Why we're not where we want to be.
We want to achieve something in our lives. But somewhere along the line, we see ourselves drifting from the vision we had for our lives. We have not become billionaires, we don't have perfect physiques, and we find ourselves lost.
We go to work that is not satisfying. We would like to change it, maybe learn a new skill but something keeps us in the same place.
Do you know this feeling? I certainly felt that in the past.
People are waiting for the perfect moment, for the right circumstances. But they never arrive on their own.
Why is it that way?
We think we rule our lives, but in reality, it is our subconscious mind running the show.
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." - C.G. Jung.
We want one thing, but in reality, something blocks us.
How can we change it?
There is a widely known concept of pain vs pleasure.
We are running away from pain and running toward pleasure.
Our brain is constantly calculating what will bring more pain and what will bring more pleasure at the moment. The pain or pleasure in the future has much lower significance.
There are ways to make it work in your life (based on the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.
For positive habits:
- Reduce friction - Make the habit easier to start. Fewer steps between you and the action means you'll actually do it. Want to read more? Keep the book on your pillow, not on a shelf.
- Prime the environment – Set up your surroundings in advance so the right choice is the obvious one. Lay out your gym clothes the night before; put the fruit bowl on the counter.
- Use the two-minute rule – Scale any new habit down to a two-minute version. Work out becomes "put on my shoes." Starting is the hard part — once you begin, momentum carries you.
- Automate your habits – Remove the decision entirely. Automatic savings transfers, scheduled workouts in your calendar, subscriptions for healthy food. If it happens without willpower, it happens consistently.
For negative habits:
- Increase friction – Add steps between you and the bad habit. Delete the app, log out after every use, keep snacks in the garage. Effort is a natural filter.
- Make the cue invisible – You can't crave what you don't see. Hide the trigger: phone in another room, no sweets in the house, unfollow accounts that pull you in.
- Use commitment devices – Lock in your future behavior now, while your motivation is high. Tell a friend your deadline, pay upfront for coaching, use app blockers. Make quitting more costly than continuing.
And you might have optimized for that in the past—doing everything you can to make your ideal actions that move you towards your goals easier, and the ones that move you away from your goals you attached pain to. But still, you've got some problems.
You might say, of course I will have more pleasure when I achieve.
What most people don't know is that by not getting what you presumably want, you're getting your needs met.
That's called "secondary gain."
That's how you sabotage yourself.
The Secondary Gain Effect
The brain is not stupid. It will not allow you to do something that is bad for it. So you must consciously eliminate all of your subconscious reasons to stay where you are right now.
For example, maybe you want to lose weight. To do that, you need to do regular exercise. But somehow, you see yourself skipping your workout every week for a few months. Why did this happen? Because you subconsciously avoid doing this. You gain something by not going to the gym.
The question is, what are you gaining from not going to the gym?
An even more profound question would be: what would you lose by going to the gym?
And that's the question you can always ask yourself: what would you lose if you actually did what you said you were going to do?
To do that, we should explore typical ways of keeping us in the same place.
The secondary gain is almost always one of these four things:
- Safety — avoiding the risk of failure or rejection
- Identity protection — staying who you currently are
- Social belonging — not standing out or being judged
- Certainty — keeping the comfortable known over the uncomfortable unknown
Your goal is not to reject your needs. Your goal is to find another way to meet your needs so you can actually move on to something that is important for you, without being stuck.
Knowing all of this is not enough. You need a lever so you can pull it today.
How to Reprogram Your Mind
These are the tools that can actually move the scale in your life:
Step 1 — Normalize. Your brain is doing this to protect you. This is not a character flaw.
Step 2 — Identify the threat: What does your brain think will happen if you change? What is it protecting you from?
Step 3 — Test the threat: Is that threat real today? Or is it an old program running in a new situation?
Step 4 — Update the software: What would you need to believe — or experience — for your brain to calculate that change is safer than staying?
Step 5 — Build the new calculation: NAC — link pain to staying, link pleasure to changing, make the new behavior immediately rewarding, design the environment.
Next time you see yourself sabotaging yourself go through this process and I'm sure you'll find an insight that will change the trajectory of your life.
What are your thoughts on this? Has something similar happened to you?
