What’s your sticking point?
What’s your sticking point?
Have you ever felt stuck? As you can see from the photo, I definitely have! To be honest, my father pushed me in that bucket to take the photo, maybe you have someone in your life who pushes you, so you feel stuck as well?!
If you’re like a lot of my clients, they often express feeling stuck when they first speak to me. In fact, this is a vicious circle because they think they have to know and understand the problem they are experiencing before they approach me, which isn’t true. Feeling stuck is just a way of the mind expressing that it isn’t happy, it’s the same if you come saying you feel a fear of failure or Impostor syndrome, you feel you could be so much more than you are, or that you feel low. Stuck is just the feeling that is presenting.
The brain doesn’t really care what your issue is, it just cares that you are experiencing ‘pain’ mentally. From a neuroscience perspective, your brain is geared towards running away from pain and moving towards pleasure. However, it can be a little slapdash when rushing to create a behaviour that it believes will help you. It has a positive intention in creating this but that’s as far as it goes, its an intention, it doesn’t guarantee a positive outcome! This is how we end up feeling stuck.
Imagine that you get humiliated giving a presentation at school when you’re young. Your mind then sees this ‘pain’ and creates a behaviour that gets you out of giving presentations, so you don’t have to go through this pain again. This might show itself as a physical panic when you are asked to do presentations or a deep psychological fear of doing them. It creates those physical mental symptoms (or both) to stop you, it ignores the negatives consequences – like not taking a job you want - of stopping you.
If you feel low it can be because all the things that make you happy – stretching your comfort zone in your business or your life, starting or ending a relationship or thinking about asking for a promotion, have been predicted to be a ‘threat’ that will make you feel bad and therefore your brain creates the low or stuck feeling so you don’t take any of those actions! Again, it ignores the dire consequences of this.
It’s a crazy bit of evolution that our brain ignores the consequence of us holding ourselves back. Even when we are successful, we still have clutter around our decision making, our thinking, our plans for our future. Imagine if you are successful, how much more successful you could be if you clear this clutter away?
So, if like me, you have times when you feel really stuck – even if someone else didn’t push you! – Then do get in touch for an informal conversation. I have a knack for hearing what intention your brain is trying to protect you from, even in our first chat and I can shine a spotlight on what is happening. Clients say they often feel immediately better from that conversation because they suddenly ‘get’ themselves and from that they start to understand how they can change. When they have this understanding their perception changes and their unconscious immediately starts to create the reality they want. It’s still surprises me sometimes how fast our minds can adapt, let me surprise you.
If you’re interested in leadership coaching, business therapy or just want to feel happier and more fulfilled, just give me a call.