Is your Mind Keeping you Stuck? SAFETY=FAMILIARITY
There once was a woman named Julia, living in NYC. She was a successful professional often on the move, juggling a demanding job and a busy social life. On the outside, all looked great but deep inside, Julia felt stuck and trapped by an invisible force she couldn’t quite name.
She decided to work with a mindset coach, hoping to uncover the root of her frustration and feeling of inner conflict.
When her coach asked her about herself, Julia let her know that she came from a family where there was often screaming, arguing, anger, drama and chaos, not to mention lack of attention or focus on her.
Her coach let her know that our brains want to cling to what is safe which, to our brain, is the same as familiarity.
Julia started to understand why she often found herself in dramatic, chaotic relationships often with self-centered or narcissistic men.
She learned that our brain/minds are wired to avoid danger by sticking to what we know, even if what we know isn’t helping us grow. Julia was stunned. She realized that her ‘safety space’-----drama, chaos, being ignored, was actually the invisible cage holding her back.
Our brain/mind associates safety with what’s familiar to us, even if it means staying in survival mode. This is where mindset coaching and hypnosis can help.
Change requires stepping into the unknown which can feel unsafe because it’s unfamiliar.
Her coach/hypnotist used various techniques to gently help her to reprogram her subconscious, helping Julia to reframe ‘safety’ not as drama and chaos but as a flexible state where she could explore new possibilities without fear.
Slowly, Julia began to embrace discomfort as a sign of growth rather than danger. This is called reframing. She learned that real safety doesn’t come from repeating the same patterns but from trusting herself to navigate new challenges.
Julia’s transformation was profound. She left her job to pursue a purpose and priority project, built new and healthy relationships and felt more alive and herself than ever.
The TAKEAWAY:
Safety is often just familiarity----a survival or coping mechanism that our minds cling to. But if we want real change, we need to recognize when our safety or comfort zones are actually holding us back and keeping us stuck.
You can transform and shift from surviving to thriving.
YOU:
Have you ever felt so fed up, frustrated and ready to give up because no matter how hard you try to change your thought and behavior patterns, they stay the same? And you stay the same?
Maybe you keep repeating the same kind of relationships that don’t work for you or perhaps you continue to react (instead of respond) in a way that would be more helpful to you, personally and professionally?
This is something that pretty much all of us have felt and experienced at one point in life or another. It’s time to let up on yourself and be more self-compassionate. The truth is: it’s not your fault!
This doesn’t mean that it’s not your responsibility to do something about it. It is but it’s not exactly your fault.
When you want to change something: a thought, an ‘old’ belief that no longer serves you or a behavior or reaction that’s hindering you………at work or in relationships, then you tend to use your conscious mind to try to figure it out and change it.
The conscious mind refers to the part of your awareness that’s actively engaged with the present moment. It’s the part of your mind that’s thinking and experiencing the world around you. Your conscious mind includes your current thoughts, feelings, perceptions and memories that you’re aware of.
The subconscious mind works below the surface so your conscious mind is not necessarily aware of what’s going on down there. This is essential to understand because in the end, it’s the subconscious beliefs, thoughts and behaviors you learned mostly early in life (0-7 years) from your parents, communities and society, that rule and can often ruin the way you actually behave and live your life.
So, what does this all have to do with GETTING STUCK?
Well, the primary job of your mind is for survival and safety; in other words, to keep you alive. To your mind, safety is familiarity. Your mind wants to do what it’s used to doing to keep you alive. To this end, your mind wants to expend as little energy as possible (conserve energy) so the ‘easier’ route is to repeat what is familiar. When you understand this, you’ll get that in order for your mind to make changes, it must be at the subconscious level where your automatic, habitual and default beliefs and thoughts lie. And you have to overtake the mind’s desire to keep you safe, which means it wants to keep you in the familiar. Clearly, this can lead to inner conflict………
What if the familiar for you has been or is: abuse, neglect, chaos, violence, etc.? You know you don’t want it and your conscious mind (what you desire) is ‘fighting’ with your subconscious mind, which is used to the default of abuse, neglect, chaos, etc.
What you must do is reprogram your subconscious mind toward new beliefs, thoughts, behaviors that you really desire and which are better for you. This is the work I do with my clients as a Life & Mindset coach/Hypnotherapist.
What you must do is to first connect your deeper subconscious with your conscious awareness. Then, you can begin to reprogram and retrain your mind!
The BUILDING BLOCKS of RETRAINING YOUR MIND:
1)AWARENESS: The first step is to become aware that your conscious and subconscious parts of your mind may be in conflict and that safety is familiarity. Once you know that one will be ‘fighting’ with the other, you can prepare yourself for the challenge.
This awareness may seem simple; it’s not always easy. It took me years to realize this and to become aware that I had to do some ‘inner work.’
2)ACCEPTANCE: Accept that this is how your mind works and that what is familiar to you, from your childhood or later on, is what it is and what you experienced. You’re not alone. You’re not broken. You’re not crazy. Once you accept all this, it’s time to move on to……
3)ABSORPTION (INTEGRATION): You learn how to absorb new thought and belief patterns and to embed them into your subconscious mind so that real change can occur. With the help of a professional: coach, therapist, hypnotherapist, you can learn how to excavate your subconscious thoughts and beliefs and bring them to light and to conscious awareness. You can then change them by changing the neural circuits or pathways in your brain (which holds your thoughts). This takes lots and lots of repetition, practice and understanding. It has to do with forming new habits and rituals, of thought, belief and behavior.
4)ACTION: It’s time to take action. Without action, these changes that you want and need to make, remain dreams or fantasies. Right after you finish this blog post, take one action: write an email, schedule time to find an experienced Mindset coach, Hypnotherapist (hypnotist), or other professional to be your partner on this journey. It’s enough to take one small step at a time.
REMINDER
This process of changing your underlying beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors works in a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ way. Your minds will want to argue; you have to know this and tell them to ‘be quiet’ and continue on your way. It’s not a linear journey. You will continue to learn: about yourself, what your real desires, dreams and needs are and how they relate to your purpose(s), priorities and values and how to make these newer and better dreams and desires part of your mind and your life.
You can do it! You deserve to have what you want. You were given dreams so you could fulfill them. You just have to make the decision and the choice that it’s worth becoming who you really want to be and doing what you want to do and living how you want to and dream of.
The only thing we don’t have enough of in life, is time. So, don’t waste it. Make your choice and get moving forward and onward.
I hope to see you on the road, on the journey.
Please join me @www.gigiarnaud.com
and SCHEDULE your Clarity call.
Let’s get you moving forward to the life you’ve dreamt about and are ready to live!
With smiles & love,
Dr Gigi
PS: Please send me any questions, comments or suggestions about subjects you want to hear more about….?