Everyone desires happiness, joy, bliss, and peace. Yet too many people are stuck in unfulfilling jobs and relationships, financially getting by, or emotionally and spiritually disconnected.
For decades, the typical path to achieving happiness has been to seek help from self-help books, mentors, coaches, clergy, or therapists. Often, these paths lead to white-knuckling our way through change or project managing our way, via an accountability partner, through mindset adjustments to achieve goals that we reason out might make us happy but sadly are not rooted in the knowledge of what makes us genuinely happy. Instead, they rely on external sources for happiness like money, a relationship, a single goal achieved, or suppressing negative emotions by being positive,
We now understand that mindset and willpower are only part of the equation. Mindset, while a crucial element to living our best life, has a paradoxical aspect in that the mindset we use to get us unstuck is the same mindset that got us stuck in the first place.
An example:
Peggy, a freelance journalist, and her husband Max, a chef at their family restaurant, decided that Peggy would be a stay-at-home mom after the birth of their first three children. They figured she could take on writing gigs here and there and have the best of both worlds. Ten years later, she has only accepted a handful of writing assignments. Most of her time is spent managing the home, caring for children and their schedules, and being an extra hand at the family restaurant when short-staffed. She tells herself that this is the sacrifice she agreed to make for the family’s good, but the radical truth is that this is not what she envisioned for her life. Life circumstances have taken over, and she has silently grown unfulfilled and afraid to upset the family by sharing what she perceives as selfish desires. Most would classify Peggy as being on autopilot or “going through the motions.” She is neither happy nor unhappy; she has lost herself to the identity of something she is “supposed” to love: her maternal duty.
As an outsider looking in, we may feel her problem is easily solvable, but it is not easy for Peggy. She has been fluctuating back and forth for years over what to do. She is unaware that this is a recurring behavior pattern, as far back as ten years old, where she sacrifices her needs over the needs of others and will settle for less than what she truly deserves once again vs. seeking help to achieve a win-win solution.
I equate many well-known mindset and willpower tactics to what we see in the healthcare industry, where we only manage symptoms instead of finding the root cause. In mindset work, it is critical to go deeper and be observant and radically honest about our thoughts, beliefs, feelings, actions, and motives regarding proposed changes and learn how to transcend the limits of our ego. Our ego, often called our false self, will present an extensive list of arguments for resisting the changes that require us to break out of our comfort zone—even at the cost of our happiness.
Understand the five egoic mind payoffs of resistance (reasons why we resist change):
- Avoiding the unknown. What is familiar may not be comfortable. Still, the devil we know is sometimes better than the one we do not. We fear that venturing into the unknown will cause us to discover painful secrets about the world and ourselves that we have kept hidden.
- Avoiding judgment. Naturally, humans want the world to see us as competent, attractive, and impressive; we don’t like it when our actions are judged negatively. The root of feeling afraid of judgment comes from wanting to be liked or fearing rejection.
- Avoiding failure. When we fear failure, we tend to overestimate the risk we are taking and imagine the worst possible scenario.
- Avoiding success. Conversely, we can also want to avoid success. Strangely, a fear of success can cause just as much resistance to change as a fear of failure. While you may consciously long for a promotion or hope that your romantic relationship will result in marriage, unconsciously, you may be afraid of what will happen if these changes occur.
- Avoid feeling guilty. If we take a risk and make a change, we may feel guilty because we contradict what others think we should or should not be doing with our lives.
So, what do we do about this resistance?
We bring resistance into the light – this is what enlightenment means. We Identify it and check for hidden obstacles.
Find our courage and delve deeply into our psyche. Here, we can discover this obstacle, “unpack the emotional baggage” that contributes to being stuck, and access the fuel of our passion. This passion will pull us out of our routine and resistance and into the creative process, opening our eyes to infinite possibilities. It will liberate us from our avoidance behaviors and quell our anxiety and fears about change.
These are a few ways to transcend the limitations of the ego. Working with a coach, mentor, or therapist might expose us to additional approaches and support in getting out of our way. The important thing is to have the intention and the willingness to transcend the limitations of our ego to follow inner guidance and intuition.
This is just one more path to our personal growth and enlightenment journey. To learn more, join me in the FREE Creatively Cultivating Consciousness private Facebook group.
I am sending love and light – Kami.
