We’re all busy trying to improve ourselves: losing weight, getting more fit, learning new skills, doing more of anything.
Have you also experienced that often, when you create a goal for yourself to improve your body or certain skills, you don’t keep it up; that you don’t feel you can stick with your motivation long enough to make a real difference? I certainly have many memories of that when I look back over my life.
What happened? Why is Rita (not her name) unable to lose weight, even though she exercises more now? Why is Peter not making more money, even though he learned new skills for his job? Why is Amanda not keeping up her intention to go to a weekly Yoga class?
There is one major important unconscious motivation which is sabotaging people’s ‘good intentions’, over and over again.
Would you like to know what that is? It could help you save lots of time, energy and pain, if you can become aware of your true motive to wanting to attain a specific goal.
Here is the number one sabotaging motivation: Rita can’t lose weight – or not enough in her opinion – because unconsciously she hopes to be loved or happy when she is slimmer. Most of the time, the fear-based mind creates this trap, where we believe we will feel more loved or happier, once we have lost more weight; or once we’re making more money; or once we’re much better at a specific skill.
Thus, the real motivator is not the goal in itself, the real motivator is to be loved, or to be happy. And then, in spite of some improvement, the unconscious mind chooses to continuously perceive a lack of love, a lack of happiness, which we then use to beat ourselves up with, to feel even worse about ourselves, and then we renew our good intentions – again, and again…This is how we spend our lives running on a hamster wheel of self-improvement –believing we need to get love and acknowledgment from others, and we won’t get it until we’re ‘better’. (This is mostly unconscious.)
Can you see it’s a trick of the fear-based mind, or the ego, to choose to feel unhappy, so we need to do more and more, and it’s NEVER ENOUGH?!
I did that when I had an Eating Disorder: I was convinced people would love me if I weigh less, and then when I weighed less, the mind thought that I need to lose more weight, and more…until I realized there must be something wrong with this thinking.
That’s the point I’d like to make: The problem is in the thinking, not in the weight, not in what seems to bother you. I don’t say you should not make any changes, but I do say: look at how your mind is leading you in circles! And then jump off the hamster wheel.
How do you jump off the hamster wheel?
- Become aware of your thoughts and beliefs, in regards to your goal. If you pursue a goal for the joy of it, for the fun and the good time it gives you – I bet you have no problem; you enjoy working at it.
- If you realize that you are pursuing a goal for another reason than the goal in itself, skip the goal altogether – for now. The way you know if you’re doing that is if you can’t seem to attain it. Or when you do, it’s not enough, you need to do more…
That’s the time to really examine your thinking and to realize that the problem is in your thinking, not in the unattained goal. There must be unconscious beliefs keeping you from attaining your goal, in order to keep you struggling – because the personality believes in struggle, in improvement, in ‘more is better’. Whereas your true nature knows you already ARE love and joy, you are perfect, and in this very moment, you can experience THAT.
If you do feel stuck in a merry go round, which creates overwhelm, struggle, depression and dissatisfaction, then it may be helpful you release some more unconscious self-sabotaging beliefs you’ve created in the past.
I would be happy to help you with this, because truly, you ARE love and joy, and it’s not to be found on the hamster wheel! And you CAN experience your true nature if you choose so.
Just send me an email at marlise.witschi@internalfreedom.com, and we will see how I can help you.
With love,
Marlise