1) SELF-COACHING

Self-coaching is honestly exactly how it sounds coaching yourself. Yes, working with a professional coach can be extremely powerful to help you gain new skills and perspectives on your personal development journey. 

But the reality is that many people are not in a position to work with a coach financially. And also a coach isn’t always going to be available right in the moments where you truly need it most. 

And this is where you can rely on your own intuition and skills to mentally work through the inner thoughts and fears that are stopping you from taking action. 

One of the things that you can do to coach yourself in a moment of need is journaling. I know this is in every personal development video ever. But journaling really is a powerful tool to have a conversation with yourself. You can use methods such as deep why questioning where you ask yourself, “Why am I stopping myself from showing up? What am I afraid of?” And when you’ve got it all laid out in front of you, you can look at it more objectively instead of experiencing it so intensely and emotionally. 

And if you don’t like writing or journaling is just not your thing, something else you can do is talk to yourself, have a conversation with yourself. Whether you do this in your mind, or with a voice recording app, it’s really just taking a moment to be mindful and to dissolve the intensity of the emotions that are associated with the fears that are stopping you from taking action on the things that you want to do.

2) REPROGRAMMING

Your mind is full of programming and a lot of our programming actually sits within our subconscious minds. And it’s really hard to see when we are sabotaging because a lot of the actions that we take are actually on autopilot. So sometimes you might not even know that you’re sabotaging yourself because let’s face it, life is busy. And often we just let our fear and ego run the show without consciously questioning why we’re procrastinating on doing the things we actually want to do. 

Self-coaching is really powerful in the moment to work through when you can see yourself procrastinating. However, a long term powerful approach is through reprogramming your mind. And there are a few tools that I use to do this. And the first one that I really love is mirror work. Now mirror work is most powerful when you’re actually looking at yourself in the mirror, doing it on a consistent basis, and talking yourself through the things that you’re actually experiencing. 

There’s no point just sitting there saying I’m a powerful goddess if that’s not resonating with you, saying things like you’re safe enough to go out and try that new hobby or I love you for being so courageous to actually start that business. Things that are really potent in your experience. And using repetition to code them into your subconscious mind is a really powerful way to override or slightly dissolve the fears that you have. 

Another thing that you can do is hypnosis. There’s a lot of research on hypnosis and it’s an incredibly powerful tool that a lot of people use from athletes to artists I really love hypnosis. Now two ways that you can do this there is a lot of incredible hypnosis on the internet that you can use. 

Another thing that you can do when you’re having really strong emotional feelings towards procrastinating or you find yourself self-sabotaging or getting anxiety around taking the particular action you want to take is EFT tapping. EFT stands for emotional freedom technique. Honestly, for a long time, I thought this was a bit out there. But it really is backed by science. It works with the meridian points in your body and helps to move the emotions through so you don’t feel them so intensely. And then you can take action from a more neutralized place.

3) HEALTH  

Your health, particularly your hormones, and your nervous system plays a big role in your ability to feel self-confident. You might not even realize it but our hormones play a huge role in how we actually feel about ourselves and our ability to think clearly. 

I’m by no means an expert in this field. But I recently got to spend some time with my boyfriend’s mom, who’s actually an expert in Hormonal Health. And she explained to me that when our hormones are out of whack, particularly our cortisol levels being higher than they should be, it impedes on our ability to think confidently, she explained that like when we’re in a state of internal stress, our mind will do anything to stop us from even slightly stepping outside our comfort zone, even that moment of slight resistance because the resistance is normal, especially when you’re trying something new. But when you’ve got high cortisol levels, your body is essentially seeing it as a danger and all it wants to do is protect you. 

So regulating our hormones and our nervous system essentially helps us to feel less overwhelmed and think more clearly. And some of the things that I’ve been doing lately, since I had this experience to really regulate my hormones, first of all, is making sure that I’m doing regular exercise. Supplements as well. Now, this is something that you want to be careful with because you don’t just want to start taking supplements willy nilly. Go see a naturopath or your doctor or someone who’s an expert in the field of hormones and finds out, particularly which hormones are going to be good for you and the hormonal issues that you may be experiencing. 

Another thing is obviously sleeping. Getting enough sleep at night is really, really important to recover from the day to allow your body to recover. Something that I’ve been doing is actually taking magnesium at night to help me have a really, really restful sleep. 

Another thing that you can do to help regulate your nervous system is breathwork I’m not a huge fan of like the breathwork that you see on the internet. But what I’ve been doing is just throughout the day trying to take more mindful breaths, you know whether that just be like putting my head on my heart and my stomach making sure I’m breathing deeply and just not living in such a state of panic or manic or rush and trying just to slow down a bit throughout my day. And my breath is almost an anchor to do so. 

4) EMBODIMENT

I need to tell you something, I frickin hate meditation. Honestly, I just find it so boring. And I feel like for me, it’s just not a vibe. Like even though I know how powerful it is. And I know that it works because when I’ve done it I feel good. The benefit of meditation is that it essentially trains you to get out of your head to be the observer of your thoughts, thoughts, it helps you to essentially control your mindset. This helps you to not always be so attached to the particular thoughts that might be causing you to procrastinate. 

In theory, it’s a good theory, but honestly, I just hate the practice. Instead, what I like to do is something called embodiment. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s helpful in training you to not attach to every tiny little thought that passes through your mind, as well as build a better self-image and a connec
tion to yourself. And when you have a better connection to yourself, you respect yourself more, which helps to build self-confidence. 

And some of the things that I really love doing for embodiment are dancing. Another thing that you can do, which is also good for nervous system regulation is present, walking, like just walking through the streets being really present in the moment, walking is just such an incredible tool. But rather than being on the phone, listening to music, whatever, just walking and just being present, with your feet, and the steps that they’re taking, being super mindful about the experience you’re having. 

5) SET AND SETTING

This concept might be one that you haven’t actually heard before, but honestly, it’s one of the most powerful and relatively simple, yet effective mindset habits that I’ve picked up personally to help myself set myself up for success when trying new things that helped me become the coolest person I know. 

It’s essentially curating your environment, your style, the people you’re with, and your routine to suit the desired action that you want to take setting yourself up for success essentially.

So all of these little tricks or hacks to kind of like get your brain to feel more comfortable doing the thing really do help. It’s almost like the old saying dress for the life you want but really it’s just about putting the effort into creating the right set and setting to better control the experience in advance to help you not feel like sabotaging in the moment.