Ep #37: Resistance to Growth

Welcome to More Than Mindset, the only podcast that bridges the gap between spirituality and success. Go beyond the mind with clarity and confidence coach Kim Guillory and learn how to integrate your passion to serve with your skills and experience to create a business you love. Let’s get started.

Hello my amazing friends. Welcome back to the show. So, I have been having so much fun with this 30-day training. So what I’ve decided to do is take the month of October and I have been posting live Facebook videos on my Kim Guillory Facebook page. My professional page. All month long.

It has been so fascinating to get into the minds of the new coach. I just knew, some of them have been trained for five years, seven years, some it’s been two years, but it’s all the same story, which is what I’m finding so fascinating.

And so some of the questions that they’re asking and discussing on the Lives is how do I find an convince clients to buy, and how do I find clients who are ready and willing? Some are like, how do I get over myself and find confidence and don’t feel so vulnerable? And so another one of the questions was where do I start and what do I do with all of this passion? And how do I turn this experience into a business? Where do I get a free flow of ideas and creativity like you have?

So that’s one of my actual clients, coach clients that asked that. She was like, where does all this stuff come from? And someone else was like, could you give me the step-by-step? And then a couple more were stuff like how can I not be seen as a fraud and an amateur? Like, trust that I am worth it.

All of these questions, it’s like no matter what level you’re at, if you’ve made no money or if you’ve made $20,000, $200,000, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same questions just keep coming over and over because this is what our brain does. It tries to figure out, how do I not feel so inadequate? How do I feel worthy? What do I do with all of these doubts and fear? Can you please make them go away?

So I just want you to feel right at home in the middle of your brain’s questioning because you, my friend, are a human, just like the rest of us. So I want to talk about resistance to growth. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. And why is it so hard if we want it so bad?

If we want it so badly, then why are we resisting it? It doesn’t make sense. It’s not logical, guys. There’s so many levels of this. Like, the resistance is first of all, we have these old thoughts that keep repeating, so we’re resisting anything new. The brain loves familiar repetition. It loves comfort. And growth is none of those.

Growth is change, unfamiliar, uncomfortable. So can you see the dissonance where it’s coming from? Can you see what’s happening? On one side it’s like, I want to grow, I need to grow my business, I want to help so many people. And then the other part is like, we want things to be exactly the same and predictable.

I don’t want any surprises, I don’t want to fail, I want to know exactly how to do it. Tell me. Tell me what to do. You can tell from the questions, right? Those are the question that are coming in through email. So what I do is I show up and I do Lives and they’re able to ask questions on the Live but they’re able to ask by email ahead of time.

So it’s been really fun. These are not all my coaches. These are some peers and some actually are just not even coaches yet. They’re just starting to integrate some coaching into their actual practice of what they’re doing now. It’s a beautiful thing to bring coaching and mindset and personal regulation and management, personal growth, and develop into any industry. We lack this, right?

Alright, so here’s the thing; you’re going to have to give up the familiar and the comfortable, and that’s what the problem is. That’s what the resistance is about. So your personality is your personal reality. It is your perception. It’s the way you perceive the world and the people in it. It’s the way you perceive the system and the way it works. It’s the way your mind understands reality as you see it.

So in order to grow, you’re going to give up that person. That personality. That understanding. That perception. That is why it’s so hard, that is why so many people quit. They throw in the towel and feed the birds. You know my story. That’s what I always went to do.

This is too hard, these people don’t want it, they don’t want to change, I give up. I don’t have to do this. I just don’t. I can retire with my husband, I can feed the birds, I can ride my bike, I can lay in the grass. I don’t need to do that shit. That’s what I would tell myself. And I want to throw in the towel and I want to quit.

And as soon as I do and I settle in, I would be so sad. I just couldn’t do it. And so I played the edge between pushing myself and resting. Pushing and resting. This is dancing with the shadows. It’s that edge, push, shift, and then I come back up, and then go. It’s almost as if you shake up a Coke bottle, it’s full of passion, and then you release the valve, settles back down.

It’s regulation. Self-regulation, self-management. I know you’ve heard me talk about this before. This is the core of my coach training, this is what I teach other coaches and health and wellness practitioners so that they can help their clients and patients.

