 So we have a question here on productivity and self-sabotage. Somebody is struggling to understand why their behavior is inconsistent. So this is from Francis and it says, The more I try to change my life for the better, it seems the more frustrated I get. I have so much good information about productivity, diet, relationships, these are the issues he's working on and I watch videos and have read several books on self-improvement but the old patterns persist. I'm no more productive now than I was. Now I just feel baffled by my own behavior and inability to move forward. Is there anything I can do or something I'm missing? So Francis I'm going to address this question and hopefully it'll help other people here too. And the reason I really wanted to look at this question was there's a part in it I really love what you said there and it says okay you're struggling to enact change, to be more productive, to maybe have a better diet, things like this and you notice now I'm just baffled by my own behavior. So this is a thing that sometimes can be missing in self-improvement or self-help. I'm baffled by my own behavior. So that's really great insight you have there because it's pointing you actually in the right direction. When you start to realize I am baffled by my own behavior, my own consistencies and what I'm seeing externally in my own behavior. Now that's important because let's look at a typical contradiction. Consciously I'm holding a goal and intention that I want to be more productive and yet in my manifested behavior I'm noticing contradictions with this. I am not acting that out in my behavior it's not manifesting itself and to us it can seem baffling when consciously this is what we want to do but our behavior is showing us that actually what is going on here. Now if we can realize okay the fact that we can feel baffled or confused by our own behavior is shown us that we don't understand it. Let's take productivity. Consciously I want to be productive, I want to be productive. I'm not acting that out in my behavior. That is showing us that there is a part of us that does not want to be productive, has no interest in being productive. Now the reason we're baffled by it quite often is we don't really understand why and we can put these like simplistic labels on why we're not doing the thing we consciously say we want to do. So this part of us that doesn't want to be productive we look at it and we say and this is a lot of this isn't self-help too it's like well that's a lazy part that's a problematic part that's the part I need to get rid of that's the part that needs to change. So see there's a real problem with that because that's basically saying I don't want to listen to you anymore go away and therefore we feel baffled by it and we're really baffled by these parts of ourselves because we don't listen to it anymore. We have come to see it as just problematic. Now the way forward with this is okay unbaffle ourselves what is this part of me that doesn't want to be productive doesn't want to stick to the diet whatever it might be doesn't want to change in the relationship what is this part of me really all about and the the assumption that we make about it is well it's just wrong it's immature it's childish it's all these different things now a lot of that goes back to childhood when maybe we were shamed for for certain things but if we really start to inquire into what this part of me wants and not to just see it as as broken or a problem and get really curious about what it wants we'll often find that what it wants is quite a valid emotional need so it's not problematic it's not broken at all in my experience what I found with the productivity stuff is that yes there is this part of me that really really wants to be productive it wants to get things done it wants to accomplish things nothing wrong with that either but there's this other part of us that is resistant to that it is undermining those efforts and we see that as laziness we see it as problematic so let's unbaffle that what does it want typically what I found that it wants is fun now it can also be about low self-esteem and things like that but we start off with the assumption that well maybe this thing wants fun it looks at this part of me that is hyper productive focused on productivity and success and it says um I don't really like that I'm not interested in that and if we continue to not proactively meet the needs of this part of us that is in resistance to moving forward with that plan it will find ways on consciousness to undermine our efforts with productivity okay so find out what that part of you that is resisting this wants another good example is in in sleep for instance I give you an example so let's say consciously you're telling yourself and it's this productive part is this success-driven ambitious part is I'm going to go to sleep tonight super early and get up and have a really productive day tomorrow nothing wrong with that however you notice it's it's now 12 o'clock at night and you don't really want to go to sleep anymore and now it's one o'clock and you're still thinking well you know maybe one more episode of this show I'm watching or still play this video game or whatever it might be and you know before you notice 3 a.m and you're still having this internal fight with yourself about why am I doing this okay there's a part of us there that doesn't want to go to sleep early and these two parts of us the productive part and the part that's resistant to that are kind of in conflict now we identify with this productive part we like that part we see it is helpful and you know the truth is if you can consciously keep that in your awareness all evening as you're preparing for bed I'm going to go to bed early tonight I'm going to go to bed early tonight in all likelihood you will succeed with that however it's very difficult to hold a goal like that in conscious awareness all the time and what will