Written by: Myles Morgan, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
It’s not always easy to see what’s getting in the way of our personal growth and fulfillment. This list may help you better identify your blocks so that you can prioritize them in your inner healing work.
When You Can’t See What’s Getting In the Way
Let’s face it. We all have blocks in one or more areas of life at one point or another. Some are easy to identify, like the performance anxiety that turns you into a frozen stuttering sweat machine every time you have to deliver a pitch or presentation. Other blocks are more subtle or difficult to spot, like the block that makes you repeatedly stretch yourself too thin at the expense of their well-being.
If problems like these persist over time despite efforts to change; if they show up again and again in different forms; or if they prevent you from creating or experiencing what you want in life, that may be a sign that you have a block. A “block” is some mental or emotional dynamic that is getting in the way of creating, achieving, or experiencing what you want in life. Blocks come in three basic forms: limiting beliefs, fears, and unresolved painful memories. These things often come bundled together and tend to require deep inner healing work to clear from your system.
It may be difficult to admit that you have a block in some areas of life. But having a block doesn’t mean you suck at life. It means you’re human. And it turns out that the more swiftly you can identify and resolve a block, the more successful you are likely to be. Just ask Ray Dalio.
One of the fastest ways to accelerate personal growth, shift your paradigm, and find innovative solutions to sticky problems is through developing the ability to name your blocks and learning how to skillfully deal with them. This article aims to help you begin to put words to what might be “in the way” so that you can attack whatever it is head-on through inner healing work. Here is a list of 7 subtle blocks and how you might begin to spot them.
1. Blocks to Feeling
“Even when things are going well, I still don’t feel truly happy or satisfied.”
“I feel this lump in my throat like I need to cry, but I can’t.”
Statements like these indicate that you may have a block to feeling, where you aren’t able to experience the full range or intensity of one or more emotions that are important for well-being. Whether you struggle with positive or negative emotions, this can feel like your emotional sink is clogged, or like your emotional soundtrack is muted.
Some people with blocks to feeling report that they have a general sense of flat or dull emotion — an experience that can correspond to depression. But we can also have blocks around specific emotions. For instance, I might have learned that feeling and expressing anger will end poorly, so I just pretend like I never get angry. Although this may save me from harmful expressions of anger, it also prevents me from experiencing healthy protective anger. All emotions have a purpose. And getting unblocked in this area can lead to a more vibrant day-to-day experience.
2. Blocks to Knowing, Trusting, or Loving Yourself
“I have spent all this time doing what other people said I should do. And through it all, I still don’t know who I really am.”
“When I try to reflect on what I really want, instead of getting more clarity I feel more confused, lost, and frustrated.”
How’s your relationship with your intuition? How about your relationship with your body? If someone asked who you truly are at your core, would you have an answer that’s not sourced in how others define you? What about your ability to clarify your life purpose, deepest-held values, or highest strengths?
If you experience significant friction or difficulty in any of these areas, you may have a block to knowing and trusting yourself. Blocks in this area could take the form of disconnection from your inner voice, intuition, and needs. It could also take the form of negative beliefs or views of oneself. All of these prevent you from feeling a sense of wholeness in yourself. And without a feeling of wholeness, you can’t live a fulfilled life.
The relationship we have with ourselves is sacred, and it serves as the foundation for the relationships we have with all others. Thus, removing blocks in this area could be one of the most important gifts you give to yourself in this lifetime.
The above clip is funny because it’s true. It’s a dramatized version of the types of toxic patterns that can run amok in all of our relationships. In real life, these patterns can be much more subtle and insidious. But these toxic “traits” are often signs that we have blocks to connecting and forming whole, healthy, and happy relationships.
“Why do all of my relationships keep turning out this way?”
Blocks to connection can come in many forms: recurring painful experiences that keep showing up with every person you date, feeling lonely even when surrounded by people, difficulty communicating, difficulty being vulnerable or trusting others, and complete avoidance of relationships altogether. What’s at the root of these types of patterns? Three words: Unhealed relational trauma.
Yes, unresolved painful experiences are at the root of most blocks. But relationships tend to be the place where we reenact or relive these wounds most intensely.
A lesson I learned years ago is that the true substance and meaning of life reside in the quality of our relationships. Therefore, removing blocks in this area is one of the 1 levers you can pull to increase your overall happiness and fulfillment.
4. Blocks to Presence
“I have so much to do that I can never just be. Even when I’m sitting still, I can’t seem to turn my brain off. I just keep thinking about what still needs to get done.”
