All motivation occurs as a result of trying to move away from pain and toward pleasure. The quest for pleasure is experienced as desire. Avoidance of pain occurs at physical, mental and emotional levels and can be experienced across a broad range, from mild discomfort to excruciating pain.
Pleasure shows up as happiness, love, enjoyment, satisfaction or other positive emotions. Pain shows up as anger, frustration, impatience, aggravation, disgust, or other negative emotions. Both desire and discomfort are powerful factors for change. On the discomfort end, disgust is among the most powerful.
Desire is defined as: A wish or longing; a request or petition; the object of longing
Disgust is defined as: an offence to the senses; extreme dislike or revulsion; a strong distaste
We tend to change our current conditions only when:
- it is creating mental, emotional or physical pain that we believe we can alleviate,
- we are disgusted enough with the current situation to find it completely unacceptable
- we desire something so intensely that we are willing to endure the discomfort of change required and make the effort to achieve it.
What in your life has become unacceptable?
What do you want with a passion?
What is keeping you stuck?
The answer to that third question is almost always fear, erroneous beliefs or lack of knowledge or ability.
Fear shows up in many ways: Uncertainty, worry, dread, anxiety, avoidance.
Uncertainty is often attributed to lack of knowledge, but lack of knowledge is often a result of giving in to fear; sometimes fear of failure and sometime fear of responsibility (also known as fear of success). It is generally fear that prevents an individual from getting the knowledge or skills they need.
Lack of ability is another matter. For example no matter how much a tone deaf person desires to be a famous singer with a beautiful voice that the world admires, that won’t happen unless the world goes tone deaf. Someone who desires to be an airline pilot but was born legally blind, cannot become an airline pilot—at least not in today’s world.
As to knowledge and skills; these are both learnable, but what we learn must align with our authentic self or we won't stay with it long enough to gain proficiency. We are born with a brain that functions a certain way and, while we can stretch our boundaries and accomplish things that are beyond the brain’s natural preferences, we can only do it for awhile. The brain is an energy hog and the strain of doing things that are contrary to our natural tastes are energy drainers and will inevitably be abandoned. For example, individuals with brains that prefer to take in lots of data have difficulty focusing on any one thing for very long. All the other points of data in their surroundings compete for their attention and they must force themselves to ignore all those interesting things and stay focused. They can only do that for so long, then the brain rebels. People with highly creative and active brains don't tolerate slow, repititious things for very long and mentally check out so they can attend to more interestng things. Unfortunately, our school systems would rather slow these brilliant, creative brains down than create a more effective school system, but that's another story.
IQ is another area of limitation. There are things that lie beyond the understanding of some, and the desire to have that be different can lead to frustration.
Lack of knowledge or ability is rarely the real reason people are stuck though. That’s because we rarely have a strong desire for something that lies beyond our abilities. Nature is a wise mother. She tends to align our desires with our capabilities quite nicely.
The real problem is what happens to us once Mother Nature has done her work and we are born into the world. At that point the outer world begins the conditioning process which results in all the irrational fears we get to adulthood with.
Since 95% of what holds most people back is based in fear and erroneous beliefs, the fastest way to get unstuck is to go directly to the source and eliminate the fears and beliefs.
The process called Rapidly Accelerate Mind Patterning (RAMP) and its deeper, but slower sister process Accelerated Mind Patterning (AMP), developed by Dr. Sherry Buffington, do exactly that; RAMP can remove blocks in minutes and AMP can remove barriers that have created all kinds of problems in a few short hours. What’s really amazing about both processes is that the changes that occur are instant and permanent. Hundreds of people have removed blocks and barriers completely and permanently through these processes. And, once the change takes place, it is effortless and delightful to maintain.