Do you enjoy seeing how far you can go in your life? To just check out what your body can do? What your creativity can produce? Challenging yourself has really become an art for some people, who are for example very good at yoga, or real adrenaline junkies for whom no sport is extreme enough, or they are just those super successful business people who just want to know if they are creative enough to make a lot of money
Challenging Yourself
Challenging yourself, what is that anyway? You start challenging yourself when you start identifying and overcoming your own pain points that block you from improving your life, or your physical ability.
Challenging yourself is therefore very much like getting out of your comfort zone. You are going to do something you find exciting.
This seems very easy, but it is not. In fact, you have to admit your vulnerabilities to yourself, and that's something most people (including themselves) don't want to admit[1].
When is something a challenge?
Something is a challenge when it is outside your comfort zone AND when it is something you are not sure in advance that you will succeed at. You expose yourself to feelings of uncertainty, doubt and even the feeling that you might not be able to do it at all.
After all, this means that you need to develop to complete the challenge properly. Maybe you need to train more, maybe you need to practice a particular skill or even take classes to do something well.
Be open to pushing your limits
So to come up with challenges for yourself, it is important that it be a challenge that pushes your own limit. You then want to push the limit of what you consider physically possible. The limit of certain skills, such as being able to wash dishes faster or type, you try to push. The most fun limit for many people is pushing the limit of how much money you make per year.
Of course, you then have to be open to pushing that boundary. To the idea that you are actually going to do something that you find exciting and that you may not be sure you will be able to do at the beginning. This can be 50/50.
If you don't even see yourself stepping out of your comfort zone yet, hypnosis can help you become more open to pushing your boundaries.
For example, you can find out why you find it difficult to set big challenges for yourself. Why is a half marathon okay, but a full one not?
Why is having your own business part time good, but choosing to work for yourself full-time is not?
This is something hypnosis helps you with.
In fact, hypnosis can help you figure out unconscious beliefs that are holding you back from challenging yourself. For example, if you've always performed a lot, the fear of slowing down or even failing can cause you to stop challenging yourself.
So where that fear comes from is something hypnosis can help with.
Finding out what causes stagnation and not challenging yourself for something truly exciting is something that can be done with multiple techniques. For example, you can have a Socratic conversation in which the why question is repeated several times. This gets you to the core of your beliefs and often the realization that that core is not based on anything. This provides a new space to create helpful beliefs that help you challenge yourself.
Another way to identify blockages to challenge yourself is with regression. With regression, you go back to the moment when your subconscious decided that what you are doing now is the best you can do and that personal growth and development is now at its end.
These are often moments from your childhood. For example, you may have always heard as a child that you can't run well, and so 12 km of running is the best you think you can do. Or you may have heard as a child that you are super clumsy, so knitting your own scarf is a step too far anyway. Or you were always told that it would never amount to anything, and so you just get stuck in work that can be done without training and don't dare challenge yourself to change this.
Through regression, you can examine that moment more closely and determine with your mature knowledge of today whether that belief still makes sense. Generally, it doesn't and that gives a liberating feeling that suddenly allows you to challenge yourself again.
Improve perseverance
Challenging yourself helps you improve your perseverance. Whether you give yourself a big challenge or a small one, it all helps.
Indeed, with perseverance, it is important that you find your internal motivation and can keep going when things get tough for a while. Especially when the going gets tough, your drive, what motivates you, is important to keep going in order to achieve your challenge and thereby bring yourself to new insights and developments.
Hypnosis also helps you stay focused during challenges to yourself so that you can achieve the goals you set for such a challenge.
One way to do this is with hypnotic suggestions. In fact, when you are under hypnosis you are more open to these suggestions and they enter your subconscious more easily to influence your subconscious beliefs.
These may include suggestions such as:
"It's good to get out of your comfort zone."
"You don't develop yourself until it gets exciting," he says.
"You do this for a freer future."
"You can learn what you can't yet do," says the company's CEO, "and you can learn what you can't yet do."
"It's okay if it takes longer, as long as you keep taking steps," says Dr. K. K., the company's CEO.
These are just examples of beliefs that strengthen your perseverance during the completion of a challenge. Depending on your beliefs and blockages, you may receive other suggestions from the hypnosis expert.
These suggestions are often given to you on an mp3 so you can listen to them at home during self-hypnosis. The induction of hypnosis is often also on the mp3 and of course the moment when you "wake up" from hypnosis. This allows you to listen at home at times when you find it difficult to accomplish challenges for yourself.
Now you may be thinking, yes nice, but how can I challenge myself?
Then I have listed a few fun challenges for personal and physical growth for you to try until you know which challenge you really want to give yourself.
Challenge 1: Get social more often
We'd all like to connect with friends and family, but where do you find the time? Challenge yourself to be that social friend who is always there and help those around you where you can.
In this way, you will learn to better plan your time and choose your personal life which is ultimately the most important part of your life.
Finding it hard to find time for your friends? A hypnosis expert can help you find the blockage preventing you from prioritizing your social life.
Challenge 2: Start meditating (doing yoga) every day
To experience more peace and happiness, a yoga/meditation challenge can give you that push to suffer less stress. Such a moment of silence can also cause you to realize things that will allow you to organize your life differently.
Do you find it difficult to sit still or do something so "floaty"? A hypnosis expert will help you remove blocking beliefs.
Challenge 3: Try to earn $500 more per month
Making money, it seems so easy until you try to make more money than you do by default. Now you have to start thinking, is a side job worth the time? Are there other ways to make extra money? This is the time when you can look at your own talents, learning opportunities and standard skills to earn that little bit extra.
Do you feel that you are not worth more than what you are currently earning? A hypnosis expert will help you improve your self-esteem and remove blockages to asking for that pay raise.
Challenge 4: Do something new every month
Don't yet have a clear idea of the area of your life in which you want to challenge yourself? Then try doing something new every month. Do something new for your social life, your health or your personal development to find out in which area of your life you want to challenge yourself for a finer life.
As mentioned, challenging yourself means going far out of your comfort zone and doing something where you are not sure in advance if you will succeed. If you struggle to challenge yourself and then persevere in an attempt, a hypnosis expert can help you with your mindset and to remove blockages.
Want to know how hypnosis does it? Then come to a hypnosis playshop or enroll in one of our trainings.
[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/32528137/HBR_-_Managing_Yourself-_The_Paradox_of_Excellence.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1553865223&Signature=9eVd2Vkhx2MlMldRWstdm%2BEcB80%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DManaging_Yourself_The_Paradox_of_Excelle.pdf
