Tag Archives: Motivation

If You Don’t Know What You Want in Life, Read This Post

When someone says that they don’t know what they want in life, I call BS on that. We all know what we want in our lives, but some of us don’t dare to admit it, not even to themselves. Let’s start with why they don’t do that.

David Hawkins introduced the map of consciousness in his book Power vs. Force. There are 17 levels in the map of consciousness. People who claim that they don’t know what they want in life are likely to be on the lower levels of consciousness.

There’s nothing wrong with being on a lower level of consciousness as long as you recognize it and work your way up. We all have our journeys in our lives, and I haven’t met many enlightened people, including myself of course.

If you find yourself on a lower level of consciousness, I hope this post would inspire you to work on getting to higher levels by letting go of your dysfunctional emotions and thoughts. Now, let’s go over a few levels of consciousness and see how they relate to the subject of this post.

Shame

People on the level of shame think that they are inherently bad. How can it be otherwise? They’ve been judged by their parents, teachers, or other authority figures as bad boys or bad girls.

Some of these folks realize that being a bad boy or girl is a lot of fun later in their lives, but most of them spend their lives believing deep down that they are bad people.

“How dare you think you deserve something nice when you’re such a bad person?”

That’s the undercurrent of their psyche that they aren’t aware of. Hence, they don’t admit what they want in life, not even to themselves.

Guilt

Guilt is similar to shame with a slight difference. Instead of thinking that they are a bad person, people on the level of guilt believe that they have done something wrong. Most of the time, that belief is indoctrinated into them by the authority figures in their lives.

Apathy

If the people on the level of apathy would admit what they want in their lives, they have to take action toward it. However, they’re so overwhelmed by their experience that they don’t believe that they can reach their goals. This is the level of learned helplessness.

Grief

Grief is a reaction to loss. People on this level have many losses in their lives. They have to mourn their losses first before attempting to go after new goals. So, it’s understandable that people on this level don’t dare to admit what they want in life.

Fear

People on this level are afraid to admit what they want in life because they have two choices if they do that. The first choice is to go after what they want and face the inherent dangers on that path. The second choice is the pain of knowing what they want but doing nothing about it.

Anger

On this level, the energy of the person is focused on what they don’t want instead of what they do want. The challenge here is to let go of the focus on the negative and formulate a constructive goal to work toward.

Pride

The person on this level wouldn’t admit that they want something because they believe that they are already perfect as they are. They wouldn’t acknowledge that they don’t know what they want.

Conclusion

Not knowing what you want in life is a sign that you’re on a lower level of consciousness. You can use this symptom to work on your psyche to let go of your shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, anger, and pride. Once you transcend those levels of consciousness, you’ll be crystal clear about what you want in life and work toward it.

Turn a Loss into a Life-Time Win

The basic premise of economics is that we have unlimited desires but limited resources. That means we will experience the pain of failure, disappointment, or rejection sooner or later if we haven’t already done so.

How do you deal with the pain of failure, disappointment, or rejection when you experience it?

  • Do you deny it and act as if it never happened?
  • Do you give up, withdraw, and never try again?
  • Do you escape it by distracting yourself with something else?

When you experience failure, disappointment, or rejection, you have another option to turn this challenge into an opportunity. That option is to face it, accept it, and embrace it.

Sink into the Pain of Failure

The first step is to accept that you failed. Accept the defeat. Denial only makes things worse. Feel the pain of the defeat fully. Sink into it. Go toward the eye of the emotional storm instead of trying to escape it by distracting yourself with something else.

What happens when you allow yourself to feel the pain of failure fully? You’ll experience that it diminishes over time and eventually disappears.

There’s a caveat though. Embracing your pain doesn’t mean beating yourself up. The difference is simple. Focus on the emotions and not on the thoughts. This is the essence of the letting go method.

Don’t reinforce your feelings of pain by expressing them or dwelling in thoughts triggered by those emotions.

The Difference between Thoughts and Emotions

You can distinguish between emotions and thoughts with a simple heuristic. Focus your attention on your body to feel your emotions. Your thoughts reside in your head, and they are expressed with language.

If you feel a knot in your stomach, that’s your emotions. Stay with it and breathe into it without thinking. If you catch yourself thinking thoughts like “I’m useless. I failed again.” Let them go. Don’t pay any more attention or invest any more mental energy into them.

