You might be diligently doing your work –finding out everything that you need to know to be happy and successful. You have done your vision board and your vision statement, you have created a one year plan and even a ten year plan but maybe you have yet to ask yourself –how good can I stand to have it?
If you find yourself stopping before the finish line, if you seem to sabotage your success, it might not be because of some deep and troubling issue.
It might be because you have not upgraded your tolerance for joy, ease, or inner peace.
We are just as inclined to hold ourselves back from good stuff as we are to shy away from the bad. We are naturally inclined to keep things the same. The “same,” in our primal brain, is equated with being safe. Every change introduces a level of risk –even if the change is good.
Let me show you what this looks like:
You are starting your business and you just made your first big sale. First you are excited and then pretty soon you are terrified. You think, “I can’t do this. What was I thinking.”
Or, maybe you never have that thought, you just forget something really important.
Maybe this sale will drastically change your income or portends more success. You have wanted both of those for so long but now just as you get them everything starts going haywire.
What can you do about it? You can practice tolerating positive feelings and experiences.
I did say tolerating –one step at a time. With change and the risk that comes with it also comes discomfort. It is the discomfort that you really need to tolerate –the discomfort that comes from having things be REALLY good.
At this point we need to work with those impulses to stay the same.
Mentally, we can work to imagine our new way of being and set intentions. Emotionally, we can begin to label and experience our feelings differently. For example, fear can become excitement. Spiritually, we can learn to step out of our ego self and connect to our higher purpose. The purpose that makes these temporary discomforts seem minuscule in comparison.
If you really want to step into your fulfillment and success, you will need to stop looking at the past or sometimes even the momentary and start working towards creating the future you really want for yourself.