You will never reach your goal

Have you ever almost reached your goal, only to have the rug pulled out from underneath your feet just when that goal was in sight?

Have you ever actually reached your goal, but before you can start to enjoy it you find something has happened to make you walk away from it?

Be honest here.  These are two very common problems faced by most people.  If this has never happened to you then all I can say is that you are very lucky and are in a very small minority.  And just because it has not happened yet, this doesn't mean it will never happen to you in the future!

As this is such a common problem I feel it is very important to address it again, even though I have referred to it in a number of different blog articles.  What can you do to stop this happening, or at least to minimize the chance of it happening?  The first step is to recognize the problem.  If you understand the causes you have a much better chance of moving in a different direction and stopping the "self sabotage" from happening in the first place.

There are three distinct reasons here, any one of which can result in the prize of your achievement being snatched away, and all of which can work together to make it virtually impossible for you to realize your dreams.  If you do not address them I would go as far as to say you will never achieve your goals.

The first I will call "Fear of Failure".  The second is "Fear of Success".  The third is "Incorrect Goal Identification".

Fear of Failure

Fear of Failure is very common.  I would go as far as to say virtually everyone suffers from Fear of Failure.

Recently I read a novel by Celeste Ng called "Little Fires Everywhere".  This is a well written novel with quite a complex plot line.  But to me the strongest element was the self-destructive instincts of a mother who was afraid her youngest daughter would not develop in the way she hoped.  You could almost say she loved her daughter too much, although I personally don't believe in the concept of "loving too much", but only of allowing that deep love to express itself in inappropriate and destructive ways.  Because she was so afraid that certain things would happen, the mother unintentionally caused those very things to happen.  If she had simply expressed her love for her youngest in the same way as she did for her other children, my reading of the novel is that her youngest daughter would have grown up as "completely normal" rather than the maladjusted child she became.

This is very typical of all of us.  We are afraid that we won't achieve what we want to achieve.  This causes us to focus on all the things that could go wrong rather than on all the things that we could do to ensure we are successful.  Often we get very close to success despite all that wrong focus.  But eventually the wrong focus comes home to roost.

We often see this in the way a lot of relationships go wrong.  One party fears the other might stop loving them and find someone else.  They have no logical reason for this fear, but gradually it grows and takes over their life.  Instead of being the beautiful positive thing it should be, the relationship becomes toxic.  The party who feels this way begins to read the wrong signs into everything.  If their other half smiles at someone they believe this means they are transferring their affections to that other person.  Every innocent action is given a completely different reason, building a picture of betrayal - a betrayal that simply doesn't exist, yet!  The more this goes on, the more toxic the relationship becomes.  The other party is almost forced into a position where they stop loving the other, or at least find that love considerably diluted.  They cannot understand what has happened, but simply know that the relationship is not working.  And so they start looking for a better relationship elsewhere - the very thing that the person responsible for this change feared would happen.

The same thing can, and often does, happen with other life goals, not simply relationships.

You want to become wealthier.  At first you are excited by this goal, imagining you now have all the things you could have if you WERE wealthier.  Having imagined having them, you then imagine them being taken away or never having managed to get them in the first place.  This makes you feel rotten.  But you now believe this is the most likely outcome.  You think of all the things that can go wrong and stop you achieving your wealth goal.  Your focus changes from what you can do to get wealthier, to what can stop you getting wealthier.  All the negatives seem to add up to something much more powerful than the positives.  Eventually, the Universe gets the message - you are focussed on not getting wealthy, so that is what it is going to ensure happens to you.

Be aware that this not only CAN happen, but very often does.  Defeat it by focussing again on the goal and the pleasure it will bring, and don't allow all those negative voices to take your power away from you.

Fear of Success

Fear of Success is really a kind of evolved Fear of Failure.  You recognize that when you achieve what you want to achieve you can easily lose it.  So you then focus on how that would make you feel.  Your impression is that if you achieve it and then lose it you will be a lot unhappier than if you never achieved it in the first place.  I think you can immediately see where this is leading.  The closer you get to success, the stronger you feel this worry about how achieving and then losing is worse than not achieving at all.  So your subconscious decides the best thing is to ensure you never achieve success in the first place.  Once your subconscious makes this decision you may as well give up trying.  You cannot defeat your subconscious - it is far more powerful than your conscious mind.

The answer, of course is to ensure you do not send this kind of message to your subconscious in the first place.

The reality is that we win and lose things all the time in the game of life.  Take pleasure from your wins, and don't focus on the losses.  Don't allow the very real fear that something in the future will change and take away what you have initially achieved, to stop you from achieving in the first place.