So here’s the next thing you need to know. In order to create the new version, you have to do the first three steps. So you know I have this unique five-step system that everything plugs into. It is like the magic of the universe. It works every single time, I’m not kidding.

It’s the universal model to gaining power and controlling your life. First step is presence and awareness. You have to come back to your personal reality. You have to see things as they are. And then you have to investigate. You have to ask the questions. You have to unveil, unravel, unlayer in order to understand why you do the things you do.

That’s what I’m showing you today. Understand that the reason you resist growth is because it’s uncomfortable and unfamiliar, and that is very normal to the understanding of the mind. Your brain’s job is to keep you alive, to keep you safe, to keep you comfortable. Its job is to solve problems.

And so it’s always going to be looking for the problem, and unfamiliar and discomfort is a problem. Growth is a problem. And so your brain’s going to tell you all of the reasons not to do it, to stay small, to stay safe. Don’t put yourself out there, don’t be brave, don’t risk failure, don’t risk rejection.

Are you kidding? They’re going to talk about you, they’re not going to like you. Don’t do it, don’t say it again, don’t say it again, don’t say it again, they’re going to hate it. I can’t believe you did it again. That is your brain. That’s what it does.

So first you have to get present, then you have to unlayer these stories, you’ve got to find out what’s happening. Most likely, you will need someone else. This is where coaching comes in. You will need someone else to show it to you because you will try to self-coach and you will coach yourself on the wrong thing.

You’re going to coach yourself on the thought and you’re going to think it’s a fact. It’s fascinating. And that’s just the way the mind and the defense works. Now, you guys who know me know that I deal more with the trauma brain. And I don’t mean trauma by it has to be this big major life event.

Trauma is perception. It’s the thing that happens and then the kid that did not understand, the younger you experienced it as a trauma, did not know what to do with the emotions, shoved them down, pushed them inside, and now as an adult, those emotions are triggered.

Now, it’s very confusing because your logical mind who’s actually running the show is trying to figure this out and it won’t because it’s not logical. In my training, we do a trigger training and it’s to tame the triggers through self-regulation, processing, integration, and embodiment. There is a process to it.

Your logical mind can’t understand, just like it can’t understand suicide or death being neutral or depression being neutral or all of those things. It does not understand that because it is not logic. This is the whole concept behind More Than Mindset.

It’s not just about changing your thoughts. There’s way more going on beyond that thought model. So first three steps. Presence, unveiling to understand, once you understand, then you navigate. Navigation means an interruption. It’s a distraction from the norm.

So whatever the typical habit is, the behavior that you’re always doing, you interrupt it. You navigate. You do something different. You change the GPS, you take a different route. Maybe you stop and take an exit. You go take a little break so that you don’t fall asleep behind the steering wheel.

Maybe you stop, clean the windshield, air up the tires, put some more gas. The things that you do to prepare to change, to reroute for what is coming. Does that make sense? The navigating does not come until you have the understanding. These are the steps that so many coaches leave out.

You A-liners, like I like to call you, I work with a lot of A-liners. You are so stinking smart. I get it. You have a doctorate degree, you have a Masters degree, I know it. I know you. I know your brain very well. I work with you. You guys are tough to yourself but you’re not tough to me.

So what I do is I kind of like, take over your brain for a minute. Like, give it a break, let it rest, give it a timeout so we can dive down and find out what’s really going on. Your amazing mind has always been in the A line. It’s always what’s next, what’s next, what do I do, tell me the next action step, just tell me what to do, just tell me what to do, look, just tell me what to do.

That’s what you guys say all the time. If you just tell me how, if you just show me how, if I knew how I could do it, that’s an A-liner. You guys are my favorite because I like it tough. I like it rough guys. I like it rough.

Alright, you got to do the first three steps and then you can create the new. I’m going to want some feedback on this one. I want to know that you’re understanding me. Reach out to me at kim@kimguillory.com. Hope into the Integrative Life Facebook group. Leave a comment on the website or on the podcast. Let me know that you’re doing the actual work and that you’re not just listening.

There is so much information to consume that you guys have become addicts to consuming and not taking action. Now, that’s when you can go to the A line. Whenever you hear something, you implement it. I allow you to go to the A line in that case.

