Changing Your Mind, Part 1: Becoming Aware

Do you want to become more "Self-aware'? The rewards of doing this in a guided way are infinite. The path will be made straight-forward in this article, which is the first article in a three-part series dealing with reengineering your reality and creating powerful outcomes and results for you. These articles involve neuroscience, positive psychology (which is a component of Transformative Life Coaching (TLC)) spirituality, and deep timeless philosophical Truths.

So, lean in, relax, breathe, be open, and go beyond the 'self-help books': These are destined to fail as they largely rely on 'life hacks' and a fake ‘law of attraction’, which are nothing more than superficial approaches and a lack-based egocentric approach to life: If you take this route, the Universe will simply provide more lack. 'Self-help' books may even be harmful, as they may lead you down a treacherous path. If you are interested in the path to awakening your limitless Self (one without any limiting beliefs), please do check out my 'Suggested Reading' list about becoming Self-aware. I will signpost you to these books and various other resources and as you navigate and journey to your desired destination, when you are ready, including my free eBook on Enlightenment.

We will incorporate financial and spiritual abundance and manifestation into your journey, which will happen as spontaneously as a caterpillar becomes a butterfly as we shift the focus to BEing.

Human BEings are ‘meaning making machines.’

How do our 'five primary drivers' result in our beliefs determining our outcomes in life? The linchpin, the mechanism that changes the entire dynamic of your life, are your beliefs. Change your beliefs and you change the results: Change your beliefs and you powerfully change your life in every domain.

Limiting beliefs are our fears. Unlimited beliefs are our infinite possibility.

There is a spiritual equation “Man minus mind equals God.” When we drop out of being plagued by negative, repetitive, catastrophising, limiting beliefs, and their subsequent repetitive ‘awfulising’ thoughts, as occurs during meditation and mindfulness, this allows us to hear the quiet still voice of clarity and intuition (which represents sacred beliefs and their manifested thoughts). You you can use your mind to change your brain. So, a better version of this equation would be “Man minus limiting beliefs equals infinite possibility." No thought, which occurs after dropping your negative beliefs, leads to divine positive beliefs and thought without negative thinking. In Zen Buddhism, 'no-mind' (mushin) refers to a state of mental clarity and freedom from clinging to negative beliefs, thoughts, and emotions.

The problem is never the problem. The problem is what you think about the problem.

There is only one unforgivable sin, and that is not becoming who you truly are, beyond your ego.

There is an alternative to feeling empty, purposeless, irritable, discontent, and dead inside; and it's very simple, as I will set out in this series of three articles.

In this first article in the series we will discuss beliefs, your thinking, your emotions, your actions, and your inevitable results.

So, how do you become Self-aware?

You

Do you want to triumph in life? This article describes the path to progress, prosperity, manifestation, and abundance. You are about to gain the key to unlocking a blazing and joyful new future. I have made it through to the other side of fear, childhood trauma, mental illness, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), self-sabotage, compulsivity, love addiction (I was looking for crumbs of love when I already had a banquet of love all around me), addiction to work, and addiction to external validation, in order to show you the pathway into the light.

Many ‘self-help’ books are all about ego, life hacks, hustle, and grind, and don’t get you anywhere apart from feeling that you are alone, on the wrong track, doing everything wrong, and worsen your conditional well-being for false, empty, limited goals. Have you just started seeking, or even been on the journey of transformation for years, but have reached a plateau in your evolution and reached a gap in the application of neuroscientific and spiritual principles?

Have you reached an impasse in your existential development? Do you want to be truly reborn into a new life of possibility? Do you want to discover your true purpose and turbocharge the meaning of your life? There is a step by step process to unleashing your true potential and Real Personal Power.

This article was written by me for you to discover a profound sense of joy, peace, Self-love and unconditional well-being, and to achieve succ ess and financial and spiritual abundance beyond your wildest dreams. Whatever you want for your life is possible. You can create the change you are looking for through a concrete plan. This is an operating manual to a changed mind and it will release you from an ego-based life that is so much smaller. You really can change your mind and your life, by doing the inner work on your limiting beliefs (which are your fears).

We can't change the direction of the wind, but we can adjust the sails of life to always reach our destination. The key is to accept that there is wind, take action by adjusting the sails, let go of the outcome, reassess, and readjust again if necessary. Keep repeating that, combined with acceptance, and you will have a successful, abundant, and peaceful life, I guarantee you. The alternative is to fight the Universe: How’s that going for you?

I was always on an upward trajectory, like the first astronauts aiming for the sky, but it wasn't until I landed on the metaphorical moon that I realised that there was nothing there to write home about. I was a straight A student throughout my life. I had a Masters degree in Philosophy and Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge, a PhD in science from University College London, and a medical degree from Cambridge and The Royal Free Hospital, London, as well as a host of higher degrees, accolades, over 50 PubMed cited publications, and international achievements. This is my Truth. These accolades and achievements had taught me zero wisdom and had propelled me in to a superficial world of ‘success’ based on how other terrified people, who live in a place of misery and lack, defined it. As an overachiever, having run five marathons in under three and a half hours, I even managed to self-sabotage in a spectacular way due to my undiagnosed mental illness, my ADHD, and my compulsivity; none of which I was aware of. You see, the deepest, unconscious part of my Soul, unbeknownst to me, wanted to drive me off the road so that I could self-sabotage my previous trajectory and start again. Christ said in John 3:3 “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless they are born again.” It’s your consciousness that is reborn.

Today is the day that you will find your true nature in a direct unfiltered interaction with your Self. You will reach a state that was previously unimaginable for you. You will be directly interacting with reality and the Universe. This will be a peak experience for you.

Here I sit at 3:30am at my desk in front of my laptop – yes, I get up before dawn these days, writing about the secrets that I have uncovered on my journey of transformation to turbo-charge your life. From the outside I had all the hallmarks of success. However, my mother’s love was conditional on my going to Cambridge and doing a medical degree. My mother had grown up in an environment where she never felt good enough. She was always worrying that things would go wrong. Her fears shaped my perception of the world, making me feel that it was unsafe and dangerous. She was deeply worried about what other people thought of her. And she ‘kindly’ passed that on to me. She wanted me to live the life that she never had. My father was kicked out by my mother when I was two years old so that she could conduct her affairs, and she got married four times. My dysfunctional childhood included being forced by my mother to watch her attempt violent suicide twice by the age I was seven.

