Karin Wildheart

Most goals are not achieved overnight. It can take time to learn new skills or mindsets. When you haven’t achieved your goal yet, it’s normal to try to figure out “why” or what you’re “doing wrong.” Coming up with a reason for your situation is a coping mechanism. It allows you to feel a bit more control, which soothes the emotional discomfort of not knowing how long it’s going to take.

Here’s the sneaky thing: as soon as you pick a reason, that reason becomes an obstacle to reaching your goal. It feels like a fact or an objective observation to you, but it is a belief. And a belief that you can’t have something you want is a limiting belief.

I’ll be blunt: these reasons are excuses.

This is a list of excuses masquerading as rational, neutral observations:

“I need to be more diligent/consistent/confident/disciplined.”
“I need to stick to a morning routine.”
“I need to believe in myself more.”
“The economy is just bad right now.”
“The algorithm is burying my stuff.”
“I must not be good enough/worthy/deserving.”
“Maybe I’m just not meant to have it.”
“I don’t know how to do it.”
“This is too hard for someone with a brain like mine.”

These kinds of thoughts create a mental/energetic environment where reaching your goal is difficult if not impossible.

They are statements, not questions. They’re conclusions that it’s impossible to get what you want. Believing them is mentally keeping your desires at arm’s length, holding them hostage until your often vague or subjective conditions are met.

A special note about “questions” like “Why isn’t this working?” It’s technically a question, but it’s mostly a veiled statement: “This isn’t working.” It’s all in the energetic tone of the question: Self-pitying? Or practical and open? The spirit in which you’re asking determines whether it’s actually a question (expansive) or a statement (closed). You’ll be able to feel the difference.

Each reason on the list is an excuse to close yourself off from expecting to get what you want. If you believe the economy is too bad for you to succeed, then you don’t even have to try. It frees you from the invisible, personal work of staying receptive regardless of what’s going on around you.

This may sound simple, but it’s critically important. It can take years to understand and apply this concept: To have the life you want, do whatever it takes to keep your heart open. It can be hard to stay open if you’re not used to it. It’s like a muscle many of us need to work out a lot more.

It can feel awkward, embarrassing, or even wrong to keep your heart open during silence or ambiguity. Your limiting beliefs, excuses, and reasons flow in to protect and prevent you from having to feel emotions like grief, rejection, confusion, disappointment. They offer an “out” from needing to be committed and determined.

It’s natural to want to avoid painful emotions. But as long as your priority is avoiding, you will be so tethered to what you don’t want in your life that there won’t be room for what you do want. Emotions pass when you let yourself feel them, and letting your emotions flow through you is both a cause and an effect of good physical and mental health.

Here’s why it’s so important to keep your heart open

Even if your conditions are perfectly favorable and you’re doing everything “right,” you can still block your own success by not being available for it. By having a closed mind, closed heart, or closed energy. Your openness is a prerequisite for receiving — picture a closed hand. It can’t receive anything until it opens.

Success may be all around you, knocking on your door, but if you don’t feel comfortable receiving it (maybe you’re afraid of the realities of fame, money, or intimacy), you will naturally repel it. When this happens, the only solution is to open your heart to receive. In some cases, this is the only change you need to make!

An open or closed heart is a highly subjective — you will only be able to feel it for yourself. A common test: Picture a baby, puppy, or kitten, or other being that you feel warm affection for. This is what it feels like to have an open heart. Now bring to mind that person who gravely offended and hurt you and refused to apologize. Closed heart. Feel the difference?

This is super important: our lives reflect our thoughts, but on a slight delay. This means that the life you have now is a direct result of thoughts and feelings you had in the past. This also means that you can’t just have some great thoughts for a day and see immediate results. If you keep opening your heart and snapping it closed again when you don’t see instant results, you’ll never get there. (This is so common, of course!) Each of us needs the skill of keeping our hearts open for a sustained amount of time, until our reality reflects our desire, even if that doesn’t happen right away. The only way to get there is to stay open for as long as it takes.

Maybe the best thought you could have about your goal is: It’s only a matter of time. As long as I keep desiring and pursuing my goal, it’s a matter of WHEN, not IF.

Here’s a paradox: There’s no objective reality when it comes to the future, only the future we create while imagining the future we expect. So no matter what the future is going to be, expecting a bright future makes it brighter than expecting a dark one.

