Posted on May 30, 2011 by Deah Curry PhD, CPC
The marvelous thing about healthy adults is that we are endlessly adaptive and resilient. We are naturally created to learn to cope with stress, and accommodate to or conquer whatever life throws at us.
Most of the time this is a good thing.  By design, this ability ensures the survival of the species.
Sometimes, how we adapt, cope, or strive to conquer ends up sabotaging our best interests, and goal achievement.  When this happens, it’s useful to examine what’s driving the choices that don’t really make things better.
When you boil away all the myriad ways that normal adults engage in self sabotage, the roots always go back to fear and habit.
We either do the wrong thing out of a misguided self-protective impulse, or we resist doing the right thing because we’re afraid to.
Alternatively, we are blithely unaware of our options because we’re stuck in an habituated comfort zone. You might almost say, we can be addicted to our habits.  Those habits themselves, like comfortable old shoes, lose their ability to support and protect us when we most need help.
Sometimes it helps to go into detail to discover where your habits came from and why your fears exist.  Often, that kind of intra-psychic exploration is just another sabotaging way to procrastinate.
Not all change needs to come after understanding.  Sometimes the easiest change comes from simply deciding to do one small thing differently.  The questions below can help you gain a little understanding while also accomplishing a little change.  Good luck!
Coaching Exercise:
1. What change do you want to make in your life in the next 90 days?
2. When you think about actually changing, how does that challenge your current habit?  What will you have to stop or give up in order for change to happen?
3. What is one action you can comfortably take to push open the boundaries of your current comfort zone, and allow a new habit to form?
4. When you consider making the effort to change, what will you be putting at risk?  What fears come up when you think about that?
5. What is one small risk-taking step you can allow yourself to take in order to face your fear and achieve the change you want?