“Just what I DIDN’T want.”
“I can’t believe my LUCK, I worked so hard and now this.”
“There’s always SOMETHING that comes up.”
“Just when I get close…everything falls apart.”
“I’ve tried everything, and nothing works.”
It’s maddening.
You live it, see it and feel it every day.
Life so often brings you exactly what you don’t want…and did you notice that every now and then you felt like you might be “doing it to yourself?”
You shake your head.
“No way.”
I know because I’ve done that too. And the fact is that random events play a big part in what happens to us every day.
And then there is this….
Sometimes….
KEYPOINT: There’s one thing we all have in common. In differing degrees of frequency and magnitude, everyone commits acts of terrorism and self sabotage in their own lives…to themselves.
Half the time you consciously become aware of it. Half the time you never see it. You never sense it.
Some people have guessed at the seemingly bizarre nature of “self sabotage.”
Guess no more. Self sabotage is very real in everyone’s life, completely devastating and 100% resolvable.
Human behavior is remarkably predictable when you know what people’s “Life Patterns” are. Continue the article to learn more about the 12 life patterns.
There are 12 life patterns. At least, there are 12 that have been found and identified so far.
UNDERSTAND: Life patterns are *not* the 16 core drivers in behavior we’ve talked about so often. Drivers are the things that motivate us.
UNDERSTAND: Life patterns are the “scripts” that people replay in their lives, over and over again…and don’t understand.
The scripts were typically (but not always) wired in to behavior at a fairly young age. And those same scripts continue to run in adults that are 30, 40, 50, 60, or even 90 years old. Because they are scripts, they are familiar. They are patterns that are very difficult to see and more difficult to break free from.
If each person’s life were a maze or labyrinth, with obstacles and barriers (age, race, height, weight, handicaps, brilliance, poverty, etc.) the fact is that most of those barriers never change in a person’s life. They become the walls of the labyrinth.
You go to church on Sunday, school on Monday through Friday, to the lake on Saturday, get punished if you do x,y or z. You get rewarded when you do a, b, or c. That’s life when you are a kid and the repetition of those things create walls that sometimes steers us from trouble and just as often create long term disasters behind almost every corner of the maze.
Then lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place…it strikes dozens of times in the same place.
KEY FACTOR: There are 12 life patterns.
Some revolve around parents unrelenting standards of a child. The child is never good enough. Other patterns stem from the responses of the child being lied to or thrust into environments that were out of control. Decades later they react the same way they did when they were kids.
Problem is, when they were kids, they were dodging the bullets and generally succeeding. Then there weren’t any bullets to dodge but the person kept acting like they were in reaction to other people… and ultimately that is yet another disaster…
Some kids have a silver spoon. They are given everything early and then react to the world as if it will continue at that pace and contribution. The kid grows up and they believe they are entitled and demand stuff, treatment, favor beyond what they contribute. They park in the handicap space at the store because “no one ever uses it”…because someone with this life pattern has parked there and the handicapped people have to park elsewhere.
KEY FACTOR: There are 12 patterns of behavior that stop people from succeeding relationships and in building wealth.
Today I’ll focus on one of the 12 manifestations of self sabotage and show you where it all comes from…and how to overcome and win in relationships and wealth.
Before we get all specific about solving things…let’s look at some odd facts of life…
You’ve probably noticed that…
- The more you argue for your point of view, the less you are heard.
- That which you fear the most today is often best for you in the long run.
- The more you need money, the harder it is to acquire.
- The more you need that person… the more they move away from you.
- The more open you are about your vulnerability the more invulnerable you become.
- The more you protest, the more you get what you protest against.
The Northwest Airlines mechanics go on strike when a company is in bankruptcy. They demand more money and benefits and are surprised when they are replaced and out of a job that paid them $75,000 annually. It’s a life pattern. Entitlement. It’s not a sin. It’s a pattern that generates self sabotaging behaviors. It’s just one…and not the one I want to look most closely at today.
So we have 12 life patterns and those 12 patterns stem from the attempt to meet the 6 fundamental needs we all have in life.
What you may not know is that we need at least six fundamental needs met to succeed in every aspect of life.
- Basic Safety (hopefully from outside the home…not inside)
- Connection to Others (love, friendships)
- Autonomy (need to be able to act on our own behalf)
- Self Esteem (the ability to put an accurate value on ourselves)
- Self Expression (the ability to speak and perform what we feel, freely)
- Realistic Limits (boundaries in life so we don’t fall off the edge)
If any of the six are not being met beginning at any point early in life, negative life patterns develop that soon shift from “clay” to “stone,” in the human mind. These negative life patterns actually helped us cope early in life with the areas of life when we didn’t have our fundamental human needs met…
Later they become the core of self sabotage in every aspect of life…stopping us from getting what we want and literally making everything we don’t want…happen. Over the course of your life you have noticed some recurring patterns and themes.
SYMPTOM: Just as the money finally appears, something breaks and you have to have it repaired.
SYMPTOM: Just as you are becoming happy, something big goes wrong.
SYMPTOM: Just as you are getting on track, you get derailed.
SYMPTOM: Just as you get your promotion, you get laid off.
