Is a lack of motivation selfish? A fear? Or a sign that you just don't care? (Part 1)

[AndrewNC]

Is a lack of motivation selfish? A fear? Or a sign that you just don't care?
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Part 1: Releasing the Fears that Hold You Back from Success

For the past few years of my life, I've been Deconstructing Motivation and trying to turn it into a formula that I could install on myself and other people.

Last night I was at a friend's house.

She's been talking about starting a life coaching business to help men improve their relationships through a mixture of some sexual energy practices she learned while traveling through Southeast Asia, and teaching them about female psychology.

But something inside her was holding her back from unleashing her full potential.

When our session began, I told her that part of the reason why she's not moving forward with this business is because of a fear. Three specific fears actually. Such a general statement, which we've heard too many times over. But when you really drill down to your fears; there are three areas to work with.

Fears from the Past:

1. Emotional Blockages from past 'traumatic' events.

I use the world traumatic loosely. It could be anything such as your mother yelling at you and putting you in time out when you ate ice cream before dinner as a child (still falling within the definition of traumatic for the purpose of this article) , or something more severe such as a physical assault or a car crash.

Fears of the Future:

1. What is the worst fear of you fail?
2. What is the worst fear if you succeed?

I'll begin with the future...

The Fear of Failing (Future)

Here she is, starting her coaching practice in the colorful state of Colorado. She has to get clients in order to pay bills and all that fun stuff we have to do as adults. She also wants to build a large brand around this. What's the worst that could happen if she fails at this?

For most people, they try to sugar-coat this. The don't want to look at the dark sides of them, so they put a lot of fluff on there to avoid facing the pain. I told her not to do this...and go straight for the worst of the worst.

I told her to bring up a scene in her imagination, literally seeing herself from a third-person pespective as her worst fear unfolds (The trick here is to bring up the pictures in your mind instead of trying to think about it. Trust me on this one.). In this scene, she saw herself having to move out of Colorado again and living at her parents' house. An understandable fear.

But the more important thing, and the way to begin transcending your fears is to not focus on the circumstances outside of you, but instead focus on what this means about who you are as a person (on the inside). The self-judgement about your negative character traits if you do fail. It all boils down to the self-judgement...

"What does it mean about you if you fail and live with your parents?" We got the label she applied to herself, so we worked through that...

• With her, we went through a more formal process to release the fear by shifting that image to a small post-card sized picture and using The Emotional Freedom Technique (YouTube Search) to rapidly release the emotion from the picture, and shift her inner perception about who she is if that scene unfolds. She saw herself has a happier, more rounded person regardless if she fails or not. The fear was gone.

With someone else I was working with the other night, she told me that she had a scarcity mindset and a fear of going homeless and living on the streets (despite having a lot of money saved up). I asked her "Who are you in that picture...if you go homeless and live on the streets. Do you have what it takes (on the inside) if that happens (on the outside)?"

"I see myself..." she paused, "Being a resourceful person. I know I could make it."

"Where is that fear now?" I asked her, "Is it gone?"

"Yes.", she said.

Regardless of the content of the two stories, or your own; the structure is still the same.

1. What is your worst fear if you fail? Rate the emotion from 0-10 in intensity.
2. Bring up a small picture, seeing yourself in the picture as if your worst fear is already unfolding.
3. Ignore the content of what's outside you, and pay attention to who you are in that picture.
4. From there, you could either use a more formal process (which I normally use), or to somehow search your brain for character traits about yourself, so you can see that even if that worst fear unfolds...you'll be ok. That you'll have the same identity as if you succeed.

Here is a thread MJ posted about the importance of identity hacking: *UNSCRIPTED* - Identity Hacking: How to Kill Your Status Quo

Here is a thread I wrote last year about creating a rapid identity-level shift: Creating a rapid identity-level shift.

Through this process, the emotion is down to a 0 out of 10 in intensity, the fear is gone, and the blockage is released.

How this applies to motivation: Where you are right now, looking forward with your goals in business, relationships, and life; that picture in your mind...is how the deepest part of you sees the future going. Not logical thoughts, but pictures in your mind.

For the one client, if she release this scarcity mindset...she sees herself going homeless. The fear attached to being homeless and not being able to survive is the emotional blockage which prevents her from moving forward. Logically you know it's most likely not going to happen, but emotionally, the part of your being that is responsible for your behavior can't tell the difference. When you release the emotion attached to the picture...that's all it takes to make this fear go away.

***Some fears are there for a reason, so you shouldn't release anything you resist releasing or that might be dangerous.***

You completely resolve these common fears by following the exercise above with the pictures in your mind, who you are if you fail, and releasing the emotions to it. Also, its important to setup some logical safeguards in your behavior so you don't develop too much of an abundance mindset and blow your money away on random things.

For my friend who is starting the coaching business, the blockage here was within that the part of her being which doesn't listen to logical thought 'If I move forward on this business, I'll go broke and have to move back with my parents.' Logically people could tell her to push through the fear, but when it comes to fears...the logic is ineffective.

The Fear of Success (Future)

This sounds crazy to most people, but this is a real thing.

I used to want to be featured in a leading industry magazine. In 2015, I was part of the feature story of Inc. Magazine with a guy who went viral for paying his employees a $70,000 minimum salary. On the cover was him with the title "Is this the best boss in America!?" or something along those lines. Then, they put me in there showing how I outsourced my work to Asia for $4.25 per hour to grow my first online business.