When you stay with the pain of failure, disappointment, and rejection long enough, something magical happens. That pain and associated fears subside and eventually disappear.

Lose Your Fear of Failure, Disappointment, and Rejection

When you lose your fear of failure, disappointment, and rejection, you approach life and other people with a lighter, playful, non-attached attitude. When you come from that place, life and other people respond to you more positively.

Even your relationship with yourself becomes more positive, which is the most important relationship that you have anyway.

You start taking calculated risks, making more offers, and getting things done effortlessly because you aren’t attached to the results anymore. As a result, you receive more yesses and accomplish more.

By going through the pain of failure, disappointment, and rejection, you come out the other side as a successful, happy, playful person.

Summary

We all have or will experience the pain of failure, disappointment, or rejection because we have unlimited desires and there are limited resources.

When you experience a defeat, you can turn that experience into an opportunity by embracing the pain it causes thoroughly.

Once you do that and process the pain of failure entirely, you become immune to it. When you reach that immunity, you lose your fear of failure, disappointment, and rejection.

You adopt an attitude of non-attachment. Other people resonate with you better and respond to your requests more positively.

Your relationship with life gets much better, and you adopt a playful attitude, which makes you happier and more successful.

From Despair, Lethargy, and Mental Fog to Bliss, High Energy, and Mental Clarity

When I observe myself, I recognize two states. The first state involves productivity, happiness, bliss, joy, peace of mind, and mental clarity. The second state involves negative thoughts and emotions, feeling down and depressed, lack of energy, lethargy, and mental fog.

As you see, both of those states involve physical, emotional, and mental symptoms. In my experience, those three components are tightly integrated. Of course, I’d like to be in the first state all the time and avoid the second state to the extent possible.

Sleep

When I observe my own experience, I realize that the quality of my sleep determines in which state I will be. I’ve read in multiple resources that sleep drains the toxins out of our brains, and I can testify that. When I had a quality sleep, I feel much better mentally, emotionally, and physically.

I aim for eight hours every day. Sometimes, I feel the need for extra napping on the weekends. When I do that, I enjoy peace of mind, mental clarity, and the absence of negative thoughts and emotions. The difference is significant.

Coffee

If sleep is so important, it only makes sense to let go of what interferes with it. In my experience, the biggest enemy of a long, quality, deep sleep is caffeine.

I’m addicted to delicious coffee, but I make an extra effort to keep my caffeine intake limited and early in the day. Green or white tea is a good replacement later in the day.

Alcohol

I’m lucky that I don’t enjoy alcohol at all. I become sluggish when I drink, and I don’t enjoy that zombie-like mental state. I enjoy staying aware and awake as much as possible, hence the inclination to drink excess coffee.

If you consume alcohol or other recreational drugs regularly and you feel lethargic, depressed, and foggy in your head, you might want to remove them from your life for thirty days and see what the effects are on your body, mind, and emotions.

Distraction

Exposure to distractions like noise, TV, radio, pop music, and social media moves me from the first state to the second state. So, I try to avoid them to the extent possible.

Cardio

A good cardio session in the open air changes my mental and emotional state entirely. I return home in a state of bliss after a cardio session even if I left home in a grumpy mood after a working day.

I used to enjoy weight training in the gym, but I’m in the process of giving up on that due to the lack of fresh air, fluorescent lighting, and constant, loud pop music in the background.

Letting Go

A spiritual practice can also help you move from the second state to the first state. I prefer the letting go method. It helps me with letting go of addictions, distractions, and other negative thoughts and emotions.

The idea is to stay with those cravings, urges, or other negative emotions without acting on them or trying to change them with other distractions. After a while, they subside. If you go through this cycle enough times, they stop bothering you.

Our modern lives test us with new challenges constantly. So, I won’t argue that you can let go of all of your negative thoughts and emotions, but it definitely helps you in reducing them to a pleasant level.

1% Improvements

When reading this post, you might have recognized some improvement points in your daily routine to move from the second state to the first state.

You might be tempted to make all the changes in a single day. In my case, that doesn’t work.

What works for me is the 1% improvements method. That is defining where I am now, where I want to be in an ideal case, and then making baby steps toward the ideal every day.

Summary

When I observe my body, mind, and emotions, I recognize two states. The first state is energetic, peaceful, and has mental clarity. The second state is lethargic, depressed, and has mental fog.

