So you want to Run a Marathon? Or Earn 6 Figures this year? Or Find the Love of Your Life? Each of these is a great goal. If it’s right for you. Why is it we feel like we want these things – we can even set these goals, but so many of us can’t follow through to completion? Sometimes we can’t even start. Even though we really, really want to? In a nutshell, it’s called Self Sabotage.
So many of my clients, and people I know, get waylaid by Self-Sabotaging behaviors. It has happened to me, stopped me dead in my tracks, and made me feel like a failure. If you’ve never heard the term, “Self-Sabotage” means that you were heading toward a goal – one that you thought you really wanted – and you yourself unconsciously did or created something that got in the way of attaining your own goal. We are often unaware of our own self-sabotage, until it happens over and over. As a Life Coach, it’s my job to help you avert Self-Sabotage before it gets the best of you. And then to help you clear the roots of Self-Sabotage all together, so that you can go on to Express the Greatest Version of Yourself.
One of the many triggers that cause some of us to thwart our own desires, is setting the goal too high – before we’re ready. For example, if you’re currently earning $50k per year, and you want to increase that to $500k this year, as your Coach I will tell you it’s possible, but not likely to happen. Because YOU don’t really believe you can do that – increase your income tenfold in one year. OR you have sub-conscious messages and beliefs running (in the form of voices in your head), like a song on “repeat.” These voices are both silent and LOUD, whispering at you, and SHOUTING at you. They say many things, but the main goal of the voices is TO KEEP YOU SAFE. Safe from what? Safe from looking bad, or looking good, or making too much money, or alienating yourself, or standing out in a crowd, or achieving more than your parents achieved (even if they told you that’s what they wanted!). Using the 50k to 500k example, these voices might say things like “Are you crazy? you can’t do that!” “Your friends will hate you if you earn that much money.” “Your friends will only like you for your money if you make that much – they’ll expect things from you.” “It will be really hard to manage that much money.” “The IRS will take most of it.” “Do you know how HARD you’ll have to work to make that much?” And on and on. We can’t just tell the voices to shut up – it doesn’t work. We need to understand them, and tame them. We’ll keep the 500k as an Ultimate Goal, while making incremental increases, like 50k to 100k, then 200k, then 500k. Then we’ll make friends with the voices in our head, listen to them, honor them. And we’ll invite them to be on our team. In this holistic way, we have a much better chance of attaining our goals, and manifesting our dreams.
Let’s look at the marathon goal. Even though I’m not a Sports Coach, I can help you more easily achieve your physical goals (along with a Trainer or Running Coach). The increments look like this: From Couch Potato to walking 30 minutes a day, to running a mile, to running a 10K, to training for a half-marathon, to training for a marathon, to running a marathon. And if you think you can stop after one, you’re fooling yourself. The voices might sound like this “Are you kidding? You can’t do that!” or “Do you know how HARD it is to train and run a marathon?” “Do you know how much TIME it takes?” “Do you really want to be like THOSE people?” “What will your friends think?” “If you get strong and healthy and fit, your whole LIFE is going to change.” The voices have the same goal – keeping you SAFE. When you feel like “No, I don’t want to run this week,” or “I don’t want to increase my miles,” it means the voices are taking over, running the show. I can help you fire your internal booster rockets, and rally the voices back on the team.
As for Finding the love of your life, the increments would look like this: Review your relationship patterns. Identify the characteristics of your ideal partner. Learn to love yourself. Ask yourself if you embody the person who would attract that ideal mate. Learn to love yourself. Learn to be happy without a mate. Learn to love yourself. Learn to BE now the person you hope to be when you attract your perfect mate. The voices in your head might say “Are you kidding? You can’t attract that person!” or “What would your friends think?”or “All the good ones are taken,” or “You’re not good enough/pretty enough/smart enough,” r “Remember how the last relationship turned out? You don’t’ want that again!”
If you’re working with a Coach, or considering it, ask about incremental goals. And ask what tools the Coach has for taking care of the Voices in Your Head. Affirmations rarely work, because we can’t stick with them long enough (saying them to ourself in a mirror, 100 times a day for 30 days), and because they feel like a lie to our mind (“I am a glorious Being, capable of attracting my ideal mate, easily and swiftly”). The most powerful and effective and gentle tool for clearing limiting beliefs and negative thought patterns, is EFT Tapping. I use it with all my clients – on all sorts of limiting beliefs, emotions and issues – and they experience a wide array of wonderful benefits. If you’ve never experienced Tapping, check it out here. Feel free to email me if you have any questions. Here’s to your Best Life!
