Breaking Mental Barriers

In our journey toward personal growth and success, we often encounter obstacles that seem to hold us back. These obstacles may not always be tangible or physical but can manifest as fears and uncertainties that reside within us. In this blog post, we'll explore key strategies to help you unleash your full potential by overcoming these internal barriers.

 Understanding the Nature of Fear

Fear is a natural human emotion that serves as a mechanism to protect us from harm. However, when fear becomes corrupted in our minds, it can hinder our progress and hold us back from achieving our goals. It's essential to recognize that fear is not just a mental projection but also a physiological response that impacts our body and mind.

 Identifying Four Common Areas of Fear

1. Fear of Loss: The fear of losing something, whether it's financial security, freedom, or comfort, can often prevent us from taking risks or stepping out of our comfort zones. We can better plan and mitigate risks by addressing our anxieties around potential losses to move forward confidently.

2. Fear of Hardship: Many people shy away from new challenges or endeavors because they perceive them as too difficult or demanding. By reframing hardships as opportunities for growth and learning, we can develop resilience and perseverance to overcome obstacles.

3. Fear of Other People's Judgment: The fear of how others perceive us can be a significant barrier to taking bold steps toward our aspirations. It's crucial to remember that most people are preoccupied with their own lives and thoughts, and external judgments should not dictate our actions.

4. Internal Voices and Limiting Beliefs: Our internal dialogue and limiting beliefs can often be the loudest barriers to our success. By separating these negative thoughts from our true selves and aligning them with our core values and aspirations, we can break free from self-imposed limitations.

 Strategies for Overcoming Fear and Unleashing Potential

1. Self-Awareness and Reflection: Take the time to identify and acknowledge your fears and limiting beliefs. Reflect on how these internal barriers may be affecting your actions and mindset.

2. Mindfulness and Emotional Regulation: Practice mindfulness techniques to observe your thoughts and emotions without judgment. Develop strategies to regulate your emotions and cultivate a positive mindset.

3. Setting Goals and Creating Action Plans: Define clear goals and objectives that align with your values and aspirations. Create actionable steps and timelines to progress towards your goals consistently.

4. Seeking Support and Guidance: Reach out to mentors, coaches, or peers for support and guidance in overcoming obstacles. Surround yourself with a positive and empowering community that uplifts and encourages your growth.

 Embracing a Growth Mindset

By adopting a growth mindset and reframing challenges as opportunities for learning and development, you can navigate obstacles with resilience and determination. Remember that growth often occurs outside of your comfort zone, and each challenge you overcome brings you closer to unleashing your full potential.

 Conclusion

In conclusion, overcoming internal obstacles and fears is a crucial step towards unleashing your full potential. You can embark on a transformative journey towards personal growth and success by identifying and addressing common areas of fear, developing effective strategies, and embracing a growth mindset. With courage, self-awareness, and determination, you have the power to overcome any obstacle and achieve your dreams. Start your journey today and unlock the limitless possibilities that await you.

