Everyone wants a happy life, to feel joy and fulfilment. The real question when it comes to things you want in life is; what am I willing to compromise or struggle with?
Everything comes with a price, if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you will likely have to compromise free time, time typically spent with family and friends, in order to work more.
So, bringing into your awareness the things that may get in the way of you attaining what you want, will give you the power to recognise the potential temptations that will arise on a consistent basis to sabotage your vision.
There is always that inner conflict between attaining what we want and not being willing to compromise what we need to compromise. In order to attain certain things like ‘’Being fit’’ there has to be a compromise like ‘’Stopping eating pies’’. We can’t choose comfort and easy. There will always be a level of being uncomfortable and compromising, and choosing new habits that support what we want to create. It comes to choosing, to the power that lies withing each of us to choose at any moment in time the actions we need to take to move in the direction we want. When we recognise that we can choose every decision we make, and that some decisions are taught and that they will make us uncomfortable, then we have the clarity to decide and choose the direction.
Clarity and focus are key when it comes to choosing what we want. Clarity not only in what we want, but clarity on the necessary compromises, on the excuses we tell ourselves to avoid being uncomfortable, on the self-talk that comes with staying stuck, such as ‘I am a loser or a quitter’, ‘I just don’t have it in me’, ‘it is in my genes’ (that is the best one, blaming your genes for your own
limitations - refer to epigenetics for more on this). We do all of this to avoid the struggle that comes with stopping doing what we do to choose a new action that is aligned with want we want. The new action requires clarity but also effort, effort to break through habitual behaviours, automatic responses that are mostly fully out of our awareness.
This also opens up the topic about deservedness, which is also part of the inner conflict and is the belief we create that we deserve things in recognition for our hard work. There is no doubt that we all deserve great things, but having clarity on when and what is key, as we tend to reward ourselves with things that are on the way to what we want to achieve. A clear example is: I had a huge week at work, I had been very busy with little time for myself. A typical action may be ‘I will go and have a few massive nights to treat myself for my hard work’. What I am forgetting here is that I want to be fit and healthy. In this situation, if you want to be fit and healthy, and this is where you want to head, then be clear on your vision, choose your actions carefully. A better result may be to go and have a few drinks to treat yourself, but without turning it into a few huge nights where you are absolutely self-sabotaging yourself, believing you deserve this.
All of the above are examples of a part of life that is called ‘inner conflict’. I want the result but not the process, and life doesn’t work like that. In the process lies growth, in the process is our ability to show ourselves that we always have a choice, that we actually can, that we can overcome to become more.
My advice on this is a simple, as the joy is in the process!