Those three steps are the most important thing and they are actually where that resistance to growth is at. That’s why growth is so hard. That’s why you do the work and you implement it and you are guaranteed to succeed because your mind might be saying there’s thousands of other coaches out there, everybody’s doing it, everybody’s saying it, somebody else is helping with weight loss, someone else is helping with trauma recovery, somebody else is helping them do that.

But listen, they’re not helping them this way. They’re just saying what they know and they’re teaching someone else’s system. They’re just amazing marketers. Now, not all of them, but I’m saying a lot of them are out there saying that they’re doing something that they’re not actually doing.

So they’re just kind of boosting and pumping themselves up through their marketing and advertising and they’re kind of like, hoping to bait some of the fish. But then whenever the client comes in and they’re not getting the transformation and they’re wanting to quit after the third session and they’re not getting the breakthroughs, that’s how we know that the coach is not actually doing their own work.

So I will ask you, are your clients showing up for their session? Are they even showing up for their consultation? Or are they getting breakthrough? And more importantly, are you getting breakthrough? Are you being coached? Are you being mentored? Are you being led?

Because so many of you want to skip this step. I see this all the time at the school I went to. It starts with oh my god, this mindset work is so fun, so fun. I’m going to go be a coach. But then they never take the first step, which is getting coached. You got to have your own mind managed.

Otherwise, you just want to be a coach to go out and solve your problems in the world and then you want to feel good because you think you’re doing something but you’re actually just doing your own work. Does that make sense?

So don’t charge the client for that. You get your own coaching and then you help your client receive their own transformation. It’s so fascinating watching this. So I do in my training, I actually watch the coaches coach, so that’s part of the curriculum is I’m there, I’m giving them feedback, I’m taking them through the process, I’m watching this.

It’s very hard. It’s not easy coaching someone and then have a mentor watch you and be in the session with you. But we do hard stuff because you know what, that’s just the baby part of what it’s going to take to get you out there.

And what’s so important to me is that they master these skills and they go out there and they help people master their lives. It’s all about gaining power and control of your life.

Alright, so here are the questions that I find most of these people who are resisting growth come up with. I don’t know who I am if I’m not who I am. So in other words, they don’t know who they are without the program. They don’t know what to expect. They don’t know who they are beyond who they have been.

And so one of the first questions is who are you when you’re not a mother, when you’re not a wife, when you’re not a coach? Who are you when you’re not – how do you label yourself? How do you see yourself? How do you perceive yourself?

When you introduce yourself to someone else, how do you introduce yourself? That’s one of the first telltale signs is you’ve identified yourself with who you have been and the things you have done. The perception of who you are. The label who you are. The program of who you’ve been. Who the world has told you to be.

We strip that away. We get rid of all of the programs and all of the conditioning of the not you self so that you can step into the true self. And that’s the part where the resistance is because as we start stripping this away, I remember one of my clients, she was like, well, what now? Everything I thought was true is – I don’t even know who to believe anymore.

She was like, it’s like everything is just ruined. I’m so vulnerable, I don’t even know who I am. What’s going on? And I was like, that’s kind of that spiritual awakening. It looks all cute and she’s in yoga clothes and she’s hanging out on the beach. That is not true.

She’s actually hanging on for her dear life by the fingernails from the rooftop. It is like bare bottom. I don’t know if you guys have ever heard me say this but it feels like you’re on the back of an RV, you’re on the ladder, you’re holding on, you’re butt ass naked going down main street of the hometown you graduated in. It is super raw and vulnerable.

It’s tough stuff. But you come out on the other side as a holistically whole individual. Your true essence of who you are from the start. Who you came out as. Who you were always meant to be before the world programmed you and conditioned you. Before you learned about all the A-lining and the positive affirmations and all the things that don’t align with you.

The I don’t know who I am without the story, or who I’ve been, I’m feeling this right now as a mother of five children and my baby is 25, matter of fact, having his own baby, and so all of my kids have partners and babies and careers and lives. So my life is completely different.

I had a physical location, my first business – it’s still here but I’m not running – I own it but I’m not running it anymore. I’m actually the owner of it instead of it being the owner of me. The way it was for 20 years. And it was really tough. I had to learn a lot of lessons about re-identifying, changing my personality, dropping the identity of who I was. Who I related to in order to become this newer version.