So I want to jump in. I want to quickly cover these four areas around fears. We've talked about fears before and everything I'm going to talk about here is outside of physical harm. Like the things that our, body protect us from, whether you're trying to protect your family from a wild animal, another deranged human, hopefully we don't have too many of those around, or just getting them out of their harms way or getting yourself out of the harms way.
[00:00:29] And I'm sure everybody has experienced that. Imagine sitting in your car and you're, you almost had a hit with somebody. Remember what your legs and body what happens to you. It's a rush of hormones that goes in your muscles get tightened up. And sometimes if it's too close, you're gonna feel it for a while.
[00:00:46] Or if you feel a close hit with anything like you saved yourself from a car coming towards you or whatever. You feel it because fear is not just a mental projection. It's actual a physical response, physiological response that we have. Thing where breaks down is when we when fear gets corrupted, like fear at its baseline is a very useful emotion because it allows us to protect ourselves.
[00:01:13] But when it goes out of hand is when it gets corrupted in our, in our mind because it shows up in all sorts of different ways. That's not useful for us to move forward. And really the premise of our training today is that what is holding you back from moving forward from a fear point of view, because it actually, you, we have the same physiological reaction to something that's not even physical in nature.
[00:01:35] And I'll go through a few of the things and I want you to think about it in your own life, whether or not it's showing up. And I want you to think about these four areas because Really, all of these four areas are not real physical fears. These are things that are actually made up in our mind. And if it's made up in our mind, we can change the story. We can change the narrative.
[00:01:56] We can change the way we look at fear. I just came back [00:02:00] from two conferences. Both of them want both of them were for business owners for coaches. One was mainly focused on business. The other one was around identity and the stories and the beliefs that we go through. We had to do a lot of deep work to make go through that.
[00:02:15] And you'll find that pretty much everybody without exception, no matter how long they've been working on this, they have some kind of narrative in their own psyche and their mind that stops them from moving forward or moving forward at the pace that they can actually really move forward in or in the way that feels aligned with them.
[00:02:32] And usually those beliefs, those narratives, those thoughts actually hold them back. A lot of times they don't even notice it. A lot of the shares in these events are when they do the work, when they work through it, I want you to just think through it.
[00:02:44] What's happening in these four year areas? Are you aware of these four year areas showing up in your life? Because these are common patterns for most human beings that will show up in one form or another. So I'll I'll write it down. I have it abbreviated here, but I'll write it down beside it.
[00:03:05] We'll start with the first one is Actually, loss, so loss, what does that mean? A lot of times, especially if you're starting something new, one of the first things that shows up is anxiety, and anxiety is another version of fear, by the way.
[00:03:21] What does this mean? Whenever we try to start something new, whether it's a new diet, a new lifestyle, you started a new relationship or a new venture path there. One of the first things that shows up is actually fear, not because it's actually something to be afraid off with because of something that could potentially go wrong.
[00:03:40] But it's actually our own internal things. There are things that we need to plan around that we need to understand that there are risks involved. But those Calculated risks are a little bit different than the fears that we have internally. And usually you feel like if I jump into this investment, I'm going to lose money.
[00:03:56] If I jump into this relationship, I'm going to [00:04:00] lose my freedom. If I jump into this new diet, I'm going to lose my, my ability to eat the food that I love now or whatever that scenario might be. It's usually showing up. So why are we talking about this? Because if you can pay attention, the pattern is always the same.
[00:04:16] Whenever you start something new, One of the first thing your mind does is it tells you you're gonna lose some on something and the reason why it does that is because actually your mind and we'll go to the deeper reasons around it your mind is the what it always finds efficient ways of doing things so if you're used to doing certain things it will pick that before the new thing.
[00:04:36] That's why we do a lot of work around vision and your why and your identity, because it needs to have a bigger reason to try something that feels risky in the moment. So ask yourself, what is the thing that you're trying in your life right now that you want to do, but you might have some level of anxiety, whether it's a difficult conversation you need to have, it's a new diet, you need to start around your health, or it's a routine you need to start, or it's a business partnership you need to start.