The difference between both states is the quality of sleep, caffeine and alcohol consumption, distractions, physical exercise, and a spiritual practice like the letting go method.

I pay attention to those variables because I want to stay in the first state to the extent possible. Sometimes, I realize that I’m far from the ideal. In such, cases I’m using the 1% improvements method to make baby steps toward ideal every day.

Pain, Pleasure, Satisfaction, Mental Toughness, Success

We, humans, are hardwired to avoid pain and seek pleasure. This simple principle was a wise rule of thumb before the civilization. Our environment provided us with sufficient challenges to deal with. This is not the case anymore.

Civilization brought us abundance and removed pain from our daily lives. This is good news on the surface, but there’s a flip side. We don’t know how to deal with abundance and the lack of pain.

If we follow our instincts, we can sink deep into pleasure and have no pain at all in the short-term. Such behavior is guaranteed to bring pain in the long term, either the pain of sickness, or the psychological pain of emptiness, or both.

Pleasure vs. Satisfaction

Satisfaction is a different feeling than pleasure. It requires our effort. That effort can be mental, emotional, physical, or a combination of them. When we reach a goal after an extended period of hard work, the emotion that we feel isn’t pleasure. It’s satisfaction.

Pleasure is a bad heuristic for success. Following pleasure rarely leads to success. Following satisfaction does.

The Formula of Mental Toughness

Success requires effort. After a certain threshold, effort feels painful. If we used our instincts, we would avoid the pain of extensive effort. That means we need to go against our instincts to succeed in life.

In other words, we need to invert the pain, pleasure principle. We need to avoid pleasure and go toward the pain to the extent possible. This is the formula of mental toughness that leads to success and satisfaction in life.

The Pain that Stimulates Growth

The pain I’m talking about here isn’t harming yourself physically. It’s the psychological pain of making the effort necessary and facing your fears. In other words, it’s the pain of self-discipline and courage.

You don’t need to become the toughest person overnight. It’s a process. All you have to do is to put one step in front of the other in the right direction. This is the principle of 1% improvements. By making 1% daily improvements, you make significant changes in your life over time.

When you go toward the eye of the storm, you’ll inevitably fail. That’s good. Every failure is an opportunity for personal growth and progress. Ray Dalio, an American billionaire investor, defines progress as pain + reflection in his book Principles.

Summary

Our default behavior is to avoid pain and seek pleasure. That instinct worked back in the day for our ancestors because their environment provided them with sufficient challenges. That’s rarely the case for us now.

To reach success and satisfaction in life, we need to invert our default instinct. We need to seek pain and avoid pleasure. That new heuristic improves our mental toughness and results in success and satisfaction in life.

Eliminating Self-Sabotage from Your Life

Yesterday, I shared the dynamics of self-sabotage. Self-sabotage occurs when our deep-seated beliefs are challenged by the reality.

Unconsciously, we’d rather experience loss, failure, and pain than to see our beliefs invalidated. If you think that you don’t deserve a promotion, you’ll set yourself up for failure when you receive one.

Self-sabotage is an unconscious process. Sometimes, we realize we are undermining ourselves and ask ourselves why we are doing that.

Sometimes, we aren’t even aware that it is us that is causing the same losses, failures, and pain over and over. We wonder what’s wrong with us and why we are attracting the same unpleasant experiences over and over.

When you come across a persistent problem, you can go over the following steps to find and change the underlying, negative, limiting beliefs.

  1. Determine your contribution to the problem.
  2. Discover your motivation to your contribution to the problem.
  3. Find out how you acquired the limiting belief that motivated you to sabotage yourself.
  4. Come up with an alternative, empowering belief.
  5. Repeat the new empowering belief until you internalize it.

Determine Your Contribution to the Problem

Some random events cause loss and pain. If you’re driving safely within legal speed limits and a truck hits you, I won’t go as far as to say that you have attracted this reality to your life.

However, if you’re experiencing the same difficulties over and over in a particular area of your life, you might want to look at your own contribution to the problem.

If you’re getting fired within the first year of every job you start, or if your relationships always end up prematurely in a breakup, you might be contributing to this problem as well.

The first step to solve such persistent problems is to acknowledge your part in it and find out exactly what you have or haven’t done to cause the failure or loss.

