Have you ever asked yourself, “Why can’t I seem to change the way I think I should?”
Perhaps it feels to you as though your life and aspirations have been put on hold. Like you’re stuck in a rut of circumstance with no way to escape the humdrum of everyday routine.
The answer to this question lies within the falsehood of the saying “Change your thoughts, change your life.”
Ultimately this belief has led some of the best potential people in the world down a rabbit hole the lengths of which would likely never allow them to see the light of day.
Why does this occur?
Because on the surface this seemingly profound and obvious quote is misleading. It doesn’t take the nature of the modern human mind into account and feeds us misinformation that appears to be general knowledge.
The difference lies in emotional integrity, the ability to utilize emotion (which in most cases trumps our thought process) in alignment with our true desires. Human thoughts and actions are horribly misaligned. There are multiple factors to blame, so many in fact that it would be of no use to list all of them, however, I have decided to mention the one factor that can most radically alter your reality through the awareness of it. That is subconscious thought.
The Power of Your Subconscious
Subconscious thought (if you can call it thought and not reaction) is the brick wall before our deepest desires that blocks the way. The rope that pulls us away from our own actualization merely due to fear.
For example, People often say that they “should” be doing something…” man, I should be studying right now” or “I should have gone to the gym today…” yaddah yaddah yaddah. Ultimately what we do know is that our thoughts alone don’t necessarily control what we get out of life.
What does then?
Usually, our subconscious neural-patterns that dictate habitual behaviors. There is, however, something we can do to interrupt and rewrite the code for these reactionary behaviors, action.
Learn how to take action despite your subconscious motivations and you can escape the rut you may currently feel you are stuck in, as well as surpass any obstacle you face in the future. This concept must be broken down into two categories which aid us in…
Escaping the Stagnancy Principles
Escaping the “should.”
Escaping the “should “ merely involves the recognition of a category of life you feel you wish to be more developed in, and taking action in what you know what you must do without accepting your irrational fears of it.
Be careful though, oftentimes we try to justify our actions through means that allow us to stay comfortable (I’m looking at you, subconscious).
Avoid pitfalls by recognizing the thought processes and excuses you may give based on some of the following examples.
Remember, they may appear different to you and your unique life or world view, but they are excuses nonetheless, and if you are not yet actualized, then you have been a victim of your own limiting beliefs for certain, just saying.
Avoid excuses similar to “I should have gone to the gym but work really drained me today.” Or “I should work on that project for work but I hardly get any downtime as it is.” Or even “I should start eating healthy but fresh and healthy food is so much more expensive!”
The term “should”, in and of itself, presents a secondary form of potential-stagnation. You have the awareness to know what must be done, yet some external factors (which you alone give your power to) affects it.
All of these examples have one thing in common, the “but” clause, which seemingly allows us the power to trample our desires and hopes for a better existence through justified means.
Don’t fall for it or any of its possible relatives (justifications of uninspired habit) that limit your potential. Act anyways.
Be Proactive, Not Reactive
Escaping the reactionary is, in essence, the beneficial way in which our immediate action aids us is in dealing with our own immediately limiting beliefs.
Rather than feeding ourselves excuses that have to do with why we warrant not taking action, which is the way of secondary potential-stagnancy, oftentimes our own feelings of self-worth cause us to stop dead in our tracks immediately in a way that cannot be justified logically to ourselves. This is a primary potential stagnation.
This is the most dangerous and pit-fall-like of the stagnancy principles.
In this case, we don’t even entertain the thoughts of what we should do. We immediately give up the moment a thought of potential betterment travels across our neural pathways. This is low self-esteem/worth.
There is no bartering, no justification, no excuses that you make to kill a dream or a thought. You simply believe you can’t, and in this case, yes, you believe wrong.
Taking action despite a low sense of self-worth is going directly against the grain of the “Change your thoughts, change your life.” Idea. It is amazingly difficult, but not impossible.
Gary John Bishop makes the point in his book “Unfuck Yourself” that actions often have a more influential and lasting way of forming your self-imposed beliefs, not the other way around.
Positive action often cures negative beliefs despite the obvious subconscious roadblocks you perceive. Why? Because you become and identify with what it is that you do.
Remember, we are what we repeatedly do.
Although you may not believe you are worth the praise or self-love or success, you must be willing to act beyond the oppositions and judgments from yourselves and society. That’s right, there are social (and not just personal) implications to be found at work here as well, possibly because we are products of socially imprinted thinking.
Don’t care what people think, or even what you currently think of yourself for that matter, take action regardless of an area you know you must improve in. Change requires risk.
We have already dived into how society, as a whole, suppresses our desires and abrasively rubs out the so-called “imperfections” of human potential. See Society Suppresses Your “Why?” for more on this!
For today, be a Rockstar. Do what you know you should, take action even if you don’t, and don’t consider opposition from yourself or anyone else.
-Austin Denison
Comments are closed