[00:05:03] Or it's a transition that you're making that it's a new thing that you want to start whatever it is in any part of your life. It will bring some level of resistance. And sometimes the resistance that might not even feel like anxiety. It might feel like a block. You're not just, you're just keep procrastinating it or putting it off.
[00:05:24] And if it's happening in your day to day life, let's say you set a goal that, Hey, I'm going to do this thing, but you're not doing it. You keep putting it off. Yeah. Even though it might not feel like anything, guess what? There's a, you don't feel it in your body, but there's a block in there. There's a reason.
[00:05:37] So what does that mean? That means that that needs to be addressed. That needs to be explored. Whether you do that by journaling or you get on a coaching call or you reflect on it more, or you talk to somebody who is in your peer group, because if it's inside and you don't know why you're doing this, not doing this more than likely it's connected to a fear of loss.
[00:05:57] that you're going to lose something in the process as you [00:06:00] move forward. So I want you to just, just do a survey of what, what are the things that you're trying to do that you're either delaying, procrastinating, not doing it, or you're telling yourself all sorts of stories of, I can't do this, it's not the right time, they're not right, not the right economy and all sorts of things.
[00:06:16] Pay attention to that one.
[00:06:17] The second one is the fear of hardship. This one is really important because it's actually an awareness. But here's how it shows up in most people's lives. If somebody has not tried something over a prolonged period of time, whether it's a workout routine or a lifestyle or been in a relationship or been in a business, One of the first things that come up is that they think that it's going to be too hard.
[00:06:45] So here's a weird thing. They're actually right about it. It is going to be hard, but here's the thing that they don't account for their ability to grow. Their ability to learn is actually a lot higher than the hardship that they're going to go through. So what happens, the trigger moment is that, Hey, I'm going to try this new thing, but you know what?
[00:07:04] I feel like this is going to be too, too hard. I'm not going to be able to do this and it becomes an emotional thing versus you recognize that, you know what, it is going to be hard. If I look at it long term, let's say I'm starting a business or I am approaching my relationship in a different way, or I'm starting a relationship, or I'm starting a new partnership.
[00:07:25] What do I need to do to go through this hardship? Do I need to give myself a longer timeline? Do I need to have a plan? So now you're addressing the concerns. Because usually if they're most of the time people don't do this, it's a very vague thing that is going to be too hard. But what is going to be hard?
[00:07:43] Is it the learning process? Is it that you don't have enough support? Is it that you don't have a plan? Is it that you don't have any of these things when you don't have those specific things and you don't know how to address it and we get overwhelmed and so we don't do anything. But if you recognize that anything worth [00:08:00] doing is hard, all you need is a plan.
[00:08:03] A habit system, a support structure and your your intention to keep moving forward and the why behind it. If you have that, you deal with it. But most of the time people don't have that. So they have they're already dealing with too many hard things that they don't know how to address. And if they're about to start something new, that's hard.
[00:08:22] Guess what? They shy back. They don't do it. They don't try it. And it doesn't have to be a big thing like starting a business or a thing. It could be a new routine. Like it could be something like I want to eat healthy or clean. Or I'm gonna talk to my spouse like this. Or it could be small things in your day to day life.
[00:08:43] Or I'm gonna start to enter things in my calendar. Something as simple as that. That could be such a simple thing for a lot of people. But you will not do it because you think it's too hard because you haven't done it before, but as soon as you come up with a plan, I have a system or a support. And I'm not saying that in the right order, but it might be that your next step might be let me ask somebody for help.
[00:09:04] If I don't know how to do that, let me create a plan. If I don't know how to do that, let me ask somebody. Let me set up a habit, a routine that I'm going to do until I make this happen. So when you, this is actually using your mind, this is called thinking. And if you're not doing that, and it just feels hard, and you're not doing anything about it, then nothing will get addressed.
[00:09:25] So that's the second reason why people don't do things and they're afraid to do things because of the hardship around it, and we call it the fear of hardship, or you can call it that. The third one, and I want you to ask yourself, I'm sharing this, I want you to look at every part of your life as you're listening to this.
[00:09:42] What are the little things in my life that I need to do, that I keep postponing? And is it because I feel like it's going to be too hard or I don't have enough direction. I don't have the right plan. I don't have the right support because if you don't have any of those things, it's likely that you're going to procrastinate it.
