attitude

The ‘F It’ Moment: How to Stop Being Intimidated by Life

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Stop being intimidated

One of the biggest problems I see people having to deal with when I’m coaching is that they’ve become INTIMIDATED by life.

This can show up in all kinds of different ways but the impact of having this problem is always the same: it stops them from taking the kind of ACTION they really want to be taking and from getting all of the amazing benefits that only action can bring.

In my own life, I struggled with this problem when I was younger and I’d been conditioned to stop believing in myself by various unhealthy influences in my life.

It was only when I really reached BREAKING POINT in my late teens and realised that the ideas in my head were stopping me from getting the RESULTS that I wanted from life that I was able to have a breakthrough moment of thinking “F it” and just decided to do whatever the hell I wanted (and disappeared to Japan).

That might sound a little reckless but – in retrospect – when you’ve been locked in your own MIND for however many years and then projected the mental cage outwards into the world around you then having a “F it” moment can be the only way out.

In fact, when things get serious enough and you resist reality for long enough – by NOT ACCEPTING YOURSELF – then eventually you’ll reach that crossroads where the only two options are to either keep resisting in a futile attempt to try and stay the same or to step up and say “F it” and then do something that might actually change your life and set you free.

These days I’m not intimidated by life at all and it’s because I put myself on a path of going out there and actually FIGURING OUT FOR MYSELF who I am and what I’m capable of (and not judging my own self-worth based on the results that I got) instead of letting the world TELL ME who I am and believing it without any real thought.

I could probably have never put myself on that path – or would’ve at least taken a lot longer to get there – if I didn’t reach that point of just saying “F it” and going out there and getting over my fear of truly LIVING.

If you find yourself being intimidated by life then the way out is REALITY but before you find it you might have to find yourself saying “F it” so that you can step outside of your programming and just going out and taking ACTION (the only real ‘cure’ for anything – especially the cure for a life lived from behind a mental cage).

This article will help you understand what that means and what you can do to start feeling truly ALIVE again.

Here we go:

Symptoms of Being Intimidated by Life

When we become intimidated by life we either STOP taking action completely or we only take the actions that are within our comfort zone and so won’t STRETCH us or show us the EDGE of our ideas about ourselves.

When this happens, we just end up living an inauthentic or UNREAL life where we ultimately play the role of a pawn in somebody else’s chess game (some boss we don’t even care about, some domineering partner or family member, or simply our ideas about ‘society’ as a whole).

The most common place we end up when we’re intimidated like this is the WAGE CAGE (i.e. some ‘job’ that you found yourself in because you forgot you could actually CHOOSE your own life if you stepped up and focused on the real stuff).

In short, we end up in this UNREAL STATE because by giving into intimidation we end up giving up our ACTIVE POWER and then listlessly floating along through life without any direction.

The way back to reality is to recognise the symptoms of living in this unreal manner, saying “F it”, and then getting back on track to finding our REAL LIVES again.

If you’ve become intimidated then you’ll probably suffer from some or all of the following symptoms:

Passive Mindset

When you become intimidated by life you’ll develop an UNREAL MINDSET that stops you from taking action.

This might show up in a variety of ways but the most common are things like negative thinking (which is almost always a way of trying to justify not taking action), ‘excusitis’ which is just a fancy way of saying that you’ll constantly come up with EXCUSES not to do what needs to be done, and self-limiting beliefs that tell you there’s something fundamentally ‘wrong’ with you or the world so there’s no point even trying.

All of these ways of SEEING and interpreting ourselves, the world, and reality just cause us to try and avoid acting in the world as a way of staying in our comfort zone (where we often don’t even want to be anyway because we’re miserable there as a result of resisting REALITY).

All of this is really caused by being INTIMIDATED by the perceived consequences of taking action and the emotions we’ll have to face by doing so (regardless of if we ‘fail’ or ‘succeed’).

Restlessness

As a result of not taking ACTION, you will probably become restless and irritable. This is simply because you know that there’s more to life but your intimidation has stopped you from going out and getting it.

When you don’t ACT, then you don’t let your unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ (shame, guilt, and/or trauma) heal itself in the way that it needs to and instead you ‘block’ the healing process behind the static beliefs that are stopping you from acting in the first place.

This causes inner friction and frustration that is experienced as RESTLESSNESS.  This is really just the DESIRE of your real self – which you’ve become detached from – screaming to be expressed in the world (and the only way you can do that is by becoming AWARE of the real ‘stuff’, ACCEPTING what’s true, and then ACTING on it).

Never Speaking Up

Intimidated people are scared of the TRUTH and for that reason they refuse to speak up and share the truth as they see it.  A big part of this is because they literally fear the truth itself because it would show the futility of their PASSIVE way of thinking and being in the world.

On a perhaps simpler level, people who are INTIMIDATED by life are almost always shame-driven individuals who have a feeling that they’re not good enough following them around like a ghost (which it is…a ghost of the past) and so they don’t want to risk ‘rocking the boat’ with their opinions or ideas in case somebody disagrees with them (which to the shame-driven individual is something that triggers all kinds of unsavoury emotions).

For this reason, when people have become intimidated by life they rarely – perhaps even never – share with others what they really think, feel, or want to do for fear of being rejected (not realising that by not sharing they’ve already REJECTED THEMSELVES).

Negative Thinking

We spoke about this above as a symptom of having a PASSIVE MINDSET (which all intimidated people eventually develop). Just to clarify a little more, negative thinking is ultimately just a form of UNREAL PESSIMISM that come from somebody trying to DEFLECT life at all costs by trying to explain it away.

That might sound a bit technical but all it means is this:

When people are intimidated it’s almost always because they have unresolved SHAME that causes them to feel like they’re not good enough in some way.

In order to try and hide from this shameful feeling (which is never real, always something they’ve picked up from outside of themselves and then taken onboard as a judgement that they continue to hypnotise themselves with), the intimidated person will concoct a POINT OF VIEW of life that justifies the story they’re telling themselves so that they can try to HIDE from their shame instead of dissolving it (by taking action).

This UNREAL POV is always negative because negativity always explains away action.

In practical terms, it just means that the intimidated person will always look on the (unreal) dark side of things in order to find reasons not to do the things that will actually free them (and you can always find a million reasons not to do things if you set your mind on doing that).

Procrastination

Another thing that intimidated people will do to avoid taking action is to procrastinate.

In simple terms, all that means is that they will focus on taking actions that feel like they’re doing something but that are actually a distraction from the REAL stuff they could be doing that will make a  big difference to their lives.

For example, I know a few coaches that would benefit from organising and having SALES CALLS but because they’re worried that they’ll be rejected or even that they’ll be successful and actually have to coach somebody they instead procrastinate by playing around on social media all day or doing other unimportant things that are their ‘hobbies’ but won’t really get them anywhere.

These tasks allow them to tell themselves the story that they’re ‘busy’ and doing things whilst also (conveniently) avoiding the things that would get them where they want to be (with the cost of having to push through their comfort zones and face themselves and other people).

Not Taking the Actions You Really Want To Take

In short, then, when you’re an INTIMIDATED person, you might be ‘busy’ in the sense that you’re constantly doing things but you probably won’t be doing the things you really want to do because you’re AFRAID of having to face yourself at some level.

Some people can spend their whole lives wasting time on distractions and busyness for this reason. If you realise you have this problem as you’re reading this then the question becomes: “What are you going to DO about it?”

Maybe it’s time to say “F it” and do some of that stuff you’ve been putting off that could change your life?

Being Outcome-Dependent Instead of Outcome-Independent

I’ve already spoken about Outcome-Independence a lot on this site (because it’s so important). If you haven’t read the main article and you’re unfamiliar with the term, then all it means is that you can live in one of two ways:

-1: Outcome-dependence (Unreal): Where your levels of self-acceptance are CONDITIONAL and affected by the outcomes you get as you go through life.

-2: Outcome-independence (Real): Where you “do your best and forget the rest” but your levels of self-acceptance are UNCONDITIONAL and not affected by the outcomes you get.

In other words, with outcome-dependence you NO LONGER feel ‘good’ about yourself if you fail to get the results you want whereas if you’re outcome-independent then you still feel good even if you ‘fail’ as you know you can pick yourself up again, learn what needs to be learned, and either try again or ACCEPT some reality that can’t be changed.

When we’re INTIMIDATED by life, we end up putting our goals on a pedestal – because we think they’ll fill the void inside ourselves (that can only be filled by ACCEPTANCE OF REALITY) – and so we inflate their importance to the extent that we become INTIMIDATED BY THE THINGS WE WANT.

Again, this comes back to our relationships with ourselves because if we become a shame-dissolving person instead of a shame-driven one it becomes a lot easier to say “F it” and go out and chase our goals in an outcome-independent way.

Imposter Syndrome

If an intimidated person actually does manage to overcome themselves and take ACTION without working on their emotional ‘stuff’ then they find themselves in a position where they feel like a fraud (Imposter Syndrome).

This is ultimately because there ends up being a gap between the way that they show themselves to the world and the SHAME that they still feel as they used action as a vessel to try and run from it instead of dissolving it.

When this happens, the intimidated person ends up being worried about being ‘found out’ (i.e. having the world reveal itself to agree with the skewed distortions of their shame).

This just adds a whole new layer of intimidation that they have to deal with because they have to find new ways to keep ‘hiding’ themselves so that they won’t be exposed as a shame-driven individual.

In reality, they could just say “F it” and keep doing what’s worked for them to get them where they are but they’re so afraid of being “found out” that they take everything too seriously to see clearly.

General Lack of Confidence

Perhaps it goes without saying, but when people become intimidated by life, they lack confidence.

This is usually for two reasons that build on each other:

-1: They keep telling themselves a story about why they can’t/shouldn’t/best not take the ACTION that they want to take (and because practise makes perfect this causes them to miss out on their own potential).

-2: Because they don’t take this action, they end up not getting results (which just reinforces the unreal story they’re telling themselves).

Once you’ve stopped taking action and you end up believing that the consequences of not taking action are WHO YOU ARE then you end up in a self-perpetuating loop that causes your confidence to dwindle.

The longer you stay in this loop the worse things can get. It’s so bad that some people spend their whole lives on this hamster wheel, going around in circles and ruining their own lives.

A shortcut to getting out of it is to realise how bad things have become, have an “F it” moment, and go out there and start ACTING again (which as you build momentum and get results will increase your confidence).

Anxiety and/or Depression

If you don’t solve the problem of intimidation then you increase your odds of becoming anxious and/or depressed. This doesn’t mean that all anxiety and depression are caused by being intimidated but it does mean that a lot of it is.

The short version is this:

Anxiety will enter your life when you create a FALSE IMAGE of yourself in an attempt to hide from your intimidation instead of pushing through it and see what’s actually REAL.

This false image just causes problems because you’ll use it as a FILTER to try and avoid reality and avoiding reality will constantly add friction to your life (which is experienced as ‘anxiety’).

Depression enters your life when you’re so intimidated that you stop MOVING. This is a consequence of developing the passive mindset mentioned above – when you start to see and think in this way then you just end up taking yourself out of action, away from any sense of purpose, and experiencing live at the level of existence alone (instead of thriving in life).

In both cases, you need to learn to say “F it” so you can start moving in a more REAL way again.

How You Became Intimidated

If you recognise the above symptoms in yourself then there’s a good chance you’ve become intimidated by life (that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re living in constant fear but it means the limits of your fear are ripe for exploration).

This means that at some level you need to say “F it” and to start taking the right kind of action again so that you can get RESULTS from life that are REAL to you.

It might be helpful to know how you ended up being intimidated in the first place (if you look at kids, for example, they have to be TAUGHT to be intimidated by life – that means in your own case it’s something that you had to learn. The good news is that if you LEARNED it then you can also UNLEARN it).

Here are some of the most common reasons for becoming intimidated by life:

Basically, you got sent into your HEAD somehow.

The short-version of what happened is that you got sent into your HEAD for whatever reason and decided to identify with it and stay there.

