Sneaky thoughts stopping you..

When you have a dream for your life and you start to really go after it. Something happens in your brain. It creates doubt, fear and confusion. It literally manufactures these feelings by creating thoughts that will keep you doing what you have always done.

Here are some of those thoughts. Over the next few months we will look at how to shift out of these to start the new season of life powerfully.

The sneaky thoughts your brain creates:

“I should be grateful for what I have”.

Yes, gratitude is a powerful thing, but when you shame and guilty yourself into being grateful it takes on a darker meaning. Gratitude is powerful when it comes from a place of peace and really loving what you have. But when you force yourself to be grateful in a difficult situation then you close yourself off mentally and spiritually. It creates resentment and a mindset to settle instead of a mind that loves to day dream and create a powerful vision. It also creates a gap between where you are now and where you want to be. You start feeling behind and then it feels awful. Which by the way, isn’t a problem. Every single human feeling is valid.

“I shouldn’t be constantly wanting more.”

You’re human and you are wired to want better and to want more for you and for those around you. Don’t let anybody make you feel guilty for that. Sometimes it can be heartbreaking to see someone not live up to their potential and the same goes for you. Your soul knows when you are settling but the ego tries to quieten the dreamer in you by becoming a critic and saying you shouldn’t want more. It feeds into the voice of doubt and soon enough you go back to what you have and “forget” your dreams. We all want more and have passions. It’s why we have hobbies and things we enjoy because we are multi-faceted human beings who enjoy a rich life full or many many beautiful things.

“This should be enough for me.”

You’re settling instead of looking at what you really want to go for. You have a dream of something you would love to make come true. But the fear of it not working out is stopping you from even trying. Having a full-time job is great but there is nothing wrong with experimenting with hobbies, side hustles and adventures where there are no rules. We were made to be multi-dimensional beings with many different interests and career pursuits. Believing this thought can leave you feeling alone and disjointed. You start to feel lost and can often put your dreams on hold until they feel more certain (the truth: nothing in life feels certain, it’s a lie your brain tells you to literally stop you trying out something new)

“I don’t know what I really want.”

You know exactly what you want. What you are afraid of is it not working out or having to start at the beginning again. You are also nervous that what you want to do has been done by hundreds of people before you. As humans we hate being seen starting small. We want the movie style transformation and want people to see THAT part of the journey rather than the messy start to the journey.

“I don’t have time, money or energy to pursue my dreams.”

Time, money and energy are resources and important ones. You may not have what you think you need to pursure your dreams. But here’s the thing. In 5 minutes a day you can work towards your dream life. You don’t need hours and hours a day. In fact people who I have worked with often only need one focus hour a week to really get going. One focused hour towards your dream per week is better than forcing 10 hours a week to end up feeling shattered and burnt out.

Maybe in this season of life you don’t have as much time as you would like but what you can do is make a list of things you’d like to explore. Then you can take an honest look at what time you have available outside of work and family commitments and housework. You may have white space or in this season you may not. For me it’s growing my YouTube channel as a creative hobby. It’s on my future projects list and I love being reminded that this is something I want to do one day because it means there are many fun things I want out of life.

“Nobody believes I can do it.”

Guess what? The only person that needs to believe you can do it is YOU. I will always advise anybody starting a side hustle to have savings and financial support to be able to pay the bills but once you have the basics covered – the sky really is the limit. If you keep waiting for people to believe your dreams will work BEFORE you start then you may just waste your whole life waiting. When instead you could just be going for it and once you do you will find people believe in you because you have made it easy for them to believe in you (trust me this is how it works)

“If only my husband/wife/mum/dad/siblings/friends believed in me, then I would be able to make a go of this new business/hobby/side hustle!”

What you are doing here is give your power to other people and guess what happens when you believe this thought? You never get started. You constantly wait for others around you to give your permission to start going after YOUR dreams.

When you believe in yourself no matter what it creates a magic that other people will feel and they will start to believe in you and bit by bit they will get curious and start asking you questions. (similar to the above thought people will join you for the ride). When you get going you will find people ask all sorts of questions: how did you start? How did you sign clients? How did you get into goal setting? How did you start creating blog posts? And so on.

That self-belief takes time and also involves listening to your soul when it tells you something could be fun to try. When you have a dream and a vision you need to keep going and putting one foot in front of the other. Also surround yourself by mentors and people who have been where you are. For me this meant listening to podcasts of coaches and CEOs and putting myself in the arena where change happens. I also read a lot of mindset and coaching books.

“I don’t get to have fun and enjoy my work. Work pays the bills, hobbies are for fun.”

This is part of an older generational thought pattern and it definitely doesn’t not need to be the norm. Yes it can take a while to find the job that doesn’t feel like a job 100% of the time but that doesn’t mean you should give up. The challenge with this thought is that you don’t expand your mental horizons and it’s a form of resigning yourself to what is because you don’t believe the opposite is true. When we look for the job that is at the centre of the Ikigai wheel then that is we are most happy. Ikigai is a Japanese concept around 4 aspects. What are you good at? What do you enjoy? What does the world need? And What can you get paid for? A career that ticks those four boxes is the one that will create the greatest sense of purpose. It can be a challenge but for example if you start out in a job simply to get paid then you could focus your hobby on what you enjoy and are good at or getting good at. The world always needs people who are happy enjoying their hobbies and creative pursuits as much as it needs doctors and lawyers and teachers and so on.

These eight thoughts are extremely common when you go after your life dreams. They may show up in this exact way or be disguised as well meaning intentions or advice from people around you.

The trick is to allow those thoughts to come up, let them be there, process them and then move forward. When you begin the process of healing these thoughts you will believe them as fact without questioning them. Some of these thoughts will be so ingrained that you don’t even see them at first. They are that powerful that they are running on autopilot. BUT you can change these thoughts.

I can help you break your doubts once and for all and help you learn to cheer yourself on in a powerful way. You will still get the fearful thoughts and doubt and days when you feel low. But what won’t happen – is you ignoring your big picture dreams.