Maybe, you don’t give 100% at your job, or you make unrealistic demands from your partners. Whatever it is, find your contribution to the problem first.

Discover Your Motivation to Contribute to the Problem

This is the hardest and most critical part. We’re looking for the underlying negative belief here. Sometimes, this belief can be conscious, but most of the time, it is unconscious.

If you don’t give 100% at your job, ask yourself why you don’t do that? If you make unrealistic demands from your partners, ask yourself why you do that?

You might think that you’ve failed so many times before and probably fail in this job as well. So, why give 100%? If this is your approach to your job, your limiting belief will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you’ll lose your job.

You might feel like your partners aren’t loving you enough, and you might be making unrealistic demands to make them show you that they genuinely love you. The underlying limiting belief there could be that you’re unlovable.

Apply the Letting Go Method to the Unpleasant Emotions that Come Up

When you discover your limiting belief, you’ll feel a surge of unpleasant emotions. That’s good because those emotions have been trapped in your body. They have been fueling your limiting belief and your self-sabotaging behavior that create your persistent problems over and over.

Apply the letting go technique to the unpleasant emotions. Stay with them without trying to change them, suppressing them, expressing them, or escaping them. If you do that long enough, those emotions will subside.

If those emotions come up again, their energy will be lower. If you keep applying the letting go method, they’ll eventually vanish from your system.

Find Out How You Acquired the Limiting Belief

Most of the time, we acquire our limiting beliefs early in our lives. Look at your past and try to find the incident that caused the limiting belief.

Maybe, your dad was distant to you when you were a child, and you interpreted that as you being unlovable. That was one of the explanations of your dad’s distant behavior. Which other explanations are there?

Maybe, your dad thought he had to be strict with this children to raise them as disciplined individuals. Maybe, his parents were distant to their children as well, and he didn’t think about it. Maybe, he was a busy professional. Maybe, he had his own problems he had to deal with.

One or more of those explanations are probably more valid than your explanation of being unlovable. That explanation made sense to the young child that you were, but isn’t it time you drop it?

Yes, it’s hard, and it stirs up some heavy emotions, but isn’t it time to process those emotions now, release them from your body, and start a new joyful, happy, fulfilling life now?

Come Up with an Alternative, Empowering Belief

At this step, you have found your limiting belief, figured out how you acquired it, and let go of it and associated emotions. Wouldn’t it be cool to come up with an alternative, empowering belief?

If your limiting belief is that you’re unlovable, the alternative is that you’re lovable. If your limiting belief is that you’re incapable, the alternative is that you’re capable.

If you’re limiting belief is more complicated than that, use your creativity to come up with an alternative, empowering belief.

Internalize Your New Empowering Belief

Repeat your new belief as much as possible. Post it on different places where you can see it often. Record it on your phone and listen to it on auto-repeat. Find proofs of it. Act it out in your life.

Give your 100% at your job even if you’re guaranteed to fail. In the worst case scenario, you’ll get fired, but you’ll have learned a brand new skill set. That’ll be the cherry on top. Or your boss might recognize your efforts and move you to a more appropriate position.

Summary

If you’re experiencing the same problems over and over, you might be contributing to the problem with your self-sabotaging behavior. The first step to resolve the dynamic of self-sabotage is to acknowledge and recognize your contribution to the problem.

In the second step, ask yourself what your motivation was to act in a self-defeating manner. Your answer will be a deep-seated limiting belief. When you discover that belief, intense, unpleasant emotions might come up. Letting those emotions go is a part of the healing process.

Find out how you acquired that limiting belief and find an alternative explanation to the event or events that caused it.

Come with a new, alternative, empowering belief. Internalize your new belief by repeating it often, looking for proofs of it, and by acting it out.

Once you go through these five steps, you’ll be free from that particular self-sabotaging behavior, and end up with an empowering belief for the rest of your life.

The Dynamics of Self-Sabotage

We’d rather experience failure, loss, and pain than seeing our beliefs invalidated. As a result, our lives are a manifestation of our beliefs. That’s good news and bad news at the same time.

Let’s start with the bad news. Most of our beliefs are unconscious. So, we aren’t aware of the beliefs that shape our lives. Moreover, our beliefs are subject to the negativity bias.

Our ancestors had to take into account the worst case scenarios all the time to survive in the wilderness. Obviously, our living conditions have improved over the years. However, we inherited the negativity bias from our ancestors and pass it on to the next generation.

