it there”).

They keep you pegged at a lower level which denies you your chance to achieve what you are truly capable of accomplishing. They might be themes in your life such as feeling alone or a story you tell about the chips never falling your way. I know it’s hard to move away from these ways of thinking and I don’t doubt that these have been real experiences for you on occasion. But these trains of thought are dangerous because if you repeat them enough, they dictate your future path. We have this perverse unwitting ability to make them self-fulfilling prophecies.

Stopping the rot starts with noticing when you say or think these downer thoughts in your head and start with noticing that you are feeling blah. How you do this noticing is up to you. It will feel good to know what the enemy looks like.

Once you’re aware of who the bad guys are, you can begin the fun part of creating empowering antidotes to repeatedly knock those old phrases and emotions out of your head. I carry mine around with me as reminders because our minds will lapse back to hardwired ways otherwise.

Think for a moment: if you could stop feeding these sick creatures and instead feed your heart’s desires, what could start to happen? If you decide to want what you really want deep down and give it permission to be your guidance system for the rest of your life, where will you start going (with some patience, persistence and a few more tests from life to see if you’re really serious)?

It’s easy to dismiss these as fanciful questions - except we’re talking about you and your one life. Several times per week I get to talk to a couple of relatives who are in their last few months of life and it’s really depressing and incredibly sad to hear. And while none of us wants to think about it, we’re all on that exact same path at some point. And it will be here sooner than we can imagine. The years do go by as quickly as you wink.

So, if you’re going to fly, what kind of scenery do you want? Are you going to choose or let someone else do that for you? This is the remarkable power of your ways of thinking. They can plunge you into ghost towns of lost hopes and dreams, lives of constant flat busyness, or vistas of amazing beauty. And you already know this because you’ve been to them already!

In my 57 years so far experimenting with all kinds of solutions and from my 20+ years guiding high achievers, I think it’s accurate to say that you will spot some of your critical ways of thinking quite easily but that others are so hard-wired, so ‘normal’ for you to think that you’ll miss them completely. Painfully, some of these poisons are as natural to you as putting on your shoes.

What made me aware of these demons was a recent online course I took that helped me identify the insidious ways of thinking I’ve had over the years that have held me back. Most of them had become so ‘normal’ to my brain that they were permanent residents there – in a very large, affluent community I’d fed them so well!

This is a big deal because it’s our thoughts that cause our feelings. If we don’t feel good about ourselves, we don’t take the impactful actions that will help us make a positive difference in the world and get the results we want. Which means little financial success too – and that has its own miserable ripple effect of unhappy partners and children.

The course I took was impressive because what you learn is specific to you. In other words, my ways of thinking and being that demoralise and hold me back – and the antidotes - are likely very different from what you may think and do.

This learning was so profound that I had to create a program to help others with this myself (message me if you’re curious). It helped me shine a spotlight on ways of thinking that I’ve had for as long as I can remember that stink to high heaven. And now I’ve got a laser burning them up because they’ve been obstacles throughout my life. I’m extremely excited about this and I really want the same for you. I feel like I’m carrying around a secret weapon that is as clear a guide for me as I’ve ever had. Yours will be totally different and equally exciting.

The most important point is this:

How can you believe that your destiny is to overcome your biggest challenges?

How can you believe that you’ve been given this ‘wound’ because you have the tools to work through it?

Let these questions sit with you because this is where your greatest gold is.

Other people have done this which is proof you can too.

2.??????? Bad habits –

The problem with bad habits is that they make you feel terrible, and this is horrendous for helping you get what you want. It’s like you’re sitting in a pool of your own vomit and acting like your worst self deserves it.

Kicking them is much easier said than done so I won’t insult you with some ‘easy 4 step process’.

We all have a few bad habits where it’s easy to know that they are damaging for us either physically, mentally, socially, spiritually, or financially. They skew us in a negative direction, and we scurry to rationalize our behaviour – our guilty pleasure; our stress reliever - we can spoil ourselves a bit for all our hard work, can’t we? Fine: none of us is perfect nor should we strive to be. But I’m not talking about being perfect; I’m talking about doing things that contribute fleeting pleasure and long-term tend to make ugly messes.