happen is okay for a moment you sit down and think okay I'm going to go to bed early tonight and I'm going to watch this show first I'm going to watch half an hour of this thing and as you do it your attention from that conscious goal is kind of fading away and now what happens is this other part that isn't interested in this goal at all comes in it's not wrong it's not bad it just has different needs different desires or preferences and it comes in and it starts to influence you right now and also the thing to note about that it is very influential because it uses emotion because it's it's quite repressed quite often and it'll start to influence your decision-making and now it seems just more justifiable this day I'm watching the tv show or whatever it might be and before you know it's 3 a.m and we continue to go on like this in this inner conflict with ourselves because of this part of us that we just don't understand and we see it as like I'll often say to people okay well well why why are you struggling with productivity I don't know I don't understand it I don't understand this resistance I have to it it's unbaffling or demystifying what this part of us wants because the truth is we can try to bulldoze it away we can try to repress it and deny it it's not going anywhere because it's valid it's very valid it's just not interested in productivity or success or something does that make it bad no it just means that it probably wants fun or it wants relaxation it wants spontaneity and here's the thing it's probably not getting it so it will start to come in and get its needs met unconsciously um without permission okay so it's not going away so the solution to this is to find out oh yes this productivity need is very healthy it's a good thing for me there's also this part of me here that has no interest in it at all what do both of them want and now start now you'll notice about these two parts we identify with this part that's productive and the part that's productive and this part that isn't doesn't want to be productive they don't like each other so we need to start start ending the conflict between them and really what you need to do to do that is to validate both parts of yourself okay so this this part that you're baffled about understand it more start to validate it more stop seeing it as an enemy bring it on board proactively and start to say well what does it want and that involves things like you know you look at your day ahead for the next day and you're thinking okay well productivity is going to be important but what does this other part want that would make a cooperate with me going to sleep tonight early i'm getting up and being productive you see we tend to see that part as a liability but it sees the product productive guy or part of you as being a liability that's a really interesting thing to think about like from its perspective why would it let you go to sleep early it sees that as dangerous based on its needs and perspectives because it's saying well if this guy goes to sleep early tonight he's going to get up early tomorrow he's going to be full of energy and he's going to jump straight into productivity and i won't have any time to get my needs met at least if he's tired tomorrow i'll have a chance at him stopping and chilling out okay so it's very valid it's very rational really so start to validate both of them as important and in planning your day look at okay productivity is going to be part of this but i have to proactively consciously include whatever this need is and it's typically going to be about fun spontaneity relaxation okay so this is kind of a me giving you a kind of the dynamics of why self-care is important and all this word self-care is kind of a boring word and we've all heard it so many times the thing is it's not really optional because the part of us that feels like it's not getting what it needs starts to get resentful and then it'll start to get sort of a little bit underhanded in terms of how it starts to influence you unconsciously and influence your decision-making so my my my answer here at francis is and anyone else who's watching is demystify what the part of you that's resistant wants and we have a lot of resistance to going in and having a conversation about that because often what i've found is that emotional need that is really driving that at some point in our past we were shamed for having that need and therefore we kind of convinced ourselves to stop wanting it or stop needing it and there's a lot of fear that we experienced around having that need in the past and a lot of shame thing is you can't get rid of your emotional needs this is this is a fundamental fact that we need to come to terms with i can't shut off my emotional needs i can repress them for a long time but they will always find a way to come back so francis i hope that's useful information demystify that part of you that you are baffled by and you will find that once those two parts start to feel validated and included they now start to cooperate with each other where in the past they were in in real conflict with each other struggling for your time and attention and once that happens your productivity will just naturally just improve because there's no resistance to it anymore see the thing is and this is again what self-improvement sometimes misses the model of pushing yourself forward trying to develop habits to be more productive it's kind of like driving with the handbrake on in your car right why should it be so hard it's it's when life isn't cruel you know it shouldn't be that hard it should be easy and once we resolve any inner conflicts we have with ourselves typically around what our emotional needs are going to be there can be self-esteem stuff to look at also but once we do that we move forward with a lot of grace and ease in our life so i hope that was a useful question and as always thanks for joining me and i'll see you again soon bye from now