There are unconscious, negative beliefs in our psyche and they are shaping our lives.

The good news is that we can become aware of our unconscious, negative, limiting beliefs and replace them with positive ones.

Self-Sabotage at Work

Nathaniel Branden explains the dynamics of self-sabotage brilliantly in his book The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem.

A man receives a promotion in his job. He believes that he doesn’t deserve the new position. He believes that he can’t succeed at it. As a result, he doesn’t give 100% at his new job. Deep down, he thinks he’s going to fail anyway, so why make an effort?

His negative belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. His lack of effort results in failure in his new position. As a result, he loses his job. Facing a career bump is less painful than facing his belief invalidated.

Moreover, what if he gave 100% and still failed? That would be even more painful and meant that he was truly incapable.

Self-Sabotage in Relationships

Deep down, a woman has the unconscious belief that she isn’t lovable. She might have formed this belief because she didn’t receive any love from her father who believed that fathers had to be strict with their children.

When she gets into a relationship and the relationship works out well, her belief of being not lovable is challenged. This disturbs her, and she starts to act in a way that causes trouble in the relationship. Eventually, her partner breaks up with her.

She’s sad, and she doesn’t get what happened. She doesn’t understand why her relationships follow the same pattern and end the same way. Deep down, her belief that she isn’t lovable is reinforced once more.

Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

People with a fixed mindset believe that they can’t develop new skills in areas where they aren’t naturally gifted. As a result, they don’t make an effort to adopt new skills. That limits their options in their lives. They end up living lives that are less than their potential.

People with a growth mindset believe that they can develop a new skill if they put in the effort necessary. Encouraged by their mindset, they work on developing new skills that are necessary to realize their potentials. As a result, they end up living happy, fulfilling lives.

Summary

We carry a large set of unconscious, negative beliefs in our psyche. When our beliefs are challenged, we get disturbed. We act in a way to change the course of events that challenge our beliefs. This process is mostly unconscious.

Our behavior is mostly irrational, and we might have a hard time understanding why we act in a certain way. This is how self-sabotage works.

The way to fix self-sabotaging behavior is to find the underlying belief and replace it with a more positive one. How to do that will be the topic of tomorrow’s post.

24 / 7 / 365 Productivity

When we’re thinking about productivity, the first thing that comes to our minds is work. From that context, being productive 24 / 7 / 365 is impossible.

If we define productivity as making the most of our lives, then 24 / 7 / 365 productivity is possible. It’s not easy, but it’s definitely within our reach.

The 24 / 7 / 365 productivity goal might look like an unreachable pinnacle for you. In reality, it’s a meaningful target.

Inversion is a useful method to approach a goal like 24 / 7 / 365 productivity. The first step is to ask yourself the following question.

What keeps me from reaching 24 / 7 / 365 productivity?

When we find the answers to that question, all we have to do is to eliminate those obstacles between us and our goal. Now, take a moment, and answer that question.

Sleep

I expect most people to mention sleep as one of the obstacles to 24 / 7 / 365 productivity. I disagree. Sleep is one of the essentials of our lives. How productive can you be without sufficient quality sleep?

If you want to maximize your productivity, you don’t have to minimize your sleep. On the contrary, you need to optimize it. You need to make sure that you get sufficient quality sleep every day. That’s one of the pillars of high performance.

Time Spent with Family

Time spent with family doesn’t count as an obstacle to maximum productivity either. Remember, how we defined productivity? It’s making the most of your life.

If your family is higher than your work on your priorities list, time spent with your family isn’t an obstacle to productivity. On the contrary, just like sufficient quality sleep, you need to optimize your days for quality time with your family.

Watching TV, scrolling social media feeds, and drinking alcohol don’t qualify for quality time with family.

Vacation and Recreation

Would you consider vacation and recreation as an obstacle to productivity? Absolutely not. Just like quality sleep and family time, vacation and recreation charge our batteries so that we become even more productive when we’re back to work.

Distraction

Now, we’re approaching the real obstacles to our 24 / 7 / 365 productivity goal. What are your distractions? How much time do you waste on distractions on a given day?

We usually underestimate the time we spend on our distractions because they are a few minutes here and there. This is what I call the fallacy of minimum marginal costs. The problem is that those minutes add up to hours on a given day.

