It’s common that I receive students who complain about doing things they don’t want to do.
“I keep smoking weed, I don’t want to”
“I keep watching porn, I don’t want to”
“I keep senselessly browsing online, I don’t want to”.
“I keep overeating, I don’t want to”.
See my Levels of Responsibility chart above before reading on. The people who talk this way haven’t even yet reached baseline Level 1.
Then want me to fix it, as if I could remote-control their choices. No amount of coaching or mentoring can take away your free will.
So the coaching session then comprises of basic exercises of conscious action (intend it, then do it), conscious attention (intend it, then focus there), etc. I then ask “Who decides what you do or focus on?” and they say “Me”.
“But then why do I keep doing it?”
I say: Because you want to.
There are two parts of you involved: The conscious mind that says “I don’t want to do it” and the subconscious part that says “I want to do it”.
A good way to bring the subconscious part to conscious control, is to do it, to choose it intentionally, consciously, willingly. “I am intentionally choosing to overeat now, because I want to”.
In so doing, it’s easier to discover WHY you want to. “I want to do XYZ because I feel bored/empty/frustrated etc” or “because I believe it will give me energy” etc.
This is taking responsibility. This is OWNING your behavior instead of asking me to fix something that you are choosing.
Another great exercise is to close your eyes and consciously visualize, feel and enjoy DOING IT and then to consciously visualize, feel and enjoy NOT DOING IT. And to mentally move back and forth between the two until it feels like your two personalities have merged and you can easily choose either. The desire-resistance contradiction is what fixates attention and this exercise unfixes it. On my website I have a Course called “Advanced Energy Clearing” that addresses this phenomenon.
Yet another approach is to explore and then release the underlying frustration that arises after “I want to do it because….”.
There is no moving forward in life if you pretend you are not responsible for your actions. Stop pretending, stop lying to yourself and fully own what you do and don’t do.