Here are some thoughts that help create the future you want: “I know this is meant for me.” “It’s already working; I can see evidence.” “I can and will figure it out.” “Lots of other people have done this, which means I can, too.” (Or if they haven’t) “I will just have to be the first person to do this.” “I won’t stop trying until I get there.”

It’s impossible to force a heart open. Your choice is the only thing that can open your heart. If you’re thinking, “Yes, but how?” you’re asking a question that countless people have asked throughout history. Though the answer is different for each of us, here’s a powerful exercise to shift you in that direction:

“What If” Excuse Busting Exercise

One of my favorite mind-expanding and heart-opening exercises is the “What if” exercise. Questions can really open your heart if you are willing to ask them genuinely and feel into the answer.

Step 1 — Make a list of your excuses, of why you think things aren’t working for you.

Step 2 — One at a time, reframe each one into a “what if” question, using the general format of “What if I can get what I want anyway?”

Step 3 — Ask yourself each of these “what if” questions one by one. Be genuine, really consider the possibility deeply, imagine what that would look like or how it could happen. Let yourself feel the expansion in your body.

Here’s the list of excuses from above in “What if” form:

What if I can be successful with my current level of diligence/consistency/confidence/discipline?
What if I can have this no matter how I start my day?
What if I can do it with my current level of self-belief?
What if I can be successful despite the economy? What if a bad economy makes my gifts/services/products even more essential?
What if the algorithm is showing my stuff to more of the right people than I realize? What if I can achieve my goals without a lot of visible engagement?
What if I can get this whether or not I feel good/worthy/deserving?
What if I can’t know my fate until I try?
What if I don’t need to know how in advance, and I can just take the steps that will get me there one at a time?
What if my unique brain gives me an advantage over the crowd of people who think alike?

Note: You’ll notice that the first list was in quotes and the second one isn’t. I find that using the quotation marks gives me a slight mental distance I like to have when handling thoughts I don’t want more of. Think of them as my version of safety gloves.

You don’t need to know how — The mountain analogy

“I don’t know how!” is such a seductive excuse. Who can’t relate to this one? It reminds me of childhood, school, where there was always a teacher present to show you how to do things. But these were concrete things like “the currently approved way to do math.” Not big things like “build a life that feels deeply meaningful.”

Big things are different. No one knows how to do something big until they’ve done it. There are infinite possible paths. No one can tell you which one to take. You must do it step by step, and only afterward can you look back and see what steps mattered the most.

Imagine if you were climbing a mountain and you downplayed every step you took, focusing instead on how far away the top was and how hard it was and how you’d never reached a mountaintop before. You’d be filling your body with stress and sadness, and for what?

Like our big life goals, climbing a mountain has a clear and definite endpoint, but an infinite number of possible paths. When you’re climbing a mountain, obviously all you have to do is take steps toward the summit. Even if you sometimes have to reroute your path around an obstruction, when you’re climbing a mountain, you know that unless you give up, it’s just a matter of time until you reach the goal.

No matter what your goal, the “how” is always the same: Take steps in its direction until you’re there. These steps can be physical, mental, energetic, etc. Whatever is needed. How do you know what steps to take? Listen to your GPS, your body, your intuition.

If hearing your intuition is challenging for you, you’re not alone. I love to help people reconnect with that inner voice (and actually do what it says) through my 1:1 coaching. If you’re looking for a DIY option, I offer a free Step One guide to show you the first step of learning to reconnect and listen to your inner wisdom.

Rest as often as you need to — you don’t lose the progress you’ve already made, and rest keeps you from getting injured and having to go home indefinitely. The summit doesn’t care (or punish you) if you stall, delay, get sidetracked, take a break and come back, etc. It’s not going anywhere.

What if you’re exactly where you belong? What if today has been exactly what it needed to be at this moment in your journey? What if you’re closer than you think? What if just reading this article has inched you closer to where you want to be?

If we haven’t met: Hey, I’m Karin! I’m a life coach who helps you break up with your inner critic so you can spend your time + energy getting what you want instead of on comeing up with really compelling excuses. If you enjoyed this article, you’d love being on my email list. Feel free to come say hi on Instagram as well!

Photo by Jerry Zhang on Unsplash