Hello and welcome to another blog post based on the Phoenix Rising podcast. This is a brand-new project and for any entrepreneurs out there sometimes you just have to start and not worry about everything being perfect. The topic today that I am super excited to talk about is, why you don't have the life you want.
The reason I decided to talk about this and most of the conversations on this post are because these are things that I talk to a lot of people about in person, whether it's friends, family, coaching clients, or fellow entrepreneurs. These deep conversations are what I love, and this is something that comes up a lot because one of the things people keep reverting back to is feeling stuck, feeling like they have super crystal clear goals, they feel very focused on what it is they want. Yet they continue to hit roadblocks and try to figure out what the heck is going on.
It turns into this whole thing that everybody gets caught up in. We get caught up in these emotional dramas. It's hard when you are super clear on what you want, you continue to put in the effort to get that, but you aren't getting it. You react to that and you create some story behind it. This is what I call the drama. "This is what I wanted, this is what I didn't get, and here's the story behind it." Because you think you're not good enough or not smart enough, you always knew it wouldn't work out, it couldn't have been that easy. You knew that would happen because of all these things. When I hear people talk about this it kind of makes me laugh a little bit because I have done that too. But none of that is actually true. You can actually get yourself unstuck, make changes, and have the things that you do want in life. That's what this post is all about, and I'm going to do my best to explain to you a few tools and pieces of advice you can do to help uncover a few things that maybe keep you blocked, or have you stuck from having the things in life that you want.
I recently heard a statistic that blew my mind! It was a group study that was done on people's ability to make change. A stadium full of 25,000 people and imagine you're at a motivational event, seminar, or something along those lines. It's got you hyped up, you're ready to change, you're ready to do the things you need to do to make the life that you want happen. 25,000 people. When asked how many people want to make the change in their life, of course everybody raises their hand. They studied who actually followed through with that and made significant transformations and changes in their life. 1/25,000 actually did the work to make the change. That is ridiculous! It makes no sense to me. It never has but I'm going to break it down to you. It makes sense, there's a reason behind it, but more so why do you keep doing what you've been doing and you're expecting a different result? It's the definition of insanity. "Doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result." It's not going to happen. The outcome isn't going to change. You have to change what you're doing.
I heard the statistic, and I was mind-blown. A lot of people come to me because they want executive coaching, because it's personal development. They want to completely be the best version of themself, as a leader, in their industry, whatever they're doing. Or it's for weight loss and fitness advice. Usually it starts out the same: Here's the problem and here's what I don't want to have or here's what I'm not and here's who I want to be. I can't tell you how many times I have heard the entire story, but also made it very clear that who they are trying to be and what they want to be is entirely 100% possible. Absolutely you can do that and here's the steps to do so.
Normally the first 30 days or so people are fired up, motivated, they're doing everything to a T that they're instructed to do. Then it starts to get hit or miss. Maybe they skip a day, maybe they eat a little more sugar than they know they should, maybe they're not doing meditations every single day. Then it slowly starts to creep back in, that is how change happens. It's a slow process, but that also works in the reverse. Going back to old habits and patterns is also a very slow subtle process.
The first thing to talk about is, why is this the case? Why out of 25,000 people does only one person actually do what it takes to make significant change in their life? The answer is pretty common, it's usually fear. Whether it's fear of the unknown or change, because this goes in any area of life, when it comes to personal training a lot of people know they have to make the change of changing their food, workouts, sleep habits, or nutrition. It works for a little bit but one of the biggest and interesting things that people fear is change of what it's going to do to the people around them.
Change could be that they no longer have the same circle of friends who go out all the time. Maybe their family doesn't support them, so they have to distance themselves from their family. A lot of times the things that keep people from making the change is the fear of not knowing the outcome is more powerful than staying in a predictable and safe space where they can predict the outcome. It's kind of like a math equation. You can totally disrupt your life and make very serious decisions and change everything, but you have no idea how it's going to turn out. You can only move in the direction of your hopes instead of your fears. Or you can have a math formula that continues to produce the same results and if you stay in it, it is safe. You know the level of emotion you'll feel, there might not be a lot of pain involved, there's not a whole lot of change or discomfort that you have to feel.
