Did Your Dream come True? Don’t Sabotage it! (overcoming the cognitive dissonance)

 

Does it ever happen to you: your dream is about to come true and you start sabotaging it. 

Maybe it’s a relationship that is so much better than any other relationship,  the promotion, the money… and now, to your greatest surprise, you start doing “stupid shit.” 

It feels like something overtakes you and you start doing things that make no sense.

In this video I want to tell you what is going on,

how to notice that this is happening and what to do about it.

First let me give you more examples:

You probably heard of people who were poor and won a big lottery. Then, a few years later they  were back to where they were before. Their bank account was bigger but their mind, their thinking, and their feelings were still thinking of a poor person.

 Or maybe, you know that person that was struggling to find a long-term relationship. And finally, this great person comes along and everything is going so well. The relationship is much better than any other relationship.  There is a period of time with no arguments. And the person starts sabotaging this relationship. They start to create drama. It is because deep within their mind peace is boring. Maybe they learned in childhood that the only way to get emotional  engagement from other people is to get in trouble and have arguments. Peace is not familiar and therefore it is uncomfortable. 

What is going on? What is happening is cognitive dissonance. 

Subconsciously, we want to create harmony. We want the inside to match the outside.  We want to have an agreement between our mind –  who we think we are the reality. Between our self-concept and our life. 

And when you create something in your life that is better than your self-concept, you are going to work hard to bring it down to the previous level.

This will make you feel like you. Yeah, this is your life. But do you really want to always stay in the same place? 

This is how to recognize that cognitive dissonance starts sabotaging your reality: When you start feeling uncomfortable emotions. 

Discomfort, dissonance, unease, unease, maybe even fear and shame. You may recognize it if your mind starts creating stories, this is not for you, people will find out that you are not really this person. 

What can we do about it? We work on our mind. 

People who don’t realize that they can change their mind, start changing the reality and destroying the dream.

In coaching we do a lot of mental work, we discover the underlying thoughts and commitments. When you see the impact of this thinking on your life, you can start thinking differently about every aspect of the new situation. You make decisions how to think and feel.

This works. But there are moments when it doesn’t work. Ha! And that’s ok, because we have more tools. 

This leads me to the  surprising thing I experienced recently: 

The uncomfortable emotion will open the door to some limiting or illogical beliefs. You work on the beliefs. 

And You may need to process the emotions. That is a new skill for many people. 

When you process emotions, you are no longer in the story about it. You are no longer hurting yourself with that story. 

You are simply getting in touch with your body wherever that emotion is. And you process it. All the way through. 

It will be uncomfortable but what if going through an uncomfortable emotion in 5..20 minutes will unlock a bigger future for you? 

I will tell you…  I don’t really know the mechanism behind it. I don’t know how it happens. I just know this works. I checked. So if you don’t know how to do this I can definitely help you. Schedule a free call, start creating breakthroughs.

The beautiful part about going through all those processes is, that now not only you will feel like this is your new reality. You can own it, but you can unlock something even better. 

 

If you are not ready to do work with a coach, there are some books I would recommend to you. They helped me several years ago to break through some of my limiting beliefs.

“Loving what is. Four questions that can change your life” Byron Katie https://amzn.to/3EO0u5N

“Beyond positive thinking. A no-nonsense formula for getting the Results You Want.” Dr Robert Anthony https://amzn.to/3VBPS0z

“The Ultimate Secret of total Self-Confidence” Dr Robert Anthony https://amzn.to/3XGhBz3