[00:09:57] And when people use the words like I am I'm [00:10:00] a procrastinator or I'm an introvert or some like vague, big word that doesn't actually mean anything. You need to break it down and see, well, why am I not doing this? What's holding me back? Is it something that I believe? Is it a story in my mind that this making it harder?
[00:10:15] Is it because I don't understand the technical pieces of it? Is it because I don't have the right support? If you don't have those things, you won't do it. So what we're trying to do is addressing the fear with thinking with actually using your mind. Now, part of this whole process, we've done this before might be is that you need to actually give yourself space to feel it first, because a lot of times when we don't feel it, we can't even, we can't even process this in our mind.
[00:10:39] So if you feel like if you sit down and you can't even think that means your mind, your energy, mental energy stuck in your emotions. Especially the emotions of survival that we've talked about before, so address those first, and I won't talk about the other two. The last one is actually the most important one.
[00:10:55] I forgot to mention that actually summarizes all three of these, but the fourth one is actually the most important one. But this is the one that actually, if there was one reason that people don't start a business, they don't choose the kind of life they want to live. They don't they don't go for the relationship that matters to them.
[00:11:15] They don't take a bold step towards the things that matter to them. They don't express who they are in their heart and soul is actually the next reason. And that is,
[00:11:25] can you guess it? Guess it in your mind. But that is actually other people.
[00:11:33] More people don't do things because they are afraid that somebody's going to judge them in their life. Somebody's going to look at them a certain way, and it's actually like I don't even want to make this a lot of people make this a demeaning thing. It's actually within our nature. We want to be accepted.
[00:11:50] We want to. We want the approval of those around, especially people closest to us. But a lot of people, and I can't tell you how many investors I work with, they've been an [00:12:00] investor for years, but because they started a new thing, they're not even putting it on their LinkedIn that they're an investor, because they're afraid how other people will perceive them.
[00:12:10] They're not declaring to the people around them that they're doing this new thing because they're afraid how other people will look at them. They won't move forward, or they won't take a risk to move in this direction. They're afraid that they're going to lose their status or something in the process.
[00:12:25] And this is not a conscious thing. Like people do this in the background. More people will not do the thing that matters to them because of some judgment from other people around them. And the fourth point is what actually summarizes all of this. And if you can master that one, all those three areas will not be a problem for you moving forward.
[00:12:44] And that's related to
[00:12:46] the voices and our head.
[00:12:49] I'm not, I'm not saying that you're crazy. We all are, to be honest. So there was actually at, at the event, I was talking to a relatively newer coach and we were, we were kind of masterminding some of the things. And she was basically saying that, you know what, she's a very experienced person, has a lot of knowledge.
[00:13:07] She's like, I can't jump in. And as she was talking, it was kind of coming up to the surface. I can't jump in and do this. And she gives a reason, you know, because I keep hearing every time I do this, I keep hearing my mom in my head saying that you're not going to do it right now, of course, her mom didn't mean to harm her, but that voice is stuck with the emotion along with it.
[00:13:35] All those three things that we mentioned the fear of loss, the fear of hardship, the fear of other people. It's actually not real. And this is why all this is completely made up in our head. This is not a real thing in the real world. Most people, if you really look at most people are actually very egocentric.
[00:13:50] That includes me. Here's what I mean by that. Most people, when they go through their day, they think of themselves. They don't think of other people. [00:14:00] That's not actually a negative or positive trait. It's, it's just the way humans think. They're involved in their own life. And when they get a break, of course they think of other people around them too, because that's what they're doing.
[00:14:10] That does not make you a negative person, that's just how our thinking works, is that we're egocentric. It means that we're thinking about our own things, we're thinking about the next thing we need to do, we're thinking about whether or not we age, we're thinking about something. And then, we, by the end of the day, we come home and it's like, oh shit.
[00:14:26] Like, I have kids, I have a family, but, I mean, , the point here is that We are most of our thinking is around us. So if you're sitting here worrying that uncle or aunt or brother or sister or whoever is going to think of you in a negative way, they're not thinking of you.
[00:14:43] They're thinking of themselves. Will they be judgmental at certain points in your life? Probably in the moment, but after that, they'll forget. They'll move on with their life. You will repeat it in your own head for months and years, but they have got long gone. Here's how this gets really bad. I've talked to people and that's why I shared that example that I shared about that coach, but I've talked to every business owner.