“I’m afraid that if I let myself truly rest — to just be here and enjoy the moment — then I might miss something important that I need to get where I want to be.”
Blocks to presence might show up as being so focused on what we don’t have that we miss what we already have. They are rooted in attachment to outcomes, comparison, and the body’s survival system getting stuck in high gear. Mindfulness practices are aimed directly at increasing our capacity for presence. But when you have a block, no matter how much you meditate, you still struggle to let go and simply be here.
Ironically, we also need presence — the ability to become completely absorbed in the present moment — to enjoy the peak experience and performance of flow. So removing blocks to doing less could paradoxically be a major key to doing, having, or enjoying more.
5. Blocks to Consistency
Whether you are struggling with maintaining routines, completing personal projects, or achieving major life goals, I have found that most blocks to consistency and discipline tend to be rooted in a fear of failure, a fear of things not working out the way you want, or a belief that you don’t actually have what it takes.
Interestingly, when people clear blocks around consistency, they tend to shift from trying to muster superhuman amounts of discipline to focusing on simply spending more time engaging in intrinsically enjoyable activities that they are naturally good at. This way, instead of it feeling like pushing a boulder up a mountain, it’s like being pulled by some gravitational force toward your goals. This is a much more fulfilling approach to increasing consistency.
6. Blocks to “Going For It”
“I have been working on my business idea for years, but something keeps stopping me from actually launching.”
It’s one thing to know that you have to be bold and take risks, to know that you have to “make the leap”, to know that you need to try and be willing to fail if you ever want to win.
It’s one thing to subscribe to these ideas. But when it’s time for you to actually put them into practice, fear of failure and rejection stops many people in their tracks. Sometimes we are keenly aware that fear is the thing that’s stopping us. Other times, this fear can masquerade as excuses, procrastination, or seemingly valid reasons why we actually can’t “go for it.”
The good news is that inner healing work has been proven to clear fear from the brain and body, even in the most extreme cases. The magic of doing this is not that it will protect you from ever failing or facing rejection, but that it will allow you to remain fully resourced, creative, and able to quickly learn and adapt in the face of failure. And this is all any of us can ask for.
7. Blocks to Healing
“I’m scared of what I might find out about myself.”
“What if I open up a can of worms that I can’t close back up?”
“What if I try all this stuff, put in all this effort, and it still doesn’t work?”
Dealing with our blocks tends to require healing. And healing requires looking at and dealing with many of the things that we have spent a lifetime avoiding, ignoring, or suppressing. So it’s no wonder that embarking on an inner healing journey can feel so daunting for so many people — like approaching a looming forbidden forest full of who knows what.
Fears that get in the way of exploring our darkest corners and oldest can be the most insidious blocks of all because these are the types of blocks that prevent us from dealing with all other blocks.
Because of this, examining your relationship to healing and inner work and dealing with any blocks around this may be the highest priority for your personal growth journey.
Honorable Mention
This list of blocks is not exhaustive. Other subtle blocks can be just as important to name and deal with, such as blocks to self-expression, blocks to learning and creative problem-solving, and blocks to managing (time, money, people, tasks, etc.) effectively.
The goal of this article was just to contribute to your self-awareness, to give you some ideas for how to think about what might be getting in the way, and to provide some places for you to look. Hopefully, this list gets the juices flowing.
Practice
Take a moment, if you haven’t already, to check in with yourself about whether you might have any of the blocks mentioned above.
Which of the above subtle blocks might I have? For each one, how would I describe it for myself?
What area(s) of life could this block be impacting? Relationships, career, health & fitness, leisure, spirituality, etc.?
What desired outcome or experience could this block be getting in the way of?
What might it look or sound like to set a goal to remove this block in the upcoming year?
The good news is you can do something about these blocks through inner healing work. You don’t have to stay stuck with them. But the first step is acknowledging that they’re there.
If you want to learn more about how to do the inner healing work needed to clear these blocks, then check out my website and book a free exploratory call, where I can share the ins-and-outs of inner healing work with you.
Cheers to a season of obliterating blocks!
Myles Morgan, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Myles Morgan is a trained therapist who chose a path of leadership and entrepreneurship rather than working in a clinical setting. Over the last seven years, he has co-founded and managed three education-based startups while slowly building his own life coaching practice. Now in his fifth year of practice, his signature coaching program, The Fulfillment Accelerator, specializes in helping founders, leaders, and creatives clear the deepest mental and emotional blocks that are preventing them from enjoying fulfillment as they actualize their dreams. As a writer, speaker, and teacher, much of the perspective he has to offer lives at the intersection between positive psychology, deep healing, and creative practice.
