Unlocking Change: How to Go From Knowing to Doing
In recent years, therapy and coaching have gained significant traction, shedding the stigma once associated with seeking help. We now have the opportunity to delve into the depths of our psyche, uncovering the root causes of our emotions and behaviours. Suddenly, terms such as trauma, projection, narcissism or attachment styles have entered the mainstream awareness. Yet, despite this newfound understanding and the language to describe it, many find themselves trapped in a cycle of repetitive patterns, unable to enact lasting change.
Why is it that we struggle to transform ourselves, even when we know exactly what the problem is?
This happened to me years ago. I had a very comfortable life, was co-leading a business in central London and felt I had all the modern luxuries to have a good life. However, under the surface there were two issues: 1 — I was too afraid to let go of a relationship I was unhappy with and 2 — I somehow felt there was more to life than just going through the motions of work, shopping, socialising and holidays.
Therapy was a great first step and it helped me learn about what caused me to feel all that fear, why I felt so uncomfortable asserting my boundaries and why it was such an issue to just show myself. I also understood how deep down I did not believe I deserved good things and always chose a challenge over something or someone that might have just been good for me. I knew the problem but I didn’t know how to change how I felt and no idea how to solve it. I needed new tools.
One day I was watching a documentary called The Sacred Science about a bunch of ill Westerners going to the Amazon rain forest to be treated only with indigenous plants. One of them was Ayahuasca — the most powerful psychedelic brew administered by shamans in South America, and it clearly called my name. In fact, it called it so loud that I decided to travel to Peru to drink it. Mind you, I was someone who had never taken recreational drugs, didn’t smoke or even drink much alcohol. I was committed to discovering those new tools though and off I went.
My whole experience with Ayahuasca is another story. One thing is sure — it kicked the door open to my realisation that I didn’t know half of what went on in the realm of consciousness and this reality. It made me experience things I didn’t know I could experience such as getting out of my physical body while retaining full awareness or interacting with multi-dimensional entities.
The come-back was tricky to begin with but once I dealt with the post journeys PTSD, I decided to integrate the mind-blowing experiences and continue my explorations using new tools, each one unveiling fresh perspectives and bringing me closer to unraveling the mechanism of change.
So, here I was practicing meditation, lucid dreaming, astral travel, holotropic breathing, hypnosis, doing temazcals, shamanic journeys, somatic experiencing, TRE, EMDR, PsychK, Internal Family Systems, Jungian therapy, NLP, cold exposure, and more plant medicines. If it offered an opportunity for me to learn something new about myself, I wanted to try it.
And what did that do? A lot, in fact.
I understood that living a fulfilling life is actually very challenging. It requires us to really face ourselves, recognise our defence mechanisms, uncover our limiting beliefs and then demands we have the courage to do the scary thing of going against those defences while making sure we still feel safe and somehow trust the process. That’s certainly not what we are taught but it is what has brought me incredible insight and most importantly freedom from being a puppet to those emotions that made me choose less than what I deserved.
Ayahuasca proved to be a potent tool, albeit intense, in initiating my departure from the autopilot mode. It enabled me to grasp some of the mechanics of existence and, crucially, to immerse myself in direct experience. Through this journey, I forged connections with various facets of my being, recognising their roles in shaping and influencing my reality. All this allowed me to purge physical and emotional baggage, rewire my subconscious, and recalibrate my nervous system, fostering a state of being that is deliberate, profound, and serene compared to my previous state.
I also finally decided to listen to all the feedback I’d heard for years urging me to pursue a career as a therapist and decided to re-train myself and delve into helping others take steps into creating the life of freedom and meaning.
KEY BLOCKS TO CHANGE
Following my own journey as well as hundreds of hours of coaching sessions, here are a few key things I’ve learned that block us from changing:
1 — Lack of Understanding of How We Function
It’s actually astounding that with all the access to knowledge and wisdom we have, we still seem to have such limited understanding of ourselves and fail to recognise that our psyche operates on a multifaceted level, far beyond the realm of our analytical mind.
Our subconscious plays a pivotal role here, steering the course of our thoughts, emotions and actions without our conscious awareness. In fact, scientists have reported that as much as 95–97% of our cognitive activity is indeed governed by the subconscious (Lipton, Biology of Belief).
Beyond that, early experiences shape our nervous system, establishing what feels safe and familiar, essentially creating a blueprint for what is acceptable later.
Thus, to initiate lasting change, we must understand how all these different systems affect each other and address the entirety of our being, aligning our beliefs, nervous system, and somatic body with our desired outcome. The analytical mind is just a small part of this system — it’s time we recognised that.
2 — Identification with the Voice in our Heads
Not realising the voice in our heads is not us but a tool that helps us navigate this reality means we do not know how to use it to support us in the transformation.
That voice, which is often ascribed to a construct of our psyche called the ego-mind (Tolle, The Power of Now), is responsible for keeping us safe, alive and connected to this reality (Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche). It will do its best to deter us from taking any risks of feeling hurt or doing something hard. And most importantly, that voice is not tasked with helping us feel fulfilled — that’s simply not its job description.
And so if we identify with this voice, meaning we believe it speaks our truth, that’s who we let at the driver’s seat for our decisions. If that’s the case, we can be sure our lives will be governed by fear from all sorts of real and perceived risks. We can also be sure that the defensive attitudes it employs won’t help us take risks necessary to create meaningful lives.
