Have you ever really wanted to do something for yourself or make a change in your circumstances for the better, only to then sabotage your attempts to give transformation a chance? Maybe you feel frustrated and powerless that you just can’t seem to make success happen?
Help Yourself Get Out of Your Own Way
There are steps you can take to help you create the change you want to see in your life more easily and more quickly. Here are my suggestions to get you on track for success…
1. Own the Problem
The first critical step to break free from anxiety is to accept that it is the way you are thinking or behaving in your life that are getting in your own way of creating the change you want to see.
2. Take Responsibility
Take responsibility for the stress that is showing up in your life and accept that only you can make a change happen. I always say to every client – ‘There is good news and bad news in working with me… the bad news is ‘You have a responsibility in the process because I can’t make it happen for you. In the same way, a personal trainer can’t do your sit-ups for you. You go to the gym and you put the commitment in to see results.
Then I say, the good news is ‘You have a responsibility in this process of change…’ Being pro-active and taking responsibility means when you finish therapy you are empowered to take your success into your life and sustain it.
3. Be Patient
Whilst you may, without doubt, get flashes of inspiration and enlightenment, shifts in perspective and create giant leaps in awareness, transformation is a process of unfolding and growing into your true self. You must give it time for sustained improvement to be long-lasting. The transformational programmes I offer to my clients provide the emotional support you need to develop awareness, so that you may take action on the critical steps to integrate this awareness into your daily living.
4. How To Create Change For Yourself
Often in the personal development industry, you’ll hear of a quick fix of instant transformation from your worries. When you don’t achieve this immediately, you may feel deflated and let down, perhaps feeling worse within yourself. The reality is it takes practice by way of sustained repetition to embed new neural pathways and create new habits in your thinking and behaviour. The so-called quick fix alludes to key moments of inspiration and enlightenment which are a catalyst to transformation. Visualisation is one effective brain training strategy that can make the transformation easier and quicker.
Taking a short time every day to visualise yourself (or pre-play) overcoming particular fears or behaviours, creates an illusion in the mind that you are experiencing it for real yet in a totally safe and comfortable way. The more feeling you put into it and the more you engage your senses in the experience, the deeper the effect. Hypnosis is a vehicle of relaxation, which guides you to relax whilst you visualise deeply, and this, in turn, allows the old wired fear programming to be overwritten by a more comfortable chemical neurotransmitter response. The more you do this consistently over a period of about a month, the more familiar and comfortable the imagined experience becomes, simply because you get more comfortable in your stretch zone. This creates a shift in real life situations because the old wired subconscious response has been over-written.
5. Understand How You Create the Thing You Want to Escape
At times when you want to pull back inside your safe comfort zone of discontent, it is vital that you grow to understand how you are creating or perpetuating the very thing you want to escape in your life. Reaching for medication at this point merely keeps you stuck in your belief that you are powerless to create change from within yourself. If you are feeling that you need to take the ‘edge’ off your symptoms, it is vital that you still take action to ensure you keep moving forward.
6. You Either Win or You Learn
Understanding that you never win or lose in life. You only lose when you quit. Learning comes from experience and careful reflection so that you begin to understand how you can get better and stronger, and perhaps what triggered your sabotage this time.
7. Nothing Will Change Unless You Take Action
Realise that unless you do something different in your thinking and in your actions, you will continue to get the same outcomes in your life. Nothing will change unless you take the right action! As Einstein said, ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different result.
Transformation Can’t Happen to You
It comes from within you over weeks of sustained effort. It is all too easy to store away within your mind fantastic advice and moments of inspiration. We’ve all done that – myself included, at times. Yet the real key to successful transformation is putting your learning and awareness into practice in reality. The best way to get results is to get help from a qualified professional who can support and guide you on your way to success. If you want to create positive and lasting transformation in your life, you must make a commitment to yourself, to consistently act on the qualified advice you receive and awareness you glean and see it through.
How and Why Do You Get In Your Own Way?
Here’s what you need to remember when it all feels like too much. It is subconscious programming buried deep within your mind, often reaching far back to your childhood, which triggers such resistance. This ‘pull back to comfort’ might feel like a depressed or stuck feeling. It feels very strong. It is an instinctive response from the subconscious to steer you away from the possible threat of unknown territory and back into the perceived safety of the familiar.
At times it can feel too difficult to sustain the stretch enough, for you to grow to feel comfortable in the stretch zone. Facing your fears and confronting your demons can be challenging. Transformation is a process. The moment when you may falter and perhaps even reach for medication is the very moment when you are nearest a breakthrough. After all, you don’t learn to ride a horse without falling off a few times. The magic happens when you muster the courage and the determination to get back on the horse and re-set yourself!
I hope this helps you to keep it real and get the transformation for yourself that you deserve!
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I am of course continuing to grow in my life too. The truth is we are all on a journey. You learn the best from those who have walked the path in front of you, and who are at least a few steps ahead and ready to support you.
It will be my pleasure to help you secure the transformation in your life in the near future. Get in touch today and let’s talk things through.
Until then,
With love and light
Lisa x
Lisa Skeffington
Anxiety Expert – Anxiety Help Bournemouth & Christchurch, UK
Support Nationally and Internationally Online