Normally, this is because in our early years we are made to feel ASHAMED or GUILTY in some way (or in the most extreme cases, TRAUMATISED) and it causes us to think ourselves into a fragmented version of ourselves that disowns certain emotions and desires.

For example, maybe you had a high school teacher who insulted your artwork and so you created a ‘version’ of yourself that has no interest in artistic pursuits.  The original interest is still down there – in the Shadow Territory – but you create a mental image of yourself that denies it.

This is just a hypothetical example but the point is that something happens that sends you into your head and your INTIMIDATION is just your ego’s way of keeping you there.

You might’ve listened to OTHER PEOPLE instead of yourself.

The only person who can live your life for you is…YOU.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where people will attempt to give us all kinds of unwarranted and unreal advice about how we ‘should’ live our lives.

More often than not, this advice is usually just passed on from one INTIMIDATED person to another and so it just ends up doing more harm than good.

If you listen to this advice then you’ll end up being intimidated and not listening to your own REAL VOICE which knows there’s nothing to be intimidated by.

You compared yourself to others (usually the highlight reel).

We can become intimidated – especially in the age of (anti)social media – when we look at the lives other people are portraying themselves to be living and compare ourselves and our lives to what we see.

The problem – as the old saying goes – is that when we do this we’re comparing our behind-the-scenes footage to their highlight reels. This can end up making us feel that we’re not “good enough” (that shame again) and this stops us from taking action (which, ironically, would get us where we want to be).

The solution is to realise that you can’t be compared to other people because you’re living your own life and you’ve had your own experiences which have made you the UNIQUE person that you are right now.

Comparing yourself to others is just a way of NOT ACCEPTING YOURSELF (because of the unresolved emotional ‘stuff’) and this prevents you from accepting who you are and then expressing it with your ACTIONS.

You lost your balls somehow (but you can get them back)

The super short version? Something has happened to you that’s caused you to lose your BALLS and to overthink every little detail of your life instead of ACTING on it.

You can get your balls back but you need to unlearn all of the BS that’s stopping you from recognising the truth about life: that the only person with any POWER over your life is YOU.

You let your ‘protective’ emotions like anger be turned against you (often into depression or sentimentality).

Sometimes, emotions that help us protect ourselves and to define healthy boundaries in our lives are ‘shamed’ or belittled by ‘guilt’ (in an attempt to control us) and so we develop an unhealthy relationship with them. The most common emotion that this happens with is ANGER.

When we disown our anger then it doesn’t ‘go’ anywhere – it just becomes something that we stop expressing. Because we have a mental ‘block’ that stops us expressing it externally, our anger simply TURNS AGAINST US and will be experienced as a hypercritical inner voice that constantly judges us, etc. eventually leading to a lack of action and then DEPRESSION.

Alternatively, we may also end up being overly sentimental about things because we end up experiencing everything through the FILTER of depression that a detachment from our healthy emotions can cause (and because a lack of anger can stop us from moving forward with our PURPOSE).

When we end up in this situation, we end up being intimidated by life because we think that we lack the strength to handle it (when, actually, we’re just hiding this strength from ourselves).

You let your interpretation of the past skew your vision of yourself in the present.

In short, if you’re intimidated by life in the present then you have a DISTORTED interpretation of the past and who you have become because of it.

What this might look like is different for everybody but it will usually involve you writing some kind of STORY for yourself to try and live out that DISOWNS vital parts of yourself because of shame, guilt, and/or trauma.

If you want to be REAL again and to stop being intimidated by life then you need to start writing a REAL STORY (or more accurately unlearning the BS story that stopped you expressing the real story in the first place).

This will probably mean FORGIVING YOURSELF at some level so that you can let go of the beliefs you picked up that caused you to be intimidated in the first place.

A short cut to doing this? You guessed it: you have to learn to say “F it”.

How To Stop Being Intimidated.

So how do we bring this all together and get life moving again? It’s simple in theory but not always in practice (which is the core problem).

The short answer is that you need to start talking ACTION.

The main SYMPTOM of the PROBLEM of being intimidated is that you stop taking REAL ACTION and then your life ends up being some unreal thing that you don’t want it to be.

You could spend the rest of your life trying to figure out exactly why you became intimidated in the first place (and maybe after reading the above list you have some basic idea) but the bottom line is that it doesn’t matter THAT MUCH.

If you want to REVERSE the symptoms of being intimidated then you need to start taking some kind of ACTION in your life.

More than that, you need to start taking REAL action so that you’re not just distracting yourself from the REAL version of yourself and making the problem worse (by being busy for the sake of being busy and procrastinating, etc.).

What this means in the context of your own life might be different to what it means in anybody else’s life but probably there is some ‘thing’ that you’ve wanted to be doing for a while but keep finding BS reasons (really EXCUSES) to put off doing.

If you can think of something like that then you’ve just given yourself as starting point.

All you really need to do now is to say “F it” and START doing it.

It’s either that or keep being intimidated and living an unreal life for the rest of your days.

 

If this story inspired or helped you then please share it with others! 🙂

Sign up for my mailing list if you want to stay in touch (you’ll get access to the 7-Day Personality Transplant for uncovering your life purpose):

If you want to find your own real life, start moving towards unconditional acceptance, and finding a sense of purpose then check out this 7-Day Course that you can start right now:

 

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The Faces of Humanity:  How We’re All Made Up of Different Versions of the Same Person

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Live Without Your Mask

There’s a (pretty) famous Japanese proverb that talks about how we all have 3 faces.  It goes like this:

“The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends, and your family. The third face, you never show anyone.”

I think it’s true, but – actually – we can take it a little deeper by exploring how there are more than three faces that the average person ‘has’ and also where they  come from and why.

Perhaps even more importantly than raising our AWARENESS of this ‘stuff’, we can also ask ourselves what we need to ACCEPT, in the face of these faces, as well as what ACTION we can take to improve our lives and grow more real accordingly.

(Awareness -> Acceptance -> Action – it works every time: see ‘Shadow Life: Freedom from BS in an Unreal World’ if you wanna apply this to your life as a whole).

If you read this article, it will help you to make sense of the MECHANICS of your relationships with yourself and the world and to start unblocking yourself and moving forward towards the only thing that really matters: an experience of WHOLENESS (or ‘connection’) to yourself, the world, and reality.

The ‘problem’ with all of these faces we each have is that we either think they don’t ‘exist’ or we think that only one of them ‘exists’ and try to ignore other parts of ourselves.

Actually, it’s completely normal and healthy to have multiple versions of ourselves in different contexts and situations because different contexts and situations allow us to express certain REAL qualities about ourselves that we might not otherwise be able to express.

Everything real about us is always within us – sometimes, it just needs a little bit of help to express itself.

The ‘FACES’ we show the world aren’t necessarily the same as masks (which mean that we’re ‘hiding’) – although, of course, they sometimes can be if we have an unreal relationship with our own emotional ‘stuff’ (shame, guilt, and trauma in the shadow or fear, pride, and desire of the ego, etc.).

All of us are FLUID because reality is in FLUX – sometimes, we just forget that and this can cause confusion if we think that we’re supposed to be ‘static’ (which is just UNREAL).

These are the most common faces of the ‘average’ human being (if such a thing exists). As usual, they fit into the only three levels that anything can fit into: The Self, the World, and Reality.

How many do you recognise in yourself?

Self-Facing Faces

At the level of our relationship with our ‘Self’ we have four faces (at least). Whatever it is that we really are is what EMERGES in the interplay between the four of them.

 

Face 1: Who You Wanna Be (To Yourself)

The first face we all have is the ‘Future Facing Face’ (or whatever you wanna call it). This is basically the face we carry of the person we want to BECOME.

This is comprised of all kinds of things that are related to the desired future we have for ourselves and we have to constantly SHOW ourselves this face in order to remind ourselves of where we want or even INTEND to be going.

It is comprised of things like:

-Our standards

-Our goals

-Our ambitions

-Our vision

-Etc.

Some people show themselves this face more than others and – indeed – you have to keep showing yourself this face in order to BECOME this face.

The reason that a lot of people become stuck or stagnate in life is because they haven’t cultivated this ‘face’ and given themselves a direction to move in.

That’s when other less ‘positive’ (or – at least – future facing faces) faces tend to get a hold of them and weigh their sense of identity down in an unreal direction.

The only ‘problem’ with this ‘Future Facing Face’ is that if we have an unhealthy relationship with our own emotional ‘stuff’ (shame, guilt, and trauma etc.) then the future becomes a projection of our EGO, rather than anything REAL (because we are creating goals and a vision of ourselves based on the fundamental assumptions of denying who we really are as a way of avoiding facing our shadow ‘stuff’ etc.)

Face 2: Who You Think You  Are Now (To Yourself)

The second ‘face’ that most of us have is the face of who we think we are NOW (i.e. in current reality). The keyword there is ‘think’ because it’s a product of our thoughts and mindset, not who we necessarily are in TRUTH.

Some of our thoughts might be ‘real’ or accurate (i.e. aligned with actual, valid truth) but often they aren’t because we get caught up in our INTERPRETATIONS of life, rather than life itself.

Anyway, this is the ‘Now Face’ and it’s a product of all of our self-assessments and conclusions about ourselves based on where we’ve been, where we think we’re going (based on the Future Facing Face), and the ways in which we JUDGE ourselves in the present to varying degrees of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (which is what all judgements deal with).

It’s ultimately, a product of the STORY we tell ourselves about who we happen to be right now.

The interesting thing (imo) – and the thing that makes the biggest difference to the quality of our lives – is not necessarily the STORY itself, but the WAY IN WHICH WE TELL THIS STORY.

If we tell the story in a way that is fixed as a FINAL DRAFT then we will stop ourselves moving and take ourselves out of reality (and be less likely to show ourselves a real Future Facing Face because we have conditioned ourselves to be PASSIVE).

If we tell ourselves the story in way where it is constantly being written and updated then we will be more likely to keep learning and move into real life (whatever that is in the context of our own lives).

Face 3: Who You Fear You Might Be

The third face is the ‘Fear Face’ – this is the face of who you FEAR you might be. This is usually shown to us when our emotional ‘stuff’ gets a hold of us and distorts our view of ourselves by our SHAME, GUILT, or TRAUMA (or a combination of the three).

When shame distorts our vision of yourself, it will affect your view of both your ‘Future Facing Face’ and your ‘Now Face’ because it will take unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ from the PAST and cause you to stop trusting and believing in yourself (so these three faces are ultimately about the Future, the Present, and the Past and your real or unreal relationship with each).

This SHAME will tell you that you aren’t the type of person to be able to get the future that you want.

It will tell you that who you are right NOW is no good.

This is just your FEAR talking and the unresolved emotions you carry within yourself that make you feel like you’re not good enough. The FEAR FACE is the one that you show yourself when you start to believe that this shame is the truth about you (because you haven’t started to DISSOLVE the shame by facing REALITY and have instead become driven by it).

It’s the same with GUILT and TRAUMA:

When guilt distorts your vision, you convince yourself that you’re a ‘bad’ person in the present and that you ‘don’t deserve’ the future that you want. This is just your emotional ‘stuff’ showing you your FEAR FACE.

Trauma – which makes us feel powerless – will  distort your ability to tap into your own power and will make you feel that you can’t CREATE the real future that your (real) ‘Future Facing Face’ wants to you to move towards (because it will distort your view and tell you that you’re passive).

There is more variation and complexity here but  – ultimately – you have a face you show yourself in your weaker moments that is purely comprised of your FEARS about yourself.

This is ‘normal’ and part of the human experience but the more overpowering your emotions are the more you will show yourself this face and start to believe that it’s who ‘you’ really are.

If you listen enough and believe it, that’s when you stop moving and stop growing REAL and hide behind ego instead (which is just a mental box you put yourself in to keep all your emotions and ‘shadow’ stuff at bay).

Face 4:  Your Shadow Face / The Unknown

Beneath the surface of all of the faces we do show ourselves from time to time, there is another UNKNOWN FACE that bubbles away beneath the conscious experience of ourselves and that drives the course of our lives without us even knowing (not consciously at least).

