What Are Your Happiness Blocks?

Many of experience blocks to our happiness and don’t even know it.  I picture it like a 10-foot wall between us and where we’re trying to go.  Only problem is, we can’t see it.  The only way we know it’s there is we keep running into it face first.

We are, of course, not talking about a physical wall, but a mental, emotional, and spiritual wall.

This wall inhibits us from finding success in many areas of our life: in love, in career, in abundance, in connection, in reaching out and going for our dreams, and most importantly, in happiness.

And this wall is made of blocks.

Again, these aren’t physical blocks, but mental blocks, emotional blocks, spiritual blocks.

These blocks come from many places (I outline the 9 types of Happiness Blocks in this free e-book), but at their core, they are old traumas.

Blocks keep us from reaching our full potential.  In NLP, they are called anchors, as in an anchor that keeps you tied down from rising up or moving ahead.  You may be able to move a little bit and strain against the rope tied to the anchor, or push into the blocks in the wall, but the closer you get to breaking through, the harder it gets because the more those blocks or that anchor will resist you.

Let me give a personal example:

I, for many years, had trouble public speaking, even though it is one of my career aspirations and I spent much of my childhood running around the backyard pretending I was giving speeches to huge audiences.  But somewhere between childhood and adulthood, something changed, and it went from feeling like the most natural thing in the world, to the scariest thing in the world.

To the point where, at a family and friends address at my veterinary college, the speech I gave was mostly unintelligible mouth sounds.  In front of nearly a thousand people.  And live-streamed on the internet.  And no, I will not post a link….

So how did an intelligent, articulate person who dreamed of speaking to large audiences end up a flubber-face when given the opportunity?  Easy, I pushed too hard into my wall, and got bounced back.

What I mean is this: I’d maneuvered myself, in the physical sense at least, very close to my goal, but what I didn’t see or heed was the mental-emotional-spiritual blocks that were still in my way.

Of course, I have since spoken to larger audiences, in far more interesting (and sometimes controversial) settings, and done just fine.  No flubber-face mouth sounds, thank you very much.

What changed?  Simple, I cleared the blocks.

You see, a few things (“traumas”) had happened to me between childhood and adulthood directly surrounding public speaking:

• While reading aloud in history class, I mispronounced a word, resulting in one of my classmates laughing and pointing at “that dumb smart person.”
• Before that, I was interviewed for a newspaper article the same day I had braces put in and a big metal bar across the back of my mouth that made normal tongue movement impossible, meaning all I could make as flubber-face mouth sounds, and my dad had to do the interview for me.
• And before that, as a youngster, I had a significant speech impediment (and also didn’t care if my letters looked like they were supposed to) to the point where I was evaluated for special needs learning, which at the time was still called mental retardation.

There’s many more (gaining the confidence to use my voice, both verbal and written, has been a big issue for me), but these are some of the most relatable and easy to understand ones.

These events left me with mental-emotional-spiritual blocks, with words like dumb, wrong, retard, not-good-enough, echoing around my head every time I tried to push through.  (You’ll notice that the episode speaking in veterinary school had elements of all these old traumas: mis-pronounced words, unintelligible mouth sounds, speech impediment.  And you know it left me feeling dumb, and like I was doing something wrong, and like I was not good enough.)

This is what I mean by blocks, and the power of these blocks if we ignore them and don’t deal with them.

There are many ways to deal with these blocks, like meditation, therapy, EFT, and other modalities.  I am lucky to have gained the knowledge to do something called Active Emotional Release, which looks at all 9 types of Happiness Blocks (many are easy to miss because they are so deep in our psyche).

Once the blocks are identified, often we need clarity about what happened and the emotions involved, and how it affected not just us but other people involved.  We need to develop understanding, and then compassion.  And finally release these blocks.

As it turns out, I still don’t like reading in front of large groups of people….  Not because I’m not good at it or it scares me, but because I like to goof around.  By clearing my old blocks, not only am I able to speak in front of large groups, but I can have fun with it, move around, engage with the audience, and really let my authentic self shine.

So here is what I would encourage:

We all have things we want to move towards, whether it’s a feeling like happiness, or something more tangible like success in business or at home.  What is that for you?

Now, are you showing up the way that you want to, or are you showing up all flubber-faced?  Why?  What is it that’s holding you back?  Where is that coming from?

If you look back, can you see parallels in the past to what you’re experiencing now?  Are there other factors at play?

I’ve put together this little ebook, The 9 Happiness Blocks, (which is free, btw!)  to help you identify where your blocks might be coming from.  Some of these block types are obvious, like old traumas, but some are much more spiritual.  What resonates with you?

You can also learn more about working with Charlotte to rapidly release your happiness blocks and open yourself up to experience joy, happiness, confidence, and success on a whole new level.

2-3 Love, my friends!

Cover Photo by Alexander Dummer from Pexels