How many times have you set a goal without success?
You join the gym, but it gets too late, or the alarm didn’t go off in the morning. You start a diet, but constantly break it, telling yourself you’ll start fresh next week. You enroll in an English course, but traffic is heavy, or you only attend one class per week.
If you could tally up the times you’ve abandoned and “failed” to achieve your goals, you’d probably realize that most of the time, you didn’t succeed because of something you did or didn’t do—simply put, you sabotaged yourself.
Self-sabotage! The first time I heard this word, it was challenging to understand because I questioned how it was possible for oneself to create obstacles to achieving what one desires. Indeed, studying Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), I learned that “the brain always seeks to agree with you and make your life easy.” Therefore, the quality of your results depends on the quality of internal communication you have with yourself. If you tell your brain that you will fail in that important presentation, that you are not good enough to succeed, your brain will execute the order and prove you right.
As Napoleon Hill mentions in his book, “Think and Grow Rich”: “There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.”
What thoughts are you training your mind with? Are they thoughts of success or limitations? The brain doesn’t distinguish whether something is positive or negative; it always seeks to agree with you and make your life easy.
Explore how to turn your brain into your best ally.