Notes - The Mountain is You
There is nothing holding you back in life more than yourself.
Self-sabotage is:
a coping mechanism: it arises when we refuse to meet our needs, often because we don't think we are capable of it.
happens when two needs conflict: one conscious and one unconscious.
You will be unwilling to reap the bandage off if you don't have a clear strategy on how to heal (Example: I never apply to better jobs because I don't have a strategy on how to get the skills and the preparation I need in order to get these jobs).
If your parents told you that all rich people are assholes, you will most likely believe it, and guess what? You will then resist becoming rich! By wasting money, not pushing for promotion or better jobs, saying and acting like money is not important to you, giving it away, ...
We don't naturally seek for happiness, we seek for what we are the most used to.
We are made to be comfortable, not happy. Take it slow to reinstate a new comfort zone little by little.
Exercise to-do : write down all the things you are not satisfied with in your life.
Let yourself be angry with yourself if it helps you climb your mountain.
Resistance and procrastination are different: act on them differently.
We all have a limit to how much happiness or joy we can experience: our threshold is the level to which we allow ourselves to experience it.
Daily journaling is great because it's a powerful physical release, like crying or shouting. Meditation and breathing exercises are also good to flush out the feelings stored in you.
A clean and organized space is essential for work and personal life: chaos doesn't usually lead to fulfilling your goals and dreams.
Be aware about goals and desires that are "forced" on us: they won't make you satisfied and won't make you grow (Example: do you want a Hermes bag/belt because you like it or because successful people around you make me believe you need one to proof something you’re not?).
Pride is often the root of our worst decisions.
Failure is inevitable: but you have to make sure it happens for the right reasons. For that job you really want to apply for, for that project that will change the world or your community,...
To achieve goals, go step by step to make it easier on yourself.
Find your core commitment: identifying your core needs and commitments helps you understand your motivations, emotions, and reactions.
If your core commitment is:
To be needed? Your core need is to know you are wanted.
To be loved? Your core need is self-love.
To be in control? Your core need is trust.
Core commitments are usually chosen but core needs are innate (we are born requiring them, we don't choose them).
The more you neglect your core need, the more your coping mechanisms will manifest (such as ED, hyper fixation on physical appearance,...).
In essence, core needs are what you fundamentally require to thrive, while core commitments are what you choose to dedicate yourself to, often as a way to express your values and meet those needs. Understanding both provides powerful insight into living a more conscious and fulfilling life.
Instead of trying to fix the coping mechanism, focus on your core needs: they are the only problem in your life.
This means that by directly addressing the true need – for example, actively practicing self-love, learning to trust others or the process of life, seeking healthy validation from within, or building a life that honors your personal autonomy – you begin to quiet the subconscious desperation that was driving self-sabotaging behavior. As the core need is fed, the psyche no longer has to resort to extreme measures (the old core commitment patterns) to try to get what it needs.
Learn to disconnect feelings from actions: take actions instead of waiting to "feel like doing it". Just do it.
Note: starting a task, even with low motivation, can generate a momentum and motivation. This is known as behavioral activation.
Regrets from the past are a way to show you the path ahead: regret you couldn't take care of someone you loved? It's not about them anymore, it's about appreciating and taking good care of the people you love now and later. Do not repeat the same mistakes.
Being too codependent is bad, but thinking you can fulfill all your needs alone is also wrong. Your need for validation is valid, your need to feel wanted is valid, your need to feel secure is valid. You are not a weak person for having these needs. We can certainly meet many of our needs alone, but not all of them.
If you keep going back to a relationship that hurt you, find the reason why you feel comfortable in this relationship? If you attract people who are too broken to commit, maybe your unconscious mind thinks you are too broken to be worth someone else right now?
If you recognize you are worthy, you will give your time to people who are worthy too.
Thinking about an ex? This relationship affected you more than you think. There is something unsolved and you need either closure or acceptance.
The gut instinct is real but it only senses the present, not the future. Gut instinct about the future is called projecting and this has no ground to be valid.
Your instincts are not feelings, they are responses.
Your feelings, while valid, are not always an accurate reflection of the reality. They are reflections of our thoughts. Our thoughts change. Instincts are not influenced by our thoughts.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and interpret emotions. Low emotional intelligence usually leads to more self-sabotage.
Breakthrough don't just happen: they are tipping points, but they are often not life changing. Small micro shifts along the way are. By small incremental shifts in your behavior you become little by little the person you want to be and it compounds over time. By building habits, that's how you change your life. Paradigm shifts: realizing that self-worth doesn't come from others' approval but from within you, seeing failure as a tool for growth, understanding that your thoughts are not absolute truth but are patterns that can be challenged and changed.
Move from "i need to earn love by being useful, perfect or needed" to "I am worthy of love just as I am".
Move from "change is overwhelming" to "discomfort is part of becoming who I am meant to be".
The mind needs problems to solve. That's why when everything is fine, you still find problems and fears to focus on. Your mind needs challenges, so find real problems to solve.
Note: the idea that fulfillment comes from problem solving is also present in the book “The hard thing about hard things”.
The mind is anti-fragile: it survives stress and disorder and even benefit and grow from it most of the time. You are built to grow from your struggles and challenges.
