How to Be Persistent: Winning the Battle Against Your Inner Saboteur
What does a person who is successful at manifesting do that a person who keeps failing doesn’t do?
You study the manifesting process of two individuals, and everything seems to be the same. They both start with the same set of beliefs. They both start to visualize the same. They both start to affirm the same. They both start to imagine with the same amount of intensity and frequency. But one succeeds while the other one fails.
So what’s the difference
What does a master at manifesting do that a person who keeps failing doesn’t do?
He persists.
He persists even if nothing happens for several weeks or months. He persists even if things seem to get worse at first. He persists even if he gets nightmares every time he goes to sleep. He persists even if he doesn’t feel any shifts indicating a change in his inner world.
And most importantly, he persists continuously. He persists without taking week-long mental vacations from his desire. He persists day in, day out, every day without fail.
Almost everybody can imagine what they want for 1 or 2 weeks in a row. A few people can persist for 1 or 2 months. But a true master at manifesting can persist for 6 months or however long it takes to manifest what he wants.
But why is that so? Why does the majority stop persisting when they know that persistent assumption is the one that creates reality? What happens between the first session of imagining and the moment of abandonment?
In short, an inner saboteur enters the scene.
The truth is that the majority doesn’t simply cease imagining. They are persuaded to stop.
Like it or not, we are hardwired to resist change. The manifesting community often brushes aside the fact that a part of you always interprets change as a threat to your life and gives your body the signal to release the hormones for fear, fight, or flight.
This part of you is your very own inner saboteur.
Why do I call it that way? Because its goal is the total opposite of yours.
Your goal is to change.
Your inner saboteur’s goal is to keep you the same. Thus, it will do everything in its power to undermine your efforts to change. And it will do so in a covert manner.
Consequently, most people never realize that they are being sabotaged from the inside. They think that something is wrong with them, that they don’t have what it takes to manifest what they truly desire.
As Sun Tzu puts it in The Art of War, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Of course, if you don’t know that you have an “inner enemy,” you won’t recognize its actions as sabotage and will fail over and over again without knowing the real reason you can’t secure victory.
Therefore, let’s unveil the favorite strategies of your inner saboteur so you can stop falling for their deceptive tactics once and for all!
Doubtful Thoughts
Your enemy’s number one strategy is to flood your mind with doubts:
“Are you sure this is working? You already doing this for 21 days but can’t you see nothing is changing on the outside? This is nonsense. You should affirm something different. Maybe if you change the scene you visualize…See that person got what he wanted in two weeks; this means you are doing something wrong! You’ve already tried every method under the sun, let’s give up now…Don’t you feel so tired?”
As you’ve probably experienced, the top two reasons your inner saboteur uses to make you stop are:
- “Nothing is happening, therefore manifestation doesn’t work / manifestation doesn’t work for you.”
- “Manifestation works but you are doing it wrong / you are doing the wrong technique because it should have worked by now.”
Of course, it’s very easy to give in to these doubts since in most cases manifestations are not instant. They take some time. And this knowledge is used against you.
Your inner saboteur knows that when it comes to manifesting, time is your ally. Why? Because once you invested enough time entertaining a new belief/assumption/thought to make it dominant, you must change. That’s the law Neville talks about.
Now, if time is your ally, it logically follows that time is the enemy of the part of you that hates change. Therefore, your inner saboteur’s number one mission is to make you stop investing time in your new belief/assumption/thought so it can never be dominant and trigger a change.
Excuses
A sneaky way your inner saboteur tries to convince you to stop imagining is by arming you with excuses why you don’t have the time and/or energy to focus on your desired outcome:
“You had such an exhausting day, you surely don’t have the bandwidth to recite affirmations at this hour…There is so much going on at work and at home right now, let’s put a pause on this manifesting thing…You obviously cannot visualize when you have a cold; your number one priority is to get well now….You are finally on holiday, this is the time to enjoy yourself – you can affirm a week later.”
Since these excuses always sound valid and logical, many people fall into the trap of listening to them.
First, they only skip a day.
Then, one day quickly becomes two.
Next, they realize they haven’t invested any time into their new belief/assumption/thought for a couple of months in a row.
Nightmares & Negative Feelings
When the “logical” reasons presented in your doubtful thoughts and excuses are not enough to make you stop, your inner saboteur turns up the intensity. It starts to target your emotions.
It does so 1) either by showing you your deepest fears and insecurities come alive in a life-like setting (aka nightmares); or 2) by releasing hormones during the day that make you feel all kinds of negative stuff (anger, sadness, irritability, etc.).
These are not pleasant experiences. They are also a lot harder to dismiss than doubtful thoughts and excuses because they insinuate that something negative will happen to you if you don’t stop.
In reality, the opposite is true. Your desired change is about to happen. That’s why your inner saboteur needs to fight you even harder.
Undesirable Circumstances
If you haven’t thrown in the towel by now, your persistence may be tested by undesirable circumstances.
These can be either 1) related or 2) unrelated to your desired change.
Experiencing the total opposite of what you want (e.g. acne flaring up when your desire is clear skin) is a prime example of the former while having a sucky day (e.g. appliances breaking down, getting sick, people cutting you off in traffic, etc.) is the epitome of the latter.
Now, your power lies in your response to these sabotage attempts.
Do you let them make you doubt manifesting? Do you let them make you conclude that you are doing something incorrectly? Do you let them make you scared? Do you let them make you think that if you continue something bad will happen to you?
But most importantly, do you let them make you cave in and stop imagining what you want?
Many people do. Many people let their inner saboteur win. Over and over again.
Consequently, they never experience those big changes they want so much.
They keep going in circles, never comprehending that they need to imagine day after day despite having doubts, despite suffering from nightmares, and despite experiencing undesirable circumstances.
They keep going in circles, never grasping that all that time they spend researching the meaning of their bad dreams and anxiousness is time not invested in creative imagining.
They keep going in circles, never recognizing that doubts, excuses, nightmares, negative feelings, and undesirable circumstances are part of the game, and the task is not to eliminate them but to learn how to respond to them.
“We’ve got to realize right from the start that success is something which is achieved by the minority of people, and is therefore unnatural and not to be achieved by following our natural likes and dislikes nor by being guided by our natural preferences and prejudices.” Albert E. N. Gray
Part of the problem is that when people manifest the “smaller stuff” or things that already align with their self-concepts, they don’t experience (that many) doubts, excuses, nightmares, negative feelings, and undesirable circumstances. Consequently, they draw the conclusion that these things are bad news and they mean that they are doing something wrong. However, that assessment is incorrect.
The reason why someone doesn’t experience doubts, excuses, nightmares, negative feelings, and undesirable circumstances while manifesting trivia is that these manifestations don’t require the person to change herself. And if a change in one’s self-concept is not necessary, the inner saboteur will not get triggered and employ all these annoying tactics.
That’s exactly why I wrote in a previous post of mine that “one cannot train for manifesting big desires by manifesting small ones. They do not require the same manifesting skill set. While manifesting trivia is a fun way to remind yourself of your power, it is not sufficient to master patience, persistence, and consistency to realize your biggest desires.”
In sum, it’s no coincidence that “Just persist!” is one of the simplest yet hardest pieces of advice to adhere to when it comes to manifesting big desires.
Your inner saboteur has many different ways to derail you. On the other hand, there is only one way to persist: continuing firmly in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition.