Whether the goal is to quit smoking, cut junk foods or anything else that takes work to achieve, sticking to the goal and not relenting to internal or external pressure is the key to success. This is the “Old Self” coming to seize control. The further along toward a goal we go, the more the old self wants to regain control and subvert progress. The old self is resilient and will always lurk until it finds a weak moment to pounce and regain its position as the one running the show. The first time a promise is broken to oneself is the most difficult, it only gets easier from there. No matter if that it was agonizing or easy, the first time is the most resistance the mind will put up. This makes coming back from the broken promise more difficult.
The easiest person for me to break a promise against is myself. With others, there seems to be some moral obligation to fulfill what I’ve promised to do. With me, I have an easy time going against what I’ve set out to do. Why? I just racked my brain trying to find an answer, I thought I should have three things that came to mind. I thought they would come quickly, but the only thing I thought was that it is ok for me to be lied to which is an issue with worthiness. So why do I feel unworthy of having promises kept towards me? Whether the goal is to quit smoking, cut junk foods or anything else that takes work to achieve, sticking to the goal and not relenting to internal or external pressure is the key to success. This is the “Old Self” coming to seize control. The further along toward a goal we go, the more the old self wants to regain control and subvert progress. The old self is resilient and will always lurk until it finds a weak moment to pounce and regain its position as the one running the show. The first time a promise is broken to oneself is the most difficult, it only gets easier from there. No matter if that it was agonizing or easy, the first time is the most resistance the mind will put up. This makes coming back from the broken promise more difficult.
I am capable of handling disappointment or is it that I expect to be disappointed and it is my way of fulfilling that expectation? Thinking about it, I believe it to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. I feel comfortable, in some twisted way, of being mistreated. It makes me comfortable and is probably a way of me not achieving excellence. Why? Because I am not comfortable with these feelings. My brain is not comfortable with achievement to this level, if I were to stay my commitments to myself it (my brain) would feel there is a threat to my well-being. The brain’s purpose is to keep us from being harmed so if it is fed the wrong information it will produce the wrong solution. It is seen all the time with athletes. If an athlete’s brain is not comfortable with a high level of success, he may post a scathing video online making a team think twice about drafting him, in a declared for the draft situation. His mind will lead him to act in a way that is detrimental to his success because he is not psychologically ready for success. Not pre-draft, but afterward at the onset of his career, Ryan Leaf comes to mind. He sabotaged his whole career because he was not ready for success.
A lot of people see others who seemingly have it all and wonder how they can throw it all away. The change that needs to happen is not to delete their online profiles or if the person drinks too much, to stop going to bars or having liquor in the house. Though those may be good temporary fixes, they are nearly bandages and the source of the problem needs to be addressed to truly fix the problem.
Breaking the seal can start out small. It is much easier to start with a little white lie than to jump right into the deep end. It is like the way you cook a live frog. When an action is done to sabotage oneself, it can take the urgency of trying to save one’s own life because, in a way, it is. Or at least that is how the mind sees it. The mind can be like a drama queen and think “if I fuck this up, I’ll just die.” It will not say it to its host like that, it will say things like, “you deserve to go out and get wasted after all the work you’ve done.” It is lying to you. The devil does not attack the heart first, it attacks your mind and it has you kill your heart.
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Marlon Riddle 
