“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” R. Buckminster Fuller
We are only three days into the new year, 2021, and I felt it’s important to share with you why we get stuck and how we can reinvent ourselves to live a purposeful and meaningful life. We all experience those moments of feeling stuck in life and it’s then that we need to reinvent ourselves to shake things up and approach our lives, work and careers with a refreshed enthusiasm. You are stuck when you feel you’ve tried everything to improve your life, but nothing changes. Frustration ensues because you’re unable to resolve the situation and feeling helpless.
Traveling around and talking to different people about this subject of reinventing yourself, trying to find out where the blocks come from led me to discovering the four major blocks – the patterns that run in the system that we carry from year to year. People set new year resolutions, put vision boards, write goals and do all kinds of things and yet are carrying this bag of heavy rocks, so to speak that are our patterns that are sabotaging us and our dreams. Here’s the four main patterns:
- Poverty Pattern. I don’t have enough money. I’m so poor I can’t even pay attention. I’m broke. I can’t afford this and that… You are subconsciously taught to say, “ I don’t have enough.” This is what you grew up seeing and hearing. You see, no matter how much money you have or don’t have, it’s not ENOUGH. So, this poverty pattern pervades us. This scarcity of resources continually tricks you into thinking that you are at the limit of your resources. It’s mostly not about our resources but our ability to tap into our resourcefulness. It’s about our ability to find resources to advance our goals. People who are trying to raise money get resourceful, they understand that you are not the victim of your resources, but beneficiary of your untapped resourcefulness. So, change your focus from, “I don’t have this” to “how can I have that without this?” Now, this is being resourceful. How can I be more valuable? How can I do this without that? Start focusing on the ways you can be more resourceful.
- Busyness Pattern. I’m so busy. I don’t have time to do this and that, Oooh my God I’m so busy. Too busy to respond to important calls and emails. Too busy to even to take good care of your health. Oh my goodness, I’m so busy, I don’t have time. Sadly, busyness doesn’t equal progress. This is busy being busy. So, we are constantly in this trap that we think of, we are busy! You feel guilty if you find yourself not being busy because it’s in your system to be busy. The truth is, you have the time to do anything you absolutely committed to. We all have the same amount of time but some people are much more productive than others, why? They commit to things that matter most and are fully conscious of that. Re-evaluate your commitments and busyness. What do you really want for your life? What areas of your life are you going to stay committed to?
- The Blame Pattern. It’s not my fault, you know whose fault it is, president’s, etc. Many people specialize in fixing the blame instead of fixing the problem! Fixing the blame doesn’t help you progress in life but fixing the problem does! This blame pattern makes you blame everything and everybody under the sun but you. My weight is about my genes. It’s my parents, my company, my children, my husband, my wife, etc. We feel a sense of relief that as long as it’s not us then it’s fine. We don’t want anything that will make us look bad. What happens when you blame is that you move into a space of helplessness. When you blame, you take whatever power you have to change the situation and you hand it to whatever it is you’re blaming and you step back and say, “how is it my fault, it’s that person’s fault.” I encourage you to trade this big rock pattern of blame for something that I call leadership. Ask what action can I take to fix the situation instead of giving your power away. Whenever you are looking for the blame, you’ll find one. Ask yourself, ‘What can I do now to make a positive change in my life?’ Then, you are taking a leadership role and it’s completely different.
- Procrastination Pattern. Procrastination kills your better, bigger and more beautiful world every day because you keep on putting it off until tomorrow – ‘I’ll get to it later.’ How many things have you always wanted to do but you still haven’t gotten to do them? You’ve always procrastinated on them. Get used to the now! Write this word everywhere possible to remind yourself of its power. The Power of now! Whatever you want in your life, go for it now! Stop delaying. The most complicated ones of us don’t like the word procrastination, we don’t fancy that term so what we do is we create something a little bit more soft – we call it ‘preparation’. I’m preparing – I’m getting ready – I’m not ready yet. But if your preparation is really about procrastination, you need to trade off that procrastination and take on action. You need to adopt the mentality that you are a person of action.
We all have good intentions but they get sabotaged by these patterns that are deeply rooted in our subconscious mind and are driving us on a daily basis. As a speaker and a life coach, people come to me with mind-blowing ideas and beautiful plans but guess what? They just end up on paper. When I ask them why they are not implementing their beautiful plans, they pull out their long list of excuses which manifest the above mentioned patterns. To reinvent yourself, you must get some help, an accountability partner that will call you on your stuff. You deserve your dreams, claim them!
Veli Ndaba is a Professional and Motivational Speaker, Life-Coach and Neuro Linguistic Programming Practitioner, Author of four books (You Are Born to Win, Your Dream is Calling You and SWITCH ON! And Set Your Soul On Fire!), Newspaper Columnist and Entrepreneur. To book him to speak at your next event or to help you and your team unleash your greatness, contact him on veli@velindaba.com, www.velindaba.com or +27 83 304 9773