SYMPTOM: You find the girl or guy of your dreams and then she slips away.
THE DISASTER: The worst? You have the break of your life sitting in your lap and you blow the sale, the interview, the meeting. The chance of a lifetime (you think) and a lifestorm hits and it is all gone because of one or two wrong words at a critical moment or even an interrupting phone call. It’s gone. The girl, the money, the power, the job, the career, the happiness.
You’ve wanted to get your life on track and on purpose for so long. You’ve set your goals and have come up short. You learn the techniques and tools of communication and even influence but still it always seems to happen. You try and make all the changes that could ever be made in a lifetime and then…BOOM! Another lifestorm.
What causes all of this?
Does God have some kind of perverted sense of humor that puts the candy in your hand until it comes to your mouth and then he makes it vanish?
12 Life Patterns
There are 12 specific life patterns that cause virtually all of these events to happen. 12 very predictable negative life paths that you can and will repeat and will repeat over and over until you break the specific pattern. Once you break the pattern and construct a new pattern in place of the old, you literally change your life (or that of your clients). The fewest number of negative life patterns I’ve seen anyone have are four. The most 11.
Could it be true that life is both this “complex and yet simple?” That if you just change a few patterns that everything will be OK?
Life is never easy. But the negative life patterns are impossible to overcome, yes impossible without stopping the lifestorms that result from the 12 negative life patterns and then replacing them with specific new patterns.
These patterns come from substantial personal experiences. They are patterns because the causes of them all actually have imprinted in your brain from real life experiences. For example, are you the person who is putting yourself second ALL the time and not attending to your needs as well as you do those of everyone else around you?
Perhaps one of your life patterns developed into a mistrust of the world, the environment and those around you. Maybe you have been abandoned so much and in so many different ways that you find these things happening to you far more often than chance would dictate. There are nine others patterns.
Every now and then someone makes something happen by accident. They know what these negative recurring patterns are and figure out a solution without having had the manual to do so. And it’s been through observing the people who figured it out that the everyone else can stop the lifestorms.
What are these lifestorms and how did they get here? How do they emerge from the patterns? Why do they rip your future away from us just as you are ready to make a quantum leap into your the future? How do you stop the madness and turn it all around?
Here’s the story of someone I’m intimately familiar with…
A Pattern of Abandonment
Imagine that you are a child. Age 5. Your Mom and Dad divorce. Your father leaves. Forever. Your grandfather tries to take your father’s place and fill in “the gaps.” Shortly thereafter he dies. Your mother continues to work two jobs to support you, your brothers and your sisters. Just as you begin to like them… babysitters come and go over the next couple of years. Finally you reach adolescence and you have your first love.
She/he is perfect for you. She likes you. You hold on tight. You call them all the time. You let them know how much you care. Nothing will go wrong this time! Everyone else that you ever loved has come and gone or just not been there. You’ve basically been on your own with no one stable in your life and have learned how tough life is by yourself. You’re going to make sure that this person doesn’t leave. But they do.
They felt “constricted.” They didn’t feel loved. They felt closed in. They sought advice from others and eventually followed it….They had a different life pattern that fit this situation and they reacted the same way they did when they were a kid…
(Note: Many people want to be communicated with a great deal …like people who have this lifestorm!…and desire an extreme amount of attention… however most people who have this life pattern of abandonment do not gravitate to those people. Instead they gravitate to people who will leave.)
Back to our story. Finally, “not being able to breathe,” they leave you. You are crushed. Again someone has abandoned you. Everyone leaves. Parents, grandparents, babysitters…and now the love of your life. You have the life pattern of abandonment cut with a chisel into the stone of your mind.
This pattern will repeat itself over and over again until you recognize it, break it and reshape a new pattern into your mind. Your mind knows no other way to act or how to deal with the feelings inside. Relationship after relationship is destined to go up in smoke until this abandonment pattern is resolved and repaired and remolded.
The same thing happens with money and the drive for a secure and wealthy future.
And, this is not the only one of the 12 patterns that leads to relationship troubles. In fact, some patterns lead to chaos in relationships, jobs, the pursuit of happiness and all aspects of life. Without correcting these 12 patterns little else will help you break the chains that keep you from having the love you deserve.
In the case of the abandonment pattern, which you may or may not experience, you find that it also causes specific behaviors in the area of money. For example,there are two common patterns with money that stem from abandonment that goes uncorrected.
The first is the workaholic who saves every penny possible so that no matter who leaves or what happens in life there will always be something to ride out the next lifestorm.
The second is that the person simply repeats the pattern with money and spends themselves to bankruptcy on things that can’t possibly help their future. They buy more car than they need. They buy a house they can’t afford. They buy toys that do nothing but cost more money to maintain.
Like the other 11 patterns, the pattern of abandonment has a plotted course that is predictable in all facets of life. It is etched in stone and it won’t change until it is sandblasted away. No amount of positive thinking will erase it. It will take far more than simple affirmations or a couple of visualizations. It takes a master plan that, while not difficult to implement, takes some time to reset itself after sandblasting away the old patterns.
