As an Inspired Action life coach, my job is to help my clients successfully transition from the life that they currently have to the life they want. This means confronting and conquering the fear of change. Think about it like this. Even though your goals and dreams are exciting to think and talk about, your dreams are usually much less exciting to implement. Dreams are new. New is hard. New is different. New means potential failure.
The Drunk Monkey, which is my little nickname for the mind, is designed to keep you away from new. Part of your programming as an animal is to stay close to the pack, stay close to what is familiar, and stay away from what is new and unknown. Anything that is new represents the potential for danger, as far as the animal part of your brain is concerned. So you naturally are going to have an aversion to your own goals and dreams.
Isn’t that crazy? Your mind, the Drunk Monkey, is not a goal-achievement mechanism, as many personal development gurus have explained in the past.
After coaching more than 8,000 people to achieve happiness and success, I can tell you with certainty that your mind is not a goal-achievement mechanism. Your mind’s job is to simply steer you toward propagating the species so you can have more babies, as well as to steer you away from danger and keep you safe.
Remember, your house is nothing more than a safety mechanism. Your car is created for safety. Clothes, shoes: safety. Your friendship groups and social circles are nothing more than safety. You wanting to be successful is nothing more than adding layers of safety. Financial freedom, just adding layers of safety. None of these things ultimately leads to fulfillment and satisfaction.
So you will find yourself naturally drawn to familiar comfort-style goals, such as a bigger house, a better car, more friends, and more money. And yet, there is only so much you need to maintain your status quo. More money, a bigger house, a fancy car, indefinite travel all represents the unknown, which The Drunk Monkey naturally avoids.
To overcome this fear of achieving your goals, I practice and teach the empowerment process. The first step is awareness. When you see that there is this Drunk Monkey in your head that is steering you away from the fulfillment of your dreams, you can take back your power.
Awareness leads to flexibility. When you see that your mind is not your friend and that it doesn’t do what you want, you can begin to choose a new behavior. This new-found flexibility leads you to new options. The options that appear were not available before you became flexible. Before you because flexible you only had one option, which was to do what The Drunk Monkey wanted. Options give you power. Options give you the power of choice. Once you see that your fear is just a biological mechanism that was developed to keep you safe from dangerous situations, you realize that your goals aren’t dangerous and your fear vanishes. This is the key to change.
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