Our childhoods become the lens through which we perceive the world through the beliefs that we carry into adulthood. And, however erroneously, they subconsciously shape everything that we do. They become driving forces for the development of our own personality, which may be a million miles away from our true purpose our true Self, and meaning in life. But our beliefs are programmed by both our parents and society. Because these programmes can develop both overtly and subtly, we may have no memory of the offending incidents that created them until we go to therapy. This is why at thirty, forty, or fifty years old we find ourselves unable to manage our lives effectively and we feel that we are living a life that isn't ours to live, even when our parents have died, along with their expectations of us. Who would have known that my spiritual blueprint, my Soul's DNA, my divine purpose (yes, we all have one - we just don't know it until we become Self-aware) was not to be a surgeon, but to be a guide in serving you in order for you to recover, heal, find your true purpose, and flourish? This is the journey from surviving to thriving.

Over five years ago I looked around me and my Soul felt like I had climbed the ‘Wrong Tower.’ I had put my ladder against a wall that I didn’t even want to climb. I was always the life and soul of the party, but I felt alone, afraid of not being worthy, feeling dead and inside like an absolute failure, terrified with mortal fears of not being loveable or loved, feeling unworthy, and scared of being abandoned and that I would die: That’s what happens when you don’t feel safe at the age of seven, when I had to sell out my own dreams and needs in order for my mother not to leave me and adopt other children, as she kept saying to my brother and me. The problem is that we carry these fears into adulthood.

I was an angelic little boy with unlimited potential and achieved the heights of success. The problem is what do you do when you are at the top of your game but feel empty, dead, and numb inside? That's the worst place to be because you have nowhere else to go. I was engaged in a constant inner dialogue, criticising myself that I wasn't doing enough and that I wasn't good enough or that something bad was going to happen. My inner critic had become so intense that my spiritual dis-ease reached intolerable proportions. I subconsciously crashed my life at the age of forty-seven. The seeds of insanity had grown. Little did I know that they had led me to the door of infinite possibility. As adults we are often confused as to why we do what we do as it comes from such a deep unconscious place.

Foundations: It starts with you

I have been inspired to write this article after reading this book as it resonates so much with my personal story, and I believe that it will with yours too if you are reading this far: ‘A Changed Mind: Go Beyond Self Awareness – Rewire Your Brain and Reengineer Your Reality’ by David Bayer, is in my ‘Suggested Reading’ list.

Small almost unremarkable moments change the trajectory of our entire lives. You will come across many synchronicities on this journey. Let me be your guide. Do you not know how to do it right? Do you not have a programme for living? What is the blueprint for your life? Do you live in an environment of perfectionism? Are you still living in a way in order to please your parents or society at large?

When we can understand that we have adopted unconscious beliefs such as there is a right way and a wrong way to do things or otherwise you won't get it right and you won't be good enough to be loved. Our day-to-day anxiety and overwhelm starts to make sense. This leaves us in a midlife crisis. We are driven by a hyper-vigilant dysregulated nervous system with Post Traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD). We are terrified that every calculation that we make could cost us everything, most importantly the love of others. We start to believe that all the achievements that we have acquired are the minimum that should be expected of usi f we want to be loved and not abandoned . We are constantly in fight-or flight mode: In survival mode. This gives us a suffocating feeling of hopelessness and inevitable depression. On the inside we desperately want to find a way out of our own lives or we seek oblivion..

I made two suicide attempts five years ago - but these, I can see now, were cries to start again. My story is not any more or less traumatic than yours. Each of our individual stories is an intelligently designed setup driven by the Universe to put us on a path where we will achieve our own unique potential. Despite the individual details of our stories our beliefs and programmes are essentially the same. To some extent we all feel like we are not good enough and that is what drives us. There's not enough time. We feel that we're not going to do it right: That money is hard to make. This is very good news, as it means that when we learn to transform the software programme of our minds, we can transform it for every person regardless of whatever experience has created it. If you can identify the programmes that create our personal suffering and prevent you from creating more in your life you can uninstall them. You can use your mind to rewire your own brain and change the way you think, feel, act, and perceive the world. When you do, you can heal your past and unlock an almost inconceivable amount of new potential.

This article, and the two follow-up articles, are a guide to the inner workings of the mind. This is your mental operating system, and it can be reset. This is the key with which you will unlock the destiny that you deserve. This is the missing piece. Some people walk the spiritual path for decades and are completely stuck. Has there always been something missing for you? Are you still not happy? Are you still suffering? What is the missing piece? Are you looking for help? Are you wondering if this is this all there is to life?

You work hard yet you are miserable. You need ridiculous amounts of coffee just to get through your day and wine to come down from it in the evening. Underneath it all there is this constant flow of discontent. Is this just the maximum experience that life can give you? Are true ecstasy, bliss, well-being, and unshakable peace elusive concepts to you? Does feeling like you are in the zone and in a ‘flow state’ feel like the exception and not the rule? Maybe you're tired of living in financial insecurity and you want to master your relationship with money and live in an abundant life. Maybe you have realised that there is more to life than the nine to five or whatever your work hours are. You want to tap into meaning and purpose in your life: You are trying to keep all the plates spinning but they keep falling off and smashing to pieces. Your life is out of balance. You are living your life and fear that today will be the day when all the plates come crashing down and you become exposed despite trying to be the super-achiever and super parent that you think you must be. It could be that you are struggling in a relationship, or to even find one: And you worry that you might never meet the partner of your dreams or that you will be living a life of loneliness. Maybe you're feeling a sense of time running out. You feel like your best days have already passed you by. Maybe you have been experiencing a mental health challenge or a series of them. Or you feel there must be a better way to run your business? You are unsure as to how to get the business to work and therefore you put the rest of your life on hold and are ploughing daily through the hustle and grind but to no effect. This may become too much to bear. You are in a fog of depression and your checking out of the pain and discomfort of your unfulfilled life through drugs, food, alcohol, sex, imitation love, or work addiction is taking you to a dark place that you feel that you may never crawl out of.

I want you to know that I get it. I have been in the depths of desperation, shame, and fear. But I know the way out. And taking this journey will be the best thing that you ever do. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You are so forgivable.