This goes back to one of the famous quotes of, "Everything that you're looking for is on the other side of your comfort zone." It's so true. Your ability to tolerate discomfort is also your ability to make significant change, results, and transformations in your life. This is a mental mindset type training that you can do. I always resort back to fitness, but your ability to handle discomfort in a workout produces results in your character that transition into life to be able to handle discomfort and persevere and other things as well.
Fear and pain are very powerful energies, which is one of the key things that keeps people from making transformations. The opposite of that is as powerful as these two things are so is love and inspiration. A lot of times we go to a seminar, an event, or we talk to somebody that is really inspirational, and they're so full of passion, love, and inspiration that it spills over into us. It makes everything seem totally possible and we go down this path of thinking, "I can do anything." "My life is unlimited." "I absolutely want to do this." Then people go home, they go back to their normal environment, they're back around the exact same people, and then that fear and pain starts to fall back in.
As crazy as it sounds it actually becomes a form of addiction, a mental addiction. Everybody has different habits and patterns that they're very aware of in their external world. Maybe they're addicted to sugar, cigarettes, drinking, certain relationship tendencies, habits, everybody is aware of those things. However, a lot of people don't associate addictive patterns with their mindset as well. You can become very addicted to negative thinking patterns, self-sabotage, and victim mindset. This is what happens: you start this process and something new and get a little bit of a breakthrough, but your mind is going to naturally fall back to the patterns that it's always known. The second reason it is really challenging for people to make such huge transformations and changes in their life is usually it is a result of unhealed emotional trauma or deep-rooted subconscious beliefs that they're unaware of. If you are new to the idea of the subconscious mind or unhealed emotional trauma, think of it like your subconscious mind is the pilot. It's the part of that is working underneath the surface. It is the deepest part of you. It is deeply engrained. It's the part that you access when you are sleeping, dreaming, in a deep state of meditation, or in a present moment of awareness. This is your subconscious mind. Your conscious mind is what works on your day-to-day autopilot. By autopilot I mean things that are kind of routine. You need to wake up, brush your teeth, take a shower. They don't require a whole lot of mental effort from you. If you think of an iceberg, the tip of the iceberg is what you see above the surface. That would be your conscious mind. Underneath that surface is the bulk of everything. That would be your subconscious mind.
Next are the things that can block your mind with the subconscious and unhealed trauma. These go hand in hand because your subconscious mind creates your belief systems from a very young age. Unhealed emotional trauma and subconscious beliefs go hand in hand because when you have a very deep emotional experience in those moments, whether you're aware of it or not, you've created a deep subconscious belief that kind of runs under the surface as the theme of everything in your life.
An example of that would be if you were a child who was neglected, didn't feel like you deserved attention, and never got the love, support, and acceptance that you wanted, because there was a moment when you drew this picture. You put a lot of time and effort into this picture, and you went to show a parent and they dismissed it. They didn't really give it any attention, love, or recognition. Your child brain, a sponge absorbing everything, basically took that, was deeply hurt creates a deep subconscious belief that you don't deserve love, attention, and recognition. Say you're five years old when this happens. That becomes so deeply engrained that when you grow up as an adult you have this running underneath the surface of everything in your life. Maybe you sell yourself short as an adult and you never actually go for anything that you want. Maybe you have a really hard time acknowledging your accomplishments. Maybe you don't feel like you deserve the job, business, or career that you really want because deep down you have a belief that you don't deserve recognition, attention, or love. This is all very hypothetical and there are lots of scenarios that come up in this way, but the point of this is when you don't have a healing process to work through all of these things, it will show up in all areas of your life.
