3 Things In Self Improvement You're Probably Doing & Should Stop - NLP Training
Author
Damon Cart
Date
Nov 07, 2018
Content
Author
This is going out as a free report on Facebook and YouTube so I wanted to make sure it's available to all of you.
If I had to do it over again, these are three things I would avoid or wouldn't waste my time with in the area of personal development.
1. Affirmations
Affirmations have been around probably since the beginning of personal development as we know it. I've used them. You've used them. We've all used them or are currently using them.
Like most things, they're not all bad. There are useful affirmations. More on that in a moment.
How are affirmations harmful?
In NLP we work with the concept of parts especially when you're suffering from an internal conflict. One part of you wants option A and another part of you wants option B giving you the feeling of having opposing parts that are pulling you apart and creating friction hence inner conflict.
Typically, when we say affirmations, we're saying things about ourselves we want to be true or want to be true in the near future like "I make $1,000,000 a year" when you only make $50K a year or "I weigh 160 pounds" when you really weigh 200 pounds.
Your unconscious must reconcile the untruth of your words, which will create an opposing part of you that sticks with the truth of the situation. This creates a conflict. In other words, I say, "I pay my bills on time" when I really don’t, and I've just given birth to its opposite part that says, "No you don't". Why does this happen?
Because this is how your intelligence knows to maintain sanity, by recognizing the truth of what's going on and opposing what's not true. Without this very important part of your brain you would get yourself into all sorts of trouble.
You might be thinking you'll be clever and overcome this by saying "I will become a millionaire" and while I agree this is better than lying to yourself, it puts you in a state of your goal always being in the future rather than you getting closer and closer to it.
What's the solution?
Start with congruence. The more congruent you are, which means aligning your behavior, actions, thoughts, and beliefs with your values, the more you will naturally progress toward what you want.
How exactly can you do this?
That's a big discussion and has become my life's work, to not only find the best tools and processes to do this, but also to help others do the same. What I can give you though as a quick, yet very useful answer is say to yourself "I'm enough".
As someone who spent most of my life battling with self-worth issues, until recently finally resolving it once and for all, I've found "I'm enough" to be extremely helpful especially in situations where I've felt inadequate.
"I'm enough" is hard if not impossible for your unconscious to argue or disagree with. Your unconscious holds a lot of deeper wisdom and resources. Self-worth issues are usually held in the conscious mind while your unconscious doesn't even consider the concept of worth or lack of worth.
2. Striving To Be The Best
The best is a lonely place because there can be only one who is the best at any one thing. It's also unrealistic.
But worst of all it implies comparison; comparing yourself to others. When has comparing yourself to others ever helped you?
You might think of times when you compared yourself to someone else who wasn't as good at you at something. You can always find someone who is worse off than you in some way.
In the city you'll see many homeless people and you can tell yourself you're "better" than them and perhaps get a small bump in dopamine or serotonin, but it's short-lived.
It's also a dangerous game to play because just as easily as you will find people you consider yourself better than, you will constantly encounter people who are better than you. And if you don't, you're probably a narcissist, but a narcissist wouldn't be reading about how to improve themselves because they think they're already perfect.
Do yourself a favor and step out of the comparison game right now. That's right. Feel that? Feels freeing doesn't it. What's it like to not compare yourself to anyone else?
Feels great!
And you may feel a bit of fear pop up as well. Isn't that interesting. Why is that?
This is your deeper programming saying "Wait a minute! How do I know if I'm good or not if I don't check in with what everyone else is doing?" or something like that.
This is a very immature part of yourself that hasn't grown up yet. Put another way, this is an outdated program that needs upgrading. This program likely started when you were very young and your parents, teachers, or whatever authority figures were in your life, brought your attention to your siblings or peers who were behaving "properly". "See how Susan sits quietly. You need to do that too" or "James gets the best grades. Why can't you do that as well?" or "Your friend Carl is lazy. He'll never get a good job."
You learned at an early age to know how well or poorly you were doing by comparing yourself to others. While this was a convenient shortcut for the adults in your life, it likely has been a big problem for you for a long time.
The good news is you can unlearn it. There are some complex processes that would take guidance from a skilled coach in order to overcome this quickly. However, you can start working on this right now using the very same process that created the comparing program in order to dismantle it. It's called habituation.
Stop practicing comparing yourself to others and start practicing getting to know yourself without comparing yourself to others. If this seems a bit scary at first, think of it as something new and exciting. Become curious about yourself. Who are you? Full stop!
If you find yourself starting to compare yourself to someone else, interrupt this pattern and go back to exploring who you are without that.
This doesn't mean you can't explore yourself with others. In fact, connecting and relating to others is the majority of how we get to know ourselves. It's one of the most important things we can do for our overall health.
Truly healthy connections and relationships occur between people who do not compare themselves to each other. Rather they acknowledge their similarities and accept their differences.
Instead of focusing on being the best, explore yourself. Get to know who you truly are and you'll find a wealth of resources and treasures that make you an incredible person without ever having to win or lose at a game created by adults who lacked creativity when you were a child.
3) The Morning Ritual
I don't think this one is as bad for you as it is annoyingly, overly hyped. Damn I used two adverbs back to back. Don't tell Stephen King ; )
Like it or not, aware of it or not, you have a morning ritual. Even if you've never bought into this idea or put it into practice, think about what you do when you wake up until you start work and you will recognize a ritual does indeed take place.
Not just in the morning, but throughout your entire day it's extremely helpful to have healthy habits and best practices. I recommend reevaluating your habits and observing your daily activities especially the ones that you don't think about consciously so that you can continue to improve your habits over your lifetime.
Never underestimate the power of gradual and incremental change over time.
My caution with morning rituals is that they're rituals not just for the morning. I get it. Your mornings set the tone for the rest of your day so it's good to start early, from the time you wake up, implementing good habits.
But if you miss your morning ritual because you overslept or maybe you wanted to take a break from it, cool. No worries. You have the rest of the day to get back on track.
I see success gurus on Youtube touting their awesome, bulletproof, shatterproof morning ritual that you should adopt so you can be successful like them and I wonder how many people really think that just by copying this person's morning habits that they're going to be as successful as them.
Now I'm not suggesting you can't learn from the habits of highly successful people. There's even a famous book written about it. You definitely can and should learn from the habits of successful people especially the people who have accomplished something you want.
What you want to understand though is that there are many great habits but they're not necessarily how successful people create their success.
A genius can tell you how they think they've become so intelligent but more than likely they don't actually know how it happened.
NLP was invented for this exact reason, to model success, to understand the true differences that make the difference rather than relying on assumptions. Most often how people create success has little to do with what they're conscious of. NLP demonstrates this over and over again.
Since you're going to have a morning ritual no matter what, you may as well make it a good one, one that sets you up for the best day possible. Just remember there's nothing magical or mystical about the morning ritual. What makes it work is simply the implementation of good habits done consistently as early as possible and as often as possible.
The key is to optimize your life this way, not just your mornings.
Damon Cart
NLP Coach and Trainer
Santa Cruz, CA
Damon Cart
Author
Damon Cart is considered to be a natural talent by some of the best NLP trainers in the world. His approach to guiding and teaching students brings to their awareness that they've been doing NLP all of their lives without realizing it and he empowers them with skills and resources to thrive and reach their full potential. With the understanding of how Neuro Linguistic Programs create oneβs experience a person can then take charge of those programs and create the experience and the life they want. By taking this approach into his own rigorous, daily NLP practice Damon has been able to rapidly accelerate his progress in learning, coaching clients and teaching workshops.
