“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes”!
With just 8 words Henry David Thoreau encapsulates a common and every effective self-deception tactic.
Which is used by many of us – as a way of ‘not’ taking action on big projects.
Instead of taking action we get involved in time-consuming and complex and sometimes expensive preparations as a way of putting off ‘climbing the mountain’ – as a way of avoiding starting the project.
It goes like this:
- This is a big project. It’s going to take me way outside my Comfort Zone – well into my Stretch Zone, in fact.
- So there’s a possibility I could fail. And disappoint myself. And then what would ‘they’ think?
- So I’ll need to make good and sure that I don’t fail.
- How can I do this…? I know, I’ll prepare very thoroughly and extensively and that’s going to take some time….
And this is where, in many cases, our automatic or unconscious Delaying Programme silently kicks in. Because this preparation then takes on a life of its own. Now we find ourselves spending huge amounts of time and probably lots of money ‘preparing’ to start.
The great thing about this strategy is that, all the time we’re delaying, we’re convinced that we’re on our way – whereas in actual fact we’re putting off taking the first steps!
This is the topic of this week’s NLP Newsletter and the full article is on our main website here.
The Pegasus NLP Newsletter
Most articles on this site originally appeared in The Pegasus NLP Newsletter – which has been published continuously since January 2001.
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