Responding to Lifestorms
Remember when you said something like, “My parents did that to me and I will never do that to anyone.”
That’s one of the three ways you react/respond to negative life patterns. You polarize consciously or unconsciously from the things that were “done to you.” This could be a positive reaction but it probably isn’t optimal. Repeating the pattern of your parents/elders/caretakers is another common reaction/response, but again, it probably isn’t optimal. On the continuum of possible behaviors there is usually a point in the middle that is where you really will be able to overcome the negative patterns and reset new successful patterns that will stop self sabotage.
Perhaps you know someone who displays the characteristics of the abandonment life pattern. Perhaps it is you. Recognition of the pattern is the first step toward eliminating self sabotage and staying out of lifestorms. The next step is to identify how you would like to feel and behave instead of your current feelings and behaviors.
If you are feeling a paralyzing fear of abandonment…the feeling that this person too will leave you, what do you want them to feel and what do you want to feel? Both parts are important. You certainly don’t want them to feel smothered. You don’t want them to feel mistrusted as that mistrust will usually move the person to the behavior you mistrust them of.
You want to feel secure and you want to behave in such a way that does not make yourself appear to not trust the one you care about. All of these pictures are the beginning of setting the new pattern. You must determine what you want to feel and how you want to behave. You want to determine what message you want to send the one you care about.
In the case of dealing with money with this life pattern, the same process is critical. What do you want to feel about money? What do you want to do with your money? Do you want to buy $5,000 toys and expensive cars or do you want to invest in your self and your future through education and investment? How will you benefit if you do these things by choice instead of repeating the self sabotaging behaviors of the past? How do you want to feel about money? What thoughts do you want to think about money?
Once the pattern has been identified and you recognize how you feel and what you think while you are “in the pattern” you then want to isolate the trigger. In the future you want this trigger to trigger the adaptive life pattern that you are going to construct in its place. You will need to do quite a bit of mental imagery and visualization along with triggering the new pattern. You will want to vividly experience the new pattern and the new thoughts and feelings of the new pattern.
You also will then need to cultivate a set of specific actions that will physically move you forward in the new life pattern. At the end of the day you will record your feelings, thoughts and actions that you had in response to the triggers that you experienced that day. Usually within 45-90 days you can have mostly eradicated the old self sabotaging behaviors and have installed the new patterns that move you in the direction of your goals, your dreams.
Of course there are 11 other life patterns in addition to that of abandonment. There are patterns that include a general mistrust of others, patterns that create behaviors where you put yourself second to everyone else.
Other patterns emerge where you might believe you are entitled to things instead of deserving of them. All of these are examples of patterns that give birth to self sabotage and are roadblocks that keep virtually everyone from achieving their dreams.
I’ve identified 12 of the life patterns which cause us to trip up – and make the same mistakes again and again. To discover which of the 12 patterns you have been the victim of and how to eliminate self-sabotage in your life (or those of your clients) you can pick up the CD program and workbook, LIFESTORMS: The Paradox of Overcoming Self Sabotage to Achieve Love, Power, Money and Happiness.
Lifestorms: 12 Obstacles to Achievement: The Paradox of Overcoming Self Sabotage to Achieve Love, Power, Money and Happiness.
by Kevin Hogan
3 CDs in this program – and it comes with a BIG WORKBOOK! And now, get a free Lifestorms DVD presentation with your order!
Discover why life often brings you exactly what you don’t want…and how self sabotage can hide around every corner. Some people have guessed at the bizarre nature of self sabotage. Guess no more. Self sabotage is very real in everyone’s life. It is completely devastating and 100% resolvable!
- Do you ever know you should start on a project but don’t?
- Do you have projects that you have started but never finished?
- Do you ever say the one wrong thing at the wrong time?
- Have you ever had things going well in life only to have everything blow up in a day?
- Have you tried to be so careful not to make a mistake that you were shocked when you made a truly costly one?
- Have you ever promised yourself to stay out of trouble in some way only to find yourself in the same trouble or worse again?
Now you can discover your own life patterns so you can eliminate unconscious self sabotage immediately. This program will break the heavy chains that hold you from your dreams and your goals.
This program is the first program ever made public that shows you how to identify specific self sabotaging behaviors and negative life patterns. Better? You can ultimately erase those life patterns and rewrite new “schemas” into your brain that will allow you to meet your goals and experience fulfilling relationships.
Here is what you will learn:
- How to identify which of the 12 negative life patterns you live.
- How to find the triggers of the lifestorms that you just can’t believe you experience.
- How to change the self sabotage into success, happiness or something productive.
- How to remove almost all obstacles between you and your goals.
- How to understand those around you so you don’t push their buttons.
- How to predict your behavior and that of others.
- How to actually achieve your goals so they are more than just a dream.
No one anywhere has ever put such a program on CD. There is not one person anywhere who can’t utilize every minute of this insightful information. These three CD’s are packed with the most powerful tools for getting past life’s roadblocks and personal sabotage ever imagined. Anyone can utilize this information and I personally guarantee that if you follow the instructions you will not experience self sabotaging behavior anymore. Your goals become reality at speeds faster than you ever imagined.
Learn More About Lifestorms or to order
