When change is worth getting totally grit-faced

Introduction: Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been fascinated by how people went from where they started in life to where they are now. Once I left school and met ever more people, at some point I noticed that many people are like my wonderful sister: they don’t (have to) make many professional changes; they get used to doing what they’re doing, and it meets most of their needs and they primarily only react to life as it affects them.

Once I became self-employed – I suppose once I had to be more proactive about my work life versus just follow my degree path – then I noticed the meritocracy: the different levels of achievement (and life satisfaction) that existed. This immediately begged the question: why do some people achieve so much more than others? After all, we all want mostly the same things. And how can I have great ‘success’?

This has been a 30-year inquiry for me. Not because the success recipe is necessarily complex for some (although people seldom talk about the high degree of excellent skills and dogged mental tenacity you need to apply the sometimes seemingly-simple recipe) but because 80% of the people I meet run into all kinds of obstacles and do not get where they really want to, and I feel badly when I can’t help them succeed the way they want to. I hate this. And, frankly, because I’ve always wanted to test what I’m capable of, do fantastically well, and more often than not I run into obstacles too. I genuinely think my life experience was intended this way so that I could help more people overcome their challenges because I’ve had to experience almost all of them myself along the way.

So, when I run across a way to make remarkable changes, I want you to know ASAP so you can put this into full action too and hopefully breakthrough your barriers based on the premise that “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Not surprisingly, this is not a simple topic, and it requires reps like everything else in life. But with diligent and adaptive practice, and not wasting time on hacks, ‘3 easy steps to X’ and the ‘7 laws of Y’ that mostly work just for the person who wrote about them, in a few months you will be blown away.

Your Potential Magic Starts Here:

Seldom do we allow ourselves to feel or process all our human emotions even though this is healthy and part of everybody’s life. Instead, most (all?) of us have numbing behaviours: these are the things we do when we feel like sprucing up our current mood or avoiding a difficult, negative emotion, e.g., we feel a bit flat, so we pour ourselves a drink (state change) or distract ourselves with a movie. Frankly having numbing behaviours is normal, but…

If you want to find a healthier, more dynamic and loving way to live most of the time that can also take you to new, more exciting worlds, then – as bizarre as it sounds – it involves changing your personality. This requires you to address the most negative emotion stored inside you so you can stop reacting on autopilot the same way each day to the same people and same issues. If you can think of your brain as a garden, you need to confront your biggest weed because it is choking your progress. In other words, this is a huge obstacle to your growth because it sucks up a lot of energy and all of it is negative. And until you begin this amazing process, it may well sound like I’m not making much sense!

The best way to make this change is by using illegal, hallucinogenic drugs. No, I’m just kidding. I recommend first giving this topic:

a)??? Some conscious thought

b)??? Use meditations (I prefer guided ones as they help me stay a bit more present) or visualisations that can help you break free from the unhelpful, autopilot ways you do certain things subconsciously and help you get more of what you really want in life. Really.

I’ve been writing on and off for 15 years about using visualization to attract more of your desires ever since I read John Assaraf’s book The Answer in 2009, but only in my 2023 book The 5 Habits to Mine Your Gold did I write in more detail about the process of pulling your mental weeds and dealing with negative emotions you become unwittingly addicted to.

I know the results of just visualising consistently can be mind-boggling because I’ve followed the recipes before and seen (no exaggeration) amazing results both short and long-term. I’ve visualised my way to marriage, children, and incredible luxury travel and speaking experiences – month and years before they happened. The only thing that limited me in the past from other remarkable outcomes was a) time – thinking I didn’t have enough time to keep doing the work; b) happiness – getting such good results I felt like I didn’t need anything else and wanting more would be greedy, and c) worthiness issues – doubting whether I deserved ‘the best’ – almost too scared to wish for more. ?

But this is not just another piece about visualising what you want. That’s just the last part.

Understanding the process:

Before you can plant all these new beautiful flowers in a mind that currently copes with ‘blah’ by either changing the chemistry of your body or by distracting your mind (fill in your own blank…by over-eating, over-drinking, online gaming, porn, flirting, “retail therapy”, over-exercise, overly-controlling behaviours at work and home, Netflix bingeing, always feeling needy for even more direction or love etc etc), you want to “lose your mind” – as Joe Dispenza says – and pull the weeds of old hardwired emotions that over time have changed how you think and behave in the world and make you fairly miserable.