Incorrect Goal Identification

Again this is something I have covered many times in different blog articles.  But it is extremely important.  If you don't give a great deal of thought to the goals you are working towards I can almost guarantee they will be the wrong goals.  The desire for success comes from deep within.  As it rises to the surface it becomes modified.  And when it reaches your conscious mind it is usually something completely different from the original intended goal.  

When you then start going after what you think is your goal, your subconscious sees it is not the original goal.  So it doesn't try to help you achieve it.  Even worse, in many cases the modified goal will be counter-productive and will move you away from what the true goal should have been.  If so, not only will your subconscious not help you achieve it, but it will actively work to stop you achieving it.  In the unlikely event that you achieve the goal, you will never be really happy with it, as it is not the goal you really wanted to achieve even though you never knew this.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to dive deep within yourself and find out what that original true goal is.  You do this by noting down what you think are your goals and then sit still and meditate on it.  As you do so you will be going deep within yourself where you are more likely to find the true goal itself.  When you come out of that meditation, note down your feelings and thoughts arising from the meditation.  You will probably need to do this many times before you truly identify your real goals, but every hour you spend doing this is an hour very well spent.  Identify your true goals and you will be setting yourself up for really achieving them.

Abracadabra

When you were a small child you probably read stories, or had them read to you, in which a magician used magic words to perform powerful acts of magic.  Perhaps the word "Abracadabra".  Or "Open Sesame" (as in the story of Ali Baba).

The word "Abracadabra" is particularly interesting.  There are a number of conflicting stories about its origin, but one version says it comes from the Aramaic phrase avra kehdabra, which means “I will create as I speak”.  In other words, this "magic" word itself refers to the magical, creative power of words.

The Christian Bible also refers to the power of words.  Right at the start of the Gospel of John we have the phrase "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  It goes on to say that everything that was created was created by the Word.

I began this article by talking about fairy tales.  Most adults don't believe in fairy tales.  In fact they may even refer to anything that they believe to be untrue as a "fairy tale".

Well, I DO believe in fairy tales!  Not literally, of course, but as ways to pass on inner truths.

The power of the word is such an inner truth.  Words create.  Use the right words in the right way and you can create opportunities.  You can create situations that will turn your dreams into reality.  Use words in the wrong way and they can destroy opportunities.  They can create situations that will turn your nightmares into reality.  Words are very powerful.  Far more powerful than you probably ever realized.

Very recently I wrote a blog about the ways most people "self-sabotage" themselves.  They say something like "I am no good at ...." and this creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.  This is the power of words used wrongly.  This is also true about the way people use words to hurt or help others, usually unintentionally.  I hope you are not one of the very many parents in the world who have said to one of their children something like "you will never amount to anything!".  This is so destructive!  This is like a wizard saying a magic spell that will cause harm to another.  It is just as powerful as such a magic spell in one of the fairy tales you read as a child.

Equally, saying to someone "you are so beautiful!", not as a pickup line but because you recognize the beauty within them, is like a magic spell turning an ugly frog into a handsome prince.  Not as quickly as happened in Grimm's tale of the Frog Prince, but just as surely anyway.

With the power of your words you can choose to create love, beauty, harmony and success all around you.  Or you can choose to create discord, ugliness and failure.  Which would you prefer to surround you?  It is entirely your choice - you can use the magic spell (i.e. the right words spoken at the right time) to create whichever you prefer.  I hope like me you will choose the former, not the latter.

Self Sabotage

"I am no good at ..."  Fill in the blanks - perhaps with "remembering people's names", "public speaking", "negotiating" ... anything at all, really.

Now, is this something you have ever said?  Perhaps out loud to others in an attempt to excuse yourself.  You don't want them to feel bad, so you say "I am no good at remembering".  So it is not that they are "unmemorable" but it is entirely your fault.  You say "I am hopeless at directions".  So it is not that they are no good at giving you directions, but just that you are really bad at following directions.

If you have never said anything like this I would suggest you are very much in the minority.

Perhaps, though, you have never said something like this out loud - but have said it quietly to yourself.  Not to spare someone else's feelings but because you feel guilty in some way and want to excuse yourself.

Whether you have said something like this out loud or simply expressed it internally, what you have done is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you say "I am no good at maths", then you will be more likely to fail at maths.  Perhaps you weren't particularly good at maths, but by saying "I am no good at maths" you are guaranteeing you will become even worse.  Every time you say this, or even think it, you will worsen your ability at maths.

If you say "I am hopeless at relationships", you will find relationships don't work for you.  You are destroying existing and future relationships simply by saying this!

If you say "I cannot dance - I have two left feet!", you will find no matter how hard you try to dance, it simply doesn't seem to work for you.  Perhaps you wanted to learn to dance properly because your partner enjoys dancing and you want to share in that experience.  But by saying this you are making it far less likely you will be able to share that hobby properly.

