Passions That Pay

photo credit: ben pollard

Tomorrow’s BlogTalk Radio show at noon EST I have as my guest a very good friend of mine Jenn Givler Jenn is an expert business coach and one of her specialties is helping people break through the mind-traps that keep them where they are.

The first step to obliterating these sabotaging mentalities is to recognize them and this can be harder than it sounds because we may not be aware of them. During my coach training with ICA we learnt about underlying automatic commitments - these are the ideas and values to which we are committed to beyond anything else. Again these are deeply rooted and often subconscious.

We may say we want more money but in reality be committed to being poor, so any money that does come our way slips through our fingers. We may say we want to be slim but cannot give up on the image as an overweight person and then wonder why we cant keep off any weight that we may lose. A clue to the presence of such commitments is in the chatter in our heads. If you have negative thoughts attached to money such as “money is the root of all evil”, “money doesn’t grow on trees”, then it will be hard to be financially successful.

Examine these thoughts and ask yourself is this true? Look for positive wealthy role models such as Oprah or Bill Gates who are using their money to do an awful lot of good in the world. Deliberately change your thoughts with positive money thoughts. Look also for the payoff in the negative thoughts. Believing money is a bad thing may allow you to not do all you should be doing to earn more but does this really make you happy? If you believe food is a friend or a comfort or that your extra pounds provide you some protection from unwanted attention then those are all payoffs which will lead straight to the cookie jar. Again ask yourself whether any of this is true- can a bowl of ice cream really be a friend?

I have focussed here on two common areas - food and money - where we regularly have mindtraps in place that make success very difficult. Where in your life are you constantly hitting a wall and not making much progress? What is the mindtrap here? What are your underlying automatic commitments? What patterns constantly show up in your life?

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