NLP and Self-sabotage

Why do many people sabotage themselves when they approach the peak of something they’ve been improving, developing, building for a while? How can NLP help stop this self-sabotage and shift us to a higher ground? 

Start something new

I described one answer in this article. Here I’ll describe another answer.  And I’ll describe it on an example from health to which hopefully everyone who looks after their health will easily relate.  Let’s assume that you decided to get slimmer.  You started eating correctly, exercising, sleeping enough, and marking your accomplishments in a calendar. Visually marking your progress would motivate and give you a way to measure progress.  Perhaps you made a tick for each thing per day. You went well for a few days, and even started liking all the uninterrupted ticks in the calendar. And you started to notice the effects of the progress. So you went ticking successfully for a few more days…. which became weeks… And you started feeling a surge of energy, lighter on the feet, smaller in the body, slimmer in the mirror….

…and then came a point when you thought ‘I’ve been doing way too well, so I can afford a treat. You stopped the climb, and perhaps slipped into some of the old things that you did before you started getting slimmer.

Why the new feels strange

And this is where we’re getting to the answer.  The feeling of doing way too well for ourselves takes us out of the comfort zone. And that is never comfortable for us human beings.  So reverting to the old ways touches base with the comfort zone.  The familiar is comfortable. Outside the comfort zone we doubt: ‘this can’t be true, I can’t be doing this well’, and we don’t recognise ourselves… ‘Who am I (becoming)?’ we may ask, because we feel that this is not us!

Make the new the norm

The NLP way to shift us to a higher ground is to make the state of doing way too well the norm. To make it the norm is to practise it until it becomes the norm. Practising = pretending that the state of doing way too well is the norm. Once we’ve accepted to pretend that this state is the norm, we’ll feel more comfortably in doing “too well”. Hence we will easily sustain it for longer.  After even a few days the feeling that we’re doing way too well will fade, because we’ve been practising perceiving it as the norm.

Of course, we should treat ourselves, but perhaps differently or more healthily than we did in the old ways. And immediately after the treating we should go back to pretending that what was doing way too well days ago is now the norm.  A week will pass and the ticks in the calendar will accumulate. You’ll like the ticks, yourself for winning over yourself, and your surge of energy even more. So you will manage another few days …. which will pass into weeks…. And after a month you’ll be well set on the new plain. Some say that it takes 28 days to build a habit…

…and keep the new norm

After 2 more months, if you persist, the ‘new’ plain will become the norm and your body will even ask for this norm.  Your old ways of “treating” yourself will become uncomfortable and foreign to you and that will be a reliable test that your ‘new’ norm is now firmly in place.  The rewards will be immense, whether they be in slimming or whatever else in any aspect of life.

So you see that NLP is very useful for dealing with self-sabotage

If you’ve been a victim of self-sabotage and really want to shift yourself to a higher ground but need (NLP) help, let’s talk.