Now that you are aware of this problem, try to identify when it occurs.  Keep alert and I suspect you will be very surprised.  Unfortunately most people do this not just once or twice a month, not just once or twice a week, and probably not just once or twice a day!  They do it many times a day!  No wonder they find they are not able to achieve some of the things they would really love to achieve - they have a voice inside that tells them they are no good at .... (and the voice simply fills in the gap with virtually everything they want to achieve).

So stop sabotaging yourself!  Promise yourself right now that never again will you create a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure!  When you hear that negative inner voice starting to say "I am no good at ..." counter it with "I am really good at ...".  It won't necessarily turn you into a world expert but at least it will begin to counter the self-sabotage you have probably been conducting for most of your life!

Saboteur

Have you ever wondered why it is that just as you are about to achieve success someone grabs the prize before you?  A little like the final stage of a race, where you are ahead of the field and then someone (who has perhaps been pacing better) comes out of nowhere and runs past you in the last few seconds.

Or sometimes do you find someone seems to work against you just after you have reached your goal and achieved success?  Completely destroying that success?  An unknown someone.  Invisible.

Does everyone seem to conspire against you, stopping you getting what you really want out of life?

These are very common problems, and probably most of us face them from time to time, if not all the time.  So perhaps we should try to find out who is working against us and why.

Well I think I can answer that question for you right now, even though I know very little about you, your circumstances, and what you are trying to achieve.  The person working against you is YOU!  Not any of your friends or enemies.  Just YOU.

Even when it seems to be clear who has done this, when you can see the person grabbing the prize before you, the culprit is STILL you, and only you.

How can that be, and why?

In the case of someone snatching the prize before you there are probably two factors involved here, both controlled by you.

Firstly, to use a horse racing analogy, you are pulling on the reins to slow the horse down just as the winning post comes in sight and the first prize appears to be within your grasp.  You hesitate.  And he who hesitates is lost.  For some people this is pretty obvious when they stop and think what has happened.  They don't mean to give up right at the last moment, but that is exactly what they do.  Others, perhaps you included, will object and will deny outright that they are slowing down just as it seems they are going to win.  But I can almost guarantee that is what is happening!

Secondly, in most cases you are mistaken in believing there is only one prize, or only a few prizes.  You may think that is the case, but it probably isn't.  Yes, if your goal was to become the president of the United States and someone trumped you to the post (sorry about my sense of humour!), there was only one prize there and you missed it.  But in all likelihood you had the wrong goal.  Maybe the goal should have been to become the president of the United States at some point in your life, in which case the prize has not been snatched away from you unless you are going to die before the next election!  More likely the goal should actually have been something very different anyway, as most of us misinterpret our inner desires, cloaking them in something that is vaguely related but not our true goal - and if we could truly see our real goal we would realize there are no limits there and that it doesn't matter if someone "snatches" the prize ahead of us, as there are many identical prizes.

In the case of the invisible saboteur, if you think really carefully you will realize that saboteur is you.  But why?  Why do you slow down right at the end of the race?  Why do you give up when someone else gains a prize but there are prizes on offer for everyone?  Why, when you finally achieve whatever it was you wanted to achieve, do you sabotage your own success, giving away the prize you worked so hard to achieve?  Why are you a self-saboteur?

There are a number of reasons for this, some of which simply need a change of state.  A change from a permanent negative attitude to a positive one.  Recognition that the world is your oyster and that the only limitations to achieving what you want to achieve are set by you.

But perhaps the biggest reason is that the "inner you" doesn't want change.  And if you are successful that will mean a big change.  Too big for comfort.  So the "inner you" pulls you back into your comfort zone.  Why?  Well it is a basic biological survival instinct.  You are alive, so what you have been doing up to now has ensured your survival.  But if you change things, then you are moving into the unknown, and your inner being believes there is a risk that you are moving into a danger zone.  Evolutionary pressure very naturally tries to steer you away from that danger zone.  Either by making you slow down and perhaps even stop before you reach it, or by making you return to "safety" when you get there.

Just recognizing this may be enough to stop this saboteur (you) in his or her tracks.  But if not, then at least you now understand the source of the problem and can enlist some external help (perhaps from a lifestyle coach) to re-train you so you don't keep missing or even throwing away the success you deserve!

Self Sabotage

Do you have a goal you want to reach and it always seems just out of your reach?  Or perhaps, even worse, even as you reach the goal you find yourself slipping back.  It was right there in your grasp and then it was gone again.  Or you achieve a goal, are happy that you have got there, but then you find the whole world is conspiring against you to take it away again.

For the big goals in your life maybe this doesn't apply.  They are so big you are nowhere near them yet, so they are not "just out of reach" and you don't find you have achieved them and then they are taken away again.  But you will probably agree this does happen to you with at least some of your smaller goals.  Perhaps those goals you need to reach in order to get closer to your big goals.