A few hours a day add up to weeks in a year, to months in a decade, and to years in a lifetime. Do you really want to lose years of your life to distraction?

Worse than that, every time you give in to distraction, you lose your focus. It takes another quarter of an hour to concentrate again. Sometimes, it’s much better to do nothing at all than to give in to distraction.

Substances

You might think that alcohol relaxes you in the evening and coffee fires you up in the morning, but what are the long-term effects of those habits on your energy levels?

Caffeine might give you an energy peak when you consume it, but excessive consumption can definitely wear you out and leave you lethargic. How does that affect your productivity?

I’m not going into other substances here. You can reflect on their effects on your productivity if you consume them regularly.

Unhealthy Diet and Lack of Physical Exercise

Maybe, you skip preparing healthy food and exercising to save some time. Have you considered the effects of those dietary and lifestyle choices on your energy levels, and as a result on your productivity?

You don’t need to eliminate all the obstacles to your productivity overnight. You can gradually reduce them using the 1% method. That is aiming for 1% daily improvements.

24 / 7 / 365 productivity comes down to resource allocation, and your most valuable resources are your time, attention, and energy.

Summary

You might consider 24 / 7 / 365 productivity an impossible goal to achieve. You might think that sleep, time spent with your family, vacation, and recreation are obstacles to achieve that goal. However, they don’t keep you from maximizing your performance. Those are ingredients of a healthy, prosperous lifestyle.

What keeps you from achieving 24 / 7 / 365 productivity is your distractions, substances like alcohol and caffeine, your unhealthy diet, and your lack of physical exercise. They hurt your productivity by wasting your time, disrupting your attention, and lowering your energy.

What keeps you from reaching 24 / 7 / 365 productivity? How can you eliminate those obstacles from your lifestyle?

Self-Programming

When you google the words subliminal, subconscious, and unconscious, you get the following definitions.

subliminal: (of a stimulus or mental process) below the threshold of sensation or consciousness; perceived by or affecting someone’s mind without their being aware of it.

subconscious: of or concerning the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one’s actions and feelings.

unconscious:

(adjective) done or existing without one realizing.

(noun) the part of the mind which is inaccessible to the conscious mind but which affects behavior and emotions.

The Effects of the Unconscious on Our Results

These three words have a lot to do with our performance and success in all areas of our lives. Our unconscious contains countless programs that we aren’t aware of. Those programs affect how we perceive and interpret our reality and how we make choices, act, and behave.

Our unconscious is filled with biases and fallacies. These beliefs are irrational. Once you bring them to a conscious level, you realize that they are unreasonable. Yet, we go through our days, making choices, acting, and behaving based on these biases and fallacies.

We don’t question our beliefs. We aren’t even aware of most of them. Yet, they influence the results we produce in our lives. They are based on our experience and on the experience, our ancestors gathered in their 4.5 billion years of evolution.

Beliefs Based on a Limited Experience

Our experience is limited. We can perceive a very limited set of phenomena in the universe. We can perceive a limited range of sound frequencies and light spectrum. Our experience is limited to Newtonian physics, which is only valid for large objects that move slowly compared to the speed of light.

Some of our inaccurate beliefs in our unconscious mind are practical in our day-to-day life, but what about the rest? What if they keep us from performing at our best and reaching our true potential? What’s the best way of dealing with those beliefs?

Discovering Our Limiting Beliefs and Replacing Them with Empowering Ones

Shakti Gawain has an exercise to discover our limiting beliefs in her book Creative Visualization. You need a pen and two sheets of paper. On the first sheet, you write your goal repeatedly, in the present tense, as if you have already reached it, using your name and in three different persons.

  • I, Burak, weigh 165 pounds.
  • Burak, you weigh 165 pounds.
  • Burak weighs 165 pounds.

As you keep writing your goal over and over, be mindful of what comes up from your unconscious mind. If you pay attention, you’ll realize all kinds of limiting beliefs coming up. Write those limiting beliefs on the second sheet.

  • I never weighed 165 pounds in my adult life.
  • I’m too busy to work out.
  • I’m too stressed to stick to a diet.

Keep doing the exercise on both sheets until no more limiting beliefs come up. The knowledge in the second sheet is precious. All of those beliefs stayed in your unconscious and influenced your choices and behavior so far. They kept you from reaching your goal.