You have felt lost scared, helpless, and without hope. Here is what I know beyond all that to be true. You are going to be OK. All is well. You will be more than OK. Whatever you are feeling will pass. You are going to be great. Because the symptoms you're experiencing right now, no matter how long you have been experiencing them, are signs of an impending breakthrough, not a life sentence. And here is what I absolutely know to be true based on my own experience - once you get on the path you are going to finish the journey. So, what is the path?

You are going to make it to the other side. There may be many times where it does not feel like it, but rest assured, if you stay committed to that desire inside of you for sure, the courage, strength, and support you need will come through. You will make it to the other side and step into the light. There is nothing wrong with you. There is something powerful inside of you that is emerging through the mess. At the early stages it doesn't feel so powerful: It feels more like frustration, anxiety, worry, depression, indecision, and overwhelm. You are starting to feel. As you become even more aware of the negative emotions, things can feel even more hopeless: A kind of self-awareness purgatory where you become acutely aware of your limiting beliefs but haven't gained the ability to shift them. And that's totally normal. These feelings are designed to motivate and move you into an equal and opposite direction, according to the Laws of the Universe, into abundance, connection, compassion, curiosity, successful achievement, and spiritual growth. In other words, how you're feeling right now is the way to how you're going to achieve what you want. What you want is one thing and one thing only: More. And why not?

This is the road to more money, spiritual growth, creativity, productivity, success, more Self-love, more Self-esteem and Self-confidence, more alignment with who you truly are and what you are meant to do with this one precious life.

You want more power to create change all around you rather than feeling that you are responding to your challenging circumstances. This path will transform the way you are thinking. This will allow you to rise into a new level of consciousness. This will allow you to have a powerful living experience: So that you can live your life in the full expression of who you truly are and consciously create a masterful life. Your desire is waking you up to the emergence of a new you. You are giving birth to your new Self. With that desire comes all the tools, resources, and capacity to achieve more than you can possibly imagine. If you are here reading my article, it is by no coincidence: This is what is known as synchronicity.

Know that the realisation of your desires is an absolute possibility. This is the path to your success in every domain in your life. Hold tight my friend. This article will be the missing piece. This will bring a totally new awareness to you of how life works. And how you can get it to work to your advantage. This will take you to the attainment of your highest possible evolution. This will transform your real-world experience. This is not just theoretical; this is an application. You will experience a deeper relationship with your Self, others, and your Higher Power. You will have a crystal-clear answer to the up till now difficult to answer questions. You will have a step-by-step programme to close the gap between who you have been pretending to be, your ego, and the powerful creator who you are destined to become. You will also have the tools; to not only expand your Self-awareness but also change the way you think, rewire your habits, and produce a fundamental biological shift in who you are.

You will change your relationship with everything and everyone around you. You will have absolute clarity around your purpose and why you are here. Every challenge will be met with even better solutions. You will operate in a consistent state of flow, knowing what you need to say and do with ease, totally naturally. As you continue to eliminate the powers of your limiting beliefs that are stuck in the neural networks of your brain, you will unbind that energy into a focus and concentration that will allow you to become more compassionate and more powerful. This will be applicable to every area of your life.

The is the science of transformation and what it means to awaken to be the ruler of your new Kingdom, right here and right now on Earth. Who will teach you the scientific and spiritual principles of a mind change and consciousness evolution in the most simple and practical ways so that you can master them? Again, you are not reading these pages by coincidence. Now is your time. This will allow you to step through the door to your future. You will become a spiritual warrior who is totally prepared for the journey ahead. Health and wealth are an inevitably for you, because now is your time. You and I are coming together with mastery in the process of change. You are at a crossroads at which you will need to make a very important decision. Will you continue down the path you are headed towards self-extinction, or will you make the evolutionary leap to the next chapter in your life? The doorway through to the next level of your evolution begins and ends with the changed mind.

Do you feel out of control? Do you keep returning to the same behaviours as hooking up with people, addiction, and relying on things outside of your Self? You are not a bad person trying to become good, you are a spiritually sick person trying to get well. Your life doesn't have to be this way. Is shame engulfing you? Is your heart pounding and your breath quickening? Is your self-loathing intolerable? Are you able to stand the inner dialogue? Can you not stand who you are? Do you need to find a way out of the pain and noise?

You will become the success that you want to be rather than what other people said that you should be. Are you deepening your dependence on external attractions? Are you using these to keep you safe from your inner dialogue and your own personal suffering? Are your behaviours becoming more extreme and more dangerous? Are you feeling more alone than you have ever been in your entire life? Are you working hard and despite that is nothing seeming to be working?

Everyone seems to be leading two lives: The façade (social media posts, the mask, the lack of any authenticity, having stuff, and pretending to be happy) and the quiet but ever-present undertone of stress, anxiety, overwhelm, and low self-esteem: An addiction to misery and security. It doesn't matter who someone is, or what they have accomplished, at the end of the day their emotional experience of life consisted of a dull ache and suffering. Is this it? The suffering is going to happen to you. There is another way. You have the power to change.

It takes eighteen months to rewire your brain. In the Bible, in Romans 12:2 it states, “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Every aspect of your outer experience is a manifestation or projection of your inner world. Regardless of whether you read Jesus' teachings in the Bible, the 'Tao Te Ching', or Buddha’s Noble Truths, the 'Bhagavad Gita', the writings of Carl Jung, the 12 steps, a 'Course in Miracles,' or any other deep spiritual texts, the message is the same. Buddha taught that the mind is everything, saying “What you think, you become.” There is a way through the suffering: A new Kingdom awaits. This is the spiritual experience. You will learn how to deal with any adversity. In fact there are no adversities, just lessons. 'Amor Fati' - love your fate. The question is "Do you want grievances or miracles?"

Napoleon Hill wrote the number one best-selling business book of all time ‘Think and Grow Rich’, which is in my 'Suggested Reading' list. What's interesting is that it is not a book about business or leadership but a book about using the mind to create powerfully in your life. Hill studied the most powerful successful men of his age: People who ended up restructuring entire industries. In effect, they created the structure in which the rest of humanity operates. They had a huge impact and lasting effects on the world. Carnegie told Hill that there was a powerful secret that these men knew and used to accumulate their wealth, influence, and Real Personal Power: In his conclusion, Hill stated that thoughts were things, and powerful things at that. And when combined with a burning desire, such influential figures were destined to realise themselves into the material world. Such books guided people onto the path of spiritual growth. Mahatma Gandhi wrote “A man is but a projection of his thoughts: What he thinks, he becomes.”

The broken promises of ‘self-help’

The ‘self-help’ movement is a multi-billion-dollar industry. But does it deliver? Is it a broken promise? Does it inform us how to use your mind to change your beliefs or your resultant thinking? Well, no.

I have consumed and devoured most of the non self-help literature, some of which I have listed in my 'Suggested Reading' list, in relation to Self-awareness in order to guide you. This information has the potential to change your life. However, fully integrating and embodying the concepts from these texts and teachers is still quite challenging. I understood the promise of a new mind and a new life. Each time you experience a breakthrough you may encounter a challenge or problem in your life. You can grow in Self-awareness and be in tune with what you are thinking and feeling, especially if you stop masking your emotions with other methods. But in many ways, the stress never leaves your daily life, and the suffering may feel even more intense with the expanded awareness initially. You can dive even deeper into personal growth.

'Self-help' books promise that life will never be the same again. Except that a few days or weeks later it pretty much will be. You are still stuck with the same brain. Your suffering can increase in tandem with your awareness. You begin to wonder if you're doing something wrong, or if there is something wrong with you. Each dive into these texts and teachings can bring a step forward but also frustration of how deep your suffering truly is. Along with it comes a deepening fear that you could be a personal development failure and never find joy. This can be a desperate struggle. The promise of Self-discovery can become unfulfilled. You can read self-help books and feel nothing but empty. You can feel worse off than when you started the whole journey. Many of these books have no effect on your brain. It's hard to let go of chasing freedom when you are studying personal development through such texts.

You keep hoping that the next experience will be different. You can find your Self in self-help purgatory. You may end up forming a love hate relationship with 'self-help' texts. You may desperately want to realise the promise of personal development and you can develop a possibility of psychological liberation, but you can grow resentment for the current model. You become acutely aware of your limiting beliefs but without the proper tools, frameworks, or methods to change your habit of thought. You get to the point where you don't want to read another book or watch another motivational video or attend yet another seminar or workshop. You begin to realise that you're not alone on this. You may begin to feel broken within personal development itself. With 'self-help' books and workshops the promise of Self-discovery can once again go unfulfilled. You may feel empty. The problem is that the 'self-help' that they refer to is not your true Self (note the capitalisation): It is your fake self (note the small 's') and so 'self-help' mainly encourage you to develop your ego rather than transcend it.

Have you ever had a thought where you feel that you should feel more gratitude, but you don't? You know that you should have Faith instead of fear, but you don't. What happens in these moments of awareness is that the mind begins to take over and you begin to judge your Self. What you begin to learn is that this is the process of the current personal development model. Once you go deeply into transformation there is no stopping you. Personal development version 1.0 (the current model) provides the foundation. It builds an intellectual understanding through which you can build true change through transformation.

The intellectual shift always occurs first before the heart takes over. The intellectual approach is like the lightning and dropping into heart is like the thunder. The lightning must occur first: Without this it is difficult to understand the conceptual terms of true healing through opening of your heart. Dropping from your mind into your heart is the true catalyst for real transformation. You first must put out the fire before you can deal with the broken bones. Life is like an emergency room triage system and sometimes there are many things that you must deal with first before you can start the true process of healing. This is why initially it may well be useful for most people to have a therapist as well as coaching. The unrealised promise creates a powerful awareness for a realisation (making real) evolution of your own consciousness. A desire to develop the capacity to use your mind to control and rewire your own brain. And is that desire grows, along with a mounting desperation, a bridge appears to take you to the other side.

If you are new to transformation, you may have just caught a glimpse of what the transformation journey ahead might look like. The good news is that all of the great psychological and spiritual teachings that have laid the foundations for this conversation have evolved. This, combined with an ever-increasing understanding of the mind, consciousness, neuroscience, and human behaviour, means that we are entering into a new era of personal development version 2.0. This distils the teachings and conceptual understandings of the past and just tell them into practical tools and frameworks that will allow you to embody, become, and realise your full potential. A personal technology to enable you on a moment-to-moment basis, to use your mind to change your brain and rewire your Self. Welcome to personal development 2.0. Put those 'self-help' books in the recycling.

Where to start

Where to start? To realise the change in our lives, and to unlock the full potential of our greatness, we must know where to start. For many, that's the challenge with personal growth. Where do we start, when what we really want, is to end our personal suffering and live the life we've always dreamed of? Is it possible that liberating our minds and creating an extraordinary life have a simple stepwise framework as well?

Our thoughts, feelings, and the various challenges and distressing events of our lives, all these elements of our disturbing reality, melt together to create what feels like what feels like a time-lapse of our life where everything is moving too quickly to make out things with clarity and to get a foothold to make any sense of it. Everything seems a blur. From the inside looking out, your life emotions in mind, can feel like a big ball of knotted yarn with no clear thread with which to begin the untying process. The behavioural humans, yourself included, is governed by a simple operating system that dictates your thoughts, emotions, actions and ultimately the total sum of your life. Understanding how this system works is necessary for creating change in your life. No one ever gave you a manual to your operating system until now. This article, and the two subsequent articles that follow, is that instruction manual.

If you're reading this article, it's because you want to improve some aspect of your life. What you will soon realise is that the change that you are seeking is the result of a change in your inner environment. Your mental attitude. Not a change produced as a direct result of your activity or action in the external world. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. In other words, if you want to be happy, work on you; if you want others to be happy, work on you.

We should begin to start looking at the changes that you desire. That is the starting point. If you can come out through consistent application of the principles contained within this article, when you create a change in one area of life, you will be able to make changes in all areas of your life. Having what you want is your natural right: Not having what you want is an indication that there is some form of resistance that needs to be identified and removed. There is a programme on your operating system that needs to be uninstalled and replaced with a programme that is conducive to creating what you want. Whether that be material, emotional, spiritual desire, joy, abundance, money, or connection, Is irrelevant. What most people don't realise is that creating what you want. Figuring out how to create what you want is about identifying the resistance and removing it. When you're able to remove the programme, the result that you seek is 100% inevitable.

Nature needs no help: It just needs no interference. What do you want? This seems like a pretty straightforward question. But most of the time when I ask someone what they want they have one of two responses: They either immediately begin listing everything that they don't want in their life: For example, I don't want my business to fail or I don't want to be alone. Or they give me one or two things that they desire before pivoting into a list of reasons why they don't have it. “I want to find love, but I don't have time to date. I want to find a career, but I'm afraid I don't have any talent”. The “What do you want?” exercise (most people don’t know what they want or need) teaches us an important lesson. In any area where we want to create change, we tend to focus on the absence of what we desire more than the desire itself. There is a reason for that.