And my brain could not see it, could not even conceive past where I was at because our mind doesn’t have the ability to feel into it, like to feed the vision to us so that we can feel into it in our body. And so it’s kind of hard for us to imagine it when we’ve never even seen the possibility of it.

So I typically take my clients through this in a practical manner, and so I take them into what we call the portal. So I would take them into the energy and essence work of it, take them all the way in, and I bring them into the sensation of the possibility and potentiality.

And once they feel that sensation in their physical body on all levels, it imprints, it forms a memory and now they have something to clench hold to. They have something to anchor in and then they keep that going in all of the decisions they make from here on out are from her, from that space where she’s feeling into that vibration of it, that sensation of it.

And that is the true law of attraction. That is how you manifest your future self, your future life is by actually cultivating it as if it were already. And it’s not easy to do. If you’ve not actually done the work, the first three steps, and I think that’s why this resistance is so powerful and so strong and why so many stay stuck for years on end and why they give up, why they’re only making a few hundred dollars and why others are making multiple six-figures.

I do believe that’s the difference. It’s that not wanting to fall apart phase. The resistance to growth is the resistance to discomfort and unfamiliarity and that not knowing. And that is what’s going to be required to go to the next level because you honestly don’t know and it is not familiar and it is not comfortable because it’s not familiar.

Doesn’t it make sense? See, it’s not logical. You have to truly get into the layers of it and start pulling it away to truly understand it so that you can calm the nervous system, you can let the mind know it’s okay. It’s okay that it’s different, and then you can rename some of these sensations.

So instead of being frozen in the story, instead of being frozen in the fear and doubt, you can actually let the unknown become your friend. And then you can lean into growth. You can lean into unknown. You can lean into the fear and doubt. And like I was saying in the last episode, you could lean into the shame, and even the imposter syndrome.

It’s like it’s unreal on some layers of perception. It’s happening. It’s here. It’s who you are, it’s what you’ve done, it’s what you know, but then there’s a belief that it’s not. So it’s a leaning into it fully. Truly feeling into it.

Alright, I have a little story for you just to give you a kind of example of why this resistance to growth is so hard. I’ve been talking to my clients about this the last few weeks. But I was like, imagine that – we’re in the South here so we have crab boils. And so you imagine you have all of the crabs in the bottom of the pot and they’re like, all hanging onto each other and you can hear them being caught in each other’s pincers.

And then you’ll have that strong passionate crab. It climbs its way up and then you’ll have these other crabs that keeps pulling it down. That’s kind of what happens in your community and in your family. The way that you have been, the people who do know you, they keep trying to bring you back. Bring you back down to their level.

And I’m not saying one’s lower or higher. It’s just to where they have been, to that familiar. Let’s huddle here. Let’s cuddle. And so they kind of pull down, and you might actually get above where you can resist that pulling, but then here goes your limiting beliefs. Here goes your BS, your belief system will actually start pulling on you.

So the pincers of crabs don’t necessarily have to pull you down. Your own disbelief and imposter syndrome, that fraud sensation will start to pull you down. Your lack of belief will start to drop you back down. And so you can pull yourself back up, you get to the top, you get to the rim, you can look over the rim, you can see on the other side, but when you look around, there is no one there with you.

And it’s very unfamiliar and it’s very uncomfortable, and it’s kind of lonely. You’ve heard that before. You’ll get to this space where, I got out of there alive and then it’s like, shit, now what? There ain’t nobody else here. And I know for me personally, I start looking for a mentor or a master or someone like hey, who’s up here?

And I feel like I’ve just not – it’s so often not found that person. And I realize now that’s just part of me and how I function and how I work. And possibly, part of my belief because my limiting belief is I got to figure it all out for myself. So of course, I’m going to have to keep figuring it out for myself until I figure out that that’s not working for me or I use it to help me. It’s all perception.

And this is just where I’m at now, so instead of beating myself up, I actually lean into that and I ask myself the questions like, Kim, these are your beliefs. Is it true? Is it real to you? Can we pull it away and unlayer it? Like where is your proof? Why do you believe that? Is it true?

And I start questioning that and then I realize actually, it’s not. I have plenty of support and I have coaches and I have peers and I have a beautiful coaching community who completely supports me so it’s not true. It’s a limiting belief and it came from being abandoned by a mother, by parents, by being by myself, by figuring things out by myself.

