Progress in your life: Fear is holding you back
Before you have success in your life, you have progress in your life. You can already think of progress or advancement as success, too. But when do you have progress in your life and why do you sometimes feel like you're standing still? How do you get yourself to walk again, literally or not. But usually mostly mentally
Progression meaning
When you look up progression in the dictionary of Van Dale you get the following result: "1 progress 2 stepwise ascent" So it's about progress.
So what’s going on when you feel like you’re no longer making progress? You’re stuck where you are, and you feel trapped in your life. Being stuck in your life often means being trapped by your beliefs and certain fears.
Fear prevents progression
One fear that hinders progress, for example, is the fear of failure. Every time you fail, you’re still making some kind of progress. You’re getting a little further each time. So the fear of failure should really be called the fear of moving forward—and that sounds a lot stranger. After all, wouldn’t you want to move forward?
Some people don't, but that's much more frightening. In nature, it's very simple, either you grow or you die out. Then people with fear of failure would fear growth more than death. Also crazy.
That's often not how these people see it, but when you think about it, that's what's going on. A baby trying to walk very often fails. But does make progress.
His muscles get stronger, balance gets better and so at some point he can take his first step.
And then he fails again when he tries to run....
Failure is so delicious.
Fail as much as you can in your life. That's the most fun there is. (Because at some point that kid does manage to run)
The best part? Well, it’s not exactly fun, but I do fail at least once a week. Usually while working out, sometimes at work, and very occasionally during conversations with my wife.
And then there are plenty of other contexts in which I occasionally fail.
I fail more than I experience success.
Happy!
Look, success is nice you know, but also very fleeting. If I achieve that then...
Then you feel too crazy for a moment and there's already the next one. And so you go on and on.
I love that too. Creating, performing, putting something down, achieving something, winning and getting stronger. But once that's achieved, that's great, but then that's over in a flash. I fail much more often than I win.
Just yesterday during my workout. I failed, didn’t make it, but I did get stronger. I did make progress. So you could say I did make it after all…
Hmmm...
So fear of failure is one such fear that can prevent progression, advancement. And this can be about progress with Crossfit (what if I can't lift those weights?), but it can also be about social progress (what if I tell my wife I don't like the food?) and making your relationship work.
Social anxiety and progression
Another fear that can halt progress is social anxiety. The fear of success is often the fear that those around you cannot handle your success—that your family and friends will become unreasonably jealous.
But be honest: If that comes true, wouldn’t you want to know—wouldn’t you want to find out who your real friends are and then celebrate your success with them?
Another social anxiety is the fear that when you step up—for example, to get that promotion —people won’t think you’re good enough.
Or that you’ll be rejected.
Illness and progression
So maybe you’ve always been making progress and then you got sick.
Shit, that's really annoying.
Your body is letting you down, and this can do all sorts of things to you. You may not be able to do as much anymore or you may have developed other problems because of it that prevent you from feeling like you are moving forward.
Progression stops, but how do you get it going again when you've fallen ill?
What often happens when you’re sick is that you mainly notice what you can no longer do and all the things that aren’t working anymore. You suddenly focus on everything that’s going wrong in your life and can blame the illness for it.
On one hand, this is very easy because then you don't have to do anything.
On the other hand, it's terrible because it prevents you from seeing the opportunities you do still have.
Because even 1 millimeter of progress is progress.
What matters most is your belief that you have the resources within you to achieve your goals. Research shows, for example, that when you think you can’t do something, it leads to a lower quality of life, whereas believing that you can accomplish things on your own improves your quality of life. This research was conducted among people with asthma, type II diabetes, and those with heart conditions[1].
This could mean, for example, that if you have asthma, you will actually exercise more to keep your lungs healthy, despite the fear of an asthma attack.
This could mean that you suddenly start eating very healthily to better manage type II diabetes.
With heart disease, this can mean that you do dare to leave the house and do things your doctor tells you to do.
Life goes with ups and downs, it is important to see progress after a down as progress, even if you are not at the point where you were before. You haven't fallen behind, just have a new point from which to make progression.
Hypnosis to overcome your fears and make progression
So fear of failure can stop progression, social anxiety can stop progression, the idea that you just can't do something stops progression, and anxiety due to illness stops progression. So a lot is related to anxiety.
Anxiety is often based on beliefs about how things work in life. Fear of failure is often a social fear. Fear of an illness or the effects of a chronic illness can cause you to still find it difficult to do the healthy things necessary to regain progression.
But most importantly, that fear is based on your beliefs. On your thoughts about how the world works and how you can function in it.
Those beliefs were formed at some point, usually in childhood. How much knowledge did you actually have then about how the world worked? Especially compared to now? So the annoying thing is that you then set up these precepts about how everything works and how things should be, but of course, as a child you didn't have all the knowledge.
With hypnosis, you can easily change these kinds of beliefs. This is done, for example, through regression. With regression, you go back to the moment when a belief first arose that is now holding you back from making progress. You do this only after the hypnotist has put you under hypnosis and given you the suggestion to do so.
Next, you will review this moment with your current knowledge, allowing you to update your beliefs. These can change completely through this regression and through this you can overcome fears.
Focus on progression through hypnosis
Then you also have a whole other way to use hypnosis to change your focus from your fear to your progression. This is an advanced technique that is not taught until later in the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands training.
With this technique, the hypnotist takes you into your life in the future. What your life will look like then when you have thus achieved your goals, your progression.
Next, you're going to take steps back. You're going to see what you did to get to that point in your life. Each time a step back until the moment when you are in hypnosis and the hypnotist helps you with this technique.
Many people report a year later that they actually succeeded, so it can certainly be a good way to focus more on moving forward and thereby actually achieving it.
Progress in your life means learning from moments of failure, overcoming fears and focusing on possibilities. Hypnosis can help you with this.
Would you like to learn more about hypnosis and what you can achieve with it? Then come to a seminar or a Hypnosis PlayShop. The PlayShops are held in Zwolle and Wormerveer.
Want to get started right away on mastering techniques to help yourself and others? Then sign up for one of our courses. The courses are offered in Zwolle, Wormerveer, and online.
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0887044031000146815