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On the road to pursuing big goals, there will be times when you feel ready to go to the next level but for some reason, you meet resistance. Even though you’re doing everything you know you should be doing, something is holding you back.

The reason for this resistance often lies deep within our subconscious. There's this thing called secondary gain, which is essentially an unnoticed benefit of staying right where you are. While logically, we want to grow and achieve more, our subconscious wants us to stay where we are.

Your subconscious mind is designed to keep you safe.

It’s there to make sure that everything you do each day can be done without thinking about it. It controls the majority of what happens in your body, your mind, your heart, your actions, your feelings, your thoughts and your beliefs. But that can work for you and against you.

Tap into your Intuition

Where we need to start is excavating at the subconscious level to look at what is in the way between where you are now and where you want to be. This is where it’s really important to understand the difference between fear and intuition. Fear will always be loud and scary, but intuition will be constant.

In my opinion, the best way to tap into your intuition is by getting into your body. Movement, being in nature, noticing where you feel certain thoughts in your body. Make this a regular practice so you can make a distinction between the voice of fear and the voice of your intuition.

Pinpoint the Secondary Gain

Take some time to think about what benefits you might be getting from staying stuck. They might not be obvious right away but ask yourself questions like:

What am I afraid will happen if I actually reach my goal?

Is there a downside to achieving this goal that I’m not acknowledging?

What am I protecting myself from by not moving forward?

Once you have an idea of what’s going on, work on flipping those subconscious beliefs around. Create new, positive beliefs that match up with what you consciously want. Instead of "I might fail if I succeed," think, "Each effort I make brings me closer to success, even if I stumble along the way." Change "I will lose something important if I grow," to "Growth opens up new opportunities and can enhance what I value most."

Visualise a Safe Success

Your subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between you visualising something and it actually happening. Professional athletes use visualisation every day because they understand this.

Practice visualising achieving your goal and it going as well as possible. Feel the emotions that go along with that and make sure it’s a positive experience. Teach your body how it feels and that this is normal because when you can teach your brain and body where to go, it will naturally flow there.

Affirmation

A lot of people try using affirmations to progress forward but they’re going too far that it doesn’t feel achievable. The key to affirmation is to pick a better feeling thought. Instead of claiming these big bold statements that are a world away from your current reality, choose something just one level away.

Mindfulness and Presence

When you're in the process of working towards a huge goal, it can feel like everything is urgent. Stop a moment and ask yourself, “What’s important right now?”. Do the one thing that will move everything forward and make every other task irrelevant.

I find the best way to stay connected to the presence is through meditation. It creates space in your mind so you can pause and think before you do something out of a knee-jerk reaction.

Calm, Consistent Action

Teeny tiny movements towards what it is that you want will bring you a feeling of success and like you're on purpose. By taking small consistent actions towards your goals, it reinforces the fact that you have focused on what's important and affirms to you that you deserve what it is that you're working towards. If you’ve decided that you want to go to the next level, your action is the thing that cements your decision.

Get Support and Accountability

Sometimes an outside perspective is just what we need. Working with a coach or a trusted friend can provide the support and accountability you need to work through subconscious resistance.

Self Reflection

I do a weekly review as a way to check in with my goals and what's happened in the last week. This self reflection practice is a great tool to discover what you’ve learned, where your resistance is, what’s holding you back and what you might be avoiding.

Remember, everything you want is available to you in some version of reality and it's available right now. You just need to remove the resistance between where you are now and where you want to be.

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