I am currently making changes at The Bold Life. I will no longer be offering coaching. I am highly recommending our guest, Lana Kravtsova, for anyone who wants to live their dreams.
Lana Kravtsova, from "Dream Followers." Lana writes, facilitates and organizes personal growth group workshops in Atlanta, create products (new one is coming soon) and does 1-1 coaching.
In Lana's words "My blog Dream Followers is about getting in the flow.You get in the flow by knowing yourself first. It took me awhile to find myself taking layers and layers of fake stuff off.
Once I rediscovered myself, my passions and dreams – ideas, people, opportunities started appearing in my life moving me forward toward my goals."
Do you remember a time in your life when you had a goal you were really excited about- your soul was singing, your whole being felt inspired and energized when you thought about what your life would be like when you reached that goal?
Then something weird started happening. You were still excited but you started procrastinating, postponing the action you needed to take in order for you to reach that goal.
You started doubting your abilities, worrying and finding excuses why not to take the next step.
Then a thought came to your head that maybe you didn’t need that goal to begin with. Maybe you’d be better off doing something else.
Thought after thought and finally you were completely convinced that this was not your goal, that you’d be better off finding something else to do.
I bet all of us have been in situations like this one. It’s OK when it happens once or twice. But if that is what is happening over and over again in your life and you find yourself settling for mediocre goals more and more often, you have to do something to stop this self-sabotage.
Is this your True Goal?
First thing to do is to check and see if the goal was really your true goal, if it was the desire coming from your soul, from your True Self.
Those are the only goals that can make us truly happy when we reach them and that are aligned with our higher purpose in life.
How do you know if the goal is the true goal?
Sit quietly, forget about everything but the goal itself.
Imagine yourself reaching it. Get into that feeling that you would experience when you reach it.
Listen to your feelings. What do you feel?
Does your soul still sing? Do you still get excited and inspired?
If yes, then most likely the goal is your true goal.
Another great way to test if the goal is your true goal is to ask yourself – would you be doing it if you could not fail?
If there was no way for you to fail, if you could choose to be, do and have anything you want and could not fail, would you still be pursuing that goal? Or maybe you’d rather do something else?
If you would still like to pursue that goal, then it is your True Goal.
So what happened?
Why did you start doubting, procrastinating, finding excuses why not to do what needed to be done in order for you to reach it? Why did you start sabotaging yourself?
Your mind got scared.
Your soul wanted it, but the goal was too far out of the comfort zone for your mind. In other words your soul and mind were not aligned.
Your soul usually knows your true desires. It knows what will make you happy. But it rarely can do anything if your mind doesn’t believe or feels scared.
Your mind is the driver of the bus and it decides whether you are going to reach the goal or not.
Your mind is very limited. It only knows what is possible depending on all the experiences you had in the past. It has certain beliefs of what you can or what you can’t do.
You probably heard about limiting beliefs. Most of them you collected in your childhood, some of them you keep picking up throughout your whole life.
Napoleon Hill said: “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”.
So how do you help your mind “conceive and believe”? How do you break through those limiting beliefs? How do you stop your mind from sabotaging you?
There are tons of techniques out there. I am going to give the steps that I usually follow and that work the best in my opinion.
Visualization. Visualization is one of the most powerful transformational tools. It’s been used for centuries by many people to help them in reaching extraordinary results in many areas.
Visualization convinces your mind that the goal is really in your comfort zone to reach. It makes your mind believe.
Try visualizing for at least 10 minutes a day for a month. You’ll see the results, I promise.
Conscious decision. Instead of being a victim of your subconscious beliefs or limits that were formed in the past, consciously commit yourself to reaching the goal despite any worries or fears you might have. Make a decision that you are going to do whatever it takes to reach that goal.
Decide and commit. An interesting thing happens when you do that. You consciously stop paying attention to your worries and doubts.
You most likely will still have them, we all do, but since you made a conscious decision and commitment, you’ll act despite those worries and doubts.
The true commitment has a very profound effect on your mind. It makes a much deeper impression on it than just plainly setting goals or resolutions.
Know your “why”. Write down all of the reasons why you want to reach the goal.
How will you benefit from reaching it? How are you going to feel when you reach it? How other people will benefit?
Having strong “whys” really motivates your mind and switches its attention from limitations to opportunities.
Review your “whys” often, preferably every day making sure your motivation doesn’t fade.
Link as much pleasure as possible to you reaching the goal. Your mind hates pain. It hates anything that presumably involves hard work and lots of striving.
Consciously decide to stop any kind of thoughts that involve hard work, striving, suffering related to reaching your goal.
Visualize yourself easily doing what it takes to reach it. Smile when you are taking the necessary steps. Purposefully make yourself excited as often as possible thinking about the goal.
If you actually do all of the above, you will get your mind on your side. As a result it will start helping you instead of sabotaging you.
It will start noticing opportunities, people, bringing you ideas that will move your closer to your goal.
What about action?
Of course you’ll have to take action! Most likely lots of action. Bold action. There might still be lots of hard work.
But it is going to be so much easier to take that action now when your mind is convinced and helping you.
Aligning your mind and your soul desires is the key to reaching the goals you set for yourself with less effort as well as feeling happy and fulfilled after you reach them.
Try it. It really works.
If you’d like more help with visualization you can download guided visualization mp3 on my blog
Lana is the founder and writer behind Dream Followers Blog. Her purpose in life is to help people live consciously, be their True Selves and dare to follow their dreams. She is also a founder and CPO (Chief Positivity Officer) at Positivity Place – growing community in Atlanta, GA of people who believe that living with Passion and Purpose and following their true dreams rocks. You can follow her on Twitter.
Life is too short to experience anything but *all* that it personally has to offer you on your level in your own life!
Hi Tess, thank you so much for an opportunity to guest post on your fabulous blog. I really appreciate it! Here is to dreaming impossible dreams!
.-= Lana-Dreamfollowers.com´s last post…you won’t love THERE if you don’t love HERE first =-.