This is our SHADOW FACE and it’s comprised of all the different things about ourselves (qualities, goals, ideas, ‘parts’, etc.) that we have at some stage in our lives cast aside and disowned as being ‘unacceptable’.

This usually happens because the World CONDITIONED us to believe that certain things shouldn’t exist and then we hypnotised ourselves to live as though they don’t – this being the case, over the course of our lives we try and act like these things don’t exist or suppress them (with socially unacceptable emotions like ‘rage’, for example).

The TRUTH of the matter, however, is that these ‘hidden’ parts of ourselves are just as REAL as the parts that we do face and – as what’s real is always real – these parts never go anywhere.

In fact, they’re not even ‘parts’, they’re just certain EXPRESSIONS of what we are as a WHOLE. We just conditioned ourselves not to EXPRESS them.

Even though we try and hide this ‘Unknown Face’ from ourselves, the ‘parts’ that comprise it never go anywhere and continue to call for our attention (so we can integrate them) from beneath the surface of ourselves.

One of the most common ways that these parts ‘call out’ to us is through PROJECTION.

All that means – at the simplest level – is that we try and hide these parts behind the CONSCIOUS FACES we show ourselves but UNCONSCIOUSLY we project them onto the world outside of us.

A classic way of determining this kind of thing is to look at what annoys us in other people.  For example, if somebody’s RAGE annoys you – it’s probably because you haven’t ACCEPTED your own rage that’s bubbling beneath the surface of your conscious faces.

What this means in the context of this article is that we all have a FOURTH FACE: the Shadow Face that is shown to us as a reflection of ourselves in the world or as a projection reflected back from others (if we can decode the matrix).

Facing this ‘Unknown’ face is the best chance we have at growing more WHOLE (instead of just being fragmented by only facing the fragmented, surface level faces created as a response to keep the shadow ‘stuff’ at bay).

World-Facing Faces

There are two main types of World-Facing Faces that we show the world (and which are affected by our relationships with ourselves and our ‘Self-Facing Faces’):

Face 1: The Character You  Play In MOST Social Situations To Survive Them (Who You  Show To Strangers/People You Just Met or Want to Keep at A Distance).

The first face that we have for the WORLD is the default face that we want to show other people. This is influenced by all of the SELF-FACING FACES and how we ‘feel’ about ourselves but it’s also inspired by two other things:

  1. How we need others to see us (because of our emotional ‘stuff’).
  2. How we have LEARNED to survive social situations in the past

This ‘DEFAULT’ FACE is just the one that we use to make sure we can get through life on a daily basis and to interact with people we might come across like strangers we have to talk to (people that work in coffee shops, taxi drivers, people we meet for the first time at networking events, etc. etc.).

We will try and COME ACROSS in a certain light in order to reinforce the stories we tell ourselves because of our Self-Facing Faces and the ‘Shadow Stuff’ we want to keep at bay but we will also put on a strategic way of being based on how we survived social situations in the past.

This might involve using strategies like ‘being polite’ or maybe even something like trying to be ‘humorous’ and making jokes. Whatever strategy you use, it’s ultimately about gaining CONTROL of the interaction so that you show the face you want to show.

Everybody does the same thing and it’s something we have to do to keep ‘society’ going.  Depending on how REAL you are with yourself will affect how much of your real self can shine through(the most whole version of yourself possible in a given moment).

Even if you’re relatively REAL, there will still be a slight warming up period around new people whilst you figure them out – whatever strategy you use to ‘warm up’ is just your DEFAULT FACE for the world. It’s not ‘You’ – it’s something that you CHOSE based on your conditioning and expectations of yourself and others.

Face 2: The Face You Show The World In Different Partnerships or Groups (E.G. Might Be Different Among Friends That Parents).

This is where things get (more) complicated.  There are multiple versions of this face which is the face that you show different PARTNERSHIPS or GROUPS that you’re involved in based on your own relationship with yourself (and your ‘Self-Facing Faces’) and the EXPECTATIONS that whatever group you’re in has for you (and what you think about these expectations and whether or not you care about modifying the way you come across because of them).

Here are some simple examples of your CONTEXTUAL FACES:

You might have a face that you show your parents that you wouldn’t show your friends.

You might have a face that you show your friends that you wouldn’t show your parents.

You might have a face that you show your boss that you wouldn’t show your wife/husband.

You might have a face that you show your wife/husband that you wouldn’t show your friends.

You might have a face that you show yourself (one of your Self-Facing Faces) that you wouldn’t show any of these people (not a group, just here to demonstrate the point).

The short-version of all this is that each one of these partnerships or groups forms a new SYSTEM and you need different faces to SURVIVE them because of the roles you’re asked to play and the EXPECTATIONS that come with that role.

You can still be REAL in each of these context but how much realness is able to creep out depends on the DEPTH OF INTIMACY in each of these relationships and whether or not you’re allowing expectations to be more main motivation or realness.

The number of these CONTEXTUAL FACES changes and varies over the course of our lifetimes depending on how many different groups we’re engaged in or how big our network is (or isn’t) etc.

Reality-Facing Faces

Even though in reality we are ultimately WHOLE (i.e. not divided into all of the different categories and labels that we use to make sense of the world – which we’re doing in this article too because it’s just how we make ‘sense’ of the world), we have at least two faces that show us a reflection of REALITY.

Face 1: The OBSERVER making sense of all this .

The first of our Reality-Facing Faces is the OBSERVING FACE.  This is just the version of ourselves that occasionally (for most) is able to STEP BACK from the complexity and confusion of the interplay between all of the Self-Facing and World-Facing faces and to watch things unfold.

This Observing Face is important because it is a version of ourselves  that we are able to show ourselves BEYOND JUDGEMENT.

All of the other faces mentioned so far – apart from the SHADOW FACE (which contains who we would be if we stopped judging ourselves)- are ultimately unreal because they involve JUDGEMENT at some level (which is always unreal because all you can do with reality is ACCEPT it – the opposite of judgement).

The OBSERVING FACE is an AWARENESS of what we have observed or are observing and allows us to hold space so that we can start to respond instead of just reacting to the promptings and conditionings of the other faces.

This comes from the place of WHOLENESS that is within us at all times (in fact, is what we are) and allows us to come from a place that’s REAL instead of being a fragmented consequence of our outdated biological wiring, emotional ‘stuff’, or social conditioning and programming (like the other faces mentioned at the levels of self-and world).

The FACT that you can OBSERVE all of the other faces is proof that they are not ‘You’. They are just survival tools that form the foundation of the EGO (which is fragmented, not the bigger which is an EXPERIENCE of being alive which always comes back to AWARENESS).

Face 2: The REAL self (who knows what to do with all this Awareness and to ACCEPT it and to take Action)

The final Reality-Facing Face that’s relevant here is the one (which is really part of the same process) that you show yourself when you ACCEPT what the OBSERVING FACE has become AWARE of and decide to take ACTION based on this (Awareness -> Acceptance -> Action, it works every time).

When you take this kind of REAL ACTION it allows you to stop holding yourself back based on the limitations of your Self-Facing and World-Facing Faces and to put yourself back on track towards a natural DRIVE towards wholeness that we all have.

By taking action you always learn more about reality and you always  become more whole because you  will eventually end up having to bring your SHADOW ‘stuff’ to the surface (as you find the EDGE – i.e. where all your ideas about yourself meet reality and you can grow more REAL).

In short, the realest faces you can show yourself are the ones that EMERGE when you are able to step back from the ‘other’ faces (Self-Facing and World-Facing) and to put yourself on the path of growing real.

When you do this, you realise that you have NO faces – you’re just FACING THE TRUTH and constantly moving forward and experiencing life as a WHOLE.

 

 

If this story inspired or helped you then please share it with others! 🙂

Sign up for my mailing list if you want to stay in touch (you’ll get access to the 7-Day Personality Transplant for uncovering your life purpose):

If you want to find your own real life, start moving towards unconditional acceptance, and finding a sense of purpose then check out this 7-Day Course that you can start right now:

 

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The Cost: Are You Prepared to Pay the Price for Your Real Life?

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If you’re trying to grow more REAL in an unreal world then you’re always going to have to pay a PRICE for your own REALNESS.

This is just the way that things are: if you want something then you have to pay the COST.  This is just a part of the human experience and it’s something that applies to ALL of us.

Our tendency of thinking about these things is that there’s only ever really a ‘cost’ for the ‘bad’ things that happen to us – actually, though, we often find ourselves paying a price just as much, if not more (as we initially perceive it), for the ‘good’ – or REAL – stuff too.

In other words: If you really want something then you’re going to have to pay for it. That’s “the Cost”.

This article will help you in two main ways:

  1. It’s going to help you understand this concept of THE COST so that you can pre-empt it and ready yourself to pay it without becoming disappointed or disillusioned.
  2. It’s going to help you stay motivated and COMMITTED to growing real by showing you that the cost is always worth it so you should always keep growing real no matter what(despite what the world might tell you along the way).

One of the greatest things you can do for yourself and the world is to know what’s REAL about you so that you can add more value to the world as an extension of acting on that AWARENESS (because the only thing that’s actually of any value is the REAL stuff and what you choose to DO with it).

Getting to the stage where you know enough about yourself, the world, and reality to be able to tap into this value and share it is a difficult road in itself – especially when the world is designed to condition us to be pliable and conformist so that we’ll be easier to control.

If you lack awareness of the extra COSTS of walking the REAL path then you might falter (which just means that the world has convinced you to be something and/or somebody that you’re not).

If you’re ready to pay the price and get something REAL then keep reading.

There’s always a price to pay. Especially when you’re shifting from unreal to real life.

“The best things in life are free”, that’s what we’re told but even these “best” things like ‘love’ or ‘kindness’ or ‘friendship’ almost always come with a COST of some kind. It might not be a monetary cost, but it’s always a cost nevertheless.

Maybe that sounds extreme but when you dig into it, you’ll see what I mean:

The COST of love is that you have to let go of your ego and learn not to at least think about other people and their needs(that’s a good thing once you learn how to do it but to the ego it’s a cost which is why so many people find it hard to fall and STAY in love).

The COST of being kind is that sometimes you’ll have to say “Yes” when it might have been easier to say “No” or that you might have to give up the time you could’ve spent on yourself to dedicate to somebody else (and your time, energy, and attention are the most precious things you have).

The COST of friendship is a combination of the two but also that you need to be able to at least offer some kind of VALUE to the relationship (in exchange for value as that’s how real friendship works).

That means that you can’t only TAKE from the relationship and that you have to GIVE something – whatever that is in the context of the relationship is the COST.

Sometimes the cost is worth it, sometimes it isn’t.  Either way, there’s always a cost and that’s just the way it is.

We can say that this is just a principle of being alive as a human being and it basically boils down to the fact that whenever we make a CHOICE then the cost of one thing is always something else (that’s just what a ‘choice’ is by definition).

Sometimes, we CHOOSE things that come with unexpected costs but there’s ALWAYS a cost. Always (just to drill the point home).

You need to understand this so you can get prepare yourself to pay when the time comes.

If you don’t understand this basic REALITY about life then when the costs of your CHOICES do creep in further down the line (as ‘consequences’) then you’ll be disappointed and disillusioned.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t make the choices that have a risk of such negative emotions – it just means that you need to weigh the costs up before you get started (as much as is possible – nobody can predict the future with 100% accuracy).

As a simple example, let’s take two different paths that you might take in life: either stepping up and changing your life by doing that ‘thing’ you want to do (but are afraid of because doing so will disrupt your life), or NOT doing that thing and just leaving things as they are.

Two very different options – 1) doing that ‘thing’ and changing your life or 2) doing nothing and sweeping it under the carpet.

Different paths but both with a COST.

To decide which one to take you need to figure out the BENEFITS or PAYOFF of each one – maybe figuring out your true values and how aligned they are with the goals in question, figuring out how you might benefit financially, in terms of health, emotionally, etc.