Another example of this would be in love and dating. We'll say the exact same thing: You're a kid, you do this drawing, you put a lot of thought and energy and your innocent little brain was like, "Oh my gosh this is so important and I'm so excited to show this to my loved one and they're going to love it, support it, and accept me." However, you end up getting rejected and ignored. You take this, you create that belief system that you do not deserve love and attention. You become an adult and you get into the dating world. Now all of the sudden, you start attracting unavailable people. Maybe you're in an affair situation. Maybe you attract people who are emotionally unavailable. You're getting frustrated because you're like, "Why do I always pick the people who cheat on me or who have no emotional depth?" Because somewhere in there every time they can't give you what you want, it validates this deep subconscious belief in yourself. They can't love you, therefore it validates the subconscious belief of, "I do not deserve love." You create these situations to further instill the deep beliefs you already have. This is a lot, because if you take a look at your life, this requires a lot of self-reflection, and there's anything that you're very frustrated with, ask yourself if there's a pattern or theme and normally you will find out what your subconscious beliefs are. That would be the first part of this process. Once you figure out your subconscious belief you then have to do the work of figuring out what was the situation that created that. This is a very complex process and I mean sometimes people get totally lost in this because they don't know where to start.
You have to start with is seeing this for what it is. In the dating world I tell people, maybe take a break from dating and instead all that energy that you're putting out and trying to get from other people, put it inward and fix your shit first. Then you won't keep recreating the same scenarios. Same thing with career. Do you continually find yourself in a job or career that you absolutely hate, and it sucks the life out of you? Well instead of going to apply for another job because you're just going to end up in the exact same position as you're in now, take a break and ask yourself, "What is the pattern or the theme and what is the underlying belief that I keep choosing these jobs or careers and ending up with the exact same result that I've always had?" That in itself is huge. When it comes to dealing with unresolved emotional trauma, if you need help with that in the description, I will put a link in which you can contact me. I will work with you as a coach through this. Right now, we won't get too much into that because it's a very deep process.
Last example I'll give is back in the dating world. Usually in our early 20's, mid 20's, and for some people this goes on their entire life if they never reflect and make changes, normally you will find that you have dated somebody who had a lot of qualities of the parent that you either did not get along with the most or the parent who was absent. What happens in these situations is if we don't heal the issues we have, so say you're in an abusive relationship. Somewhere along the lines, whether it's verbal, emotional, physical abuse you usually don't get into abusive relationships if you don't have somewhere in your life experience where you experience abuse. The way you work through that is you have to first accept the experience that you had, work through that process, heal the pain and the trauma of that, and then you stop recreating scenarios that mimic that because you haven't healed it. Basically, in order to stop repeating things, you have to heal things, and in order to heal things you have to self-reflect, become self-aware, and you have to feel all of it.
The whole moral of that story is, you can have all the inspiration and motivation to make change, but if you don't do the work to uncover the unconscious beliefs and the trauma that is dictating every choice in your life, then those things will constantly elude you. Do the work. Last example people have of why they don't have the life they want. I feel this one a lot of people can resonate with because they hear it so much. It's self-sabotage. You do all of this: Goal setting, you get super clear and focused, you've already established new belief systems in your subconscious, you've healed all that trauma, you finally have a job opportunity that sounds like a dream. You go for it; you nail the interview. Maybe you get some really good traction with your business, or maybe you even meet somebody that could potentially be a long-term love partner.
Here's what happens to a lot of people. They start this process, it's going so well, it's absolutely amazing, everything they wanted. They're so happy, and then somewhere along the lines self-sabotage occurs. "Wait this can't be this good, this is too good to be true." I feel like at any moment the other shoe is going to drop, and I almost don't want to fully enjoy this because it almost seems like I shouldn't enjoy this because there's something that I'm missing. You create this entire scenario, or you create problems when there isn't a problem all because your belief system is life should be hard, love should be hard. Nobody ever actually has the career of their dreams; nobody actually gets to make money doing what they love. You create these things, you start talking to yourself, and you create self-sabotage in your mind. Then what goes on in your mind is produced in your external reality. Then in your external reality you start to look for things, you become paranoid. This can't be the right person, this can't be the right job, there's got to be something I'm missing. It sounds way too good to be true. Then you create problems that aren't even there, and you start acting out so then you start snooping in the phone, you start getting paranoid that you're going to get cheated on.
