It’s usually because of fear. Fear of what people think, fear of not being enough or not measuring up, fear of rejection, fear of intimacy, every time we lean toward fear and make a decision from that scarce and scared place, we strengthen the ‘wrong side’ of us. We contract. We hide. We ‘white lie’ to fit in and we all know that ‘fitting in’ is the opposite of belonging (what we truly crave) thanks to Brené Brown (my fav book by the author: The Gifts of Imperfection).
When I think of a human being, I think of the split. We all have it. Fear and love. Ego and higher self. God and the Devil. Vulnerability and disconnection. Voldemort and Harry (my personal favourite). If we continually give into fear, don’t show up, don’t speak up, don’t have difficult conversations, feel resentful or jealous, don’t take action on our dreams, claim we ‘can’t afford it’, binge watch TV, scroll, smoke, drink and party; it’s difficult to feel centered, connected, joyous, peaceful and proud of ourselves when all of the above is food for Voldemort and malnutrition for Harry. V man (as I call him in my teachings) is getting fatter and stronger by the minute whilst Harry (your higher self) is buried under a pile of self imposed deceit and lies 😵💫
We must challenge our inherent beliefs because the negative ones are simply not true. I did a live stream on Instagram, you can watch it here and I speak about moving away from escape and facing our fears (one small incremental step at a time, like James Clear mentions in Atomic Habits) and also how being completely honest with ourselves is the most vulnerable thing we can do and when we’re vulnerable, we connect, which is what we truly wanted all along.
Lifestyle Design is all about connecting to your feelings and emotions, checking in with how you’d like to feel as your baseline and ‘creating your hard’ as Joe Rogan would say. Life will be difficult from time to time, we essentially have to create our own ‘warrior’ training or else we will be ruled by V man and his relentless tyranny (thoughts, despair, overwhelm).
I often think of the quote Tim Ferriss shared years ago “Hard Choices, Easy Life, Easy Choices, Hard Life” – as humans, we are obsessed with accomplishment and feeling proud of ourselves, I believe it really is what makes us tick and moves us forward as a species. Whether it’s creating something from nothing, scoring a great bargain, up-cycling something, cooking a brilliant meal, it all boils down to effort = reward.
If you’re fearful of effort, what you’re really fearful of is not listening to the cues of your body when you’re about to burn out and you push it too far. So instead of pushing it too far you do nothing at all, flip flopping between burn out cycles and inaction.
Lifestyle design asks you to: check in daily, if not a few times a day around how you feel and what you need. If you’ve had a lot of trauma in your life (childhood, abusive relationships, toxic work environments etc) your ‘v man default’ is to not trust yourself and disconnect from your body/needs. I am here to tell you, you can and it gets to change. It starts with you.
The book It Didn’t Start With You highlights the effects of inherited family trauma (disassociation, not feeling in ‘your body’). My view when it comes to lifestyle design is you get to start afresh, for you, from you. Implementing how you want to feel and the standards you actually want in life.
In closing, fear didn’t start with you so it’s not your fault what happened to you in the past. It is now your responsibility to design, live and feel the way YOU want on a regular basis. Let Harry have a voice. Get quiet enough to listen to Harry. Harry requires space, nature, meditation, journaling, good friends, good food, decent sleep, boundaries, standars, exercise and mindfulness to speak up. Love yourself more and Harry will be there to support you, so to speak.
If you could do with some time and space to map out how you want to feel and be in ’23, join us for the upcoming 3-Day Online Workshop: How to Create Optimal Health, Wealth & Freedom through Lifestyle Design | Dec 19-21 @ 12:30pm NZT