For the last few weeks, I have been describing the powerful effects of mindset shifts and how transformative they can be. Although a slight mindset shift can change your life, the follow through is more challenging. As soon as you make a mindset shift, a couple of things happen. First, your life becomes harder not easier. The second is that you have to deal with your subconscious, which will give you every reason why your mindset shift will not work. In addition, the people who you rely on for love and support might not embrace your epiphany.

Yes, your life will become harder.

As soon as you decide you want to lose weight, you have to find time to go to the gym. You probably have to go buy more expensive groceries. You have to avoid temptations at restaurants. When you are in a hurry, you can’t rely on fast food because there is nothing immediately available to eat.

As soon as I decided to go to USC, I had to figure out a slew of activities that had always been taken care of by my parents and I had always assumed that would continue to be the case. When someone wants to start their own business, they have to learn bookkeeping, marketing, leadership and dealing with the unexpected. When a couple decides that they want to improve their marriage, they have to uncover issues that they never had to deal with in the past.

I believe that one of the most challenging parts of change is changing our habits and our routines. Nothing will change unless our habits and our routines change. Our lives become harder because habits and routines become more complicated as we want more out of life. Here is the good news, when we replace negative habits with positive habits, it is challenging to take on new habits for a little while, then it becomes easier.

Nobody says, “I want to fail.” Nobody says, “I don’t want success.” Nobody ever thinks about sabotaging themselves. However, much of our actions are dictated by our subconscious. We all have a narrative about life, and this narrative started when we were children. This narrative tells us how much money we can make and how much success we deserve. It can even be whether we believe that the government is out to get us. From a young age, the narrative that we have was formed. If someone is not actively trying to rewrite that narrative, then our subconscious can take over. Our subconscious is only trying to protect us. This was a good shield in the medieval times. However, the subconscious holds us back in modern times. If you were told that money was the root of all evil, you are going to have trouble making money. If, as a child you were told that you were not good enough, then you might have trouble forming relationships. If your parents shielded you and gave you everything you wanted then you will have a hard time putting in the effort needed to achieve amazing success.

Although there are many challenges in my life because of my cerebral palsy, my parents instilled a narrative focusing on the importance of hard work, that life is a blessing, and that nobody owes you anything. There were periods of my life when I was stuck. Despite this, my subconscious was ingrained in nothing but love and persistence. I understood that it was just a challenge.

It is possible to challenge your subconscious. However, it is not as easy as making a simple mindset shift. The mindset shift is only the beginning. The challenging part is pushing through and fighting with your subconscious. It’s about a commitment to ultimately win.

Human beings want support. They want to know that other human beings have their back. Amazing people look weird to others. When you are working on your dreams, you might look weird to other people. Friends and loved ones might not understand why you need to take a couple of hours on the weekend to read instead of hang out with them. They might understand, but not like the fact that you cannot split a dessert when you go out to restaurant, or why there aren’t any more Chinese takeout nights. Your success is messing with their lives. Their subconscious is telling them that you are leaving them behind. Their subconscious might want to protect you. When I decided to go to USC, my parents could have easily discouraged me from going simply because they did not want to see me get hurt. This is a very valid and normal reaction. Even though there was slight questioning on the part of my parents, I eventually received their support.

According to Noah St. John, one characteristic that all successful people have is that, along their journey, they have people encouraging them. I was blessed to always have encouraging people in my life. Note – Encouragement probably won’t come from the place that you expect. It often comes from an unlikely source. It might come from a person that you met at a conference. It might be from a client. It might be from a boss. Although I had encouraging people all my life, I look in different circles for different types of encouragement. My friends and family who know very little about my business don’t know how to encourage me in my business efforts.

Although mindset shifts are powerful, it’s the follow through where the challenges often lie. At first, you will feel excitement. As soon as you start working on your goals, fears, doubts and head trash from your subconscious will start appearing. In addition, you will have to get the support and encouragement of others. During the process of bringing your goals to fruition, there will be many pitfalls. This is one reason that goal setting and New Year’s resolutions often go nowhere.

A true mindset shift is not a decision to change your life. It’s a commitment to change the way you live your life and engage your dream. It’s also the way that you engage your subconscious and looking at what truly holds you back. It’s about engaging with your habits and routines in order to support those goals and those decisions. Lastly, it’s about engaging your network or adding pieces to your network that will encourage you and assist you in whatever way.

The goal is to make the mindset shift transform your life.