[00:15:07] I've talked to a lot of times they don't do things because of something they heard from somebody in their past. A lot of times that person is gone. They're not even in their life. And their behavior is determined by that thought process that by that emotional process. Beyond that, we have all sorts of thinking processes that does not, that do not service.
[00:15:27] When we think about losing something, when we think about the hardship, when we think about other people, they're not your thoughts, they're a product of your environment and we've made it about ourselves and we confuse those thoughts with who we are. If you, if you had the ability to put all those thoughts aside and you just connected to a deeper part of yourself, whether you call that your soul, whether you call that your core, your center, whether you call that that part of you that came into this world, and that was excited.
[00:15:58] That was [00:16:00] passionate. That was playful. Think of your kids. Think of other kids around you. Watch how they operate, how they operate is they just jump in things. They don't care. They they will. They will start playing with something. If they enjoy it, they will keep doing it and then they will move on to the next thing.
[00:16:14] If they need to ask somebody something, they'll go ask them. If they need to do something, they will boldly do it. When do we forget those things? We forget those things because the environment around us condition us to surround those things. Now, I'm not saying this from a frame of reference of go blame your parents or your environment, other things, because they were probably given a similar environment.
[00:16:39] And this is how corruption works where the same negative pattern of thinking and beliefs and emotions get passed on from one generation to another until somebody stops it. And if you've read at my last book, the one, you might be the one in your family, in your community that stops that pattern. And until you do, nobody else will.
[00:17:01] You might be the person who stops the pattern of abusing the people around you, whether it's emotional or physical. You might be the person that stops the pattern of eating a certain way or treating people a certain way or judging people a certain way. You might be the person that stops the pattern of living a more abundant and free life.
[00:17:22] And I think that's why a lot of entrepreneurs and investors go on this path is because they feel there's a part of him that feels like they're capable of doing something more. And all of this boils down to this. If you can deal with the thoughts and emotions in your head, and you could separate them from who you are deep down, guess what ends up happening?
[00:17:42] You start to do things that are connected to your soul. It doesn't actually matter what other people think. It doesn't matter how hard something is. It doesn't matter what you lose in the process. And I've gone through this process myself. When I left, when I jumped into the entrepreneurship world, I was in [00:18:00] debt.
[00:18:00] And I just spent at least, I think it was 50 K plus to study for a whole thing. And I had worked for a couple years in it. I just, spent all that money and I left because it just didn't feel aligned with my soul and it felt scary. It felt like hell and I heard all sorts of things around me, but more, more of the problem was in my head.
[00:18:22] My, the, the voices in my head was much more louder than what I heard from other people. I would hear from other people maybe once a week, once every two weeks, if they were negative towards what I was doing or they weren't supportive, but the voices in my head were constant. So my growth has been how can I separate those thoughts and emotions from who I am if I'm sitting in a given moment is this and this is why we do the work of your ideal self is this if I were to think ahead 10 years from now on five years from now on and have an ideal version of myself with who has achieved everything that I want to achieve with that person think this and if you actually just ask yourself that guess what ended up happening that's just one tool you'll be like no there's no way that person will think that The only reason I'm thinking that is because I've been conditioned from my past to think that and that's how most of this fictional fear develops into something that feels more real than it is.
[00:19:20] And in your experience, it is actually real. You feel like you can't do something. You feel like you're procrastinating. You feel like you don't have the energy. You feel like you cannot be organized and disciplined. You feel all those things and it feels real, but it's only real because those thoughts and emotions and beliefs are inside of your head.
[00:19:38] Those stories are in your head. And so a lot of your work becomes dealing with those stories, and this is why we're doing this work is so you become aware of them and you stop the pattern. And if you can stop it, guess what ends up happening, you start to do things that that feels more like you're in flow, you're doing things that matter to you.
[00:19:57] You're doing things that feel aligned with your purpose, [00:20:00] you're doing things that make you happy, you're doing things that connect you to other people around you, which is a very different frame.