A step that a lot of people tend to skip, though, is figuring out ‘THE COST’ (though they might think about their fears or reasons not to get started which are usually just EXCUSES – see below).

In the first case, of going out there and just doing that ‘thing’ whatever it is, the costs might be:

-Having to give up your ‘current’ thing.

-Having people be jealous of you or hate on you for being ‘successful’.

-Having to spend some time learning new skills instead of watching Netflix or whatever.

-Having people think that you’re crazy/weird/unusual or whatever because you’re doing something unconventional.

-Having to listen to people try and persuade you not to do that thing whatever it is.

-Having to RISK failure and the emotional ‘stuff’ that comes with it.

Etc.

Depending on whatever the ‘thing’ is in your own life you could probably come up with a list of costs that’s longer than your arm – and this is just for the ‘good’ things that you want to be doing with your life.

I guess the basic rule is that you can’t have the sweet without the sour – it probably all balances out in the end but you need to know it so you’re not just floating through life with your rose-tinted glasses on setting yourself up for disappointment and disillusionment.

Ask yourself about that ‘thing’ that you think you want: Can you pay the COST(s)? If you can’t then maybe you don’t really want it.

To complicate matters, there’s also the other option: doing NOTHING and trying to forget about that ‘thing’ and just going through the motions of living in the same old way and getting the same old results.

That might seem like a simple way of AVOIDING the costs of going to get that ‘thing’ (which you may have some fear about which has stopped you going for it in the first place), but because EVERYTHING in life comes with an OPPORTUNITY COST, inaction will cost you just as much – or even more – than just getting up and doing that ‘thing’ in the first place.

Let’s say you do decide to do nothing and just leave your life as it is, even though that ‘thing’ (whatever it is) is calling out to you and life will continue to change around you anyway.

The costs might be things like:

-Having to get to the end of your life and REGRETTING never stepping up and doing what you realise you were called for.

-Having to watch other people who have stepped up to do their ‘thing’ doing it and getting RESULTS that you can’t even get close  to (and having to live with jealousy because of it).

-Having to PUT UP with whatever you’re currently putting up with and forcing yourself to tolerate.

-Having to have the people in your life just see you as being somebody who never did that ‘thing’ and never will.

-Having to always wonder if there’s ‘more’ to life or wondering what your real potential might look like (hint: there is more and your real potential looks like freedom).

-Etc.

Again, in the case of your own ‘thing’ it might be a longer list or it might be a shorter one. The point is, though, that – whether you make changes or you don’t – then there’s a COST to pay.

If you’re undecided about taking some action in your life or stepping up and being more REAL or not then you need to ask yourself what the COST of each path is and if you can HANDLE it.

If you can’t handle it then you know that:

  • It’s either not YOUR path and so you can forget about it

Or:

  • You have some kind of mindset issue that needs tweaking because you don’t TRUST in yourself and your ability to handle whatever might arise (and, trust me, when you’re being REAL you’ll be able to handle just about anything).

Basically, it comes down to this: Whether you DO or you DON’T there’s gonna be a COST so the only question is which one do you wanna pay? Do you wanna pay the cost of being UNREAL or do you want to pay the cost of being REAL?

I know what I’d choose every time.

The cost of being unreal is that you’ll always wonder if there’s more, never know your true potential, and probably spend the end of your life regretting all the things you didn’t do but could’ve done if you got over yourself.

Assuming that the ‘thing’ you want to do is actually REAL – i.e. it’s aligned with your TRUE values and intentions and the process of moving towards it will make you more WHOLE, not FRAGMENTED – then the main cost of NOT making the choice and going for it is that you’ll never KNOW yourself, you’ll never know the world, and you’ll never know reality.

This is because the PAYOFF of taking the REAL path is that you will connect with what’s real about you and find a way (that ‘thing’) of expressing it in the world. As you’ll have to do the work to make it happen then you’ll have to BECOME a more real version of yourself to get there. If that payoff is worth more than the regret of not even trying then it’s worth it.

The cost of being real is that when you’re making changes to go from unreal to real you have to let go of a lot of things and when you’re real you’ll have to deal with being hated by unreal people that can’t (currently) do what you’ve done.

The COST of taking the real path is having to LET GO of your ego and the things that are asking you to keep living out an UNREAL version of yourself and your life.

More than that, you’ll also have to pay the price of having to deal with people who haven’t stepped onto the REAL path trying to pull you off course by causing drama, hating, or projecting their own ‘stuff’ onto you (though if other people are constantly causing problems in your life you need to ask yourself if you’re the ‘UNREAL’ one seeing as you’re the common denominator).

The point is that – no matter what you choose – you’re “darned if you do, darned if you don’t”.  That’s just LIFE.

If you want to be REAL, though, you might as well make a CHOICE about what that looks like and the PAYOFF you get rather than just passively letting life happen and paying the costs for something you don’t want instead of something you DO.

In general, as you grow real, you’ll see that ALL COSTS are unreal because what’s real about you can never be taken away from (we’ll talk about that a little further below).

If you’re on a crossroads in life then what that basically means is that your choice is between:

  • An UNREAL life with unreal costs you can’t do anything about because you’re unreal (e.g living a life that’s a consequence of you hiding and paying costs you CAN’T handle because you’re UNREAL).
  • A REAL life with unreal costs that you can do something about because you’re real(e.g. living a life that’s a consequence of you not hiding and paying the costs that you CAN handle because you’re REAL).

In both cases, the costs are ultimately unreal – because you’re always real no matter what and it’s just your perception and interpretations (filtered through your identity) stopping you from seeing it.

On your way into your REAL life, though, you’ll have to grow through the things that make the costs seem real – your choice about how you handle this will affect how far you get.

Examples of the kinds of price you’ll have to pay if you focus on your REAL intentions and values.

Though there are no hard and fast rules, these are the kind of costs that you can expect to pay as you step up and start moving towards that ‘thing’ and your REAL life.

In all cases you haven’t really lost anything ‘real’ – you just STOPPED BUYING INTO unreality:

Letting go of unreal relationships that are holding you back.

The real relationships in your life will support your growth and movement towards the goals that are real to you.  The unreal ones won’t.

As you wake up to your realness and start moving forwards then the COST will be to set healthy boundaries and say “No” to the people that need you to be unreal (for the protection of their own unreal ego ‘stuff’).

The reason that you don’t really lose anything real here despite the ‘cost’ is that the only thing keeping you in such relationships in the first place was your own UNREALITY.

Not being able to watch Netflix as much.

Committing to growing real comes with the ‘COST’ of having to say “No” to unreal activities and distractions like spending all night watching Netflix or playing video games or whatever (obviously, this is a matter of degree based on the context of your own life).

As you start to CHOOSE the real stuff over the unreal distractions like this then you probably won’t have time to waste on such things because you’ll have found your REAL purpose.

Again, the ‘cost’ isn’t really a cost because all that’s happened is you’ve stopped acting out an unreal story in your head and replaced it with a real one. You simply changed your focus and it changed your life.

Having people hate on you or be jealous because you’re doing your ‘thing’ and they’re not.

If you think that everybody around you is going to be happy for your ‘success’ as you step up and grow real then you’re going to have a bad time.

It’s a harsh reality about life but some of your closest friends and family don’t actually want you to be ‘more’ successful than them or to even just start doing things that are important to you (usually because they never had the balls to step up and do what’s important to themselves).

If you’re going to put yourself on a real path, then this is something that you need to prepare for – it’s a COST that you’ll be asked to pay and if you’re not real about it then it can make your life miserable.

Actually, even  though this may look like a COST, it’s actually not a REAL one. The reason for this is that the only reason these people are hating on you is because they’re being UNREAL (because when you’re being real you know your own capacity to succeed at your ‘thing’ and know that others can succeed at theirs too – what’s more you want them to!).

If something is UNREAL then you don’t need to worry about it or concern yourself with it – the only reason that you would is because there’s some unreal, emotional thing going on inside you that makes you interpret this unreal hate (etc.) as being real.

When you learn to say “Gimme something real or GTFO” then you can either walk away from these people or simply stay real and learn to ignore their BS. Either way, it nullifies the cost and you’ve grown REAL.

Having to work hard and change things.

Going out there and getting that ‘thing’ that you want comes with the COST of hard work.  That may seem like a lot of unnecessary effort when you haven’t even got started yet but look at it like this:

You can either work to get to where you want to be or you can work to have to try and live with yourself for never trying.

When you look at it like that the ‘hard work’ isn’t really a cost as much as it is an opportunity.

Having to let go of your current way of identifying as you grow real through experience.

No matter what you’re trying to do or where you’re trying to get to, as you grow more REAL, you will inevitably change as a person and the way that you see yourself will change too.

For some of us,  this is a price worth paying for our goals because we know that we’ve chosen to aim for something real and so – even though we may change – that change will be for the better (because we shaved away layers of unreality to reveal the REAL stuff).

The ‘problem’ for a lot of people is that they’re scared to change because the sense of identity they’ve created for themselves is actually a box that keeps a lot of their unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ at bay.

This is actually the main reason that certain people DON’T want to choose the real path – they’re not ready to pay the cost of letting go of their cherished ideas (and illusions, tbh) about themselves (and the world and reality by extension).

When you start growing REAL, however, you’ll see that this sense of identity is actually completely UNREAL – yes, we need it to function in the world and it acts as a representation of whatever we’ve been through and survived but it’s not who we really ‘are’ (just an interpretation we created).

When you realise this, you realise that losing one form of it is not really a COST, it’s another opportunity to replace it with something more real so you can go deeper into life.

Having to deal with the consequences of being real in an unreal world (i.e. dealing with people who are ‘asleep’, NPCs, etc.).

If you decide to grow real in an unreal world (i.e. a world that just needs you to conform so you can be controlled) then you’re going to have to pay the price of STANDING OUT which will bring unwanted attention and disagreement (if you let it).

The problem here is often caused by projection – if you’ve started to put yourself on the path of growing real then, eventually, you’re going to have to face some of your own ‘SHADOW’ stuff (the previously disowned parts of you that were deemed ‘unacceptable’ by your own shame and the guilt that society conditioned you with in the first place).

These can be both ‘good’ or ‘bad’ qualities but for whatever reason, society has decided that it would be better if they’re not part of the human experience.

An example might be ‘creativity’, for example, which may take you to some places that the majority of people aren’t willing to go (because they’ve disowned this side of themselves in order to be more productive employees or whatever).

If you become real and trigger some of the hidden ‘Shadow’ stuff of the people around you then it can lead to all kinds of drama and conflict.

You need to be ready for it because it’s highly unlikely that you’ll do the work of growing more real, doing more authentic things and expressing your true thoughts, feelings, etc. without upsetting somebody.

The costs here actually can be pretty high if you come across an actual nutcase who’s completely repressed and sees something in you that they’re trying to hide from themselves.

You can usually avoid such people as you start focusing on your own real ‘thing’ and start meeting other Real Ones but you need to know that this is a price you’ll possibly have to pay.

Again, even though it can be costly in some cases, the core source of the problem is still the same: whoever is getting triggered by your ‘Real’ stuff is only that way because they have an unreal relationship with themselves.

That makes it easier to ignore and move on (“Gimme something real or GTFO”) but you need to be real enough not to poke the fires and push these people over the edge (although that’s actually what they want deep down as by sabotaging themselves they can eventually destroy themselves and allow the real version of who they are to creep through).

Everybody is constantly moving towards wholeness – even those who are locked inside themselves – that’s just a natural drive we have but you don’t really need to get involved and ‘save’ anybody from themselves as the only person with that power is them.

The more real you become the more you’ll see how most people are unreal. You’ll have to learn not to JUDGE and slip back into unreality.

In short, the more real you become, you will have to live with the COST of being surrounded by people who are living unreal lives in an unreal relationship with themselves.

You need to be careful not to judge here as judgement is always unreal and will just cause you to end up back on the unreal path you’re trying to avoid.

The final cost to yourself is that you will have to work to cultivate better emotional control and self-regulation and to learn to be patient.

