Today will be a short update on the project.
Because, I’m learning so much about myself, I’ll mostly focus on that.
The Basics
- Article published: No
- Word count: 0
- Time spent: 0 minutes
I woke up knowing exactly what the problem is.
That when writing, I’m not writing to anyone specific.
When you haven’t defined an audience avatar or persona, you end up trying to write for everyone.
And that is either impossible, or ineffective at best.
So instead of writing today, I continued with my own growth.
Tomorrow, I will start building clarity around who the audience is.
What I’m Learning
It’s becoming clearer to me that a lot of the choices I made in the past around the work I do were driven by ego needs.
The problem is that these ego needs are tied to attachment wounds.
That means it’s not just about becoming successful to overcompensate for feeling like a failure. It’s an attempt to fix early attachment trauma.
In relationship dynamics, it’s called repetition compulsion.
In personal development, it’s called self-sabotage.
In NLP, it’s called values conflict.
Let me illustrate an example for each one.
Remember, these are happening outside of our awareness and at a neurological level, so it’s wired neuro chemically.
That means, we cannot “think” our way out of it.
Values conflict: This is were one part of you wants one thing and another part wants something else, but they conflict with each other.
E.g. One part wants to lose weight or tone up and another part wants ice cream.
In NLP coaching, you learn that the part that wants ice cream has a positive intent, such as relaxation. It might also hold the belief that once you get the body you want, you’ll never be able to relax. So it’s sabotages your fitness goals by eating ice cream.
Personal development: Something similar happens here. One part of you wants to change, be successful, etc, and another part fears taking on more responsibility and what other people might think.
So you have two parts moving in opposite directions.
When both parts understand they want the same thing; “success and freedom”, “fitness and relaxation”, and that it’s not either or, they start to work together.
Repetition compulsion: This is where someone compulsively tries to get the love, attention, or validation, in a romantic relationship, that they didn’t get from their parents in childhood.
It’s an attempt to fix an attachment wound so they can finally feel safe and secure.
However, a romantic partner can never fulfil these needs. Because the compulsion to get an internal need met externally, presupposes an internal belief of being insecure, unsafe, unlovable.
So getting them met externally is a losing battle. It has to come from within.
Side note: This doesn’t mean it’s wrong to want our needs to be met in relationships. That’s actually healthy. And I think that if there’s enough compatibility, patience, and awareness between two people, a relationship can be an advantage in healing our wounds. But it needs to be mutually agreed upon.
Anyway, this conflict was exactly what was showing up in my attempts in business.
I’ve known this for some time, but it’s taken many years to untangle it all at a nervous system level.
When you spent so many years attempting success in business, but for the wrong reasons, you develop patterns that are hard to break.
So now that I’m starting over, it’s easy to fall into familiar patterns.
However, this time round, I have so much more awareness and can feel things shifting already.
I will elaborate on this more in future updates.
But for now, it’s back to the basics. See you tomorrow on day 4.