So who is that goalkeeper who is so efficient at keeping your ball from passing between the goal posts?  Whoever it is, they must be really good at goal-keeping, as you never seem to score!

If only you could make that goalkeeper switch sides just as you are approaching the goal, how easy it would be.  You would achieve exactly what you want to achieve!

Let me reveal exactly who that goalkeeper is.  It is you!  Yes, that is right!  You are the one who is making it impossible for you to score your own goals.  And I agree that goalkeeper is good.  Really good!  As for switching sides?  Well, now you know you are the one standing in the way and stopping you getting to the goal it should be easier for you to reverse this.  You don't need to make the goalkeeper change sides, just recognize he or she has mistakenly been playing on the wrong side all this time.

Enough of the sports imagery though.  Let's have a closer look at what is happening and what you can do about it.

You are guilty of self sabotage.  This is not another metaphor I have made up, but a recognized psychological issue.  We all do it.

Some of us do it in very noticeable ways.

If, for example, you are trying to get healthier and lose weight you may find you are also a "comfort eater".  You have a bad day at work, so the moment you get home you attack a big bowl of ice cream.  You feel a bit depressed (perhaps even depressed about the fact that you are not losing enough weight) and so you reach for the biscuit tin to give yourself some comfort.

Or you are trying to reach a goal of cutting your credit card debt, perhaps even losing that debt completely.  You have the right plans in place and know you can get there.  Then you suddenly find you have gone on a shopping spree, which has dug a deep hole in your debt reduction strategy.  It is almost as if a different person came along, grabbed your credit card, and put you right back to the beginning again.

I have known sales people, good sales people, who have gone along to one of their most important, big sales ever and have completely screwed up the sale.  Not because they were nervous.  Not because they didn't know how to swing the sale.  But because they found themselves saying things that they knew would mean their prospective client would not buy.  Why did they do this?  Not because they no longer believed in what they were selling.  Not because they thought it was wrong for the person in front of them.  They still believed passionately in the product or service they were selling, and they knew it was right for that person.  They seemed just deliberately to sabotage their own sale.  Why?

I have known business owners who, just as their business was really growing and starting to give them the return they had always dreamed of, started taking actions that any good business consultant could have told them would destroy the progress they had made in the business.  They didn't do this because they hadn't taken the right advice from a business guru.  They did it even though if they had stopped and thought carefully about what they were doing, they would have known it was a disastrous strategy.  So why did they do it?

The answer in all these cases is self sabotage.

Your own self sabotage may not be as obvious as these examples, but I can almost guarantee somewhere along the line you are guilty of committing self sabotage.  And that may be the very reason you have not yet reached your desired goal.

It may be as simple as knowing the right way forward but allowing yourself to go in a different direction.  If you are reading this blog it is very likely you understand very well the concepts of positive and negative thinking.  You know if you focus on the negatives you will never get there, yet still those negative thoughts keep coming into your mind and you don't seem able to stop them.

Why we self sabotage is a deep and complex subject.  I could write a whole book about it, and I guess there are a number already written.  But there are just a few reasons behind most examples of sabotage.

Perhaps one of the commonest reasons is that although you think you want to achieve the goal, deep inside you are afraid of getting there.  You may be afraid of changes it will inevitably trigger in your lifestyle.  Maybe you have got into a comfortable rut and subconsciously you want to hang onto that comfort even though you know it is a rut and you cannot afford to stay there.  You may recognize that once you reach your goal many of your "friends" will be jealous and will no longer want to be your friends.  Notice, though, I put "friends" in quotation marks.  The reality is that your true friends will be happy for you if you do achieve what you want to achieve.  Those who are jealous were never really your friends in the first place and you are better off without them!

Another very common reason is that you have some doubts, which may be genuine concerns, and then you surpress those doubts.  But you have not rid yourself of the doubts, just repressed them.  They are still there, and they are now making you sabotage your efforts to reach your goal.  Instead of repressing them, you need to recognize and address them.

Linked to this is what I, and many other coaches, refer to as "blocks".  Often these arose many years ago, perhaps in your early childhood.  They are usually irrational, but that doesn't stop them making you sabotage your progress towards your goals.  The key to dealing with blocks is to recognize they are there, to identify them.  Sit quietly, focussed on your goal, and allow repressed doubts and objections to arise.  This might not happen immediately.  It might not even happen the first few times you meditate in this way.  But keep trying and you should find they do eventually arise.  Even better, let one of the many good coaches who specialize in "blocks" guide you through the process.

There are many reasons for self sabotage, and there are many ways to counter it.  But the very first step is to recognize that, just like everyone else, you are guilty of sabotaging your own progress from time to time.  Once you recognize this you can work on unearthing the reasons and then finding out how to remove them.