Ever gotten frustrated with yourself for something you want to do but don’t make progress on?
Yes. Me too.
All those “I should have been…” or “I should have done…” projects. Ones where you expected more, or wanted it done, or wouldn’t it have been nice to have something more in place.
I’m going to tell you something about the frustration with some blunt truth here that will make you shake your head and laugh at yourself just a bit. (Because if you realize this is happening, there’s a quick fix for breaking the pattern.)
If you’re frustrated with yourself for something you haven’t accomplished yet, then you’re stacking problems onto problems! Think of it – the frustration is from a regret, the regret has already caused you to feel disappointment, failure, sadness, and who knows what else. Even if it is subtle, it is all there.
Not only are you doing it in your mind and heart right at that moment, but you’re compiling issues into quite the monster stack for later that needs to be sorted through. We auto-process a lot of emotions, but complicated heaps like that often don’t process out by themselves. They just stick around to create a pattern of “when this happens, I automatically get down on myself and demotivation and procrastination happen again.”
Eventually, you simply accept the fact you’re not going to achieve more, so why try.
Now you’ve got a success-killer lurking below the radar! All because there is this auto-response trained into you.
If you’ve read some of my other blog posts or have been hanging around me at all here online, you’ll already be familiar with the idea that your body stores the emotions and events you experience. And that those emotions affect so much of what you do and feel daily right now.
So with that fact in mind, the fact that your body stores and reacts subconsciously to everything you’ve been through, patterns you’ve created, messages you’ve somehow received, remember this:
When you’re feeling frustrated or down on yourself for not accomplishing something the way you think you should have – you’re not only storing frustration patterns. You’re storing an entire messy box that gets opened up repeatedly over the years and you add more to it with each repetition.
What seems like simple frustration is actually a mix of disappointment, more frustration, stewing in the past, procrastination for what you could have just been doing by now (or something better), exasperation that you are doing all of what I just mentioned…and more.
It subtly but tremendously affects your decisions, actions, thoughts of the future, how you process the past, your relationships, self-worth, confidence, and so much more.
If you keep spiraling and allow yourself to continue on the (very common) path, then sadness, a touch of depression, feeling like a failure, de-motivation, procrastination, and a total halt to chasing your dreams comes into your life.
I’m going to point out here though, that the people most affected by this subtle but tremendous self-sabotage pattern are the ones who muscle through it. Their sense of responsibility overrides their inner feeling. They seem to have it all together, they have already made it so far into their success journey.
What they are lacking… is that sense of inner peace and happiness while they achieve.
What they don’t realize… is that everything can feel 1000x easier. More fun. Quite Effortless.
Which makes slam-dunking that 6, multi-6, and million dollar goal so attainable.