If people are ‘unreal’ it’s not their fault, it’s just a product of their conditioning and you basically just have to let them get on with it until the time comes for them to find something real to hold onto (assuming that time ever comes).

There’s always a choice. No excuses.

Sometimes, you convince yourself you don’t have a choice which stops you moving towards your goals.  The truth isn’t that you “don’t have a choice” but that you “don’t want to pay the cost”.  Ask yourself why because a lot of the time it’s just fear, pride, or other ego ‘stuff’ that you’ve CHOSEN to keep in place so you can hide from your unresolved shame, guilt, and/or trauma.

When you want to do something but you’re scared of the cost you make EXCUSES – this is just the ego’s way of trying to resist paying whatever cost needs to be paid.

If you find yourself stuck on a crossroads where you don’t know if you have the courage to move forward or not and you start making EXCUSES to explain away what you really want to do (that ‘thing’, whatever it is), then you need to remind yourself that you can only lose things that are UNREAL because reality never goes anywhere (and even then you don’t really ‘lose’ anything because it was never there in the first place – it was just a product of the way you chose to perceive things).

This means that the price you’re afraid to pay usually has something to do with your attachment to your illusions about yourself, the world, and reality and that you’ve DISTORTED your view of things through the lens of your ego in order to try and stay the ‘same’ and refuse to take action.

At the end of the day, there is no real cost – there’s just a process of deconditioning and learning to understand reality.

In short, the price never costs as much as your ego will try and convince you it does before you’ve paid it and when you understand the reality of life you’ll see that the costs are never as bad as you think (because it’s usually unreal).

You need to be ready to pay the price but you also need to be ready to see that in REALITY it’s always worth it:

You can either choose the unreal life you might already be living or step up and grow real?

There’s always a cost but there’s always a CHOICE. Which one are you going to make?

 

 

If this story inspired or helped you then please share it with others! 🙂

Sign up for my mailing list if you want to stay in touch (you’ll get access to the 7-Day Personality Transplant for uncovering your life purpose):

If you want to find your own real life, start moving towards unconditional acceptance, and finding a sense of purpose then check out this 7-Day Course that you can start right now:

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How to Stop NEEDING to Be Liked by Others (Walking Away from Life’s Great Popularity Contest)

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Life doesn’t need to be a ‘popularity’ contest

This article will help you to deal with one of the most common but harmful problems in the world: needing to be ‘liked’.

The key word here is “NEED”.

Obviously, it’s better to be ‘likeable’ than not – there’s no need to purposely be unlikeable in life.

At the same time, we can make ourselves completely MISERABLE and take our lives of track by making being ‘liked’ our main motivation.

If we only focus on getting approval from other people then it just leads to us not spending time focusing on the REAL things we could be doing with ourselves and our lives, growing into a continuously more authentic version of ourselves, and finding a ‘tribe’ or community of people that actually like – or even LOVE – us for who we actually are (not some FAKE version of ourselves that we created because we crave validation).

If you have this problem (of needing to be liked) then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about and you’ll probably suffer from some – or all – of the following symptoms:

  • You’re often anxious, frustrated, or even depressed (even if you don’t show it).
  • You know that you’re being ‘fake’ or selling yourself out in order to make people ‘like’ you but the thought of being disliked is too unbearable or too much hassle – because it would mean rearranging parts of your life – to start being real.
  • When you’re in a group of people you constantly find yourself comparing yourself to others and trying to figure out where you stand in the social hierarchy. This just stops you from relaxing and having a good time.
  • It’s almost like you don’t really even know who you are anymore –you’re main motivation for doing things is to ‘fit in’ and be approved of by the herd.
  • You’re constantly trying to make it look like you think/feel/do what everybody else does. You just want to come across as being ‘normal’ but now you’re paying the price because you feel detached from yourself.
  • When you’re out-and-about in public or hanging out with people, everybody thinks you’re a cheerful person who’s got it all together. You know that’s just a MASK, though, because in private you struggle with emotional emptiness and question everything you’re doing with your life.
  • You often find yourself having problems with boundaries because you want to be liked by absolutely everybody and so you say “Yes” to their needs and “No” to your own (when a REAL approach is to say “Yes” to your own when you’re not hurting anybody and “Yes” to others when it suits you).
  • You’re obsessed with your own self-image and constantly need other people to help you reinforce it for you (because it’s on unstable foundations because it’s not REAL).
  • (if you can think of any other obvious symptoms then please leave a comment).

To make matters worse, having this unreal attitude towards ourselves and our lives can be made worse by drama and BS in your life.

This is because you’re probably not the only person in your life or social circle that has this problem; others in the world around you also have a tendency to crave being liked by everybody else (even people they don’t ‘like’ because of their own ego stuff) and this just leads to life turning into one big Popularity Contest.

This being the case, just leads to all kinds of unnecessarily stressful situations where everybody is in competition with each other for something they don’t need in reality in the first place: the approval and ‘liking’ of other people.

Depending on how much they secretly hate themselves and have a void to fill within themselves (because of unresolved shame, usually), people will put all of their efforts into trying to build themselves up (to mask how small they feel) and to put others down.

This Popularity Contest is completely unnecessary because it’s totally unreal in its primary reason for existence: helping people to convince themselves that things that aren’t important about them or anybody else are important.

The only winning strategy in this particular ‘contest’ is not to play.

This article will help you figure out how you can check out and be in competition with the only person that matters: YOURSELF.

The Irrationality of Needing to Be Liked

Just to be clear, this article isn’t about making yourself unlikeable but about making sure that you live in such a way that you’re not bothered if people don’t like you.

That’s a subtle distinction but it’s about embracing the reality of life which – in this case – means accepting two basic premises and learning to work with them:

  1. You can’t control what other people think about you and whether they ‘like’ you or not.
  2. What they think about you doesn’t need to affect the way that you think about yourself.

In the first case, it’s quite simple:

You can’t control what other people think about you and whether they ‘like’ you or not.

You could be the nicest, most wonderful human being on the planet and – still – somebody out there would find a reason to dislike you (no matter how hard you might try).

Maybe they’re just having a ‘bad’ day; maybe you remind them of somebody that once called them an offensive name; maybe they just don’t like the way you talk or something about the way you dress.

The point is, that people are just weird – they have likes and dislikes without even knowing their reasons behind these feelings and – because people are varied and opinions are many – there will always be somebody out there that simply doesn’t like YOU.

This kind of ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ has nothing to do with rational reasons or logic and so it doesn’t even really reflect on ‘You’ as a person – it’s more just a ‘feeling’ that certain people have when they see you because of their own emotional ‘stuff’.

If you think about it, there are probably people that you dislike and can’t even really give a good reason as to why – there’s just something about them that speaks to your unconscious mind and makes it say “No, thanks.”

Because it’s an emotional thing and beyond any logical reasons or argument then you can’t bargain or reason with these people to make them ‘like’ you (and if you respect yourself you shouldn’t waste time doing that anyway): you just have to accept it and move on. It’s literally all you can do.

Maybe they’ll change their minds one day; maybe they won’t. It doesn’t matter. You can’t control it and so – like anything else in life that can’t be controlled – you just need to ACCEPT it.

Trying to make everybody like you is just as irrational as trying to convince yourself that the sky is usually green. It’s just the way it is and so you either accept it or make yourself miserable by going up against reality.

Trying to make everybody like you is just as irrational as trying to convince yourself that the blue sky is usually green; it’s just the way it is and so you either accept it or make yourself miserable by going up against reality.

What they think about you doesn’t need to affect the way that you think about yourself.

The second point to be made is that not only is what people think about you outside of your control (so you don’t need to worry) but, also, just because somebody thinks something about you doesn’t mean you need to believe it or change the way YOU think about yourself.

Let’s say that again for the people at the back:

What people think about you is just their OPINION; you don’t have to take it on board as a FACT about you.

In other words, what you’re dealing with is an INTERPRETATION, not REALITY.

Obviously, this isn’t always as easy to live as it is for me to write down in words – if somebody says something ‘negative’ about you then your initial instinct might be to feel a pang of shame or doubt or some other unhelpful emotion.

When this happens, you can get carried away to wherever that emotion wants to lead you, distort your own view of reality,  and get sucked into the ILLUSION that another person’s words or opinion somehow have power over you.

This isn’t a sign that their opinion is valid (though of course it could be but that’s up to you to decide – it’s not true just because they said it); it’s a sign that you have some unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ that’s making you BELIEVE that what they said could be true.

This is a key point:

If you are fully aware of your own realness and are able to ACCEPT YOURSELF UNCONDITIONALLY then you will have a good opinion of yourself and the opinions of others won’t change this.

This is ultimately about a concept I’ve talked about before on this site and in my book Shadow Life: being Outcome-Independent.

What this basically means is that your sense of self-worth and levels of self-acceptance are not dependent on external outcomes – like how people might think or feel about you, for example.

The main thing that stops you from being outcome-independent and instead being dependent on outcomes (or external validation, ‘likes’, etc.) is that you have an unhealthy relationship with your own emotions, especially in the form of SHAME.

When you feel shame at some level of your ‘being’, then you’re more likely to do two things:

  1. Create a false image of yourself that you hide behind to try and hide your shame from yourself and the world.
  2. Try and get other people to help you keep this false image or mask in place by trying to control your relationships with them (in terms of what can be said/done/felt, for example).

Unfortunately, because this false image is completely untenable – because it’s not REAL – you can easily start to doubt yourself when people ‘dislike’ you in some way.

This is because, actually, they’re not doubting the real ‘You’ – which can’t be doubted because it’s real ; they’re doubting the false image which you also doubt because you KNOW it’s not true.  Naturally, this triggers an internal conflict within you (and your normal coping mechanism for this conflict is to just try and be ‘liked’ so it goes away).

Quite simply, the reason that you doubt yourself is because you’re not being yourself – you have lost touch with what’s real about you and so you have started to yourself if the negative things they’re saying about you are true.

If you were being REAL then you would, of course, realise that these things are not true because you would be standing on a more solid foundation.

What is that foundation? The knowledge that when you’re being real you can’t be JUDGED in either ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ terms – you’re beyond either.

The problem, then, isn’t that you’re scared of being disliked but that you don’t know the truth about yourself and so seek it in other people (who probably don’t know themselves either).

The solution is to stop looking for answers about who you are in the OPINIONS and interpretations of other people and to instead ACCEPT who you are, CHOOSE who you want to become, and to DO the real work of becoming that person.

You can’t control what other people think about you and whatever that happens to be doesn’t need to affect your relationship with yourself anyway (unless you CHOOSE to let it).  That being the case, you might as well figure out what you like about yourself and then keep doing it instead.

The Psychology of Needing to be Liked All the Time

So if needing to be liked all the time is irrational because you can’t control other people’s opinions and those opinions don’t matter anyway then why do some of you need to be liked?

The short answer is that there are two main reasons:

  1. Reasons of the Self
  2. Reasons of the World

Reasons of the Self

The reasons of the Self are just any of the reasons related to your own psychological relationships with yourself that make you DOUBT who you are and have to create a fake version to deal with this doubt.

Normally, this comes down to  three emotions (or a cocktail of the three): shame, guilt, and/or trauma.

Shame: Makes you feel that there’s something inherently ‘wrong’ with who you are and so you try to make people like you to compensate.

There are millions of different ways to compensate here and if you look at the world around you (especially on social media, etc.) you’ll see shame-driven people everywhere.

Guilt: Makes you feel that there’s something inherently ‘wrong’ with the things you do, want to do, or have done. Whereas shame is always perpetuated internally, guilt always comes from some external source (that’s usually trying to control you).

When you have less shame and can see reality clearly then guilt is less likely to affect you – when it does affect you, it makes you dance around through hoops trying to be ‘liked’ again (by whoever is trying to make you feel guilty in the first place).

Trauma: Trauma is the most severe thing that can happen to a human being – it essentially means that something happens to you that makes us doubt – and even fear – your own power.

