Deep problem

[Freelancer]

This is something I only recently realized in that its very hidden and below the surface. Now this is hard to explain because it has to do with my own beliefs about my capacities in real life but I'll do my best. Hopefully this forum can provide me with some tips to guide me in the right direction.

Lately I've been busy self sabotaging myself in the following matter;
Every time I find something that can propell myself forward I put myself in a state of action and start moving in that direction but after approximately a week I find myself unable to continue.

A good example is simpleology 101, this is a course excersize online that increases your personal effectivity through a daily excersize that takes like 15 minutes. So I got all excited, read up on it. Got my parents to do the same (I can get others to move lol) and started. After 10 days I stopped doing it, I just forget it literally. Now at the time this had me really puzzled, you might think well just start again but somehow I couldn't get myself to do this. You know the thought patterns of coming up with excuses, I can't start because xxxx etc. thats what happened at that point. I did not have this problem AT ALL during the first 10 days.

This particular pattern repeated itself in several other instances as well. Certain activities that have a clear advantage for me and that I'm motivated to do go great for the first week or so and after that BOOM all motivation/drive/etc. gone. I've been able to partially overcome this pattern through leverage by putting a penalty on not doing it but after the 30 day challenge is over I fall back in my old pattern of finding excuses.

This really had me puzzled for a while, in fact I usually go through two 'states' in one I'm highly recourcefull and full energy and the other I am constantly second guessing myself, finding excuses and messing around. Now the first state is something I've been slowly cultivating but the second one keeps popping up. After a while I realized that it has a certain correlation between the first problem I described earlier (ie. losing motivation after a week or so) and my states. Every time my 'state' changes (globally so to speak) I 'lose' all my old awesome patterns of behavior.

So I started looking within myself to figure out why the hell I am dropping down all the time. I'm fairly sure that this is caused because I developed the following belief:
I have to do everything by myself/figure out by myself.

I'm sure you can understand what a incredible limiting belief this is and how its holding me back. You see what happens when I lose the 'state' is that I get the idea or feeling that somebody else placed me in that situation or provided me with the strenght to do this. Simpleology for instance at one point I started thinking how great it would be to create something similar, than I realized it was already done and I was using it and than I lost all motivation to do it because somebody else is helping me. Now to me this all sounds very logical haha but I'm sure to most people it sounds rather strange. When this happens it feels like a pillar of my reality gets destroyed and I tumble down for a few days before finding myself back and going back in the groove. Hence the states that go up and down...

In my teenager years (20 years old now) I was bullied for a long time and I always felt very strongly that 'if only they left me alone Id be fine' somehow I generalized this to the rest of my life and stopped accepting help. During this time I was very inside my head, I created a prison or savety fault inside my mind. When I'd get bullied or in a tough spot I'd retreat into that savety fault where nothing could emotionally hurt me. Now the problem was that this savety fault was overflowing at some point. I won't go into what then happened but the bullying stopped (don't worry didn't kill anyone ).

This experience has left me stronger in many ways but it also installed that limiting belief into me. This limiting belief is at this point very deeply rooted into my mind. So my question to anybody who got this far is:
How can I change this limiting belief into a empowering belief effectively?

Thank you very much for reading this little sneak peak into my mind. Hopefully you can help me out, this idea of being unworthy of help/to good for help (don't know which one it is yet) is really holding me back.

[Max Power]

I consider that you are suffering from a fear of success (I started a thread about it in this topic) failure or average performance is a great comfort zone and very acceptable, it's everywhere you look, we are surrounded by it.

Also you're probably compounding it with denial, denial that you are this very awesome creating machine capable of achieving anything you require and as you can see when you get started, things start happening, the wheels start turning.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which way you want to play it, all the answers lie within, just stop accepting fear as something that even exists inside your world and take no prisoners, get busy and follow it all the way through, when it gets tough (as you've planned it to be for challenge purposes) just restart you claim to success.

Don't think you can, know you can, there is a difference and it's that simple.

[Freelancer]

Originally Posted by Max Power

I consider that you are suffering from a fear of success (I started a thread about it in this topic) failure or average performance is a great comfort zone and very acceptable, it's everywhere you look, we are surrounded by it.

Also you're probably compounding it with denial, denial that you are this very awesome creating machine capable of achieving anything you require and as you can see when you get started, things start happening, the wheels start turning.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on which way you want to play it, all the answers lie within, just stop accepting fear as something that even exists inside your world and take no prisoners, get busy and follow it all the way through, when it gets tough (as you've planned it to be for challenge purposes) just restart you claim to success.

Don't think you can, know you can, there is a difference and it's that simple.