So it’s an unconscious belief that I’ve adopted. I’m aware of it now but I haven’t completely shifted through it. Does that make sense? So I use it. I make friends with it. I lean into it and I was like oh, there it is. My old friend is still here. It comes up every time growth gets a little hard.

And I have to watch because it becomes the thing that pulls me to the bottom. It becomes the belief system that grabs onto me and pulls me down to the side of the pot. So it’s about my awareness of it so I can navigate and the way I navigate is I was like, listen here, fear and doubt and victim mentality, get in the passenger seat, put on your seatbelt, because I’m going to continue going.

I’m in my lane, I know where I’m going, and if you don’t behave, I’m going to put you in the backseat or you’ll have to go sit in the trunk. And sometimes, I’m like, you can go ahead and misbehave, you can act up, you can clown around, but it’s not going to stop me from continuing to go forward.

And so that is self-regulation and self-management is I am aware of all of the crabs, all of the thoughts, all of the little things that are riding in the vehicle with me, I’m just the vehicle. But I’m very careful about recognizing who is the driver. Is it my soul essence that’s driving? Is it my higher self that’s driving? Is it the doubt, the limiting beliefs, is it my mind?

Because my mind always wants to go take a break. It always wants to stop at Bucky’s and go hang out and see what’s there because Bucky’s is so fun to stop and get gas and kind of just look at the people. It’s so crazy how busy it is. That’s my mind. My mind is very active. It loves to be occupied. It loves to be stimulated.

I call it like it needs a little itch every once in a while. It needs a little puzzle to figure out. And so I know that about myself. I’ve got a super powerful brain. It’s magical. It comes up with so much ideas and creativity. It’s fascinating.

But I don’t let that part drive because I’ll never get to where I’m going. I’m going to have to keep stopping and keep playing and keep taking these little turns to go look at waterfalls. Instead, I’m like woah, car seat, buckle up, I’m driving. I know where I’m going, I know exactly what to do. Self-control, and I move on. Does that make sense?

So imagine when I go back to the crab pot, that when you get to the top, which is the growth, you get to the rim, you have now grown. You’ve reached $50,000 or $100,000, whatever it is in your business. Maybe it’s your first 10 clients or your first five clients. Maybe you’ve quit your full-time job.

But you’ve grown, you’ve gotten to the next step. And then what? Because here’s where the resistance comes in. You will self-sabotage, you will hit your limiting belief or your upper limit, however you call it, or you’ll feel isolated and alone. You’ll feel like no one tells me what to do, I don’t know what to do next, and then you go back down.

It is your job to self-regulate and self-manage and keep yourself up. And it’s okay to go halfway up and back down, halfway up and back down and kind of play it, but be very careful because your BS, your belief system, your old limitations will possibly drag you back down to where it’s very familiar.

You feel like you’ve left people behind. I’m like that. I don’t like to leave my clients behind. I want them all to make money. I want all of my coaches to kick ass. I want them all to come up with me. I’m like, go make a bunch of money because we got a lot of places to go see.

I want to go to Bali for two weeks, I want you guys to come with me. I want you to travel the world with me so it’s super important that you make money too. And so I don’t like leaving them behind, I don’t like feeling like I’ve grown above my community or I’ve grown out of my friends or my family.

This is one of the resistances to growth. The reason I’m mentioning it to you is because so many of my clients are there and I was there for so long. It’s so painful. Alright, so you get to the top, you self-manage, you self-regulate, you take a breather, you play back and forth, and then you’re at the next level.

And that, my friends, is allowing growth. Beautiful, beautiful thing. I hope that was helpful and it gives you the courage and it gives you a little bit of understanding on why there is so much resistance to growth. Because rationally or logically, you’re like, of course I want it. I know my why, it’s really big and strong, of course I want it. Why do I keep doing this?

I was really hoping this was going to be a short one but back at 29 minutes. Alrighty, until next week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than Mindset. If you’re feeling stuck on your journey to health, wealth, and relationships, head over to www.portal.kimguillory.com to learn more about the portal.  It’s a membership community where we take this work deeper, apply the concepts, and coach around the tough stuff.