Now, it’s time to reverse your limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs. Write down your empowering beliefs, post them somewhere you can read every day, and read them every day.

  • I can burn 25 pounds of fat.
  • I have time to work out.
  • A healthy diet lowers my stress.

Summary

Most of our beliefs are unconscious. They are a product of the limited experience of ourselves and our ancestors. Even though some of our beliefs are practical for our day-to-day life, a good deal of them keep us from performing at our best and realizing our goals.

You can discover your unconscious limiting beliefs by writing down a goal repeatedly on a piece of paper. As your limiting beliefs come up, write them down on a separate sheet of paper.

Once you’re done writing your limiting beliefs, come up with the empowering opposites of those beliefs. Read your new empowering beliefs every day and see how they affect your performance and success.

Law of Attraction or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Does law of attraction work? Does believing in a future event increase its likelihood? Can you improve your chances of success by visualizing it?

Contrary to the opinions of diehard believers or skeptics, the answer is “it depends on the context.”

You’ll probably not win a well-designed lottery game through visualization. However, if your success depends on your actions or on the actions of others, you’ll be increasing your chances by believing in a positive outcome and visualizing it.

How Does That Work?

Your belief in a specific outcome influences your behavior. Your behavior affects the outcome directly or indirectly through the actions of others. The result reinforces your belief. This cycle forms a positive feedback loop, and it is called self-fulfilling prophecy.

  • Imagine, you believe that a project will fail for sure. How hard would you work on it, if at all?
  • Imagine, you believe that a partner will break up with you. How would you approach your relationship?
  • Imagine, you’re sure that you’ll be fired from your job. How much effort would you invest in it?

In each case, your belief in an adverse outcome will contribute to its manifestation.

Now, consider the opposite. Imagine, you’re confident that you’ll make the sale, win the competition, or realize your vision. How motivated would you be to work toward them?

Influence on Yourself and Others

If you look at those examples carefully, you’ll recognize two categories, our relationships with ourselves and others. Self-fulfilling prophecy applies to both categories.

Your belief in your success at learning a new skill will increase your chances at it. This is called the growth mindset. The opposite of the growth mindset is called the fixed mindset. Your mindset is self-fulfilling prophecy applied to your relationship with yourself.

If you expect your team to perform well and communicate your expectation to them, you’ll be increasing the chances of your team’s success. This is the application of self-fulfilling prophecy to your relationships with others.

The Dark Side of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

There’s also a dark side of self-fulfilling prophecy. Racial and gender stereotypes are a typical example of self-fulfilling prophecies. For example, if a girl isn’t expected to succeed in mathematics and science classes and treated that way, she will probably not.

When you practice self-fulfilling prophecy, you might also risk failure by overconfidence. That’s most of the time not a real risk because of our negativity bias.

In either case, not seeing the success a 100% certainty but a high probability works better. In other words, you can use the 5-to-1 ratio when using the self-fulfilling prophecy as well.

Being Too Realistic Is Hazardous for Your Success

Self-fulfilling prophecy doesn’t need to be grounded 100% on reality to work. The rumors of the insolvency of a bank can cause a bank run. When a sufficient number of people withdraw their money, the bank will become insolvent.

If you’re too realistic and admit that you may or may not succeed at your goal, you’ll be reducing your chances of success by not taking full advantage of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Conclusion

If you think you’ll win the lottery by visualizing it and getting into the feeling, you’ll probably fail.

Believing in a positive outcome on a venture that depends on your own behavior and on the actions of others increases the likelihood of a positive result. This is called self-fulfilling prophecy.

And let’s face it. Most outcomes that are worthy of pursuing involve our or other people’s involvement. That makes self-fulfilling prophecy an effective tool in your mental toolbox.

A Six-Step Self-Coaching Template to Solve Your Persistent Problems

There’s no human life without any challenges. If you don’t have any challenges now, you’ve probably retreated to your comfort zone. I’ve got bad news for you. The challenges that you’re avoiding now will eventually find you.

You might be on the other end of the spectrum, and your life might be full of challenges. Moreover, you might be facing the same challenges over and over.

You might be switching between jobs. You might have different relationships. The same challenges might occur in all of your jobs, relationships, or in any other context.

If you have repeating patterns among different jobs, relationships, or in other contexts, it might be your approach to the problem that isn’t working.

