Episode 160: Mental Blocks: The Silent Success Killers with Megan Porta

Hello awesome people! How are you doing this week? I hope you are all surviving this last month of 2020.. And not just “surviving” but thriving in some way. Or ways!

In today’s episode I’m going to talk about mental blocks and how they are the silent killers of our businesses and of our successes.

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Let’s chat about mental blocks (aka “success blocks”)! I love digging into this topic because doing so allows us to get to the bottom of some of the struggles we face as entrepreneurs and small business owners. It allows us to discover the reasons we are sometimes held back from achieving our dreams and achieving success. So often we try to find solutions for certain obstacles we face in the wrong places. We unknowingly seek out band-aid options as opposed to fixing the source of the problem. 

First of all, let’s chat about what I’m referring to when I say “mental block” because I don’t want there to be any confusion about what I’m talking about.

A mental block in the way we’re referring to it today is a limiting belief that makes achieving success really difficult or even impossible. 

Whether we are aware of this or not, we’ve all been in a place in our lives where we have been presented with opportunities or success that we have blocked due to feelings of unworthiness.

Can you relate to this? You feel like you are doing “everything right,” yet you aren’t where you feel you should be? Maybe it relates to finances or blog traffic or even your circle of peers? It could relate to something larger-scale like overall income generated, or it could relate to something really small like your Instagram following that never grows.

It took me nine years of being an entrepreneur, feeling like I was spinning my wheels constantly, working SO hard, burning myself out over and over again, before realizing I had mental blocks to work through. Once I figured out these blocks existed and I started working on fixing them, it was like a huge heavy weight was lifted from my shoulders. 

Either you are nodding your head right now, fully knowing what your own personal blocks are or you are like, “Really? Something I can’t see and that I’m not even aware of is holding me back from success?” If you’re in the latter camp, this might be a hard concept to swallow at first. It’s hard to understand that there are deep-rooted thoughts sitting in our subconscious minds that are holding us back because that just seems ridiculous, doesn’t it? That beliefs that don’t even actually enter our thoughts can hold us back? 

If you feel like a breakthrough is due in some area of your business, you likely have some mental blocks to work through. These mental blocks can be the silent killers of our businesses because most of the time we don’t even know they are there, so how in the world are we supposed to address them? They are inner conflicts that we aren’t even always aware are happening, so they are very very sneaky success stealers.

Don’t panic, we will walk through some steps in this episode to help you discover what your mental blocks are and also ways to address them. (Disclaimer: I am NOT a psychologist! Everything I talk about in this episode comes from experience and a lot of research. If sorting through mental blocks brings up trauma or depression, PLEASE seek professional help.)

Allow me to tell you about my discovery of my first mental block. I had been following a successful author and entrepreneur who talks often about something she calls “money blocks.” I read all of her books and read every email of hers that landed in my inbox thoroughly for years before believing that I myself could have blocks that were keeping me from making money.

I always thought I was immune to it somehow, but one day it clicked. I had the thought, “Wait, maybe I have money blocks!” I had always felt that for as much and as hard as I worked? I was not making as much money as I should have been. I did a lot of journaling about what my parents taught me about money as a kid and worked through those on my own. My parents had terrible relationships with money and lucky for me, they had different issues with money so I was subjected to the whole gamut of money issues. 

Even though I wasn’t consciously thinking any of those things, they were rooted firmly in my subconscious. By the way, I feel I should interject here about how powerful the subconscious mind is. According to Bruce Lipton who is the author of the book The Biology of Belief, “The subconscious mind is running programs that are a million times more powerful than the processing abilities of the conscious mind.” Don’t underestimate the power of that sneaky little guy who lives with all of us, aka the subconscious.

So I worked through a lot of my money blocks and got to a place where I felt I had convinced my subconscious that I shouldn’t have to work super hard just to make peanuts.

After I sorted through all of this, I still felt like there was something that was holding me back in the realm of earning money. I couldn’t figure out what could possibly be left to explore. Then I had the thought to explore something in my life that had always come easily and to do a simple comparison.

For me, that topic is love. One of the things my parents always did well was send me the message that I was loved and that I was worthy of receiving love. My parents divorced when I was really young and I spent my childhood bouncing between parents and cities and states, but despite all of that there was never a moment when I didn’t feel totally surrounded by and worthy of love.

