IN THIS VIDEO:

“The Frustration Cure” — How to STOP getting what you DON'T want!! — is 17 minutes of unscripted, unfiltered, problem solving perspective.

Have you ever decided, I mean COMPLETELY committed yourself to ending a habit or unwanted behavior, yet continued to get the same results? Yup, I definitely have, and it SUCKS!

But, how do we fix it?

No worries – Let's solve it together, right now.

Here's 2 quick takeaways…

1. Whatever we feed our mind (regardless of the context) our mind will feed back to us, and it will eventually manifest. This is especially true in the case of established habits. Our mind can't negate a thought without first “showing it” to us, which is likely to trigger our established reaction to it. So, stop thinking about what you DON'T want, and focus on what you DO want instead.

2. We must make sure what we want, is in-line with what we VALUE. The congruency of our wants and values is like fuel for our resolve to get it done.

Enjoy and share with someone you love!  Sometimes we can all use a Frustration Cure.

Stay awesome…

Full Transcript Here:

I'm so excited to tackle today's question which is “Help me, how do I stop getting what I don't want?”

Now I love this question because the answer itself is within the question. Isn’t it so cool when people say that “the answer to your question is within the question itself”? but it’s true today! The answer to the question is in the question itself. You’ll understand what I mean by the time we finish up today after these after these few minutes.

We've all been there right? If you’re anything like me, which you probably are if you’re watching this video – you're a good person, you’re doing the best you can with the resources you have, so as you go through life when you see things that aren’t right within yourself, you want to change them, you want to stop them.

If you see some bad habits you know, if you’re a smoker and you realize it's not healthy and you want to stop, if you're overweight and you realize… “you know what I should be in better shape. I want to stop eating like this”, if you're at work and you’re constantly getting in arguments with your boss or your coworkers — you see things that aren’t right and you want to fix them, right? So what do we do when we want to fix something?

We have to make the decision! Right? Making an absolute decision changes things. That’s absolutely true — BUT!! — what do we do, or what could be happening when we’ve really, truly, decided that we want to stop something, but over time we still see the same things happening?

We want to stop being overweight but even though we keep telling ourselves that, we’ve decided on it, we’re just not getting the results. Or if we don’t want to be so angry all the time and we just find ourselves being angry constantly – what causes that??

We’re going to fix that today in just a couple minutes. I’ve got to tell you a story about this guy named Vince, and in full disclosure, to protect Vince's identity in this fictional story I need to tell you his name is not actually Vince. 😉

Well let’s get started. Vince is a great guy, he’s a restaurant owner. Not just any restaurant owner, he owned the absolute best restaurant in the city. He had the best chefs, the best food obviously, had the best décor, the best clients, he had the most money.

He was so wealthy. He had it all. A beautiful wife, beautiful kids, and he also had – MISERY. He was completely miserable! But why? He had everything right?

Well a couple things were going on with him; one, his wife, she was so beautiful he got extremely jealous anytime he saw her talking to anybody. I mean he would start these horrible arguments just because she would be having a conversation with someone, man or woman.

He was so jealous that if he caught himself looking at her for too long he wanted to kick his own ass. I mean he was that kind of over-the-top jealous.

His employees? He had the best employees, chefs, everybody was top-notch, but he was always angry with them. Anytime they did something that wasn't perfectly aligned with what he wanted, he would just blow his top and go nuts. He had no tolerance for creativity or deviation of any kind.

With his kids, he loved his kids to death, but he never saw them. He was so involved in work he never got to see his kids. He missed their recitals, he missed their soccer games, he missed everything.

With himself – he wasn't happy about how he looked. He wasn’t happy about how he felt, he was overweight, he didn’t exercise. He hated all these things about himself and his life, and he was a good guy because he saw these things were wrong and he wanted to change them!

So what did he do? He decided to try positive thinking. So he woke up one day, and he did this for six months straight, every day he woke up he told himself “I am not going to be jealous of my wife today, I am not going to be angry at my employees today, I’m not going to avoid my kids today, and I’m going to stop being so fat.”

And guess what happened after six months? Yeah you got it, jealous, angry, didn’t see his kids and he’s fat..still. After six months of waking up every day and telling himself what he didn’t want to do anymore, he kept doing it. Why?

Well I’ll tell you what happened. He went home one day and he was so upset that he sat down at his kitchen table and he starts just sobbing, crying. His wife hears this crying and she walks in and she’s like “oh my gosh.” Puts her hand on his shoulder behind him and says “Vince what is going on?”

He said “I’m just so frustrated. I know the things that I'm doing wrong and I really want to stop, and I even decided to stop them but nothing’s changing, I don’t know what to do”. His wife says “well, honey, it just so happens that a friend of mine told me this guy named ‘The Sage' is in town. Nobody’s seen this guy for like twenty years, but supposedly he is the one person that can fix any problem that anybody has”.

He looks at her like “you’re freaking nuts woman, what are you talking about The Sage”? She said “look, you’re obviously at your wits end, I know somebody who knows how to get a hold of him. I’ll call him, & have him meet you at the restaurant tomorrow”. He says “fine, I don’t even care anymore”.

So he doesn’t even think about it, he just eats his dinner and he goes to bed. He wakes up the next day, goes to the restaurant, walks in, there stands this unassuming man and he says “who are you”.  “I’m The Sage, your wife told me to meet you here. I understand you have some issues, how can I help you”.

Vince looks at him, says “okay well I tell you what, for six months straight I’ve been trying every day to stop being so jealous of my wife, I’ve been trying to, I want to stop being so angry with my employees, I want to stop avoiding my kids and just not seeing them, and I’m sick of being fat, and no matter how much I try to stop these things they just keep happening, and I don’t know what to do. So if you can help me great, if not get the hell out, because I got things to do”.

The Sage is very calm and looks at him, he nods his head and he says “okay”. He says “I’ll tell you what, today is Monday. I will show you how to fix your problem on Friday. In just nine words you will have your solution”.

Vince looked at him and said “Excuse me, nine words?” The Sage nods his head and says “nine words”, but I will need a couple things. Number one, you and I will not speak until Friday, number two, I need a newspaper, number three, I need a table to sit at, number four I need your best waiter”.

And Vince says “Hold on, you're telling me today is Monday, you’re going to show me how to solve this problem by Friday, we’re not going to speak, and you want a newspaper a table and my best waiter?”

The Sage says “Yes”, and Vince is like “fine, somebody get him a newspaper”.

So they get The Sage a newspaper, he tucks it under his arm, he goes and sits down at a table, he opens a menu, he looks at the fancy waiter and he starts pointing at all this stuff on the menu. Desserts, entrees, drinks, breakfast, lunch, dinner, he starts ordering all this food. I mean he orders a ton of food and the waiter is looking at him, writing everything down and he says “sir are you sure you want all this stuff?”, and The Sage is looking at the menu just pointing out more and more stuff and he just says “yeah”.

So the waiter brings out all this food. I mean they literally had to bring extra tables to hold all his food. And when all the food comes out, The Sage just sits there, opens his newspaper and starts reading. He reads the paper for like 15 minutes, folds it back up, tucks it under his arm, gets up pays the bill and leaves.

Vince sees this going on and he’s like “what just happened?!”, and they said “He ordered all this food and he didn’t eat any of it and he left”.

So now Vince is hot, so Tuesday comes, The Sage comes in around lunchtime, he does the same thing, orders a ton of food, they spread it out everywhere, he reads his paper gets up pays the bill, he leaves. He does it Wednesday, he does it Thursday, he does it Friday!

Finally Friday comes around, Vince storms in, makes a beeline for him, he looks at him, he says “are you a complete idiot?! You told me that you’re going to show me how to solve my problem by Friday, we’re not talking and all you’ve done every day is order food that you didn’t eat, read your newspaper and leave. What is wrong with you, what is it that you even want”?

And The Sage looks at him and says “…now that I think about it all I want is some tea”, and Vince just turns beet red! He’s like ready to blow his top! “Tea?! You want tea??”

The waiter sees this going on and he’s says “you know I better get this guy some tea before the boss kills him” The waiter comes over and puts the tea down in front of The Sage. Vince is just beet red with anger and The Sage very calmly picks up his tea, takes a sip and he stands up and he looks at Vince. And Vince says “You told me you were going to fix me, show me what my problem is in nine words”.

The Sage nods his head, sips his tea, looks down at all this food that’s spread out in front of him that he had ordered. He looks at Vince, puts his tea down, puts his hands in his pockets and looks at Vince dead in his eyes and says… “this is what you’ve been doing with your life.”

Vince steps back, he almost falls over and he starts to say “what are you talking…..abou—”.

The Sage pays his bill and he leaves.

Vince was never the same after that day. He was never the same. Because Vince’s problem wasn’t that he didn’t know what he needed to stop.

He didn’t need to tell himself to stop being jealous of his wife, but what he needed to do was start ordering what he actually wanted, and what he wanted was to be more trusting of his wife, to be more appreciative, to be more loving, to be more tolerant.

With his employees his problem wasn't, he didn’t need to tell himself to stop being angry at his employees, what he needed to focus on was; I need to be more tolerant of my employees. I need to be supportive. I need to be a teacher to them. I need to be curious about what they do, what their perspectives are. I need to appreciate them.

With his children he didn’t, you know telling himself that he didn’t want to be away from his kids wasn't helping. He already knew he didn’t want to be away from his kids, but what he needed to do was order what he wanted. He needed to order himself to be at the kids games, to spend time with them at home, to help them with their homework, to be there at their recitals.

With his weight, telling himself to stopping being fat didn’t get him anywhere. What he needed to tell himself to do was to start eating healthier and exercising regularly.

All The Sage did was change his perspective and show him that he was ordering all this crap that he didn't want every day, when all he had to do was order what he wanted. That was it.

See our minds, our subconscious minds are funny, or our unconscious minds are funny, because what we focus on, our unconscious mind brings it back up. Brings it right back up to us.

And it’s sort of like having a conversation with somebody when there’s a bad connection, so you and I may say to ourselves; “I don’t want to be fat, I don’t want to be fat, I don’t want to be fat”, and all our unconscious mind hears is… “What’d you say?! Oh you want to be fat? Cool, let’s go get some moon pies”.

And that’s all that comes back up in your head. And it doesn't help you and it just creates a snowball effect of the same thing happening over and over. So you have to introduce new thoughts, you have to introduce your destination.

I mean if you sit down in your car, if your car has GPS or your smartphone, & you go to Google Maps and you want to get somewhere, if you have somewhere you want to be, you don’t go to your GPS and plug in “okay uh, where do I want to go, I want to go, not home”, you are already home! That's not a NEW destination.

So if you just sit there and go “I don’t want to be home, I don’t want to be home, I don’t want to be home”, guess what, you’re home!

So until you tell yourself where you want to go, you’re likely to wind up in the same place. So whatever behavior or whatever habit that you’re recognizing that you don't want, that's great that you recognize “I don't want to be here anymore.” But what we have to remind ourselves is knowing what you don't want is fine, that's the baseline, that's the starting line, but you can’t stay at the starting line and wonder why you didn't get to the finish line.

You have to focus on the finish line and (literally) go there. So telling yourself “I don’t want to be fat anymore, I don’t want to be fat anymore, I don’t want to be overweight”, that’s not helping you to get to healthy. What you need to say is “I want to be healthy, I want to be fit, I want to exercise every day”.

If that's your goal, now you have a focus, now you have a target, now you can get there.

And it is so simple, but most of us play our lives,  habitually in our society, we play on defense all the time and we wonder why we’re not getting somewhere.

All we think about is what we don't want or what we’re afraid of happening & we get so tied up in the ‘don't wants’ that we neglect our ‘wants’. It’s important to remember that

So you know two things to remember; number one whatever you feed your mind, your mind will feed back to you and it will manifest itself, and that’s what was happening with Vince.
He was simply feeding himself what he didn't want, and that's why he stayed in the same place he was. Once he started feeding himself what he wanted, he started feeding his mind what he wanted to change to, that’s when results started happening. So it’s very simple but it’s extremely important.

And the second thing is we have to make sure that what we want is in line with what we actually value, and that’s what the great thing was about Vince.

Vince really did want to stop being jealous of his wife, he really did want to stop being so mean and angry at his employees, he wanted to stop a missing time with his children and he wanted to stop being overweight. He really valued those things, and once he made that shift and actually started focusing on what he wanted instead of those things, that's when everything changed.

And I think that’s what will change for you if you ever find yourself a place where you’re getting the same thing over and over again. Just shift that lens simply from what you're not wanting and shift your focus to what you want. Because then you can get there, then you can start using your senses to say “okay how much progress am I making and how can I improve?”, and I think that’s going to make a huge difference for you.

I tell you what, it's definitely made a huge difference for me in my life.

I am a complete work in progress, I in no way shape or form have all the answers, but I have recognized things over the years that work and I think this is definitely one of them. So remember focus on what you want, not so much on what you don't want, and I think that will help you big time.

Let me know what you think, as always you can reach me at aaronkeithhawkins.com, please go to Facebook like my fan page aaronkeithhawkinsfan, stop in there, I think you’ll love the material I have on there. Give me a like! You’ll also find me on histogram, @aaronkeithhawkins.

Until next time I appreciate, as always, you spending time with me. And I know we’ll get to chat soon again. 🙂