You get yourself into imposter syndrome, and you start thinking maybe you're not good enough for the job, or maybe they missed something in your resume and then you start talking yourself out of it. This is another form of deep-rooted belief system that you have to work yourself through. So, self-sabotage look out for that and ask yourself if there's any area of your life that you have done that in, and then the important question you have to ask yourself is, "Why?" Why did you do that? Because when you uncover your why you also uncover your answer to make lasting change and to stop doing that.
Now that we've uncovered all these ways that we keep ourselves from having the things in life that we want, now I'm going to explain to you how to stop and how to actually do the work to do the things that you want in life.
If you ask most people, "Why don't you have what it is that you want?" I'm not sure you would ever hear one person admit, "Well, actually it's my fault. It's my fault because I haven't done the work on my belief system." "It's my fault because I ignored the red flags and my intuition and instead, I validated a deep belief that I don't deserve this." "It's my fault because I didn't take responsibility because I didn't stick to what I committed to."
Nobody says that because then there's no excuse, there's nobody to blame. The only person that can make the change is you. It is so much easier to blame the economy, the cheating ex, your parents, who didn't give you whatever kind of thing that you needed that you didn't get. It's so much easier to blame the weather or everything. It's so much easier, but we have to understand is every time you do that, you give away your power and you give away your ability to make change. It is a hard gut check and a hard pill to swallow when you accept responsibility, because it takes you out of a victim mindset as if everything happens to you and it makes you an adult. Don't we love adulthood?
Here's the question you have to ask yourself, "Why is it that you know exactly what you want but you continue to make the choices that are not in alignment with that?" I cannot answer that for you, nobody can answer that for you, only you can. When you do that, you take responsibility, and you uncover, and you shed a lot of light on the path to actually getting what you want. Basically, if you want a business that's super successful why do you put all of your energy into jobs that you actually hate? Why not transfer that energy into figuring out how to have the business that you want? Maybe you're scared. Maybe you don't have the security. Maybe you're going to have an unpredictable outcome.
Same thing with relationships. Why do you want true love and monogamy, yet you continue to casually date and sleep around and throw yourself at anybody who will give you attention? Maybe you're scared of real intimacy. Maybe because deep down you're punishing yourself for some past mistake and maybe you feel like you don't deserve love. Ask yourself these questions and actually listen to what comes up for you, because that is going to be the catalyst for change.
This then leads me to my next point. Once you uncover this, you have to face your deepest fears and unhealed emotional trauma head-on, so they stop being the driver in your life. A very child-like but very simple way to give you a visual image of this, it's like when you're a kid and you're scared of the dark because you think there's some monster underneath the bed that's going to grab your feet when you put your foot out and suck you under this deep dark hole that you can't see. The only way to see that there's not a monster under the bed, and it is your imagination, is to get out of bed and look under the bed to see it for itself or turn on the lights and you'll see there's nothing there. Your fears are the exact same thing. As long as you refuse to look at them and acknowledge them head on it's like that fear of the dark. It's that thing that you will not shed light on because it scares you so much except for usually what you realize when you shed light on it, is that it's nothing more than your stuffed animal that was under the bed.
Facing your fears keeps you from facing self-sabotage. Sometimes it's easier to do this with a really close friend or easier to do this with a coach, because what you have to be careful of is when you face the fear it's important to have the support that it's completely valid for you to have that fear but also, it's highly unlikely that it's actually going to happen. You need that positive reinforcement and validations because a lot of times I've had deep fears before that I will trust with a very close friend or a very close family member and even trying to say it out loud, because it has become such a big thing inside of me, because it's hard to admit.
Sometimes I'll start crying and I get super emotional and vulnerable. I am so scared. Then normally the second I get it out of my body it loses its power. You've turned the lights on. You're seeing it for what it is, it's a fear. Whatever that might be, if you have a fear of failure that's okay that's completely legitimate. You're allowed to have a fear of failure because it's completely real. Don't let that stop you from making the change to pursue the things that you do want in life. Maybe you have a fear of being cheated on. That's okay, you probably have very valid reasons for that. Don't let that keep you from actually opening up to the kind of relationship that you want.