I always thought our personality was fixed, but if you want much better outcomes in your life, you want to pinpoint which way of BEING you have that has embedded itself inside you and is most destructive to you. This emotion got hardwired a long time ago. It happened first because of a strong emotionally negative experience that provoked the feeling e.g. anxiety, then it became a temperament and then, over time, became your personality through being reinforced by other experiences that induced the same emotion. Your brain got used to feeling this way. It actually became your (perverse) comfort-zone way of being. It’s scary, isn’t it, because it never happened intentionally but it stuck since it was such a strong emotion and you kept reliving it in your head.

Until you do the homework (below) and become AWARE of what you think, say and do with this feeling, it’s going to stay the same way and continue to be the tail that wags the dog – for the rest of your life (how’s that for a massive downer?). Why? Because most neuroscientists agree that 95-97% of what you do is dictated by your subconscious mind and only 3-5% of your actions come from conscious decisions made during your day. It’s alarming to see this in action – how much of your day is identical to the day before. Please let me urge you:

If you want to tap into new, better worlds for yourself, this work could easily be some of the most important you will ever do if you’re willing to dig in and stay put. Your subconscious could likely be your biggest hurdle. This is how I’m guiding some of my clients now and it’s legitimately life-changing if you want it to be.

What’s possible when you apply this to your business: as you engage less with the negative energy, you’re going to free up more room and time for more positive energy. This is going to seep increasingly into your business activities and help you grow. People can tell when you’re trying to sell them something and they can also sense better vibes from you when you send them which will attract more opportunities. This might not sound very tangible but, remember, neediness is a massive turn off and others can pick up on this. If, instead, your prospects and clients get ever more elevated, authentic energy from you, well - everyone wants to associate with a winning team.

Take your pick – start with ONE familiar feeling with the understanding that many of these inter-relate:

Anxiety, anger, guilt, worry, sadness, depression, frustration, insecurity, hatred, judgement, victimisation, shame, regret, suffering, greed, disgust, envy, resentment, pain, lack, and unworthiness.

According to Joe Dispenza in Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, “Almost everything you have done in your life has been to run from this feeling. You used everything outside of you to try to make it go away…this feeling influences everything you do.”

Once you’ve picked ONE, it’s wise to compile a list:

*How do you think when you’re (feeling your one emotion) e.g. frustrated?

*Who/what do you use to stay addicted to e.g. anger (subconsciously – it’s unlikely you do this intentionally)

*How do you act when you’re feeling e.g. guilty?

*What do you say to yourself when you’re feeling e.g. unworthy?

*What physical signs do you get when you’re feeling e.g. worried?

The process involves observing yourself. Some of these answers won’t come right away. Because your thoughts and behaviours are so engrained, you don’t think or notice all of them anymore – it requires time. Stay open to new insights. Unfortunately, your list might get quite long (mine did) which is a bit demoralising at times (“Oh no! Not another. That’s a big one to stop reacting to!”)

This is when it’s a good time to remind yourself that if your brain could win an Olympic gold in feeling e.g. frustrated, it also has the capacity for neural pathways to win an Olympic gold in amassing a fortune, running a transformative non-profit, raising confident, caring children, and/or running a country. Same neurological principles just focused on the opposite direction!

This exercise is particularly enlightening:

“I use (person/experience/event) to stay addicted to the feeling of….”

For me, the process went like this: Growing up, I used my mother and anything not going great in my life as an excuse to stay addicted to feeling anger, then it shifted (unwittingly and unfortunately) to my wife, her mother, my kids – especially if they spend too much time on screens, the dog, my business, even to clients who didn’t seem to be giving it their best shot – though underneath this, I was also really angry at myself (which I rarely acknowledged).

The purpose to these questions is to help you become increasingly aware of what you think, say and do when you’re feeling (blank) so you can catch it faster and reroute your mind. It’s not easy to do well at first so expect a bumpy ride. I carried my list around with me to help me nip in the bud what I wanted to avoid faster. NOTE: The purpose is also to stop you being a puppet that reacts thoughtlessly and predictably to various triggers – to stop your addiction to reacting the same way every time and produce the same negative emotion.