Human beings are ‘meaning making machines.’

Meaning is a fundamental feature of our ability to survive. If we are at risk of death or harm, our sympathetic nervous system kicks in and we move into fight, flight, or freeze mode. If we are in safety, joy, peace, or pleasure, we move into a parasympathetic response of rest and relaxation. Which switch gets flipped depends on the meaning you are giving your experience: Because it's a matter of life or death to us,

Human beings have a natural inclination to lean towards a danger-based interpretation versus a solution-based interpretation. We tend to focus on what's wrong. So, when we set goals or we do our vision/visualisation boards or we simply answer the question of “What do we want?” within a very short period, we notice the absence of what we want and unconsciously and automatically give meaning to that absence. We tend to focus on the negative, even when we are desiring the positive. If you want to make more money, the odds are that you're realising the absence of financial abundance in your life: A state of lack: Which attracts more lack. If you're experiencing a health challenge and you want to be healthy, it would seem natural to pay more attention to your sickness than wanting to solve it, than paying attention to the individual potential of your health. If you want to have a great relationship, because the relationship that you're in is lacking in passion, connection, and intimacy, you're more likely to pay attention to your poor relationship than to direct its improvement. We have a natural tendency to be consumed by problems other than potential the threat versus the opportunity.

The natural question is “What do you want?” More specifically, “What do you want most?” I'm certain that you desire many things. But there is likely only a small number of things that you desire in your life right now, for me it's two things – coaching and writing. These will create more joy, more peace, more energy, than anything else in this moment once you have them. The absence of it is creating more stress, more anxiety, more sadness, more anger, and more overwhelm than anything else in your life. Having it will create happiness, and not having it is creating suffering for you. You may want to let go of your depression. Perhaps you want to buy yourself a private jet plane or yacht? Perhaps you want to have a partner and have a baby? Maybe you'd like to be able to spend more time in Nature, travel the world, or serve others? Perhaps you want to overcome the grief that you have experienced because of the loss of a close loved one? Perhaps you want to overcome an overwhelming health challenge or develop serious leads for your self-employed business? Perhaps you want to be financially free? I want you to think of this thing that you want, one or two things that you desire above all things in your life right now. It can be distilled into one thing: For example, my coaching and writing can be distilled in to serving others in seeing their Highest Self and taking that forward from that moment on into all areas of my life so that is totally authentic and aligned. What's your one thing? What's the problem?

My next question is, again, a simple one. The starting point is “What do you want?” The next step on the path is “What's the problem?” Why can't you be, do, or have this thing? What has been preventing you from creating this in your life until now? Don't overthink it: Tune into that intuitive clear inner voice in your head. Every time you have thought about this thing, whatever your one thing is, every time you think about this thing, your brain is giving meaning to the having of it.

The inner conflict

When you think about your one thing, all the reasons that automatically spontaneously almost instantly come up for you explaining, justifying, and rationalising why you're one thing hasn't happened yet. That loud, brash inner voice of your ego. The one that says things like “Money is hard to make.” Or “She's never going to change”; “If you want to do it right you have to do it your Self. “Nobody is ever recovered from this.” “It didn't work out before.” “I don't know how to do this: It's too risky.” “I may not do it that well.” I'm not good enough.” I know you may have some beliefs that this will happen for you, or you will create this thing or that you are in process and progress and that it will happen soon, but I’m also certain there is an inner resistance or doubt. An inner dialogue that is actively explaining why it hasn't happened yet. How do I know? Because if there wasn't, you wouldn't be experiencing any suffering around it and more likely you'd already have it. There is a beautiful entry point into your transformation. If you want to keep creating a life you want - having what I would call a powerful living experience, anything is possible where financial, health, and relationship abundance is your birthright and it comes easily when you have the freedom to focus your time on the things you enjoy, to unlock the genius inside you and to translate that genius into some form of outward expression that you get paid for: To live your life and enjoy peace and calm while feeling consistently connected to your Self, others, and a spiritual power inside of your Self. If the key to that is identifying and eliminating the programmes and limiting beliefs you adopt when you were a child which are stored in the recesses of your subconscious mind, yet shape your daily experience, perception, and possibility, then the question must be “How do you become aware of what you're not yet aware of?” How do you identify the psychological and emotional programmes holding you back? How do you become more Self-aware? The answer is quite simple: Identify what you need and listen to the intuitive crystal clear though quiet internal dialogue in your mind for the reasons and beliefs for why it hasn't happened yet. Your explanation: The meaning you give for the absence of what you want is what you unconsciously believe about that area of your life. Said in another way the reason you don't have more money in your bank account isn't because money is hard to make it's because you believe money is hard to make. The reason your health challenge isn't going away isn't because you haven't found a solution to your health problem: It’s because you believe that it can't go away without you finding a solution. Because you believe there may be no solution. The reason you haven't met the person of your dreams isn't because there aren't any good ones left it's because you believe there aren't any good ones left. Identifying what you want and then observing your own thinking about why you don't or can't have it is the key to unlocking and accessing the unconscious beliefs in programmes that are the real only reason you haven't got or created your ‘one thing’ yet. You need to trust in the Universe, leap into the void, believe that a bridge will appear to the other side, and that in any case you will metaphorically grow wings so that you don’t truly need either of those things. Your Higher Power not only grows wings in any case, but it also keeps the sky open as a possibility for you to fly in.

In fact, they're the only reason you don't yet have everything you desire. And the journey to the next evolution of your personal growth begins by mapping out all your dreams, desires, and the vision you have for your life and to look at the thoughts and beliefs that are not in alignment with those outcomes. These original beliefs have shaped your experience and lens of perception for decades. So much so that they have in some ways become fact or inherently true for you. But they are not in fact, fact. They are flexible: And as you learn how to transform the limiting beliefs that you have stored in your inner reality you will begin to radically transform the results in your outer world.