I'm not sure if the problem is a fear of success, its possible I must admit that. Can you point me towards that thread of yours?

I'm committed to achieve success (for me success=personal growth) and I've changed many things in my life. I might have given the impression that I can't get solid habits to stick around even though this isn't the case. I've already achieved many things but there's still some sort of barrier to push through, I know I'm capable of doing that I just need to figure out a way how to do it...

[Max Power]

Originally Posted by Freelancer

I'm not sure if the problem is a fear of success, its possible I must admit that. Can you point me towards that thread of yours?

I'm committed to achieve success (for me success=personal growth) and I've changed many things in my life. I might have given the impression that I can't get solid habits to stick around even though this isn't the case. I've already achieved many things but there's still some sort of barrier to push through, I know I'm capable of doing that I just need to figure out a way how to do it...

Somehow you're avoiding the real problem, it's like you know what it is, but you dancing around it, it's like in all your post(s) you've left something out, something you aren't sharing perhaps, as well as asking for advice, which is always encouraged here, write out questions and see if you can tap into the missing piece, ask yourself what is missing, what is wrong, it may take a little while it may be quickly, but the answer is there.

Write out the problem and ask for the answer (this works I've tried it) then walk away and let it go, the answer will come. See the post about Fear of Success in this topic.

[Shamou]

Congratulation Freelancer... you fit right in with 97% of the population...

How many people start out on a diet and quit...??? How many people start going to the gym or doing exercises and quit...??? How many people start on any good and self-improving habits and quit...??? I am very conservative when I say 97%... it is probably even higher than that... so, buddy, you are not alone... So, don't deprecate yourself because you follow what is almost normal and natural behavior...

Now, what could be done to improve your "stick-to-it-ness..."

First would be to never start a new program on the spur of the moment while only driven by the enthusiastic feeling that "this is going to change your life for the better..." Everything has a price... and sometimes the price is not worth the effort...

Second, if you make a public commitment... that is, announce to the entire world what it is that you are starting up... chances are that you will stick t it...

Third... don't be in too much of a hurry to attain perfection... it took me years... j/k

.

[Freelancer]

Originally Posted by Shamou

Congratulation Freelancer... you fit right in with 97% of the population...

How many people start out on a diet and quit...??? How many people start going to the gym or doing exercises and quit...??? How many people start on any good and self-improving habits and quit...??? I am very conservative when I say 97%... it is probably even higher than that... so, buddy, you are not alone... So, don't deprecate yourself because you follow what is almost normal and natural behavior...

Now, what could be done to improve your "stick-to-it-ness..."

First would be to never start a new program on the spur of the moment while only driven by the enthusiastic feeling that "this is going to change your life for the better..." Everything has a price... and sometimes the price is not worth the effort...

Second, if you make a public commitment... that is, announce to the entire world what it is that you are starting up... chances are that you will stick t it...

Third... don't be in too much of a hurry to attain perfection... it took me years... j/k

.

Yeah well spur of the moment thing, true in a way. I get the sense I'm throwing mud against the wall to see what sticks.

Your right though, public commitment combined with public humiliation should do the trick. Just started a new challenge (lol keep throwing the mud ) no pc during the day which I've been putting of for like a week now. Getting my whole family in on this.

If they catch me, I pay 5 bucks and the challenge gets reset. Whey good times, best thing is I'm pulling this judgement over myself. Damn I'm gonna get intrusions into my room now ah well. I'll get over it.

[Megan]

All my best efforts to turn myself into a machine have failed also.

I'm left thinking that my Soul is better than my conscious mind at deciding what's best for me.

[ultimate]

i have done similar things too

[Max Power]

Originally Posted by Megan

All my best efforts to turn myself into a machine have failed also.

I'm left thinking that my Soul is better than my conscious mind at deciding what's best for me.

Don't try to seperate yourself, that's denial. Align yourself more with you true creative power (consciousness) and manifest whatever you deisre to know truly thyself.

Remember you are not a physical being trying to get more stuff into your life to make your physical being happy, you are a spiritual being manifesting stuff to know what you truly are. The physical manifestations show you what you are not and in that way you know yourself truly.

Max

[jwz]

I also have this spur of the moment thing where I believe that I can accomplish anything.
Quit smoking. Budgetting. This, that.

A day or two later, it passes.

What do you do in these situations?

I know that I CAN accomplish these things if I could make myself mainain a certain degree of 'drive' throughout a longer period of time.

But how....

[John Hill]

The only way you can change any ingrained belief is by changing your subconscious mind. Your subconscious convictions regulate what does and what does not come into your life.