When that happens, it’s much more difficult to trust and believe in yourself and so you end up trying to outsource that trust and belief to others (which always fails because you can’t control what people will think about you and their opinions don’t really matter anyway).

Reasons of the World

When it comes to the psychological ‘Reasons of the World’ (aka SOCIAL reasons) for why you have a NEED to be liked, the short-version is that being ‘liked’ offers survival value.

Quite frankly, if nobody likes you then you’ll find it harder to have success in your career (because all business is ultimately about relationships), you’ll have no friends watching your back if things go sour somewhere, and people won’t really care what happens to you (in the most extreme cases) and so will leave you to die in the gutter (only a slight exaggeration).

If nobody likes you then that just means that – in the eyes of society – you’re lacking in status and that you’re not offering any value to the world (I know that’s harsh but it’s how it is).

We could probably say loads here about how this goes back to our “evolutionary past” and how human beings needed to hunt and live in tribes but all you need to know now is that being liked by the right people is a ‘good’ thing – living to make the wrong people try and like you to keep masking your own shame isn’t.

In terms of your own psychology, then, there are two things going on with a need to be liked:

The first is that you have unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ that’s preventing you from walking away from unhealthy relationships or causing you to outsource your ‘good’ feelings about yourself to others (which – as we saw above – is irrational because you can’t control what they think and their opinions about you are redundant anyway). Also, these ‘good’ feelings are really just a short-term high that comes from the release of tension of thinking you might not be ‘liked’.

The second is that you have all kinds of social instincts that are part of your biological makeup that make you feel like you have to be one of the herd/tribe/pack or you’re going to be cast aside to die in the (proverbial) gutter.

To give up the need to be liked you need to work on your relationship with yourself and listen to your own opinion more than others (and, for the record, if you have a ‘bad’ opinion of yourself then that means you’re being unreal and have picked up external standards or conditioning that you’re judging yourself in accordance with).

You also need to realise that your instincts to follow the herd and blend in are not reality – they’re just impulses that can help you survive but that you need to be selective with.

If you just follow any old crowd, then you’re going to end up being miserable because you will lose yourself in the crowd and no longer know who you are.

 

How needing to be liked all the time can hold you back

Just to drill the point home, here is a list of the symptoms you’ll face when you have the fundamental problem of NEEDING to be liked because of your unresolved emotional ‘stuff’.

I’ll also give you some quick tips so that you can actually start DOING something about this issue and moving towards a life that’s more REAL.

You’re never present because you’re always following an unreal agenda.

Problem: The first problem that arises from needing to be ‘liked’ all the time is that nobody really knows you because you’re always acting to come across in a certain light (that’s actually shadows), rather than being the REAL you.

As an example, maybe you need to be seen as being ‘nice’ (because your toxic shame can’t stand the idea of you being a ‘bad’ person or whatever) and so you have to constantly turn the volume up on how polite you are, hold back what you really think, never express your true feelings, etc.

This may help you to get what you want in the short-term, but in the long-term all you’re really doing is distancing yourself from other people and never truly being ‘seen’ (which is all any of us really want, at the end of the day).

Solution: The solution here? Start letting the REAL you out. You don’t have to go overboard especially if you’ve built a lot of the relationships in your life on an unreal foundation.

Stop being so AGREEABLE and start saying “No” – that’s always the first step to setting healthier boundaries and that’s what you’ve ultimately given yourself: a BOUNDARY PROBLEM.

Next time you catch yourself doing something purely because it will make you look ‘Nice’ (or whatever) then allow yourself to say “No” and be REAL instead. Overtime, this will definitely make you feel better about life in general.

You’re constantly comparing yourself to others

Problem: Another problem you’ll face if you need to be liked is that you’re going to constantly find yourself comparing yourself to others. This will be for two main reasons:

  • You want to compare to see how you’re ‘ranking’ in terms of whatever quality your ego has convinced you you’ll be liked for (being ‘nice’, ‘intelligent’, ‘alpha’, ‘beautiful’ whatever).
  • Your underlying SHAME (which is the main driver of needing to be liked) will want to make sure that nobody is ‘better’ than you because that will just make you catastrophise and act like there’s something WRONG with you (which is irrational but we’ll save that for another post).

In both of these cases, your need to be liked has caused you to create an ILLUSORY/BS standard to compare yourself and others to which is causing you to waste time in negative thinking and comparison.

This just stops you appreciating yourself and having REAL relationships with others (because you’re too busy comparing yourself to them to see them clearly).

Solution: First and foremost, you need to be AWARE of the fact and then ACCEPT the truth that human beings are incomparable – there will always be somebody that’s ‘better’ that you at some things but you’ll also always be better at some things than them.

Secondly, you need to try and develop an ABUNDANCE mindset – this just means realising that there’s enough goodwill in the world for everybody to be ‘liked’. Just because somebody else is likeable doesn’t mean you can’t also be likeable.

Thirdly, you need to stop worrying about other people and creating illusory competitions in your head by choosing a PURPOSE for yourself and your own life and focusing on that. When you’re busy GROWING REAL, you won’t have time to compare yourself to others: you’ll just be DOING YOU and getting things DONE.

You’re always criticising yourself

Problem: All this needing to be liked and comparison just sets you up for FAILURE. It sets you up for failure because you’re trying to do the impossible which is to change REALITY.

If you don’t realise that this is what you’re doing then you just end up living according to a bunch of EXPECTATIONS about yourself, the world, and reality that can never be met and you end up constantly criticising yourself.

This is because you keep telling yourself you ‘SHOULD’ get certain results but you never do (because you nobody can). In this particular case, the ‘SHOULDS’ in question are to be liked by everybody, to always be the best, to be perfect, etc. etc.

When you keep failing then your inner monologue (as an extension of your EGO) will keep chastising you and beating you up (or tell you you’re not good enough in the case of Imposter Syndrome).

Solution: You need to do the work to align your expectations with reality and to ACCEPT  the realities of life that we’ve talked about here today in this article.

You never focus on your own goals because you’re wasting time on trying to impress people etc.

Problem: When you CHOOSE to live as though you’re only purpose here on earth is to be ‘liked’ then you make choices that reflect that – because most of these choices are UNREAL and our lives are just a consequence of the choices we’ve made then… it leads to your life being UNREAL too.

This is because in life the most important things we have – because we’re gonna be dead one day – are our time, energy, and attention.

Every time you CHOOSE to hide yourself behind some fake image of yourself, you’re wasting your LIFE.

Every time, you CHOOSE to not do that thing you really want to do because of shame or guilt, you’re wasting your POTENTIAL.

Every time, you CHOOSE to try and impress people or beg them to like you with desperate actions, you’re wasting the opportunity to be really KNOWN.

If the CHOICES you make are motivated by unreal, shame-driven, egotistical reasons then you’re not living YOUR life.

Solution: You need to start asking yourself what you really WANT from life, create a vision for it, and COMMIT to taking the actions that will help you realise it.

When you have a real vision then it makes it a lot easier to make CHOICES that are a reflection of you who really are, who you really want to become, and what you’re committed to do to get there.

Not being  REAL to yourself or others.

Problem: In short, when you act like you need everybody to like you before you can like yourself then you stop being real.

This is a one-way ticket to misery because being unreal always leads to eventual frustration (see the symptoms we talked about above) and frustration always turns to misery if you don’t do something about it.

If you can’t be real with yourself (or others by extension) then you’ll never truly feel ALIVE – this means that one of the best and most urgent ways for you to improve your life is to start working on this stuff and actually moving towards self-acceptance and a life of ‘liking’ yourself first and foremost.

Solution: You CAN solve this problem but it will take a little patience with yourself and some time for you  to readjust and reconfigure the shape of your life based on the CHOICES you’ve already made.

You do this by putting some thought into what you truly VALUE and INTEND to do with your life and then start dedicating yourself to that instead of the FALSE MISSION you’ve created for yourself (the mission that you think is to be LIKED more than anything REAL).

The Final Word

This has been a long article but I hope it’s helped you to see (if you had the problem we’ve been talking about) that focusing on being ‘liked’ only causes more problems in your life.

Not only does it distance you from yourself but it distances you from other people and wastes the precious time that you have here on planet earth.

If you want to start making changes in this area then you need to spend a little time becoming AWARE of who you really are and how this ‘likability’ problem is holding you back.

After you’ve gained this AWARENESS you need to ACCEPT the truth about yourself and the ways that you can express this truth in a real way through ACTION.

By dedicating yourself to that ACTION you’ll know what you want to say “YES” to (real life), that will make it easier to start saying “NO” to the unreal things we’ve been talking about, and you’ll increase your odds of meeting REAL people that actually like the REAL you for real reasons.

Don’t be liked; be real. The rest will fall into place.

 

If this story inspired or helped you then please share it with others! 🙂

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How to know if you need a Personality Transplant (if you suffer these symptoms then here’s a guaranteed solution):

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Is it time for a Personality Transplant? Read on to find out!

The most important relationship in your life is your relationship with YOURSELF.

To some people reading this that sounds ‘selfish’ but, really, it’s just a matter of being REAL.

If your relationship with yourself is as good as it can possibly be then it has a number of incredible benefits that cascade into the rest of your life:

-You have better relationships with other people because accepting yourself makes it easier to accept them.

-You know what your true INTENTIONS and VALUES are and so you’re able to build a life with purpose that allows you to better SERVE other people.

-You’re happier because you’re getting authentic results from life and so you have less DRAMA with other people.

-You’re getting more DONE because when you improve your relationships with yourself you know what you really think and feel and know what to DO with this information.

-You’re more likely to take calculated RISKS that will allow you to get out of your comfort zone and actually reward yourself with experiences that you want (because you no longer allow a fear of failure to hold you back because you know that even if you do ‘fail’ your self-worth doesn’t need to be affected).

–Etc.

Unfortunately, for a lot of people in the world – and you may be one of them – we get CONDITIONED to stop trusting and believing in ourselves and to try and conform to standards, values, and intentions that have nothing to do with who we really are.

When this happens, we end up convincing ourselves that we need to change something that can never really be changed – the REAL version of ourselves – and this just ends up causing our lives to go into a state of disarray and for us to feel the chronic call of the VOID as we disown important parts of ourselves.

We disown these life-enhancing parts because society/the world/matrix/whatever makes us self-hypnotise ourselves into thinking that these ‘parts’ (really part of the WHOLE) are “unacceptable” and so we try to hide them in the Shadows of ourselves – see the book Shadow Life: Freedom from BS in an Unreal World which you can get for free elsewhere on this site.

These collective, “unacceptable” parts are actually our key to salvation because they contain the TRUTH about us and will allow us to rise again and to live a REAL life instead of the life we’ve created as an extension of the cage we’ve caused ourselves to live in because of the denial of all this Shadow ‘stuff’ and who we really are and can become.

If what you’re reading here, makes sense to you, then don’t worry because there is something you can do – no matter what your situation – you have to ACT, though, and the price of inaction will just be the consequences of staying on whatever path you’re currently on and to keep building on whatever results you’re currently getting (you know what that means in the context of your own life – just ask yourself: “IF I don’t do anything now where will I be in five or ten years from now?”).

What you need to do is to start looking at how your relationship with yourself at present is HOLDING YOU BACK from the life you really want and how the way you IDENTIFY with yourself is keeping some of the real parts of you at bay (or attempting to – these ‘parts’ are always showing up in our lives but that’s a story for another day).

What you probably need to do is give yourself what I have recently been calling a PERSONALITY TRANSPLANT.

That might sound painful or difficult but it’s actually a relatively pain free procedure that can allow you to make a lot of ‘internal’ progress in a relatively short amount of time (usually 7-Days if you’re ready to commit and actually start changing your own life).

What a Personality Transplant involves is just looking at the personality (aka Ego in the language we use here) that you’ve CHOSEN and CREATED for yourself and seeing where it’s holding you back from taking the kind of ACTION that you need and want to be taking to get where you need to be in life.

