Our hot buttons get pushed all the time. People offend us, situations don’t turn out as we hope, and we get triggered.
Triggers overwhelm us and throw us off our axis. Why? Because in triggering moments we are suddenly flooded with fear-based thoughts, emotions, and sensations which send us into ‘reactive’ mode.
We tend to react to triggers with judgment and blame. We come to see them as the source of our pain and problems, and the very reasons why we can’t get what we want.
In doing so, we become victims. We see life as something that happens to us—and success as a matter of luck. That, in turn, is how we make our lives into a struggle and take on the identity of “the failure.”
Lean into your triggers
When someone tells you to turn your obstacles into opportunities, do you feel briefly inspired and then confused as to how that can happen? Or perhaps you get triggered by what sounds like oversimplified advice?
The advice isn’t oversimplified. Justifying our reactive feelings and thoughts as right—and dismissing the inherent value of the trigger is how we complicate life. Rather, we need to be curious about our triggers and observe what they reveal about us in terms of false beliefs.
Triggers are simply a mirror. Even the ones we want to dismiss as petty can point to the false beliefs that hold us back from success. Each trigger that pops up is an opportunity to see something within us that needs our attention and reconciliation so we can actually achieve our goals.
How do we know that triggers are never the cause of our failures? Because two people encountering the exact same trigger can react very differently to it. One person might explode while someone else will walk on by like nothing happened.
It’s never about the trigger. It’s about what makes us individually predisposed to reacting to it with painful thoughts, feelings, and sensations. It’s about our subconscious false beliefs.
Our false beliefs are truly the only thing standing between us and what we want. We often think that having the right strategy is the key to success. However, a strategy only works if it is backed by supporting beliefs that speak to our full potential and worth.
In addition, it is usually the case that multiple strategies will work, but in the absence of supportive beliefs, none of them will deliver results.
I once worked with a woman who struggled to monetize her creative projects. Her creations were absolutely brilliant and lacked nothing in terms of quality and substance. She promoted her work time and again using various outlets, but no matter how hard she tried, for years she could not make a sale.
And then one day she began to diligently zoom in on her triggers. Whether it was her husband’s snide remarks, the rude customer in the checkout line, or the disturbing dream, she explored each trigger until she discovered the false belief that was the very source of her reactivity.
Within a matter of weeks, she discovered the very essence of most of her triggers. A false belief that nothing is good enough, which she neutralized as soon as she acknowledged it. By tracking her triggers for a couple of months she was ultimately able to identify all of the sneaky self-defeating behaviors that were the real cause of her failure.
Almost immediately, she “magically” stumbled across the precise resources and support she needed to launch her business and is now well on her way to financial freedom.
On the surface, we may want something badly while overlooking the sabotaging monsters that lie within us. Underneath our desires, we are likely to find limiting beliefs that are running the show and dictating the outcomes. When these are brought to light, we create the space to make new, empowering choices that actually improve our circumstances.
We pay a high cost for ignoring the reflections given off by our triggers. We relive failure over and over and the losses become greater.
The remedy is to appreciate that stress triggers almost always point to an aspect of self that needs healing, and know that everything is here to help us grow. This mindset shifts us out of reactive-victim mode and into responsive-creator mode.
That is how we line ourselves up with exactly what we need at the exact time we need it, and success becomes an inevitable reality.
Bianca Finkelstein is the CEO of High-Rise Soul Academy and helps aspiring thought leaders use their intuition and discover their worth.
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