Do you keep facing the same frustrating situation again, and again, no matter what you do? Or, do things work pretty well in your life, but you keep feeling bad, and you just can’t figure out how to change that? Have you maybe even thrown up your hands and conceded, “This is just the way life is!”?

You wouldn’t be alone. It’s not only that a lot of us get to that frustration point where we just can’t push against that negative force, anymore. In fact, early in life, long before you have any choice in the matter, your brain develops a survival mechanism that says, “This is how life is. This is how you need to be in order to survive.” So, since you were a toddler, you’ve actually had a set way of being in the world that strongly resists any change. And, unfortunately, this survival mechanism is built largely out of Learned Distress®, the feeling you absorbed early in life that there is something wrong with you being just the way you are. (You can get a “picture” of your Learned Distress survival mechanism by taking a free, scientifically validated personality test.)

So, it’s not surprising that most people get to a certain point where this survival mechanism starts to take a toll. It doesn’t feel good, but to the part of the brain that stores the survival mechanism, it’s the “known evil.” This reminds me of a story I heard:

Long ago, there was a war that had been going on for many years. The convention of the day was to put prisoners of war to death by firing squad, but one general took an unconventional approach with his prisoners. He gave them a choice: face the firing squad or walk through a black door in the amphitheater.

One day, the general’s aide came to him with a question: “Why hasn’t anyone ever chosen the black door?” The general answered, “Because they’re afraid of the unknown.”

Then, the aide asked what he really wanted to know: “General, what’s behind the black door?” With great sadness, the general answered, “The black door leads to their freedom.”

Now, it’s not just fear of the unknown that holds you back from walking through that door. It’s a natural wall of resistance to change that protects your survival mechanism. But, Quanta Change® actually gives you a way to get through that wall, by tapping into the brain’s natural recharging mechanism. It allows you to tell your brain that you want your survival mechanism to be based on your well-being, instead of the various negative things it picked up early in life. And, when you do, you start to feel better. The familiar struggles lessen in intensity, life gets easier, you start to be able to do things that you didn’t even feel capable of before.

And just as the prisoners could not even imagine the freedom that existed beyond the door, you can’t really imagine what true well-being is like until you experience it.

“Really?” some of you ask. “I haven’t experienced my true well-being yet? But I’ve done LOTS of work on myself!” I feel your frustration. Many of my clients have done decades of self work before they start Quanta Change, but I hear something very similar from all of them: “This is different. I feel different now. Things are actually easier.”

They say things like, “That resentment that has been around my whole life. . .it’s just GONE.  I can’t even feel it anymore.” Or a few months into the process, I’ll remind them of something they’d struggled with their whole lives, and they’ll say, “Oh, yeah, that. I had forgotten all about it!” Memory is stored by the intensity of feeling associated with it.  So, when you permanently unlearn a layer of Learned Distress, the memory of it literally disappears. Not only do you not feel bad at that level anymore, but you don’t even remember how it felt.

To go back to our firing squad story, I think what everyone has been doing is controlling the firing squad, or at least ignoring it. Quanta Change actually gives you a way to leave the firing squad behind, layer by layer, as Learned Distress is replaced gradually by your natural well-being. Curious about what your “firing squad” looks like? You can get a picture of it and what walking through your own black door might be like by taking the free Sensory Quotient® test.

Sara Avery is the Executive Director of Quanta Change, and she’s been guiding people through this process for the past 16 years. Click to get your free, personalized SQ report and to sign up for a free, 30-minute call with her to understand how your SQ generates the biggest challenge in your life.