Where Do I Start?

An excellent place to start if you want to learn the basics is the Emotional Embuffination book. In it, you'll find a comprehensive walkthrough on how to resolve conflict and live your best life possible. It's available on Audible, print, or as an e-book.

One of the most common models I’ve heard was the idea of finding and eliminating limiting beliefs. The theory goes that there are all sorts of subconscious beliefs that sabotage our progress without us knowing it.

Limiting beliefs are generally subconscious thoughts that we’ve developed over our lifetimes to protect us. They can be learned through our parents’ attitudes, through seeing others hurt, or through experiencing trauma ourselves. Once in place, they serve as a force that holds us back from getting to the goal(s) we want. They’re usually designed to protect us from harm, but frequently bar us from accomplishing our goals. This is true even if we’re outwardly saying and doing positive things that should otherwise make us successful.

For example, I might consciously think I want financial success. I keep saying I want to become a millionaire, but every time I have opportunities to make money, feelings of unworthiness surface and cause me to turn down those opportunities. The assumption, then, is that if I can identify my limiting beliefs, I’m able to counter them and implement a better model.

The problem is that once we identify what a limiting belief is, we frequently label ourselves with that limiting belief. In other words, I associate myself with the limiting belief I’ve identified. If I’m wrong, and there wasn’t a limiting belief there before, I’ve essentially created a limiting belief. In contrast, if I’m right and I’ve correctly identified the limiting belief, I’ve now reinforced its power by giving it a ton of attention and mental focus.

This may sound overly simplistic, but a powerful back-door around limiting beliefs is to not give them attention. Don’t reinforce them. Don’t identify them. Just do the thing that’s necessary to get to the place you want to go. Don’t tell yourself you’re bad at making money. Just go figure out how to make money. Don’t tell yourself you have an illness. Just find out how to be healthy.

This is not to say you should ignore problems nor is it to say that limiting beliefs don’t have power over you. It’s a function of focus. Law of attraction principles fixate on what you want, not on what you don’t want. So you don’t say, “I’m becoming less sick.” Rather you say, “I’m becoming healthier and healthier.” Your focus shifts to the positive state. Limiting beliefs are the same.

The way you do each of those things is listed in the two-step process above. Figure out what you want or where you want to go. Then identify and follow steps to get you there.

Once you’ve gone through this process and have identified some new habits to incorporate you should periodically re-assess and see if you can identify new habits to incorporate.

If you constantly repeat this process, you’ll grow more emotionally embuffed and soon be able to handle conflict like you never could before.

If you’ve made a lot of individual changes in your life but never see a difference in things, it’s easy to get frustrated. It’s like there’s an invisible wall that doesn’t allow you to get through and you feel like you’ve tried everything.

Part of the problem is that a lot of goals are more complex than just the introduction of a single new idea. Imagine building a computer. You might correctly set up your monitor, have a power source that’s properly transferring power, have your motherboard set up properly, and have a keyboard functioning correctly. But one malfunctioning microchip could cause the rest of the device to not properly activate.

Many of our problems are the same. You might be doing a lot of things right, but still not be seeing results if the issue is more complex than one independent variable.

That means a few things. First, if you feel like you’ve tried everything and you’re still not getting what you want, remind yourself not to give up. You may well be really close to finding the one or two additional factors that push you into success.

Second, it’s critical you keep learning and incorporating new ideas. Read, get other people’s perspectives, get coaching, take classes, attend masterminds, or do whatever you need to to make yourself level up and finally get what you’ve been trying to accomplish.