Here’s a list of some of the most common symptoms that people suffer unnecessarily from (‘unnecessary’ because it’s quite ‘easy’ to do something about it) when they might be ready to go through the ‘Personality Transplant’ procedure for themselves:

You need a Personality Transplant because you never get anything real DONE.

The clearest sign that you might be ready for a Personality Transplant is that you never get anything REAL done.

Yeah, you might spend your days ‘doing’ things but this doesn’t necessarily mean that these activities are fulfilling or that they help you build any momentum or move forward in life in the way that you want to (like the REAL stuff you could be doing).

Normally, when this happens it’s because you have developed an unreal personality that is out-of-sync with both the nature of life and reality themselves but also the nature of who you are in your REALNESS.

This happens for a number of reasons:

  1. You don’t appreciate life as what it really is and you think that you have all of the time in the world (hint: you don’t because you’re going to die one day).This leads to a problem where you don’t value your time, energy, and attention and so you give them to DISTRACTIONS that don’t deserve them.These distractions can be ANYTHING – depending on your underlying intention – but the most common distractions are things like:

    Meaningless activities like video games, Netflix, dramatic relationships, pointless jobs, trying to escape from boredom (you’re only bored because you haven’t figured out your purpose), etc. etc.

     

  2. You have been conditioned to become DETACHED from your true values and intentions and you are listening to EXTERNAL SOURCES of ‘authority’ about how you should live your life and what you should do with it.This external conditioning eventually turns into an internal monologue that we hypnotise ourselves with that causes us to feel shame or guilt around the actions we really want to be taking.Eventually, this shame and guilt turns into NEGATIVE THINKING or SELF-JUDGEMENT that causes us to start making excuses about why we can’t act in the way we want to act.

This way of RELATING TO OURSELVES just ends up turning into an unreal PASSIVE mindset that prevents us from acting in the world.

When we are operating and attempting to design our lives with these two driving forces in our lives – 1) giving into distraction because we don’t value our time, energy, and attention, and 2) hynotising ourselves to be passive – then we just end up ensuring that everything we do is motivated by something UNREAL.

A simple truth about life is this:

Unreal in, unreal out; real in, real out.

All that means is that if you are motivated to act (or not) from an unreal place (because of your conditioning, etc.) then then end result will also be unreal (and vice versa: a real intention leads to real actions and therefore real results).

If you’re not getting anything real ‘done’ then it means that you’re starting off from an unreal place and so you need to switch things up and change your relationship with yourself (with a ‘Personality Transplant’).

You need a Personality Transplant because you keep getting frustrated and that frustration will eventually turn into misery if you don’t do anything.

Naturally, if you keep failing to get the RESULTS that you want from life then you will eventually become frustrated. This is normal.

The problem for a lot of frustrated people is that they try and convince themselves that the source of their frustration is outside of themselves.

Instead of changing their approach to life – by changing the way they relate to themselves first and foremost – they will say things to themselves that attempt to deny reality and to keep their (unreal) personality in place.

Examples of what they might say:

“Life is so unfair.”

“I’m just not supposed to succeed.”

“I’m so unlucky.”

Or maybe – instead of changing themselves and their approach to life – they will start to try and  trick themselves into thinking they have control over the uncontrollable (reality) with all kinds of magical devices or philosophies:

-Hororscopes and astrology

-Crystals or other things that can explain away PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY for our lives.

-Trying to ‘manifest’ things instead of taking action and REALISING things.

The point is that when we have unreal beliefs or use unreal systems to try and control life (instead of working with it) then we just end up distancing ourselves more and more from reality and prevent ourselves from getting RESULTS.*

This just leads to more frustration because of the friction between what we want and what we get from life.

If we don’t change our approach at a FUNDAMENTAL level (the most fundamental being our relationship with ourselves) then we just fall into the INSANE trap of “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

Unless we WAKE UP and see the truth – which means changing something – then we become more and more frustrated and then this frustration just turns to MISERY.

The SOLUTION is to start looking at where your relationship with yourself is BLOCKING your view and stopping you from ACCEPTING the reality of yourself – when you can do that you will start moving with reality again (instead of against it) and your levels of frustration (and potential misery) will dissipate.

*This is why so many ‘spiritual’ people (etc.) are actually quite miserable – because they’re not using their spirituality to face reality (which might mean changing) but to keep hiding and to try and force reality to their will (which is impossible and thus brings friction, frustration, and misery).

You have problems with yourself, the world, and reality that you just can’t seem to solve. You need a Personality Transplant.

When we have (unconsciously) CHOSEN a personality for ourselves that is designed to keep the truth about ourselves and the world at bay then we constantly find ourselves with ‘problems’ that can never be solved.

The variation and complexity of such problems is myriad but the thing that they all have in common is that they linger and NO SOLUTION can ever be found.

The reason for this is that these problems only exist in your head because you’re unconsciously trying to hide the TRUTH about reality and life behind your personality (which you don’t want to change).

If you could let the TRUTH in then one of two things would happen:

  1. You’d realise that you didn’t have a problem – you just had something you needed to accept about life or were thinking in a way that caused you to DISTORT reality.
  2. You’d find a solution to the problem and then you’d DO something about it (and so no longer have a problem).

The point here is that if you find yourself having a lot of existential or other problems that never go away  then the actual ‘problem’ is with how you’re relating to yourself and how this is BLOCKING YOUR VIEW of things.

Normally, the only reason we want to block our view in this way is because we have some unresolved ‘emotional’ stuff (shame, guilt, trauma) that the view will involve looking at.

The ‘cure’ is to learn to look in such a way that it doesn’t hurt and you can grow through it and find a stronger foundation to stand on. This is the end result of the Personality Transplant.

You have a restless feeling that there’s ‘more’  to life.

When you’re being unreal with yourself you’ll constantly feel like there’s ‘more’ to life and that you can express more of your potential or do more with your life.

Some people feel like this for years and years (sometimes even their whole lives) because they never wake up and smell the coffee.

The reason you feel like there’s ‘more’ to life is because there is more to life – you’re just not experiencing it because you’re holding yourself back with an unreal personality and the cage of beliefs it’s locked you within.

When you have these unreal beliefs that make you PASSIVE, then you don’t go out and get the things that you want from life. This manifests as a feeling that there’s ‘more’.

Sometimes, we’ll try and trick ourselves into not GROWING REAL by saying that we should just be grateful for what we already have (which is often not very much if you have these mindset issues).

This is an example of ‘toxic gratitude’ and is just your ego’s way of ensuring you continue not to take action (and therefore grow in the process).

The other reason you might feel like there’s ‘more’ is because as well as denying yourself external experiences (etc.) you’re also hiding all those internal ‘parts’ of yourself in the ‘Shadow Territory.  Your craving for ‘more’ is a craving to be RECONNECTED to your REAL SELF and to become whole again.

You need a Personality Transplant because you constantly judge or criticise yourself which stops you moving forward.

When you take onboard all of the external conditioning of the world that we talked about and start hypnotising yourself into believing it then you pick up a  metric-f-ton of unreal standards according to which you can judge yourself by.

This shows up as:

-Negative self-talk

-Imposter syndrome

-Hypercritciality

-Outcome-dependence

-Etc.

This stops you from taking action and makes you feel ASHAMED to be/feel/think/do the things that you really want to be doing.

What you need to do in these kind of cases is realise that when you’re being REAL you can never judge yourself because reality is beyond the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ of judgements.

You need to learn to stop listening to this unreal internalised voice and to start acting on a foundation of acceptance instead.

You can TRAIN yourself to do this and to start moving forward again.

You need a Personality Transplant because you feel like you’re stuck in a rut, just wasting your life doing the same old same old.

A clear symptom of having an unreal personality (that needs to be ‘transplanted’) is that you feel stuck in a rut, nothing ever changes, and you just keep going through the motions of doing the same old, same old.

You feel like you’re WASTING your life then the reason for this is that you are wasting your life because you don’t understand what life is (like we said above) and so you’re wasting your time, energy, and attention on distractions instead of DIRECTION.

Luckily, when you start getting back in touch with the real version of yourself by going through the Personality Transplant procedure then you will have a better understanding of your DIRECTION in the form of purpose and so things will start moving again.

Being stuck in a ‘rut’ just means that you have no VISION for the future or who you’re becoming on the way there.

Once you’ve started to look at what’s real about you, you will understand your true values and intentions, how you can create a vision around these things, and what skills and qualities you need to develop to MAKE IT HAPPEN.

When you’re armed with this information, it’s a lot easier to move – even if only a little every day – and to stop wasting your life on the same old, same old of the comfortable but familiar.

You need a Personality Transplant because you suffer from anxiety and depression that you can’t quite explain.

In many many cases, anxiety and depression are not fundamental problems but SYMPTOMS of the deeper issue of having an UNREAL relationship with yourself and allowing this relationship to remove you from reality.

Before you smash the REALITY RESET BUTTON and give yourself a Personality Transplant, you can just end up causing problems for yourself that lead to mental health issues:

Anxiety is often caused by engaging with yourself in an unreal way because you have created a false image of yourself based on false assumptions about who you are, what the world is, and how reality works.

When you interact with the world from the vantage point of this false image then you are constantly getting NEGATIVE FEEDBACK from reality in the form of unmet expectations and a lack of results.  This constant friction would cause anybody to be anxious.

Depression is often caused by not listening to the FEEDBACK you get from your anxiety and so clinging to our false self-image instead of changing it: this just causes frustration that turns to misery (depression).

The other fundamental problem that causes depression is that you have lost touch with your PURPOSE because you have picked up a PASSIVE BELIEF SYSTEM that caused you to stop moving.  All human beings need to keep moving to be fulfilled – if we lack purpose our emotional life reflects this.

If you suffer from anxiety and depression then it’s probably a result of the lifestyle choices you are making based on your relationship with yourself.

Medication (etc.) may mask these symptoms in the short-term but to solve the fundamental problem you might just need to give yourself a Personality Transplant and start moving again.

You need a Personality Transplant because you don’t trust and believe in yourself enough to build the relationships you want and get the results you need.

Our unreal personalities are always caused by underlying SHAME, GUILT, and/or TRAUMA that we are not prepared to face.

When you don’t face these emotions you end up blocking them behind an unreal version of yourself and spend your whole life engaged in CONTROL FREAKERY in order to support this false version.

Living in this manner stops you from building real relationship and getting real results.

This is because – at some level – you end up doubting yourself and failing to trust and believe in your CAPACITY to do the things you need to do and to relate to people in a way where you recognise your own VALUE and serve people in an appropriate way.

If you don’t have the kind of relationships in your life that you want to have then you need to learn to push through the underlying emotional ‘stuff’ and to learn to accept yourself UNCONDITIONALLY (which can be done).

When you can do that you’ll have a better relationship with the world and will get the results you want from life as an extension of that.

You want your life to change for the better but it never does.

In short, if you’ve been trying to change your life for a while but never get anywhere then you need to try and change your personality from an unreal one to a real one.

This means getting out of your comfort zone – which is an extension of your current identity, not reality – and to find your EDGE.

This means stepping up and giving yourself a Personality Transplant – if you don’t then things are going to continue to never change and before you know it your life will nearly be over and you’ll be battling regrets.

Giving yourself a Personality Transplant isn’t that ‘hard’ but takes a little commitment (to yourself and the life that you want).

It involves things like:

-Creating a REAL vision for yourself.

-Deconditioning yourself from all of the external things that have made you hide from yourself.

-Looking at your self-limiting beliefs.

-Seeing where you’re being too PASSIVE or NEGATIVE in your thinking.

-Exploring what parts of yourself you’re denying and what GIFTS they have to offer you.

-Looking at how you can STRETCH yourself and find your EDGE.

-Learning to understand how you might be causing yourself to be FRAGMENTED.

-What you’re not accepting about yourself and life.

-How you can use your time, energy, and attention more effectively.

-Plus a load more.

If you’ve already waited long enough to start making changes then you can get started right NOW by signing up below– this will give you access to a 7-Day course that will allow you to figure this stuff out in the context of your own life and to start getting results and moving again FAST (if you don’t want to leave this site, check out the Personality Transplant intro video below).

