How Your Subconscious Mind Holds You Back From Greatness
By Leo Gura - January 15, 2014 | 12 Comments
A deep example of how I hold myself back from greatness and so do you.
Probing The Subconscious Waters
- One of the most important ways to grow yourself is to become aware of how your subconscious mind holds you back from greatness.
- If you think you’re free of limiting beliefs, you’re kidding yourself.
- If you think you’re going to achieve your dreams without addressing your limiting beliefs, you’re kidding yourself.
- I recently had an epiphany that revealed one of my own greatest limitations, and I want to show you how it unfolded.
A Story About A Mushroom
- Recently my girlfriend flew in to visit me from out of town.
- While cooking for her one night, I sauteed up a batch of mushrooms.
- While stirring the mushrooms, one of them fell out of the pan and tumbled down to the floor.
- I immediately, reflexively, picked it up off the floor and threw it back in the pan.
- Eeeeeewwwww!!!
- What’s worse, I tried to do it on the sly
- I knew it was the “wrong” thing to do, but I also felt bad about letting a good mushroom go to waste.
- Luckily my girlfriend caught me red-handed and called me out on it: “Hey, did you just put that mushroom back in the pan?!”
- Shamefully I had to confess: “Ummmm…. Yeaaaaah?”
- And that’s when it hit me: I have a real problem with money!
Lifting The Veil
- What is really going here?
- Notice what happened here. On the surface is looks like I have a problem with hygiene, but actually, I have a problem with scarcity.
- I put the mushroom back in the pan because I didn’t want to waste it.
- But, you might wonder, if there were still plenty of mushrooms left in the pan, how important can one freaking mushroom be?
- But this is a failure to appreciate the depth of the problem.
- It’s not really about mushrooms. It’s about my limiting beliefs around needing to be secure.
- The subconscious mind is very sneaky and operates in illogical ways.
- In this case, one mushroom triggers subconscious feelings of money-scarcity even though I own a business, I have zero debt, and I have a large savings.
- Yet still I get triggered.
- Can this really be possible?
- Absolutely! This just goes to show how deep our conditioning and limiting beliefs run.
- And you’re doing the same silly thing in your own life too!
Why So Neurotic
- Many people have a bad relationship with money because they spend it too frivolously.
- But I have the opposite problem: I am too conservative.
- Now that I’m aware of this, I observe myself very carefully when I’m cooking food.
- Inevitably food falls on the floor every now and then, and if I’m conscious, I can notice a deep impulse in me to pick it up and reuse it, even though my higher self knows better.
- Why is this happening?
- Quite simply, I have subconscious fear of going broke. And this fear drives me to be stingy, conservative, and economical in the most neurotic ways.
- I have this fear because my childhood was always plagued with money problems. Even though my family was never poor, we always struggled with money. We never had a reliable source of income.
- The ups and downs of my family’s financial situation left a deep imprint in my mind about lack of money and the need to save.
- This imprint is so strong that even a decade later, after many years of personal development work, I am still emotional triggered by money.
Watch Out For Distractions
- After this incident with the mushroom, I became very conscious on my limiting beliefs around money. It was like an epiphany.
- Now that I became conscious, I set up a rule for myself that I will throw out anything that falls to the floor, on principle.
- Notice that this is NOT a hygiene issue.
- Hygiene is not as big a factor as it might seem. Human beings can tolerate much more dirt and uncleanliness than most people would believe.
- The modern world is sanitized to the extreme. It wasn’t like that for hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution.
- So many of your notions about hygiene aren’t biological, but simply cultural.
- I’ve got nothing against hygiene, but to focus on that would be to miss the bigger point.
Deep Wiring, Deep Unwiring
- The problem is that even after you discover your limiting conditioning, like I did in this case, it’s still hard to just tell yourself to shut it off.
- Subconscious conditioning is wired very deep, so it’s hard to unwire.
- You have to do a lot of inner work to unwire it. This takes a level of commitment that few people understand.
- But this is some of the most powerful personal development work you can do.
- You have to always be on the look out for how your limiting beliefs manifest themselves, and then as soon as you spot them, you have to commit to fixing them.
- Do not assume that such a deep issue will spontaneously resolve itself.
- If you don’t take the time and effort to actively weed out your limiting beliefs, they will keep you stuck for life.
Greatness Squandered
- This whole problem goes way deeper than just food on a plate or even money.
- The underlying tragedy is that my neurotic relationship with money keeps me from impacting the world.
- Because I’m triggered by money, I am too stingy with myself and my dreams.
- For example, I will hesitate to invest in great business opportunities because I want to feel 100% secure.
- But in the end this holds me back because not only am I missing out on new sources of income, but I’m actually cutting short my self-actualization.
- It’s funny, but I actually don’t value money. I only value money in it’s ability to enable me to impact other people and do great work.
- So ultimately if I’m stingy with my money I will not invest in myself, I will not create the business I want, and I will not live out my life purpose.
- There is a direct link between my stinginess with food and my inability to live my life purpose.
- And this have been a recurring theme in my life now for at least 10 years!
- The whole issue revolves around creating a sense of security.
- If I can’t feel secure, I will never go out there and do the really scary things that I need to do to fulfill my life purpose.
Security As Prerequisite
- The human brain is wired in such a way that you can only take on challenge and risk when you feel secure.
- Psychological studied have demonstrated that security is a prerequisite for risk-taking.
- The way they prove this is by putting a 2 year old baby in a strange new room full of toys and other interesting objects.