The bestsellers on habits don’t usually tell us how hard it can be to kick a bad habit. They avoid citing the odds. They are obligated to publish a one-size fits all multi-step solution that fills you with a surge of optimism and then feel like a loser when it doesn't seem to get you the same outcomes. They don’t explain how only a few people can generate willpower much easier than most (probably including these authors) or how hard it is to build a willpower muscle. Publishers don't like that kind of messaging because it’s bad for sales.

What actually works for you personally? You know it’s probably not by comparing yourself to someone who’s found it relatively easy to quit a bad habit.

However your bad habits have come about over time, now they are an attempted fix for a problem you’re not solving. When something isn’t feeling good, a great question to consider is: “What is life trying to teach me?”

What’s scary is that life continues to try to teach us repeatedly until we face our problem – for as long as we live. I know that life can grind us down sometimes and we succumb to thinking “this is just the way it is” and some low level ‘reality’. Fortunately, this is not for you anymore, hence the question:

“What is life trying to teach me?”

Remember: you’ve been given this ‘wound’ because you have the tools to work through it. And when you do face it and beat it, your morale and energy will be so high that more business and opportunities are going to come your way because we are all magnets. The more authentic positive energy you exude, the more it will draw to you what you really want – and when you feel better, you take more proactive actions that will get you there.

How have you kicked bad habits before? Something motivated you to stick with making the change - some concoction of (mostly) pain and/or pleasure got you the leverage you needed.

To sustain it you likely sensed that you were worth it. No one is inherently any better or worse than you. Getting more comfortable in your own skin and being you – now that’s the life to pursue. That is something else the new course I’m running helps to reveal and being your real self is not easy for any of us. Appreciating yourself for who you are and who you aren’t and cannot ever be – that is no mean feat.

Lastly, sometimes the ‘bad’ or ‘meh’ feeling you have that you ‘fix’ with a bad habit is in fact a totally normal emotion and you just need to let it work its natural way through you by acknowledging it and letting it bugger off after you’ve had a good night’s sleep. You didn’t need to eat all that ice cream or drink all that wine after all. It was just a normal part of human being.

3. Negative energy people that bad vibe everything else you do -

It’s normal to have negative emotions such as frustration and anger. As I just referenced, the best mastery is to process them and let them pass through you without hanging onto them.

Who are the low energy people you don’t want to hold onto? How can you reduce interactions with the negative, angry people you know? Low and toxic energy is miserable to be around. It’s also bad for business because you waste a lot of time needing to recover emotionally and people can sense this energy even when you think you’re masking it well.

4. Food, drink and inactivity that invite health issues -

What would serve you to no longer hold onto? Since most adults in the west are visibly struggling to keep their weight down, there’s a good chance there are foods/drinks that you consume that are doing you no favours. You might not realise which ones these are as your health, age, and certain products change. The same is true for too many sedentary habits.

5. Money-losing ways of communication -

When do you hold back sharing your real thoughts and feelings because you’re overly concerned with what others may think? If you do it a lot, the world doesn’t get to meet the real you. Bad for business. Does your lack of openness or caring create too many average relationships? Bad for business. Nobody refers business as usual. When you show a lack of trust for others e.g., to complete their tasks exactly as you expect them, well, you’ll get results, but you will rarely be pleased with them! Bad for business.

Yes, you’ve got a reason for how you communicate (holding back, people pleasing, being distrustful) but you may be holding onto a way that isn’t good for you anymore. It probably came from a legitimate bad experience but it’s stuck. It helps protect you from this past hurt, but it doesn’t help you attract better outcomes now. The world’s waiting for you to make this shift and give you what you want. The fire doesn’t start until you pile it up with wood and light it.

I want to be honest: the recent course I took also helped me identify my Achilles Heels in this area. Sometimes it’s really hard to objectively notice your own less effective ways of communication. So, yes, you might need others to point these out to you. The challenge is: how can you avoid taking their answers personally? I’d rather hear it from an objective third party as loved ones can also simply project things they don’t like about themselves onto you and there goes your peaceful weekend ??

We will always be flawed beings but if you’re ready to ditch what doesn’t serve you, pick a battle from the five areas above that is worth fighting and, as you conquer it, you will feel fabulous and that’s when your trajectory tilts rapidly upwards…

To slaying your dragons!

Matt

Copyright Matt Anderson, 2024