Fight, Flight, or Freeze Responses

We have three reactions to challenges, fight, flight, or freeze. These are low-level reactions and tend to perpetuate the problem. You might win a fight, but I can guarantee you that a similar conflict will arise.

The same holds for the flight response. You might quit a job because of a conflict, but the chances are high that you’ll face a similar conflict in your next job.

The freeze response doesn’t solve any problem either. It only postpones it.

How are we going to deal with our persistent problems then?

Today, I want to share a template you can use to work on your persistent problems. I recommend that you pick a problem, take a pen and paper or open a text editor, and do the exercise with me.

When you’re writing your answers, take as much time as you want. Some of your answers might be contradicting each other, and that’s fine. We’re brainstorming here.

Once the whole exercise over, you’ll have the opportunity to write down your conclusions, the lessons you learned, and the action plan you devised.

Step 1. Define Your Problem

Most of the time, we perceive a situation as a problem on an emotional level. We have reactions like “I hate my colleague” or “my colleague hates me.”

In this step, we want to bring the problem to a conscious level.

  • What are the symptoms of your problem?
  • How does this problem manifest in your reality?
  • What makes you think that your colleague hates you?
  • Why do you hate your colleague?

Step 2. What Are the Adverse Effects of Your Problem?

This question must be easy to answer because you define the situation as a problem. How does this problem lower the quality of your life?

Come up with a few sentences to define your problem and the adverse effects of your problem. Don’t skip these steps with a simple sentence response like, “my colleague hates me, and he makes my job harder.”

Also, don’t go too much into detail. If you find yourself writing more than a few paragraphs, you might be dealing with multiple problems. If that’s the case, pick one of those problems, and work on it.

Step 3. What Are the Advantages of this Problem?

This question might sound counterintuitive to you, but take your time to reflect on it. This step is important, so be creative, and write as many answers as you can come up with.

If you need inspiration, you can read my post Reframe Your Challenges as Opportunities.

  • This problem motivates me to improve my conflict management skills.
  • It’s an opportunity to practice mindfulness.
  • It’s a personal growth opportunity.
  • It’s a lesson to learn not to take things personal, and be objective.
  • It’s an opportunity to face my inner demons.
  • And so on…

Step 4. What’s My Contribution to this Problem?

In this step, you have to be honest and objective. How did you co-create this problem? I don’t claim that it’s all your fault. But what’s your responsibility in it?

None of us are saints, but maybe you tried to act like one and gave people around you the permission to treat you any way they want.

If you don’t take any responsibility and only blame the other party or the conditions, you’ll be giving away your personal power.

If you give away your personal power, you’ll face the same challenges over and over, and wonder why you attract these unpleasant experiences.

Step 5. What Are the Lessons You Need to Learn from this Problem?

You’ll be attracting the same challenge over and over unless you learn your lessons from your problem, and act on those lessons.

Again, take your time and reflect on this question. Maybe, you have to dial down your agreeableness trait. Maybe, you should stop taking every remark of everybody serious. Maybe, you should acknowledge others, and not look down on people. Maybe, you should start practicing mindfulness.

You can come up with as many lessons as you can. They might be contradicting each other, and that’s no problem in this step. In the first five steps, we are exploring and brainstorming.

Step 6. Your Conclusions and Action Steps

Now, it’s time to come up with a congruent conclusion. That means making a summary of each step by taking the items that make the most sense to you and that don’t contradict each other.

Based on your conclusion, you need to come with your action steps and behavioral changes. And of course, you need to follow up on them.

I recommend making weekly reviews on your conclusions, action steps, and behavioral changes to find out how they play out in your life, and to make course corrections whenever necessary.

Summary

Our default responses to challenges are fight, flight, or freeze. Those reactions only perpetuate the problem and make it persistent.

If there is a problem that occurs over and over in your life, you might want to go deeper than those basic reactions. You can use the following six steps to do that.

  1. Define the problem.
  2. What are the adverse effects of your problem?
  3. What are the advantages of this problem?
  4. What’s your contribution to this problem?
  5. What are the lessons you need to learn from this problem?
  6. What are your conclusions and actions steps?

If you don’t take the responsibility and work on your problems consciously, they will persist and come back at you over and over in different contexts.

By taking responsibility, you’ll build your personal power and improve your satisfaction and the quality of your life.