I received over 300 hate mails and death threats saying how I'm what's wrong with this country. 'Success' turned into a lot of emotional turmoil through this chapter of my life. I didn't see it coming, so the fear wasn't there beforehand...

But for many of us, something in the back of our mind sees fear coming if we are successful. Because of this, we (unconsciously) hold ourselves back, even though we consciously say we want to achieve our goals.

This is how it works at a deeper level...

Going back to the human behavior part of this, you have two internal visions that go through your mind when you think about going forward with your business. If your unconscious (non-logical) mind sees the possibility of your actions leading to something bad (the fear of failure), it creates the emotional blockage that prevents you from moving forward. That's why you should always translate logical thoughts into pictures, so you can consciously see what this part of your being sees (the part that is responsible for your behaviors).

For most people who don't know this, they just the pictures play in the back of their awareness and let the emotions linger around forever. So the long-time problem stays around for even longer.

• I worked with one client who was starting a web design business. If he succeeded at charging $5,000 for a website, his family 'would see him as a greedy person'. We brought up a picture, and released the self-judgement and emotions towards the aspect of greed...and the blockage was released. The emotion drained from a 8/10 down to a 0/10. This process took 20 minutes.
• The client with the scarcity mindset didn't have a fear of success, so releasing the fear of failure was enough for her to move forward with an investment she's putting her money into.

For my friend last night...

This girl has a gift. I can't even explain it, but there is some skill-set she has which I've never seen before. At the conscious level, she wants to go out there into the world and create this brand that impacts humanity for the better.

But something was holding her back...

I asked her what her fear would be if she succeeds. I had her bring up a picture in her mind seeing herself in the picture.

"I would be un-relatable and isolated."

^^^that right there is the root cause of her not moving forward with her business. Now, how to work through the problems and arrive at the solution on the other side...

With some of the things she talks about (channeling of sexual energy, etc.) she has a fear that most people couldn't relate to her, it would push people away, and she would be isolated.

• From her logical perspective: "I want to start my business, help the world, and get clients!"
• From her behavioral perspective: "Oh hellll no, if I do this, I'll be isolated."

That was the thing holding her back...

To resolve this problem, I told a metaphor about how when I made the transition from employee to entrepreneur, the employees I worked with were no longer able to relate to me (I was unrelatable and isolated like she was), but once I made the full leap - more successful business owners and millionaires started coming into my life to mentor me and/or grow alongside me. I could relate to them, and they could relate to the journey I was going through.

So it wasn't a matter of "If she becomes successful, nobody could relate to her" anymore; it was just simply the fact that she would attract new types of people into her life. She would attract the type of people who would naturally relate to her new unique line of work.

This, mixed with the formal emotional release work on the picture of her being unrelatable released 90% of her blockage and fear of moving forward.

She still wasn't 100% congruent with moving forward, until we worked through a fear from her past.

This came in the form of an emotional blockage from one single past 'traumatic' event, which for most people - was not so traumatic at all. But for her behavior, it was devastating.

Fears from the Past:

There's a technique where you imagine floating up out of your body on top of an imaginary timeline that stores all of your past memories and emotions. This timeline is accessed through visualization.

I told her to float back in time to the very first instance in her life where this fear occurred. Not to think of it, but instead allow whatever scene/picture naturally come to her awareness.

She was in school many many years ago and she answered one question very intellectually. Two classmates sitting next to her scoffed at her and made her feel like an outsider.

What this one little tiny blip in her past did to her was create an emotional blockage.

• "If I make myself stand out, I will feel this pain of being an outsider and it is bad."

This belief ultimately led to her behavior of closing herself off, and purposely keeping her small.

Can you see how this belief which was installed in her from school gets in the way of growing her brand (requiring her to stand out and talking about sexual energy and other things along those lines)?

The solution to this: What positive resources, insights, understandings, or character traits does the version of herself (in school) need in order to be emotionally ok with the other people judging her?

For her, the answer was the insights that she will attract the right people in her life when she is who she authentically is and the confidence to step into her power. That the kids on the outside were merely a reflection of something she could develop within herself to be strong enough to push forward through adversity and judgement.

Once she got that inside, it was time to reset her emotional state to a time before for the blockage existed.

She imagined as if it was a couple days before that event, she was dancing around with friends at a club, being free and open; a point in her life where the emotional blockage didn't exist. She re-lived that dancing scene in her mind and tapped into the emotional state of before the emotional blockage was created, brought back the emotions and new insights to the present moment...

And the blockage was gone.

Transcending your fears to take action towards your goals in your life.

Often times we don't move forward with our goals and dreams in life because of these fears and emotional blockages.

• When you follow this process and release the fear of who you are if your worst fear unfolds.
• When you follow this process and release the fear of success.
• When you release any past emotional blockages using that timeline technique.

It's these three areas which often hold people back from taking action and having success. Regardless of the content of your fears, the area of your life, or whatever, this formula is the same and can be applied to rapidly releasing emotional blockages, fears, and installing motivation in any area of your life.

 

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[lowtek]

For me, I've found that a lack of action is driven by misalignment of what I'm doing with who I am. I have a strong self identity, and trying to take a path that isn't consistent with that identity results in significant friction. Perhaps it's a character flaw that I can't push through that to just grind it out, but I found that by changing paths my motivation has skyrocketed.

In real terms, it's been the difference between working 4 hours a day and 10 hours a day / obsessing when you're not working.