John

Attracting People.com

[kaushal1]

Just start believing in urself. If u r not able to particular routine which u consider is good for u then start searching the reason for it. Collect the reasons and start
making the efforts for removing hurdles in Ur desired routine. First live for urself
and also start loving urself.

[Ilya]

Hi, Freelancer.

I've been in the same situation as you and many-many others. There were different things that helped me in this situation. But there were key beliefs that really pushed me through.

I'd say, what you are going through when starting new activity and then dropping is a widely spread phenomenon.

I don't know how it is called properly, but it is based on the way how we estimate the efforts needed to reach a goal. Shamou's note on diets reminded me about it. So I'll use diets as an example.

It's Monday morning and we start a new diet and the exercise regimen. We are determined and vigorous. Everything is fine. The next morning we jump on a scale and lo and behold! We've lost some weight! We are happy and stick to it. The next day we've lost some more weight!

But something else is already happening at the back of our mind.
We think - right, I want to lose 30 pounds. Today, I've lost a pound. So 30 divided by 1 means that in 30 days I will reach my goal! Yahoo! Let's do it.

At the very same moment something else is happening well outside our attention, or consciousness. We do not know about it, but it is destined to make our projections fail in a most spectacular fashion.

Our body, having detected the drop in the calorie intake and the increase of strain kicks in the compensation mechanisms. I'm not going into details here,
the guys in Health&Fitness forum will do it better. The key idea is that our organism always tries to stay in balance. And if something shifts this balance, the organism invariably answers with counteraction.

In a few days the progress rapidly slows down. Something that was easy, suddenly becomes hard. And it really does. It is not an illusion, it is not the willpower that's failing. It just became harder to achieve the goal. Suddenly, we are looking not at a month, but at a year of effort needed to achieve the goal. The motivation drops and we come to a crossroad.

There are two ways out of this crossroad. First is to give up and go back to whatever we were doing before the diet. We gain back the lost weight, and return to the starting point.

The other way is to continue our efforts. But not in a simple "toughen it out" way. No. If we go harder at this point, the counteraction will also increase.
Instead, we have to figure out what counteraction we are getting exactly, and how to work around it. In case of the diets and fitness all plateau-breaking techniques come to help.

And if we do that, and succeed, then something amazing happens. Our performance rapidly increases. It may even surpass the linear projections we were making. It can go into exponential growth. We may end up two month later, not having lost 30 pounds, but instead having reduced body fat percentage and having put muscle on. And this way we would reach the new stable state that is more fit then we could ever hope for. And the body will consider this new state its default and protect it from changing. Which will require us to repeat all the process if we want to develop further.

I've used the example of weight loss, but, in fact this scenario is one of the most fundamental things in human life. It applies to learning, social life, business, development of the people and countries. You see it everywhere you go.

It was a real breakthrough for me when I've learned about it. The plateau will come with certainty. It won't be the end of the day, but the beginning of the real thing, Just knowing it was the real eye opener.

Suddenly I was in control. Is wasn't about bad me, It was about diagnosing the problem and finding the solution. This is something I'm good at. This was about being smart and not working hard at all. Suddenly there was a round-abouts, instead of dead-ends.

I've acknowledged that some tasks are hard. Most of the tasks are harder then we think they are in the beginning. But they are easier then we think about them in the middle.

I hope that will help you, Freelancer, and everybody else, to make some more sense out of this world.

[VacMan]

I think this is a very common issue, and I agree with Shamou that it's probably experienced by over 97% of the population.

One thing that I've noticed is:

If I'm extremely/overly excited about something and it's almost all consuming and energizing. I'll get really wrapped up in it, and it will just dominate my life, like almost take it over.

The only thing I can equate this feeling to is like a really big sugar buzz or caffeine high. The problem with this is that it almost always creates a big crash for me, and I end up de-motivated or deciding to stop.

The activities I found I've actually stuck with are those that do not feel like a sugar high. They feel more like "Slow digesting carbs"

These "slow digesting" feelings are less accompanied by feelings of extreme excitement and all encompassing thoughts, but they have more of a feeling of deep knowing and determination. This feeling causes me to make a life change, and the actions I need to do in order to accomplish my goal become part of my life, and not just on my daily chore list.

It's hard to describe, but in order to really stick with something it really needs to resonate with me on a deeper, and real level, one that I know will become part of my life.

That being said, I still get excitement out of these types of feelings, but they are not just as fleeting or as intense. They are more manageable and real.

I'm learning to recognize these feelings, and now I often ditch goals/ideas which are accompanied by the "sugar high" excitement.

Maybe searching within yourself and deciding if this is a sustainable, real, and worthwhile goal, before committing to something, could help avoid the crash accompanied by goals that really aren't worth it to you.