Today, I want to share a quote from Russel Brand’s Mentors that really resonated with me. When talking about habits and the need that we all have for mentorship, he says:
“If we do not employ conscious mental strategies, we will continue to use the unconscious ones installed, prior to awareness.
It is painful to become awakened, because you feel the presence of patterns to which you were previously numb.”
My big ‘awakening’ came via CBT, at 27, when I realised that I’d programmed myself into being socially anxious, dreadfully afraid of public speaking and pretty fearful of everything and everyone in life.
The painful part here is that although I had this moment of realisation, these thoughts, feelings and behaviours were so well ingrained into my daily mindset, that the realisation itself wasn’t enough to make it stop.
Indeed, the realisation isn’t the end of the story: it’s the beginning.
Changing my habits took years of effort, steps forward and back, as I learned and continue to learn each day, how to think, speak, listen and act differently to how I did before.
It’s a never-ending journey, trying to better than you were yesterday, without any real destination.
But thanks to that awareness that I’m now at least flying in the right direction, it’s a much more comfortable one.
Anxious-Ambition.com 