As I worked on unlearning my habit of anger, I had to problem-solve: “If my favourite team not playing their best triggers me to become irritated, then angry, and start snapping at the kids, what do I do to avoid this?” Answer: experiment fast! First, I decided not to watch their first game of the season. That worked well, but I get pleasure from seeing them too, and it felt like I was punishing myself. So, then I watched their second match carefully monitoring my mood. After a disappointing first half, I thought I better mute the sound for the second half and do something else because I could feel my mood had dropped quite a bit. They ended up losing and (to me) miraculously my mood monitoring helped it not ruin my day or make me surly with the kids. This was a big win for me!

I have to keep telling myself: “Don’t use (person/slow business day) to stay addicted to anger!” It really helps and it’s still a challenge. I am still having failures every day, but I am definitely making strides and have seen an improvement in several key relationships. My kids are expressing their love more and I’ve been spending a surprisingly increased amount of time with my wife. ?

What’s also hard is you probably subconsciously attract some other people who share the same negative emotion as you which means you are going to be tested a lot by them even if you are curbing your own reactions. What a stinker, eh? Then you have to keep reminding yourself: “Well, she can be e.g. anxious, but I don’t have to be. I’m not going to engage. I’m going to defuse it.” Then really interesting, more positive things start happening. And your fight or flight emotions barely get started.

One of the bigger challenges is when you’re feeling good at your progress – you are catching the old emotion and starting to think you’ve conquered it - when the old emotion slowly sneaks up on you. This enemy is not going to give up easily. It has won over your body and your subconscious over a long period of time so you’re going to have to fight repeatedly (= grit) for a healthier, happier future. It’s a subtle shift because it’s not realistic to feel great all the time anyway, so you let a shift happen away from feeling good, but you’re trying to avoid your old emotion and it happens anyway.

You go from aware of your good mood to gradually unaware of feeling neutral and then much quicker than you could believe, you are back into your old negative emotion way of being. It’s disheartening especially when you think you’re making good progress. It’s also unsettling how easily you can slip back into it AND how scarily normal that negative emotion feels when it returns – like putting on a battered yet comfortable pair of old shoes. Only these ‘shoes’ don’t make you feel good about yourself at all and throw you into survival mode. They are holding you back. Throw them away!

Unexpected life events also easily get you back to living in your old emotions rather than in a healthy present. They throw you off your good intentions quite easily – especially at first because you don’t have the resilience and experience to handle strong tests yet. It could be anything from a child getting sick, to driving on nice open roads then getting bogged down in traffic, to bad weather that interferes with your fun plans – anything unexpected. As Professor Moody says often in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire: “Constant vigilance” is required. Rowling has had her own mental demons and knows what she’s talking about.

The last element to unlearning a negative way of being is the spiritual one of surrendering your biggest weed to a greater power than you and let that higher level of consciousness solve the problem. This concept helps me feel less tense about trying to force the issue or figure everything out myself.

The great news is YOU will persist because you know (now anyway) the biological fact that neural cells that fire together wire together and ones that don’t will start to weaken. Through repetition, you will forge a clearer, healthier pathway in your very human brain. In 1938 when Napoleon Hill wrote Think and Grow Rich, this concept was dismissed as hocus pocus (well, not by his 500 self-made millionaire case studies!), but in this century neuroscience technology can now demonstrate these nerve cell changes. The only question that remains is: are you ready to leverage this for your own good?

Why meditate and visualise? Joe Dispenza explains that: “Meditation opens the door between the conscious and the subconscious minds. We meditate to enter the operating system of the subconscious, where all those unwanted habits and behaviours reside, and change them to more productive modes to support us in our lives.” Taking more time to move away from negative ways of being and doing to elevating more positive emotions has a ripple effect into creating better things in your life. You absolutely have to FEEL what you want over and over. Your body and emotions have to buy in – mechanical affirmations don’t work at all because they don’t influence the body or the brain.

During the meditation, start to picture who you want to become, how you want to feel and think, and events you want to see happen. Details and repetition and FEELINGS matter a lot. Please, give it time and reps, reps, reps. The best times of day to meditate and visualise are when your subconscious is best influenced. This is when you first wake up and before you go to sleep.

End note: when I hear true stories about people who got great results with practicing these methods, they almost all worked on it for months, sometimes years. I know we all want quick results but try to remember that it took you a long time to forge the most unhealthy habits you have so try to be patient and persistent with expecting results. It doesn’t stop you from noticing new synchronicities, coincidences and surprise events. This is a very good sign that you’re gradually seeing change.

To a new (real) you!

Matt

Copyright Matt Anderson, 2024