What gets in the way of achieving what you really want in life?
If you’re answer was ‘my thoughts’, I love that you’ve been reading these blogs and see how powerful your thoughts can be.
For most people, the biggest things that get in the way are what I call mid-life soul suckers. Really these are dream-killers at any stage or age in life, but they seem particularly strong at mid-life for a variety of reason I won’t get into here.
So what is a mid-life soul sucker anyway? It’s anything that you do in excess (meaning more than you intend) that gets in the way of what you really want to accomplish, or keeps you from having to feel an uncomfortable emotion. Some examples are:
- Facebooking, TikToking, Instagraming for longer than you wanted
- Eating more than you intended
- Drinking more than you wanted to
- Gaming for longer than you intended
- Over-spending
- Binging on Netflix or any streaming app
- Working more hours than you’d like
Now I want to be really clear. None of these things are negative or positive, or bad or good alone. So why is it a problem for up-leveling to do these in excess? Because whenever you do these in excess – again any amount more than you intended – you make no forward progress in your life. They keep you stuck exactly where you are, and in some cases, actually result in you going in the reverse of where you intended. These soul suckers leave you feeling at best ‘meh’, and at worst full of guilt and shame. No Up-Leveling.
I had a client who passionately expressed her desire to write a book. She worked full time and felt she had no time to write, and quitting her job wasn’t something she wanted to do either. During her coaching she talked about her nightly habits and that she spent time scrolling through Facebook and having a glass of wine. It didn’t seem like a big deal to her and it helped her relax. As I continue the session, it turned out she was spending upwards of 3 hours on Facebook and usually more like 1 bottle of wine. Again, there’s no judgement here. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. It became a problem for her because it was completely blocking her from being able to see that she had plenty of time to dedicate to writing her book. What’s amazing is that she wasn’t really consciously aware that she was doing this every night.
Our brains really are amazing. When you do something over and over your brain moves these repeated thoughts and behaviors to the part of your brain where it becomes automatic. Super useful when it comes to things like walking, or driving. Not so useful when it comes to things you do in excess. That’s because once it becomes automatic, it feels like you have no control over it (much like the beliefs seeming to be fact in my last blog). But when you eliminate the behavior or eliminate the excess, you gain SO much freedom in your life and your mind.
Going back to my client’s situation, we came up with a plan, but it took conscious effort for her to not automatically pick up her phone and look at Facebook or go for a glass of wine. Her auto-brain just wanted her to keep doing what she had been doing. Her planning brain had to overrule. This was her brain working exactly as designed.
Now it’s your turn. Ask yourself, what is one area I do something in excess? Most of us already know to some extent, but we tend to not think about it consciously because it takes effort and our auto-brains don’t want to do that.
Then ask yourself, how is this getting in the way of for me? How is this preventing me from up-leveling?
Like always, I would love to coach you and help you eliminate your soul suckers, and up-level your life. Schedule time on my site to coach with me, and if you’d like to get periodic emails when I post a blog along with special updates from me, sign up below!