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inner saboteur

Broken New Year Resolutions

Every year we have good intentions; set ourselves New Year resolutions, whether it is to lose weight, get fit or get a new job.  Strangely, something often stops us, something inside us says, ‘it’s a bit cold to go for a run today’ or ‘I don’t like to waste good food’, or ‘there’s a recession on, there won’t be any jobs going’.

So what is it in us that finds these good reasons not to do the things that would be so good for us? Let’s call it, our ‘inner saboteur’, that little voice in our head that persuades us to sabotage all our best efforts.

We all have an ‘inner saboteur’ that can disrupt our plans to be happy and successful, if we don’t learn to recognise and control the thought and behaviour patterns it brings about in us.  It uses our fears of taking responsibility and causes us to avoid change.

When our ‘saboteur’ has got the better of us, we can be so afraid of change that we became ‘stuck in a rut’, it does not have to be this way.

Here are some steps I use in life coaching to help people get their control back:

–        Firstly, we need to recognise when it is our ‘inner saboteur’ speaking or acting and separate this from what we really believe, want and know to be true.

–        Then, forgive ourselves for all the times we have let that saboteur take control; there is no use beating ourselves up for it, just forgive and clear the way to move forward.

–        Next, identify the changes we need to make to get what we really want and to be who we really want to be and welcome those changes into our lives.

–        Trust our ‘gut instinct’; follow our intuition; practise hearing what it is telling us and responding to it by taking action.

–        Overcome the saboteur’s power, by taking small steps, small acts of courage, making small decisions, taking small choices to help us to regain control.

Once we have control over our lives and our future and are responding in a positive way to opportunities, we can move forward to achieve happiness and success, in whatever ways are appropriate for us.

I recommend a wonderful book called Sacred Contracts by Caroline Myss that is really helpful in learning to work with our inner saboteur.