Fancy seeing you here! 😍🤓👋🏼

So picture this: you’re sitting there, journal in hand or cursor blinking on blank line, trying to answer your Powerful Question.

You write it out. Maybe it’s something like – so what am I really afraid of?

And you’re scared to know the answer – you almost or decidedly don’t actually want to know.

So what do you do next? How do you move forward? Aren’t Powerful Questions supposed to be the answer to self introspection, intuition, and healing?

Eeep, amiright? 😅

I found myself literally in the same spot today right before writing this. I just had a long talk with my husband about our potential for parenthood, and I realized I was scared of something. Cue today’s journal-fest and terrifying powerful question. 

So how did I move forward from an answer I’m scared to know? Better yet, how do YOU move forward into exploring a part of you that’s full of fear?
 

First, it’s important to know that this is super common 💛 Uncovering new nooks and crannies of your heart or emotions can cause your unconscious mind to rebel through fear, because it’s job is to optimize and habitualize your sameness – which is to say right now, your stuckness. 

Which is rad when you want tapping on the break during traffic hour to be an instant habit.

It’s less so when we are talking about your journey to existential happiness and fulfillment 💛

So your unconscious mind is resistant to change until we learn how to get it on board with the process – which is what we are getting to next!

There are quite a few ways to ease your unconscious mind along the path towards embracing the desires, behaviors, and states of being of your truest you—your Soul Self 💛— including helping her to answer questions that scare you 💛

The bulk of these tactics are based in Self-Coaching, Brave Heart Open Mind’s method for empowering you with the tools and tactics you need to streamline becoming your Soul Self — settling into the mindset your soul desires and the career mastery your dreams require 💛

Knowing how your unconscious mind works is the first part of the equation, and using that knowledge is the second.
 

So How do you counterbalance your unconscious mind’s love of sameness?

One way is to lead it into exploration mode— asking it questions like:

• What would have to happen if I did know the answer to this scary question?
• What would happen if I didn’t know?
• What wouldn’t happen if I did know the answer?
• What wouldn’t happen if I didn’t know the answer?

These are some sneaky questions born out of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and the cool part about them is that they’re designed to speak directly to your unconscious mind, rather than your conscious mind. This means that they get your unconscious mind unstuck without you even having to consciously answer them!

(My sister “hates” these questions because consciously, they sound weird 😂, and she also always feels better on the other side of letting her unconscious mind consider them 💛)

Here’s how they work:

• Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is the study of how your unconscious mind communicates and operates.

• Within NLP, neuroscientists and psychologists are exploring how to talk to the unconscious mind directly. Part of this process is called Quantum Linguistics.

• Quantum Linguistics explores concepts of unconscious language like how the mind doesn’t process negations – (For example, if I tell you don’t think about a pink and purple platypus, your unconscious mind first definitely has to think about the platypus before it processes “Ope, jk, we shouldn’t be thinking about it.” Which is useful in understanding your behaviors like why you look down when you’re telling yourself “don’t look down” or why you screw up when you’re telling yourself “don’t screw up.”) Quantum Linguistics is a robust study of little nuances like that.

• We are using Quantum Linguistics as we hang out here together right now by creating an opportunity for your unconscious mind to bend around the question it’s resisting. These questions specifically set up your unconscious mind to consider:

1. The possibilities of knowing your fear. (What would have to happen if I did know the answer to this scary question?)
2. The opposite of your fear. (What would happen if I didn’t know?)
3. The not-possibilities of knowing your fear. (What wouldn’t happen if I did know the answer?)
4. The mirror-image reverse of your fear. (What wouldn’t happen if I didn’t know the answer?)

All four of these linguistic uses of would’s and wouldn’t’s, did’s and didn’t’s, help your unconscious mind to move beyond stuckness into the opportunity for seeing possibilities 💛 (Quantum Linguistics calls this style of questions Cartesian Coordinates, if you’re interested in the technical term 🤓)

And you may feel better or feel the real answer to your initial question right away! That’s awesome!

You may also need to give your unconscious mind time to noodle on it a bit more.

Set a date to circle back to your initial question in a few days and choose to do something that nourishes you, like a trip to a local bookstore, plant shop, or coffee bar 💛

And after that? After you know an actual answer for what’s holding you back or how you’d like to move forward?

That’s what we’re moving onto in our next email, which dives even deeper into Self-Coaching 💛

Until then, you’ll find me in a bookstore letting my unconscious mind noodle what scares me about knowing what really scares me about being a parent 💛