In any area of your life where you are experiencing frustration, disappointment, scarcity, anxiety, overwhelm, or any negative emotional state where you desire to be, do, or have something but have been unable to achieve it; where there is a gap between where you are and the vision or dream you have or where you want to be, there's only one thing preventing you from closing that gap, from creating that thing; from experiencing more joy, peace, abundance, and connection. The problem that you think you have; that there isn't enough time, or that achieving success is hard, or that others have more resources than you, aren’t really the problem. The problem is that you have what I call an 'inner conflict.’ What does this mean? Inside you there is a psychological and emotional incongruence. On one hand you want something; on the other hand, you believe and feel that it's not possible to have it. This is the crux of the whole problem.

On one hand you want to pursue your dream and start your own business on the other hand you believe it's too risky. You want to find a life partner while simultaneously believing all the good ones are already taken. You want to discover your purpose, but you believe you have no idea what you want to do or that perhaps you don't even have one. In other words, the problem is never the problem. The problem is what you believe and think about the problem.

What you believe is in direct conflict with what you want to achieve. This is your ‘inner conflict.’ The human operating system is designed to produce results in alignment with one thing and one thing only: What you think. When you desire something but unconsciously believe you can't have it, in other words when you experience doubt, fear, or disbelief as a result of your own limited past experience of what is or is not possible, or how things must or must not be done or accomplished, you create conflict within yourself - your feelings are evidence of this inner conflict: Stress, anxiety, overwhelm, jealousy, sadness, depression, and fear; what I call suffering, are all symptoms that there is an inner conflict at play.

Your ability to create what you want or to change the momentum of your life requires a new focus and a new energy. When you desire something but believe it's not possible, you expend all that creative energy on bad feeling emotions. Rather than having creative and productive ideas arising from joyful and excited states, the focus on the inner conflict wraps you up, consuming your time, attention, and energy and as a result perpetuate in your current circumstances rather than creating something new. The good news is that once you identify your inner conflicts, which is accomplished by the simple process of determining what you want, and then identifying why you believe it can't happen, you've now identified the only thing preventing you from achieving that which you desire: A limiting belief. Once you become aware of a limiting belief that is holding you back, you can use the tools and technologies that I'm going to teach you to transform that belief. To uninstall the memory and to reinstall a new one. To consciously architect your perception of the world so it is an alignment with the desires, and dreams and goals that you have: To use your mind to rewire your own brain. In order to do this two things are necessary: First you must understand the philosophy of the science of how and why you operate the way you do. Why is this important? Because it will provide you with the unshakeable certainty that in fact, as Buddha said, “The mind is everything what you think you become.” Spiritual, scriptural, philosophical, and wisdom teachings have spoken to the absolute power of the creative mind for millennia. Neuroscience now provides a grounded in scientific understanding of how your brain and neurophysiological system acts as a goal achieving machine. And how your perceptions, emotions, actions, and results are manufactured by what you believe. Together they form a complete understanding of the whole human BEing operating system. Having a deeper knowledge of this will support you in committing yourself fully to the fact that your entire life is your own creation. And that the challenges, experiences, and triumphs are simply an outer objectification of your inner attitude. Second, you must have a way to integrate the understanding into an actionable plan. A series of simple step by step instructions to transform the way you think. To change your beliefs so that you can transform both your inner and outer reality. Are you going to take the blue pill or the red pill? Right now, you're at the entrance to the doorway. You know what you want: Your one thing. You begin to identify the limiting beliefs and patterns of thinking that are the only things preventing you from creating, being, doing, having, or achieving your one thing. These are your inner conflicts. Now let's take a next step through the door into understanding how your beliefs really do dictate your destiny; an even deeper look into where your beliefs come from, so that you can learn how to transform them permanently.

The psychology of beliefs

Mahatma Gandhi said that “A man is but the product of his thoughts: What he thinks he becomes.” Beliefs once born, will realise themselves into our reality. Not through some sort of magic fairy dust, but through the precise mechanism by which we operate as human BEings. Small conclusions we come to at a time we barely remember objectify themselves into nearly every aspect of our lives. This is how childhood trauma rules our life subconsciously until we shine a light on it and make it conscious. Beliefs inform the way we think, the way we react, even the way we identify with our Selves. This is why we have to learn to respond and not react. Beliefs become a part of our personality. The word, once established, becomes flesh. Jesus said in John 1:14 “The Word became flesh.” This states that Jesus, the Word of God, took on human form and lived among us, revealing our Higher Power's glory, Grace, and Truth.

The things you cherish most in your life, the aspects of your Self that you're most joyful about, are all result of empowering beliefs you developed that conceive themselves into your personhood in your life. On the other hand, when we're unaware of our limiting beliefs or left without tools to transform them, our lives can feel stuck. To see how your beliefs shape your reality and what you can do to change your current circumstances you must understand the ‘five primary drivers’.

Defining the five primary drivers explains how the beliefs we have form the results we produce. This notion, that what we believe and think drive our outcomes is at the core of behavioural psychology. It is really common sense.

1. What you believe determines what you think

2. What you think informs how you feel

3. How you feel drives your behaviour

4. Your behaviour and actions determine the results

5. The results you do or do not produce are ultimately the life you have

Let's take a look at the five primary drivers: Your beliefs dictate your thoughts. It shouldn't be surprising that your beliefs dictate your thoughts. If you believe that money is hard to make, you're not likely to access thoughts and ideas of making money easily. If you believe there is no solution to your relationship problem, you won't think about how to solve it. If you believe there's so much that needs to get done and not enough time in your day to do it then you'll focus your attention towards stress related thoughts. What you believe, the core programmes you adopted as a child, inform the way you think now as an adult.

A simple exercise you can do in order to see the impact of your childhood belief systems is to complete a very simple statement “When I was growing up money was…” Whatever your answer there is a high probability that money is that way for you now too. In my experience about 90% of people will relive their parents experience of life. About 10% of people will rebel against their parents’ way and create a transformation. Most people who grew up in an environment where money was scarce and hard to make, or was considered the root of all evil, or was never enough, will experience financial insecurity in their lives. A small percentage of people who grew up in financial scarcity will revolt against it: "I'm never going to end up that way", thus developing a new set of beliefs that lead to financial abundance.

Once you learn and implement the tools you'll find in this series of three articles you'll develop the capacity to transform any generational patterns that you've unconsciously adopted. The Buddha said “The mind is everything: What you think you become.”

For years I knew what I needed to do to take my coaching and writing business to the next level. At the beginning it was as if an invisible force was holding me back from getting clients. My inner dialogue was the voice of my inner critic. I have now metaphorically embodied chucking him into a bush on one of my daily walks in Nature and I am done with him.

I used to get upset if a client said no. But now I am not attached to outcomes and results, and I don’t believe that they should affect my Self-worth. It’s just that they had something on and had nothing to do with me; it was to do with them. My mother being embarrassed and shouting at me when I was seven years old for cominglast in a race on sports day shaped my internal dialogue until I became conscious of it. I ran five marathons in sub three and a half hours, subconsciously driven by that event and my limiting beliefs when I was seven years old. This can affect you in every area of your life, not just your business.

Your thoughts dictate how you feel. Your thoughts create neurochemical responses in your body that allow you to experience the thought as an emotion. I refer to the expression ‘train of thought’. If you have negative thoughts, you board the train to a negative set of emotions. The converse is also true if you board a train with positive thoughts. In other words, your thoughts produce feelings.

So, there I was sitting in front of my computer knowing that the only thing I needed to do in order to generate more income was to reach out to potential prospects. But as I sat there, I began to experience ”I don't know how to do it right”, as if it was actually happening. I began to experience a future that I didn't want right there in the present moment. Pretty crazy right? Alone in front of my computer I imagined the rejection of a 'no'. I experienced the shame of this rejection. I was experiencing a future that I would do anything to avoid, sitting right there, in that present moment even before taking the first step.

Your feelings determine your actions. Would you take action to do a thing that you were already experiencing the failure or fear of? Of course you wouldn’t; and neither did I. So, rather than make connection calls and reach out to potential prospects I would do anything other than that. This is what everyone does until you make the subconscious conscious and change your beliefs in the first instance .

We've all developed a unique set of avoidance or procrastination mechanisms: Maybe it's browsing the web or social media. Maybe it's texting a friend or organising your desk. People often talk about self-sabotage, not understanding what it is or why they do it. Self-sabotage is simply taking action that's not in alignment with the results you want to produce. And the cause of self-sabotage is a limiting belief. or an inner conflict, and the thoughts and subsequent emotional discomfort it manufactures. It's a present moment fear that what you're wanting to achieve is impossible, so why bother? Our limiting beliefs are the same as our fears. It's so simple and straightforward, yet so invisible until we become aware of it.

Your actions determine your results. Your actions produce the results you have in your life. If action is the cause, the result is the effect. Ralph Waldo Emerson said the Law of Cause and Effect is the “Law of Laws”. Aristotle, the great philosopher and polymath, who was taught by Plato, asserted that we live in a world governed by law, not chance. He stated that everything happens for a reason, whether or not we know what it is. He said that every effect has a specific cause or causes. Every cause or action has an effect of some kind, whether we can see it and whether we like it or not. The Law of Cause and Effect states that for every cause, there is an effect. This is the same as Isaac Newton's third Law, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction". On a personal note, Aristotle tutored the son of Alexander the Great, after whom my middle name, Alexander, meaning 'defender of men' or 'warrior,' was given to me.

The Law of Cause and Effect states that every cause has an effect and every effect becomes the cause of something else. This is a scientific Law. I was spending so much time drifting and distracting myself from the things I knew I needed to do that I started feeling even worse about my Self: "Why can't I just commit to do the things I said I'm going to do? What's wrong with me? Why does it feel so difficult to just sit there and just get the work done? I'm never going to figure this out. I should be further along than this by now." In observation of my own behaviour, I came to the same conclusion that I started with - that I just didn't know how to do it right. In other words, procrastination and writer’s block.

Many writers express frustration with the overused and often shallow 'life hack' articles, viewing them as clickbait and lacking in genuine substance. The term 'life hack" is seen as a buzzword that promises quick fixes without offering real solutions. If it sounds too good to be true it always is. There are no shortcuts to the lifelong journey of inner work that is needed to achieve Self-realisation and find true abundance and Enlightenment. Most twenty year old social media 'influencers' also describe superficial versions of the 'law of attraction', manifestation, and abundance. Anything that includes a 'hack' of any kind when it comes to joy and success is 100% not worth clicking on. The word is constantly used in the headlines of internet articles that promise to make your whole life more efficient and abundant. Magazines and newspapers seem to be using it more than ever — and what’s worse — in a sense of trying to make you think that a few 'hacks' can 'cure' or 'fix' your life long issues (no-one else can 'fix' you and you are not broken), or land you a dream career opportunity. These sorts of articles make my stomach churn, in the same way as it does when I see an article about buying social media followers (yes, people still write and share articles like that); it’s a gross way of saying that it’s easy to grow an audience if you follow some ridiculous cheatsheet. Whether it’s a big company, or a YouTuber sitting in their bedroom, there is absolutely no way you can escape the inner work needed to become Self-aware. It takes time to build something real and valuable, needing nurturing over time, through daily spiritual practice. You cannot shortcut ridding your Self out of your limiting beliefs (they are hard-wired into your brain in childhood and you still carry them now), and changing the way you think, feel, and act. This is because it take time to rewire your brain from doing the inner work required. Offering ‘hacks’ are fine if you are telling readers how to cut down the time it takes to build an IKEA wardrobe - fine, offer us a hack then — but not when it comes to changing your mind or your subconscious. There is no 'flat pack’ to your new life. I don’t think it is possible to 'hack' your way anywhere when it comes to relationships, careers, or personal and spiritual growth. Of course you can’t solve all your problems by reading a listicle of a few 'quick solutions'. I’m not interested in 'hacks', shortcuts and 'tips', as they simply do not work. I’m all about learning; growing slowly, authentically, and truthfully. It takes time to rewire your brain. It is never 'one and done' when it comes to inner transformation. Stop trying to fast-forward through your life and career - if you do, you will miss it. Life 'hacks' are just as stupid as dangerous social media challenges, 'fake-news', and misinformation.

Your results reinforce your beliefs. When you step back and look at the results you're producing you will notice an illuminating thing. Your actions always, without question, reinforce the original beliefs that you started with (see the diagram of 'the five primary drivers' above). I had reinforced my own limiting beliefs and self-perception and deepened the false narrative that I don't know how to do it right. All as a result of a failure to understand that none of these things were actually true. The only truth was that I was operating according to a subconscious programme named ”I don't know how to do it right” - a limiting belief or fear. And without intervention that programme would play out precisely as it had my entire life. The five primary drivers are a self-fulfilling prophecy. What you believe you think; what you think you feel; what you feel you act upon; how you act determine your results, or lack thereof; and your results always 100% of the time reinforce the original belief. The mistake that most people make to try to change their life is that they attempt to modify their actions. We end up going round and round and round on some sort of action-oriented carousel looking for the next magic pill strategy: We're hoping that this time our actions will produce different results. But the linchpin, the mechanism that changes the entire dynamic of your life, are your beliefs. Change your beliefs and you change the results. Change your beliefs and you change your life.

Your brain is a goal achieving machine. If I were to follow you for a few days and observe your daily life - what you do; take a look at how much you make; see what kind of relationships you're in; evaluate your health, I could tell you precisely what you believe. When I Iisten to private clients I start each session by just letting them talk to me uninterrupted about their lives: No-one is listened to for ten minutes without interruption under normal circumstances in everyday life. I simply ask “What would you like to think about and what are your thoughts?” This comes from Nancy Kline's 'Thinking Environment Model'. It feels great for the coachee! By listening intently to their stories it is clear to me what they believe. One client of mine, David, struggled to grow his business for over two years and talked about his businesses having been in a drought. None of his beliefs about himself were necessarily true. They were just ideas: But ideas are alive. And given enough time and energy and trajectory a belief is 100% destined to objectify itself into your reality. Change their trajectory and you change the direction of your future. I helped David see that his business wasn't in a drought but in a healthy productive and very much needed period of reorganisation. Within six months he was generating more revenue more easily than ever before. But until we were able to identify the limiting beliefs or inner conflicts that David had been caring for most of his life and transform those limiting beliefs into empowered 'limitless beliefs' that were in alignment with the results that he wanted to produce it was nearly impossible to change his circumstances or results. Beliefs are the linchpin to transformation. Most people fail to appreciate the profound impact that beliefs have on their daily lives - not just the thoughts that you have, but the feelings you feel and the way you perceive your circumstances and experiences. Even the daily decisions you make, the way you have conversations, the restaurants you select, the seat you choose, and who you sit next to. They are all driven by beliefs and thoughts that have an influence on whether you will produce the desired results you have in any area of your life or whether you will continue to experience the absence of those results. Think about it - these seemingly random choices create the entire container within which your reality exists. But they're all driven by one thing - your core beliefs. Your beliefs dictate your destiny.

Your choices are all connected to a sophisticated invisible structure of unconscious choices and decisions that you are making in order to orchestrate the experience that nobody wants to do business with you. We are all operating within one infinitely intelligent system that is interacting with itself and with us to align an entire network of individual circumstances, and situations toward the production of highly predictable outcomes. You have to looking within to identify the psychological cause that was the driving force of your experience.

Don’t look outside your Self to explain why it was happening and how to fix it. The good news is now that you understand it's not anything external like your sales skills or bad luck that's producing undesired results, we can work on shifting the one thing that's causing this repetitive experience - your beliefs. Change your belief and your change your outcomes. You don't have to believe in a 'law of attraction' or 'magic' of the Universe to understand how every single result you do or do not create in any aspect of your life is a result of your beliefs. Beliefs make up who you are BEing, which is the fundamental basis of manifestation and abundance. This is how the miracles (which are very real) of the Universe work. This is how you create your highest possibilty. It's also literally how the human BEing operating system works. The psychological sciences explain quite clearly that your brain is a goal achieving machine and the instructions it is operating against or the assumptions or beliefs you have about life. Your beliefs are informing your conscious and unconscious mind and are bringing forth into your reality exactly what it is that you believe. Without much effort, you can radically transform your external reality when you adjust your inner architecture or attitude. But if you truly want to transform your life you must become 100% committed faithful and loyal to the idea that you are creating the experience of of your life by the design of your own thinking. You must become what I call ‘radically responsible.’ You must accept that every single experience you are are not having is a direct result of what you believe. There are no exceptions. The moment you attribute an explanation to a force outside your Self you create a precedent where some things are within your control and others are not. Sure, the economy may be bad but some people are thriving. Yes, the prognosis may not be good, but some people recover from it. OK the relationship may have challenges, but other couples are able to recreate their passion. The moment you give power to a cause outside your limitless beliefs you lose the power to change your circumstances.

There isn’t anything in your life that you cannot transform by changing your beliefs about it. In fact, there is no force more powerful in the world than a changed mind. When you commit to the radical responsibility, and you have a framework for transforming your limiting beliefs, and you stay loyal to that practice on a moment-by-moment basis, any change you can imagine becomes possible. In the next article in this series of three articles about 'changing your mind', I'm going to teach you the neuroscience of transformation and beliefs: Where they're actually stored, how to access them, and how to begin to change them. We will literally be rewiring your brain.

Before we jump into that it may be helpful to do a quick inventory of your limiting beliefs. Researchers have identified over 1000 limiting beliefs that people have. That may sound like a lot but there are less than 100 that comprise the most common limiting beliefs. And only a few that are at the core of all of our suffering such as “I am not loveable, I am not loved, I am not worthy, I will be abandoned, and I will die.” These limiting beliefs are the same as our deepest fears, and they define the human condition. They also define how we heal and recover from the human condition, and human conditioning during our childhood, especially our childhood traumas. I invite you to take just a few minutes to go through the above limiting beliefs (some of these will become clear during psychotherapy, which is a useful discipline that compliments Transformative Life Coaching (TLC)), and see which of the beliefs on the list (“I am not loveable, I am not loved, I am not worthy, I will be abandoned, and I will die”) resonate with you. If they feel familiar that means the resonance or energy of the belief is inside you. These are something that you'll likely want to address with the tools from this series of articles and TLC in general, along with psychological approaches.

Certainly, it is possible to have empowering and limiting beliefs about the same subject. For example, some days you feel you're good enough but other days you feel like you're not good enough. Perhaps even on the same day or even the same hour! That's normal. The work we're going to be doing throughout the rest of this journey is to pull the weeds of those limiting beliefs out, so they no longer hold you back from your expanded goals, vision, Real Personal Power, and full potential. Doing a quick inventory of your psychological warehouse will be invaluable as we move forward. Because you want an awareness of your biggest limiting beliefs as we do this inner work together. Once finished with your reading today take just five minutes to go through these limiting beliefs. You may be surprised at what you find. In the next article I'll give you even more context around what your limiting beliefs really are and why they can seem so elusive even when you're committed to your personal growth potential.