I unknowingly carried that sense of love-worthiness into adulthood and have managed to attract all of these incredible people who I love and who love me back. Just like I unknowingly carried a sense of money-UNworthiness into adulthood and managed NOT to attract money for so long. Both were unknowing, one was a very good thing to carry and the other had basically put a deadbolt on my bank account. 

Once I had that “control” to use as a comparison, I was able to uncover my remaining piece of the money block so much more easily. Not only were all of those dysfunctional thoughts about money ingrained in my brain, but I still believed that I wasn’t WORTHY of making money or achieving success on the level I wanted. 

It all came down to an unknown feeling of unworthiness! And that is what mental (success) blocks are all about! How worthy we believe we are to receive (fill in the blank) and what thoughts we repeat to ourselves that support that.

So I thought, “Ok. If I believe that I’m worthy of love, then I am certainly worthy of anything else I want in my life,” and that acknowledgement was the first step.

After working through my money-unworthiness issues, there were other blocks waiting for me. There’s the over-arching success block telling me that I’m not worthy of achieving a certain level of success (another lie). And there are other littler, less intrusive blocks that keep me from achieving success in specific areas.

Here are some examples of mental blocks you might be experiencing:

• Your follower count on any given platform is laughably low, no matter how hard you work to grow it.
• Opportunities never seem to come your way, as you watch people around you being swarmed with opportunity and fortune.
• You work tirelessly on increasing your blog traffic, but it never seems to increase.
• You are surrounded by low-quality people (gossipers, problem-focused people and people who hold you back instead of lifting you up).
• No one ever buys anything you create!
• You feel like you should be making way more money than you do, given the amount of effort you put in.

If any of these sound familiar or if you have something else that is holding your success back in a way that doesn’t make sense, it is likely you have your own mental blocks to wrangle!

This topic is not talked about enough, in my opinion. It is a very underrated and underestimated issue. It is the root cause of so much of the bad stuff that occurs in our businesses. Not addressing mental blocks is the reason we quit. It is the reason we get frustrated and burned out. It is the cause of much entrepreneurial strife. And most of the time we don’t even know this is what is happening!

I encourage you to think through things within your business that you feel are being blocked. Pick one small thing and do the work toward unblocking it. Once you get that down, you can move to bigger things. And again, if this process brings up any serious emotions or issues such as trauma or depression, please STOP. And seek professional help.

1. Acknowledge one block in your business  that is holding you back from success. Start with one small thing. Awareness is an important first step!
2. Journal about it or talk through it with a trusted friend. Pinpoint where the untrue stories came from and rewrite them! If your parents delivered the message to you that earning more money than you need to “just get by” is sinful, write out a new story. Journal about what is your actual story on this topic and start retraining your thoughts to repeat the positive (true) story. Recognize that the things that are blocking you are LIES. By journaling or talking, you will call out the lies and replace them with TRUTHS.
3. Pinpoint something that has always flowed into your life easily and use it as a way to boost feelings of self-worth. If that one part of your life flows effortlessly, then others can and should, too!
4. Repeat the following to yourself multiple times/day: I AM WORTHY. Because you are.
5. Change your thought patterns. Any time a negative thought enters your mind, rephrase it to reflect a positive thought. Make this practice a habit.
6. Forgive people who may have implanted negative thoughts in your subconscious. We’re all doing our best all the time. Our parents were all doing their best. Friends and family members from our past were doing their best. Have grace and don’t hold grudges as you work through mental blocks. Be grateful that you have the lesson to learn and forgive everyone.
7. Gratitude. Always gratitude. Along with forgiveness comes gratitude. Express gratitude in a journal, or just in your mind, as much as possible. Gratitude for the blocks you’re uncovering and the success that is heading your way. Gratitude for failures because they are our best teachers. Gratitude for EVERYTHING.
8. If you still aren’t getting anywhere, go back to step 2 and dig until you discover what is holding you back.

The most important point from above is to implant in your brain that you are worthy of (fill in the blank). If nothing else, repeat “I AM WORTHY” to yourself until you actually believe it, and things will start to change.

Once you see the power of releasing mental blocks, you will be inspired to release more, which will allow opportunities and success and people to flow into your business. Mental blocks are sneaky! They’re silent! We often don’t even know they exist. Calling them out releases MAGIC and I cannot wait to hear about the blocks you work through.

Please feel free to reach out to me if you want to talk through anything from this episode! Here’s to releasing GOOD, positive, productive things, people and opportunities in the new year! Thanks for being here, food bloggers, I’ll see you next time!