Perhaps you have a goal, and perhaps you’ve had this goal for years. You work at the goal, you make some progress, and then you regress only to work more at the goal. The goal seems really hard. Maybe it’s weight loss, or maybe it’s your overall fitness, or maybe you’ve had this financial goal for years.
You may have noticed other people set similar goals and seem to accomplish them with ease. Yet you struggle mightily and have a hard time making headway. What could be going on? Is it a low level of self-will? Is it a discipline issue?
Someone who has a hard time losing weight might just think it’s hard because they like food too much. Or perhaps someone who has a really hard time saving money thinks they just like spending money too much. Perhaps this is true, but I suspect there’s something deeper at work.
If month after month, year after year, someone sets a goal, they put in a big effort and never seem to quite accomplish the goal, there is likely a part of them that really doesn’t want the goal. A part of them actually wants them to fail at accomplishing the goal. This is likely to be at a subconscious level, so it’s not obvious.
For example, if a person has the means yet continually struggles to save money, something deeper might be at play like the following beliefs, emotions and thoughts:
- Rich people are evil. If I save money I’ll appear to be a rich person, and I can’t allow people (including myself) to think I’m evil.
- People with money are taken advantage of and robbed. To stay safe, I make sure I don’t save too much money.
- I don’t feel loved, but buying things makes me feel good at least temporarily.
So while they say they want to save money, a deep ingrained part of them actually wants to do the opposite.
These deeper beliefs and mindsets often come from emotionally charged childhood experiences. So they are powerfully ingrained in us even if we aren’t unaware of them. At a subconscious level we are scared to death that we will not be liked, accepted and approved of, we will experience personal harm, or love will be withheld from us.
And by the way this isn’t about some weird people out there. This describes all of us – you, me, everyone.
The punch line is this: If you have a goal like this that you keep trying to attain over and over again, check your deeper emotions, beliefs and thoughts or no amount of self-will and effort will get you to your goal.
Instead of trying harder, remove or reduce the power of your subconscious commitment for the opposite that is self sabotaging you.