3 — Fear of Imperfection
This is one is one of the most interesting paradoxes in life: we all know we are limited, and yet, we all also have such a big issue admitting it and especially in front of others. That fear of being seen as flawed or vulnerable often impedes our ability to change. We crave acceptance and validation from others, fearing ridicule or rejection if we reveal our true selves. This fear of imperfection leads us to cling to the safety of the familiar, just like that voice of the ego-mind urging us to avoid the discomfort of growth and vulnerability.
Embracing failure and having to learn new skills as a natural part of the learning process is crucial in overcoming this barrier.
4 — Not Accepting the Reality
Have you ever been upset that something you didn’t like happened and asked yourself this question: Why is this happening to me? This is one of the signs of us not being able to accept the reality of life — that challenging things happen to all of us.
“Why me?” is not just unhelpful, it makes us take on a mindset of a victim. This is not to say we should never feel sad or devastated — not at all. Just that cultivating feelings of victimhood or frustration at the way life actually is, will not lead us to assuming ownership for our own role in the situation or at least our response to it.
Difficult things happened — once we accept it, maybe we can free up some of our mind space to come up with new creative ways to do something about it going forward.
5 — Drowning in Shame
Psychologists say even babies feel shame, so in some ways, shame is an emotion that characterises our human experience. In the end, we are imperfect beings. However, some people struggle to tolerate this feeling and end up acting it out. This means they are unable to reflect on their own role in a given situation and instead defend themselves from the idea they may be imperfect. This constant protection of the fragile self blocks any chance of growth and in fact worsens with age.
However, if we are to experience limitation, shame is a pretty fundamental feeling to enable that. We just have to not let ourselves drown in it but let it be a reminder of our human condition.
6 — Unwillingness to Do Hard Things
True transformation requires us to confront challenges and step outside our comfort zone. The prospect of facing adversity or learning new skills can be daunting though, leading many of us to opt for the path of least resistance. We may cling to fantasies of effortless success, avoiding the hard work and discomfort necessary for growth. However, real change demands a willingness to embrace discomfort and uncertainty, trusting in our ability to navigate the unknown.
The thing is we do have all the tools necessary for us to be able to achieve this — we just have to be willing to learn how to use some of them. This means doing the hard thing of learning something new and exposing ourselves to the unknown.
Case study
One of my clients — let’s call him Jack — was a CEO of a fintech company. Jack realised that despite achieving the coveted role of a company CEO, he still didn’t feel secure within himself and made decisions driven by the need to be accepted and recognised rather than by what he believed was the right thing to do.
As a highly driven and analytical person, Jack was very demanding of himself and his children and made sure he spent his time always doing things. He certainly didn’t allow for any shortcomings, which created underlining feelings of self-hatred and inferiority because Jack could see he was not quite achieving the kind of success he was after.
He had been doing therapy for a number of years and so he understood how his early childhood experiences contributed to how he was feeling but he didn’t know how to change it.
We embarked on a slightly different journey — one into his subconscious to begin with. Given that Jack never even meditated, this was a very new experience for him and his analytical mind. After a few attempts to get Jack back out of there, his ego-mind went with it, allowing Jack to eventually experience the feelings of expansion, confidence and empowerment — something he did not realise he already had within him.
This was only one of the experiences but it convinced Jack that change is within reach because he could taste it — he could FEEL it. Moreover, those expansive feelings created new neural pathways in his brain and made him believe a different reality was indeed possible.
CONCLUSION
Achieving meaningful change requires a holistic approach that acknowledges the complexities of human nature. Working with someone who understands this process firsthand and employs a multi-modal approach to address this is key.
By integrating various tools and techniques that target the conscious and subconscious mind, the nervous system, and the somatic body, we can unlock the potential for lasting transformation.
It’s also important to realise that for such transformation to take place, we need to want to do the work and then show up to actually do it. There is no one magic pill — even psychedelics require us to integrate what we learn during our journeys and do the work after. In the end, we can’t escape opportunities for growth — we can only choose whether we will take them.
About the author:
Monika is certified in Life Coaching, Transpersonal Psychology, Jungian Therapy, NLP & PSYCH-K®. She also holds Masters in Linguistics from the University of Warsaw, and a CIMA qualification.
She seamlessly navigates the analytical realm, showcasing expertise in corporate and entrepreneurship, and the introspective sphere, marked by her personal journey beyond the analytical mind.
Her personal explorations involve diverse modalities like plant medicines, shamanic journeying, traditional therapy, CBT, hypnosis, subconscious re-programming, sound medicine, holotropic breathwork, vagus nerve activation, out-of-body experiences, lucid dreaming, and somatic healing, among others.
In her coaching, she merges cognitive talk therapy with subconscious, nervous system, and body work, tapping into unprocessed emotions and intuition helping her clients connect to themselves, free from their limitations and create meaning.
Employing tools like CBT, NLP, PSYCH-K, EMDR, personalized visualizations, hypnosis, shamanic journeying, journaling, breathwork, and TRE, she offers a multi-modal holistic approach.
She is also a host of a free weekly zoom meet-up called The Conscious Café. You can sign up to it here:
