Kermit the Frog used to sing that it wasn’t easy being green. It’s the same with human. Sometimes it’s not easy being human. The mind is a complex being. Thoughts shape action and sometimes our unconscious thoughts can in fact stop us from being who we want to be and stop us from achieving the heights we dream of.
Human potential coach Bill MacLeod has travelled all over the world helping people get in touch with their unconscious thoughts and identify and deal with the issues that blindside them and get in the way of success.
Bill believes that “when we are born the mind is like basically a sponge. In the first three years of our life, information is downloaded and not filtered and this information is the fact file that we draw from for the rest of our lives”. Typically, Bill says, “We only use our conscious mind five per cent of the time; 95 per cent of the time we’re basically using the unconscious mind, which was laid down in the first three years of our lives.”
Bill believes if we are using the unconscious mind for 95 per cent of the time, our self-limiting beliefs that we may not even be aware of, can hold us back, and limit us and blindside us. So for people looking for success, that’s the area to explore.
In Bill’s experience, he has found that successful people act and think consciously. They have a clarity, authenticity and stillness about them and they love what they are doing and would do it whether they are being paid for it or not. He says, “They feel that they are doing what they are meant to be doing in this world.”
Recently, he was working with an agent whom he helped encourage to get in touch with the thoughts that were blindsiding her. Bill says, “She was doing a listing presentation for a million dollar property and when she came to the end, the client said, ‘Why should I go with you? Everyone’s come along and said the same thing’. And the real estate agent was about to go on with her spiel but she just stopped and put her books down and she said, “I have walked past your house for the last 15 or 20 years every day with my dog, and I’ve looked at this house and said, ‘One day I want to sell this’. And that was it – she got the listing.”
Bill says, “When you drop your veil, the client will get the realness. They’ll get the authenticity. It feels risky. For some people they go, ‘Oh, no, no. That’s too risky. I can’t be that natural. I can’t really be me’. And I say, ‘Well, what a shame’.”
There are all sorts of issues that blindside people.
Some people don’t want to be truly seen. They only want people to see a particular projection of themselves. They may feel that if they are their true selves, they may be judged or that their weakness will be seen. Bill says, “Those people tend to use various strategies or behaviour to cover that. So they may become quite aggressive, or they may bully, or procrastinate or pander to everyone else’s needs before their own.”
In some ways, Bill believes, “They sell themselves out in trying to become somebody, because they’re afraid of actually being seen. They’re afraid of maybe the fact that failure is something they’re afraid of, and they’re afraid that their vulnerability will be seen, and they’re afraid of humiliation, or of being marginalised, or not being liked.
“So when I’m working with people, I work on their blindside to those surface behaviours. Somewhere in their upbringing they learned that ‘If I’m exposed, if I’m vulnerable, I might get hurt, so I’m going to hurt someone else before they hurt me’. And then they’re blindsided to the fact that this single program is running so much of their lives.”
In Bill’s experience, a blindside for many people is making decisions and so they procrastinate as a result. Bill says ”A reluctance to make a decision is sometimes because people look to others for validation and they have no real clarity within themselves to make a decision.
“It has a lot to do with trying to please people. So they’re indecisive because they’re almost trying to work out what they need to do. That can often blindside them, and for these people they just believe that’s the way life is, that it’s an uncertain place. They want to avoid conflict, they don’t want to upset people, they want to be seen as a nice person. So when they’re running like that all the time, again I look at the emotion that’s behind that with people. Typically behind those people it’s rage. Something’s happened, again early on.” Once that issue is dealt with, Bill has found that people find making decisions easier.
Another area that can blindside people is always trying to prove that they are good people. Wanting to prove how nice you are can get in the way of running a successful business. Bill recalls a man he was working with recently, a 70 year old who owned his own business. Bill says, “He came to me and he said that he’s been on pills for the last 18 months and that the business was about to go to the wall. He’d spent his life trying to prove to people that he was a good person. He’d helped out so many people in the community, and yet his business has gone into a bit of schtum.” With Bill’s help and guidance, the man’s business and health recovered and he learnt that focusing on himself rather than seeking validation from others was essential for his survival.
Sometimes the only person getting in the way of our success is ourselves and Bill MacLeod is a friend of the mind. If you would like to get in touch with Bill, please email:
bill@billmacleod.net