Your unconscious thoughts are the true drivers of your life – if you let them.

Is this you? Do you keep doing the same things, making the same choices, and feeling the same feelings? And all this despite your best efforts to make your leadership more effective, change your lifestyle, and build better relationships through your interactions?

It’s maddening, I know. 

95% of our thoughts are unconscious repetitions of the thoughts we’ve had yesterday. What’s worse is that most of these thoughts are negative, and that’s why making a conscious effort to change is an uphill battle.

It’s an unconscious habitual loop of “thought —> feeling → thought” that keep you stuck where you are. That’s just how humans work.

If you are not fully aligned around the change you want to make, change is hard. In other words, when your unconscious is not on board, your conscious Self is sailing against a heavy storm as it tries to steer your life to a sunnier place.

Here’s what to do:

Expand your awareness of your unconscious patterns of thinking.

Notice uncomfortable feelings as you are doing something differently than yesterday. Just let the feelings be there. They will pass as you stay on track with the change.

Here’s a bit of neuroscience that might come in useful as you’re weathering out the inner storm:

Think of the feelings that drive you back to old thinking and behaviour as addictive substances.

Yes. Addictive substances is exactly what they are: 

A cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters that coaxes you to revert back to your habitual patterns of feeling and thinking and doing. These patterns may not serve you, but they feel SAFE because they are familiar to you.

As you stick with the new patterns, you weather out the withdrawal period. Your feelings will start to change, and with them your thinking, your choices, your actions, and, ultimately your results.