People often share with me their challenges with the self-sabotage behavior of procrastination. While procrastination is one of the most notorious self-sabotage behaviors, when I ask a few questions and dig a bit deeper I tend to find additional symptoms. Often I uncover the hidden self-sabotage behavior of “getting stalled in the planning stage.”
I have always found my clients to be perfectly capable of reaching the goals they set for themselves, and they were usually much closer to their success than they believed themselves to be; they just needed help getting rid of their self-imposed roadblocks.
Whenever I work with a client that uses the self-sabotage behavior of “getting stalled in the planning stage,” they will typically tell me that they are great at coming up with new ideas and planning them out. However, once they’ve planned the implementation of their ideas down to the nitty-gritty detail, they begin to lose interest in the project, so their energy and motivation stalls out.
One of my favorite clients, Gail (not her real name), has started every kind of new business imaginable. She is creative, intelligent, educated, and very energetic, so there is no real reason why she couldn’t move forward and turn any of her ideas into a successful business. Unfortunately, Gail was consistently blocked by the self-sabotage behavior of “getting stalled in the planning stage” so she was unable to stay motivated to implement an idea once she completed the planning stage.
Gail loves to PLAN! She loves getting a new idea and then planning it all out! She says she even gets a buzz from planning out a new idea. She will work for hours working out the details of how to implement her new idea. She will create a detailed plan of action, map out her goals for the implementation of the plan, create forms and timelines needed for implementing the plan, and create spreadsheets for tracking the impending success of her idea. When Gail talks about creating a Plan of Action for new ideas her excitement and enthusiasm actually make her look as if she is glowing.
In the past, Gail would come up with a new idea for a new business venture and she would work energetically to put together a Plan of Action for her new idea until she had every detail mapped out and then as it came time to move into the implementation stage, she would begin to lose interest. The love would fade, the excitement would subside, and the momentum would die out, so eventually she would move on to some other new and exciting idea that needed to be planned.
The entrepreneurs I work with who deal with the self-sabotage behavior of “getting stalled in the planning stage” will give me detailed reasons why they dropped an existing project and moved on to a new project, but in the end they always admit that they know these “reasons” are just excuses. The problem is that they seldom know how to break free from these internal barriers.
The inner part of you that blocks your success always has a positive intention behind its behavior. The inner saboteur is actually an inner protector because it has only one mission, which is to protect you from perceived danger. The goal of any good success coach is to help you find that inner perception and help you change it to something that will continue to protect you, but in ways that are much more in alignment with helping you to move toward your goal — not away from it.
As Gail and I progressed through her work she became more and more aware of when and why she set up this cycle of starting a project and then dropping it for something new.
Like Gail, her mother also had lots of energy. As Gail was making her way through her school years her mother always wanted to “help” her with her projects. Although her mother was only trying to “help”, Gail would feel as though her mother had taken over the project, so Gail would lose interest and let her mother finish it for her. Gail said she could still hear her mother’s words, “Honey, let me do that for you.”
While Gail’s mother was so very proud of how much she helped her daughter, she could not see that Gail perceived her mother’s “help” to mean that she was not capable of completing anything on her own.
Gail realized that the only time she felt she had any control over a project was when she was planning it out. Once she began to implement the plan her mother would get involved and “take over” until the project was complete. Gail had set up an internal way of protecting herself from the pain of failure by never allowing herself to actually get past the planning stage to implement any of her ideas.
Gail and I worked together to help her inner protector (previously the inner saboteur) find more effective ways to protect her from failure. Gail realized that her mother’s positive intention for helping her was to make sure she was successful, which would protect her and provide her with greater opportunities. Gail set up a new internal belief that used her mother’s positive intention of moving her toward success. Gail set it up that she could more effectively protect herself if she moved through the successful implementation of her projects. As a bonus, Gail added in the feelings of excitement and accomplishment for completing a project; feelings she has seen so often in her mother as she completed Gail’s projects for her.
Not all inner saboteurs are as easy to find as Gail’s, but it can be done with any inner self-sabotage behaviors and the rewards can be enormous!
Getting stalled in the planning stage is the result of hidden inner fears that it is not safe to actually accomplish the goal; that success might somehow cause us harm. So not allowing yourself to move into the implementation stage becomes a way of protecting you from this perceived danger.
If you are struggling with the self-sabotage behavior of “getting stalled in the planning stage,” take the time to figure out what is the “positive intention” of the inner saboteur. What does it want for you that is much more important than your success? Once you find the inner positive intentions, you can work with it to find more effective ways to keep you safe and move you toward the success you desire.
Troyann Williams is on a mission to help people Break Free from Self-Sabotage Behaviors. To learn a step-by-step process for Breaking Free from Self-Sabotage Behaviors, go now to ==> http://www.selfsabotagebehavior.com.
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