This is the biggest challenge for everyone? It's easy to say you want something really badly, but much easier to self sabotage when you can't see it coming quick enough. Self sabotage also happens when you start making progress towards a goal and see small results. The main reason for self sabotage is that the goal is often something that is unknown and therefore has the potential to let you down. Weight loss is a perfect example of this. Let's say you decide to go on a diet to lose 10 kilos. You feel really motivated. You start exercising and eating really healthy foods. Then you look in the mirror and see you're starting to look good. The subconscious mind then sets into protection mode questioning what this means. What if you lose the weight but can't keep it off? How hard is it going to be to lose the weight - how much more exercise do you have to do to get there? Why should you have to go through so much pain to achieve this - is it really worth it?
Normally, people give in to this line of questioning and end up going back to bad habits. The way to avoid this is to be very clear about your goals and then focus on your plan. Then tell yourself that you're enjoying your plan and FORGET the outcome. Let's go with the weight loss analogy again. So you decide to lose 10 kilos by sticking to a balanced diet and starting to walk 10 minutes a day and build it up (as noted in the Refresh Your Life program). You get up one day and people at work start commenting on how great you look. You start to think "hey I can relax a little now". So you go to morning tea and look at all the chocolate cake. Normally you'd think, "I look good, I can afford to eat the cake". But this time say to yourself "I've got a great plan which I'm enjoying. It's not about weight loss, it's about sticking to my plan". Then you'll stop thinking about the DIET and start thinking about living a new healthy life - sticking to your new plan