Get to the place of trusting yourself that you're doing this inner work, and that you won't repeat the same process. Whatever your fear is, after you uncover the first step of why you continue to make choices that aren't in alignment of what you want, then look this head on. Take responsibility. The monster under the bed is not a monster under the bed, the monster is your big fluffy teddy bear and just wants to be held, cuddled, and seen for what it is. Stop making it into something bigger than what it is. Uncover those fears. The other part too with uncovering your fear is every emotion that you have takes up some sort of energy in your body. Emotional trauma, fear-based thinking, self-sabotage, pain, resentment, regret, hatred, all these emotions all hold energies to them. When you keep them shoved down into your soul, it takes up so much energy. The problem is, in order to make real change it requires so much energy. By doing this process, looking at things head-on, facing your fears, subconscious beliefs, and the healing trauma that needs to come out, you free up so much energy and so much space that you can now utilize towards your goals and having the things in life that you want instead of obsessing and wasting that energy in the direction of the things that you don't want.
The final part of this is once you've uncovered your subconscious beliefs, you've faced your fears head-on, you now have to change your beliefs and your mindset. You have to create new thought patterns. Once you've cleared out all that energy, you have to replace it with something new. This goes not just for your mindset; this also goes for anything in life. Say you stop going out and drinking, you stop this habit, now you have all this time. You have to replace it with something new, healthy, and good. Same thing with relationships. You stop dating the asshole, narcissists, cheaters; now you have all this time because you're not dating those people. Fill it with something good, you have to replace it. Fill it with a hobby, friends, anything. All this inner work that you have to do, you have to replace it though otherwise if you leave it empty for too long, you're going to get really bored, lonely, and you're going to fall back into old habits.
Take the time to write out very specific new beliefs that you want to establish, and then what you can do is look for things, make a daily conscious habit that validate that new belief. If you are trying to be an entrepreneur who is doing what they love and is highly successful, look for other entrepreneurs who are doing that as proof that it is totally possible and repetition over time will establish new subconscious beliefs that you can do the same thing.
If you want to be married to the love of your life and full of love, passion, intimacy, deeply connected, you guys are best friends, and is everything that you look for in a partner, look for other couples who genuinely have that and it will establish the belief in you that it is possible that you can have that. It shifts your mindset.
If it's money, you want to establish a new belief system that there's plenty of opportunities, there's money all around, we live in an abundant world, an abundant universe that constantly wants to give us everything we need. Look for people who live that way and live that lifestyle. The more you focus on that the more you will establish that belief system.
Ultimately life is everything that you give the attention and energy to. If you continue to establish and engrain these new beliefs in there, over time you start to transform. You start to make the change and then as a result of that the world outside of you starts to change. Sometimes that can be a little bit scary. I think this is what scares people the most is it's so much easier to ask other people to change. It's easier to ask your boss to change, it's easier to change your job, to change everything on the outside, because it keeps you from having to do the work. Inevitably what will happen is when you start to this work and you start to move and change what's going on inside, everything outside of you will change. All of a sudden people will start to disappear and new people will show up. All of a sudden you have an abundant mindset; all these opportunities just keep finding you. All of a sudden you realize you are surrounded by people who truly love, support, and care for you. You no longer have people who drain you or take advantage of you. All of it starts with you, inside you doing this work.
To make this a full circle blog post, the reason you don't have the life that you want is not because anything outside of yourself or some greater power is keeping you from having it, usually there is a lot going on inside that is dictating everything in your external environment. The only way to really uncover that and make change is to spend time with yourself, spend time in self-reflection, become self-aware, put more energy internally than you do externally, and to take 100% responsibility for your life. It's a lot, it's not easy. However, it's empowering and it gives you the tools to move in the direction you want and to make change, so you do not continue to put yourself in the same situations that are hurting you or making you unhappy.
Really what anything is about is committing to yourself to put in the effort, to put in the work, and to make lasting change. You have the ability to create anything you want. Life truly is full of unlimited possibilities and opportunities; you have to believe in yourself enough and do the work to establish that belief in yourself in order to get it.
Ashley Drummonds
https://ashleydrummonds.com/pages/coaching-withashley-drummonds