- If the baby’s mother is present in the room, the baby will venture out and explore the space and play with the toys.
- In this case the mother is simply present. She doesn’t encourage or help the baby in any way.
- If the baby’s mother is absent, the baby will cower in the corner and never interact with anything.
- Why does this happen?
- Because for a baby, it’s mother is the most important thing. If the mother is lost, the baby is screwed.
- More generally, when a human being feels threatened, survival instinct takes over. All priority is shifted towards establishing security.
- A human baby doesn’t have the luxury to play with toys if its mother is missing. All attention gets hijacked to find the mother.
- If this didn’t happen, it’s pretty clear that the baby would be at a huge survival disadvantage.
- Okay, that all makes sense, but how does this apply to you?
- Well… You are still that baby! You’re just a little bit taller.
- The moral of this study is: to go out there and create a powerful life, you have to take care of your survival needs.
- If you don’t handle your base needs, they will prevent you from living on your edge.
Dig Deep And Commit
- Be very observant about how your hang-ups cripple you.
- As we’ve seen with me, my hang-ups cripple me financially and in business.
- Where do your hang-ups limit you?
- Perhaps you have hang-ups around relationships, or fitness, or diet, or career, or education, or socialization.
- Perhaps someone told you that you were stupid?
- Perhaps someone told you that you were ugly?
- Perhaps someone told you that you’re a failure?
- Any one of these can haunt you for life.
- Take a very honest and deep look inside yourself.
- Look deep into your past because most hang-ups get created in childhood and early adulthood.
- Look for ways in which a big childhood block is manifesting itself in your life right now in subtle ways and not-so-subtle ways.
- I have committed myself to ironing out my hang-ups around money, no matter what it takes, because I know I need to clear that out to move higher.
- You should do the same
- Once you uncover your hang-up, you need to commit to ironing it out, otherwise you will remain stuck for the rest of your life.
- The awesome silver-lining to all this is that right now there are tools and resources available to help you permanently get over any hang-up, no matter how bad you think it is.
Bottom Line: Be vigilant against subconscious limiting beliefs and commit to eradicating them once and for all.
reader says: Hello! Is there a video about money in one’s life? Money as a source of opportunities and as a source of problems?
Leo Gura says: I don’t have a video yet on money itself. That’s a great topic!
Gerard says: Can I suggest you maybe make a video on deep, wired money paradigms! Not a how to to wealth mentality but a more general explanation on how it just works down deep in the subconcious. I’ve been reading think and grow rich by napolean hill.
abhishek says: suppose i sort out a hang up then how do i work it or iron it ?
Billy says: I see how the story of the baby and mother creates needy behavior. Once the much taller person experences this separation ,what was once outgoing fun (at times) person would then feel abandond and could possibly self distrucked. It would also cause social isolation and maybe even depression. if he had been called stupid ,or idiot I dong see how all these years later it could cause all these problems and why would they just now be an issue?
mechanical engineer says: Catching oneself doing the subtle things is no easy task. A lot of people do the same thing and expect different results. Social programming from media and parents themselves contribute to these debilitating habits.I practice meditation and it’s one way to catch and correct the subconscious mind programming. I have also changed my social circle. Thanks for the video.
Plant bio trees says: I have not seen how meditation can be beneficial unless you are meditation on something or about something. I have heard some of leo videos and he thinks its important to get to a point where nothing matters. He also thinks nothing in our past was real. I think instead of wasting time to accomplish that he should just get a lobotomy. Sorry leo I am just saying. I am in agreement about changing your social circle. But finding a new one that you fit into is not that easy. meditation and organized groups is the same as brain wash isn’t it?
Kathy says: Very good. I have that habit of which I will address BUT I would toss any food stuff out in the back yard for my furry friends. I feed everybody. Hope THAT”S ok. Yes? Thanks!
Jack says: Can you make a video of dealing with cognitive dissonance. The issue – dissonance over having sex with a girl I’m not in to, just for the sake of sex. Possible issues here – other girls finding out (strong chance cause I live in a commune house) So I’d lose the chance. Fear of being ridiculed and now having to deal with my actions by treating the girl well and not making things awkward. Dont know why I care so much. Right now I just do.
Antonio says: Hello Leo, I really respect your work and it has helped me a lot!
I have a question about this topic here.
You make it seems very hard to eradicate limiting or negative beliefs, but if you’d just use positive affirmations very intensely to instill positive beliefs and also choose them carefully to override negative beliefs when you noticed them. I think that would do the job, or wouldn’t it?
Laura says: Hi! I think there is s concept called “lifetrap” which refers to the problematic subconcious thinking learned from the early years. Children and animals react in three ways in protecting themselfs by avoiding stuff, surrender or fighting back. In certain situations, if we have a lifetrap, we interpret a cituation thru a special lense which was construct in our childhood and we have simply no idea, how to cope with the situation with reason, because the situation is charging our emotions. For me for example. I have a peoplepleasing tendency, because as a child I changed schools alot and was always the new kid. So I had always to work hard to fit in. That has led me to lots of suffering, because I dont even like being with people, because they are robbing my time and energy, but the word “no” is very difficult for me.
If you’re interested in this idea of “lifetraps” then google it. They are really beatifully categorized and there is even a test you can do to reveal your own lifetraps.
Jonathan says: This is great content man and I can’t wait to watch what you come up with on this vein. These are questions I’ve been trying to ask and answer for myself. Further insight highly desired!