Everything that's new, good or bad, will first feel uncomfortable until it feels familiar.
Our brain also works the opposite way: everything that is familiar seems good, even though it's not always true (fast-food, toxic relationship,...).
Any accomplishment involves change. If you are predisposed for anxiety or depression, it will be even harder because your comfort zone is absolutely essential for stabilizing your mood. This is why these people sometimes seem narrow minded from the outside.
If you have anxiety about money, you need to learn how to manage it better, not getting more of it. About relationships? Learn how to relate to others.
Familiarize yourself with the unknown to feel more comfortable with it.
Chronicle anxiety comes with the inability to process stressful events.
You get scared if you have difficulty to imagine a positive outcome from a situation. This is why exposure therapy works well: if you're scared of planes, watch tons of videos of takeoffs. It will help you project yourself in safe plane trip.
If you want a Director job, imagine yourself going through the process and all the steps and succeeding at them. Imagine your first day as a Director, what will you do and say, your first meetings, how it feels to take big decisions, …
Intelligent people have the ability to infer, others just take what they see at face-value, they don't challenge what they see.
What is not right for you, won't stay in your life. A job, a partner,... you can only pretend for a while, nothing more. When something is right for you, it brings you clarity. When something is wrong for you, it brings you confusion.
Be careful not to fall in love with the potential of someone or something: the illusion of what it could be. What about the present and the real? That's what matters.
Note: this also links to the idea of the book “The hard thing about hard things” that you should hire people for their potential now, not later, not for when the company will grow more, but now.
Recovering comes down to restoring safety. You must restore safety in the area of life that traumatized you. Example: if you were traumatized by a relationship in the past, you will maybe reinvest your energy now into being attractive, rich or successful (this time she won't cheat on me). You believe that if you are good enough this time, you won't be denied or rejected again. But it doesn't work like that. It creates unhealthy attachment to these things, like money and physical appearance. To restore safety around relationship, you need to build new and healthy relationships. Focusing on money and physical appearance will only attract even more unhealthy relationships, attracting people who want your money and not you, in turn reinforcing your trauma because you will never feel rich or beautiful enough, thus never safe in the relationship. It reinforces traumas. If you are traumatized because you were bullied, you need to find new friends. By money? Save-up for emergencies, find a side hustle, learn to manage money. Never compensate in another field but create safety in the area of your trauma.
If money is the trauma, more money won't solve anything as you still will waste it and feel the fear of a lack of it. Trauma is relationship? No matter how many new relationships you get into, they still will be toxic if you don't solve the trauma.
Your trauma is not in your head, it's real, it created real changes in your brain structure. The way back to a normal state is to go back to the feeling of safety needed to turn off your state of survival, and thus be able to go back to a normal life.
Being calm all the time is not being mentally healthy: letting yourself feel a wide range of emotion is.
When healing from physical injuries, your body starts to progressively return to its normal state. With mental health it's different: you become someone new because of what you've been through.
Becoming the best version of yourself is in your nature: healing is getting rid of the fears and obstacles to become that person.
Don't fall in the trap of worrying too much about the monster in the closet: take care of what really matters: health, finance, relationships,...
Give priority to your own and only one short life.
Growing up is not proving wrong people from the past. Growing is to be so confident and hopeful about your future that you don't care and don't think about what others' think.
Avoiding what traumatized you is never the answer: scared of planes? Exposure therapy or just do it and travel more.
Emotional validation is very important: use it to "open" people and connect to them.
Validating your own feelings is very important: it means allowing yourself to feel your feelings.
Exercise to do: close your eyes and imagine the best version of yourself. This is who you really are. Are you very different from that? The difference is the trauma, the fears, the things you picked up from others and not coming from within.
When you do something ask yourself if you'd do it if you couldn't tell anybody about it? If no one could ever know you went to that party, bought this Hermes belt/bag, no one could see the pictures of your trip. Would you still do it yes or no?
If you "want" to be a Director, if you want to be muscular, imagine the daily life, and would you want that? The daily training, the daily meetings and boards. Does that sound enjoyable and fulfilling? Not the title but the daily life.
Remember that you are the only one responsible for self-sabotage, so the good news is that it's only up to you to change it: you're in control.
Remember from Buddhism: serenity is still feeling the feelings and having the thoughts but acknowledging them and letting them pass and go.
Don't let your inner child control you, don't let the monkey mind jump from one thought to another. Being mentally strong is a process, get a plan. Stress and overthinking won't help, but planning will do.
About past mistakes, don't try to repair them, focus on the present and how to not reproduce them in the future.
You can't chase happiness because it's something already inside you that you have to allow: happiness is your natural state.
If you're anxious it's because you live in the future, if you're depressed it's because you live in the past. By living in the present you are happy.
To take care of your future self, you act now by doing things that will be good to you later on. Set-up the habits now and live them. What you do for your future is happening right now at this instant. Each day you have 24 hour to live in the present.
See yourself as equal to others: there will always be something to learn from others, no matter who they are.
Learn new things as much as possible: never stop.
What matters is not so much what happens but how do you respond to the events that occur.