This is a donation-based course so anybody who is in the small group of people that are ACTUALLY ready to work on themselves can have access to these life changing ideas and be rewarded for their commitment to life itself (‘donation-based’ means pay what you want even nothing – this is an incredibly valuable course though so if this article resonates and you don’t take it then you need to ask yourself what’s blocking you).

Real life is just around the corner but you gotta step up and TAKE IT.

Many thanks for reading and I hope you get where you need to be,

 ————-

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Mistakes people make when they’re trying to solve their problems (Do you have an actual problem or do you ‘just’ have ego resistance?)

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Here’s how you can tell if you have an actual problem or if you just have some kind of ego resistance (because you’re afraid to change or accept reality at some level because of your unresolved shame, guilt, and/or trauma).

Working with people in mental health and coaching people over the years (just coaching these days as I left the mental health sector) has taught me that a lot of people out there often have ‘problems’ that linger way longer  than they need to.

Is this because the ‘problems’ in question are just so insurmountable that they can’t be solved?

No, not if you look at it in a REAL way.

If you genuinely can’t do something about a problem then it often means you don’t actually have a problem ‘outside’ yourself: it means that you’re struggling to ACCEPT something that can’t be changed.

And…If all you can do with something is accept it, then it can never be a problem, it’s just the way life or reality works.

In these cases, you need to ask yourself exactly what it is that’s preventing you from doing what needs to be done to ACCEPT this reality.

In my experience, it’s usually a cocktail of shame, guilt, and/or trauma that’s caused us to CHOOSE a belief  system for ourselves that’s aligned with what we WANT to believe about life, not reality itself (and, to go full circle, we usually WANT to believe something other than the truth so we don’t have to face our shame, guilt, and / or trauma).

Another FACT about human life is this:

If you understood the cause of your problem, then it would be in your NATURE to do something about it.

I.e. to find a SOLUTION and to act on this solution.

Then you wouldn’t ‘have’ a problem anymore (“have” in scare quotes because actually what’s going on in a lot of cases is we’re BEING a problem for ourselves).

That’s just common sense in a way: if you have a problem and then you discover a solution then you only have two options:

  1. You’ll take the actions that lead to the solution. Problem solved (assuming you were right about the problem and the solution that goes with it).
  2. You won’t take the action leading to the solution, either because you have IDENTIFIED with having the problem, because it’s not a REAL problem, or because you’re scared that the problem will lead to bigger problems (for example, maybe you’re scared of success because of the extra pressure or work you’ll bring yourself).

The ‘short-version’ of this then is simple:

1) You either have to accept a ‘problem’ as part of life, in which case it isn’t a problem.

or:

2) You understand what can be done about your problem and so you do it, in which case you no longer have a problem.

or:

3) You have some kind of ‘problem’ in your life that keeps lingering, either because you don’t ACT on it, or because you can’t find a solution (which means the problem is unreal).

In the first two cases, the solution to your problem is always being real:

Increasing your AWARENESS, ACCEPTING what has to be accepted about life, and then ACTING accordingly.

In the 3rd case, the only thing stopping you from moving forward is your own relationship with yourself that is BLOCKING you because you either:

  1. Lack AWARENESS – in other words, you think a certain thing is a problem but it isn’t or you’re dealing with a SYMPTOM and not the fundamental cause.
  2. Refuse to ACCEPT – in other words, you WANT to believe that yourself, the world, or reality work in a certain way, rather than accepting the truth about them (for example, this is the same as having a problem with the fact that the sky is blue because you feel better about the colour green).
  3. Have a barrier to ACTION – in other words, you’re not DOING the things you need to DO in order to move yourself towards becoming aware of a solution or implementing one.

In all of these cases, the problem isn’t the ‘problem’ – the problem is that you are being RESISTANT to reality for some (usually emotional, like we said) reason that is blocking your view or reality (almost always because of your relationship with yourself).

Here are the most common causes of this kind of ego resistance (or whatever you wanna call it):

AWARENESS: You’re dealing with a symptom, not the fundamental problem.

A lot of the things that you might mistakenly believe to be your problems are actually just SYMPTOMS of a deeper problem. Normally, the deeper, fundamental problem has something to do with your relationship with yourself.

As a hypothetical example, maybe you’re somebody who suffers from headaches. You might believe that these headaches are the main problem and so you spend all your time trying out new medication, fancy new diets, etc. etc.

The mistake you’re making is not realising that these hypothetical headaches are just SYMPTOMATIC of something deeper:

-Maybe you’re STRESSED because you have shame that’s causing you to push yourself to be ‘better’ than everybody else.

-Maybe you’re not SLEEPING ENOUGH because you’re feeling guilty about all of the terrible things you did (as an example).

-Maybe you have unresolved trauma that’s caused you to become dissociated from yourself and so you have a lot of inner tension leading to the headaches.

These are just hypothetical but the POINT is that if you don’t dig deep enough then you’ll only be ‘rearranging the furniture on the Titanic’ and the ship will still sink when it doesn’t need to.

A lot of the time when I’m coaching people I’m just working with people to help them understand whether the problems they’re trying to solve are the FUNDAMENTAL problem.

Once they make the shift, they can put their energy into something that will actually make a difference.

ACCEPTANCE: You want reality to be something other than what it is (normally because of the way you want to see yourself).

When it comes to the way that life is and the way that human beings operate in reality, there are all kinds of models and ideas about how to live a ‘good life’ and to get results.

There are all kinds of religious texts, philosophies, ideologies, etc. that are TOOLS to help us make sense of life but  – at the end of the day – life operates in the same way for ALL of us, regardless of which model we decide to follow.

Some of these unifying LIFE PRINCIPLES can be hard to swallow:

-We’re going to die one day

-We’re not special in the scheme of things as a whole

-We have to put in hard work and effort to get what we want from life

-We all fail

-We all have questions that can’t be answered

-Etc.

All of this stuff applies to all of us.

Sometimes, people find themselves having problems they don’t seem to be able to find a solution for.  In my experience, this is because the problem ONLY EXISTS IN THEIR HEADS because they’re trying to deny something fundamentally true about life.

This is because they WANT life to be different to how it is (because of their underlying emotional ‘stuff’):

-They want to live forever because they can’t imagine life without their identity.

-They want to be seen as special and different to everybody else.

-They want to get things as soon as  they want them without doing the work.

-They want to never fail (because failure triggers shame).

-They want to know everything (so they can control life and keep their ego where it is as  the main thing that threatens ego is LEARNING).

-Etc.

The point here is that when you don’t ACCEPT life you just give yourself a bunch of problems that exist in your head alone.

You’ll be trying to solve your emotional pain or existential anguish or whatever else is going on by trying to change life (which is impossible).

What you need to do is ACCEPT and grow with life.

ACTION: You don’t want to do the actions that will help you move forward to a solution.

When people aren’t AWARE of life and they don’t ACCEPT life they don’t ACT on life – they either don’t act at all or they act on some BS that exists in their heads alone (so never get results).

If you think you know the solution to your problem but you don’t act then:

1) You either have ego resistance (i.e. you know the action will show you that your self-image is BS because you might fail or you’ll have to grow through your comfort zone or something).

2) You don’t want to solve the problem because there is some kind of ‘payoff’ that comes with it (for example, maybe people will feel sorry for you, you have an excuse not to try, etc.)

In both cases, this comes down to you avoiding yourself and  trying to uphold some false version of yourself you became invested in.

If you have a problem that lingers, then probably some of this stuff is going on for you.

The solution is to:

Become AWARE of the actual problem, so you’re not running around like a headless chicken chasing phantoms.

ACCEPT what can’t be changed about life and whatever is inside you that is causing you to resist it.

To ACT on the solutions that you do have without letting your ideas about yourself  talk you out of it.

When you live like this you realise that actually there are NO problems once you take your identity out of the equation:

You’re either ACCEPTING reality or you’re trying to DENY it.

That’s the biggest mistake any of us can make when it comes to our ‘problems’ as a whole.

 

 

If this story inspired or helped you then please share it with others! 🙂

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The World isn’t Against You as Much as Your Attitude is.

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The main barrier to getting what you WANT is…

‘You’.

Well, more specifically, it’s your attitude.

That doesn’t mean that we need to be NEUROTIC and take UNLIMITED RESPONSIBILITY for everything that happens to us (sometimes “?” really does just happen).

It does mean, though, that we ACCEPT that 90% (approx. figure) of the stuff that goes on in our life is either:

1. Something we can change.

2. Something we can walk away from.

3. Something we can learn to live with.

If you can understand that then you can ensure that your attitude towards life is a REAL one that will give you the kind of RESULTS you want from life.

It’s pretty simple, really:

You think in a REAL way then you get something REAL.

You think in an UNREAL way then you get something UNREAL.

The problem is that sometimes it’s ‘EASIER’ (in scare quotes because it only seems easier as a short-term thing) to keep on BS’ing ourselves and to try and come up with all kinds of different EXCUSES why the world is against us and we can’t HAVE whatever it is that we want for ourselves and our lives.

Like we’ve said before, this is a form of RESISTANCE because the ego wants you to believe change is IMPOSSIBLE so you don’t try and grow through it (normally because of FEAR as the ego evolved to protect you in the short-term based on whatever you’ve already been through).

This attitudinal resistance looks like this:

-Constantly LOOKING for evidence that the world is against you instead of why it wants to support you.

-Looking for solutions anywhere except within yourself.

-Constantly looking for new problems to worry about before the current one is even solved.

-Avoiding taking any responsibility for your CHOICES and decisions and the consequences they’ve led to.

-Not acting like the person you want to BE, but the person you fear you ARE.

-Only trying to have faith in yourself whilst at the same time not believing in yourself (so trying to force everything through ego which is UNREAL).

-Etc.

All of these ways of thinking and anything similar are just an extension of your RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF.

You need to flip the script and be open to yourself to allow the world to open to you too.

 

My coaching can help you sort your attitude out and grow real.

 

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Life Rewards You Based On Your Attitude Towards It.

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Life is for the LIVING.

If you want REAL life to give you everything it has to offer then you need to get your mind right and that starts with your ATTITUDE.

People say that “life is unfair” but that’s not quite true….

Life is the great equaliser because it’s available to all of us if we do the work required to ALIGN ourselves with it and do what is ASKED of us.

It begins to seem “unfair” when we resist the CALL of life and answer the call of ‘The World’ instead .

As we’ve said a million times, though:

“THE WORLD IS NOT REALITY” – it’ just a bunch of ideas and assumptions based on our fears about LIFE.

Real life is FAIR because it’s available to everybody – all you have to do is shake yourself out of your slumber and to start BELIEVING in reality and not the world or any of its BS.

When you make the ‘shift’ like this you can start to have an attitude towards life that is creative and LIFE-ENHANCING, not destructive and LIFE-DISMISSING.

A LIFE-ENHANCING attitude DEEPENS your relationship with life:

-You believe in possibility.

-You KNOW that things will always work out.

-You are open to allowing yourself to HAVE the things that life has to offer.

-You believe in yourself as PART of life and that makes you more WHOLE.

-You believe in ACTION and flux because you know that life moves.

-You don’t complain, make excuses, or fail to appreciate the gifts like has already given you.

A LIFE-DISMISSING attitude takes you out of life:

-You only believe in more problems, not possibility.

-You look for reasons why life will let you down again.

-You come up with reasons why there’s something special about ‘You’ that means you can’t HAVE what millions before you have had.

-You think that life is something separate from whatever it is that ‘You’ are.

-You don’t take ACTION because you resist changing yourself (even though you’re unhappy with yourself as you’ve denied LIFE).

-You actively look for new things to complain about or make excuses for so that you can get sympathy and play the victim (because you confuse attention for love).

In short, if you act like LIFE, you get more life; if you deny life, then life denies you.

Life only rewards ITSELF.

 

Let me coach you so you can change your own life.

 

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Outcome-Independence: The Art of Living Badly

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How to get it together by forgetting about perfection, being real, and staying in motion.

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