Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Stop the Sabotage: Making and Maintaining Change During Difficult Times
    Stop the Sabotage: Making and Maintaining Change During Difficult Times
    Stop the Sabotage: Making and Maintaining Change During Difficult Times
    Ebook138 pages2 hours

    Stop the Sabotage: Making and Maintaining Change During Difficult Times

    By Herman "Ray" Barber

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Stop the Sabotage: Making and Maintaining Change During Difficult Times is written for those who are tired of starting over only to fall back into old behavior. If you are feeling discouraged and are telling yourself that maintaining a desirable change just isn’t going to happen, now you have a guide to understand why success hasn’t occurred. Before learning more concepts, learn how to eliminate those personal choices that have sabotaged your ability to keep change going. If you have been devouring self-help information for years and haven’t succeeded with your personal change agenda, this information isn’t wasted once you identify and eliminate the sabotages that have you stuck. Learning more concepts the equivalent of putting perfume over body odor. "Stop the Sabotage: Making and Maintaining Change During Difficult Times" is the equivalent of taking a bath before putting on perfume and new clothes. It keeps it real and keeps the focus on you, not on others. Those who cannot identify exactly what needs to happen differently for their lives to improve for the better now have a view of the dynamics that stop our efforts to maintain change and to continually move forward. Whether you discount perfectly good information, spend time and energy swimming up-stream, cannot develop a solid support network or use your strengths to move forward, these and other self-sabotaging issues will be history. If you are tired of playing with change, get serious. "Stop the Sabotage: Making and Maintaining Change During Difficult Times" calls for self-honesty and your willingness to take a personal inventory of yourself. If you aren’t ready for the challenge just yet, buy "Stop the Sabotage" and give it to someone who is serious with getting on with his or her life. If you believe you are worth it, spend a little time, effort and money improving your life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 1, 2011
    ISBN9781614481409
    Stop the Sabotage: Making and Maintaining Change During Difficult Times

    Related to Stop the Sabotage

    Related ebooks

    Personal Growth For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Alone Time

      Jul 15, 2021

      Alone Time
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Persuasion

      Nov 17, 2021

      The Art Of Persuasion
      2 min read

    • Article

      Back In The Saddle

      Oct 10, 2018

      Back In The Saddle
      6 min read

    • Article

      Dating Drama

      Jun 1, 2020

      Dating Drama
      8 min read

    • Article

      Q & A

      Sep 1, 2022

      How do you define a ‘person of influence’ in today’s world? Whether we realize it or not, we are influencing people all the time, from the time we are very young. Whenever you do or say something that effects a change in someone else’s thinking or be

      8 min read

    • Article

      You Must Be Real To Heal

      Nov 16, 2022

      You Must Be Real To Heal
      4 min read

    • Article

      Mitch Wallis

      Nov 23, 2022

      Mitch Wallis
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Clear Purpose

      Aug 12, 2018

      Imagine that when you were born, you were told that as part of being allowed to enter this world, you then had to sign up to leave it in a better state than when you arrived. Then, imagine that we were all told the same thing and that all 7.2 billion

      4 min read

    • Article

      Saying No Takes Practice

      Nov 25, 2017

      Saying No Takes Practice
      2 min read

    • Article

      Q&A

      May 1, 2023

      Three ‘impact objectives’ have guided you in your career. Please describe them. I crafted these objectives over the years as I thought about the impact I wanted to have in my career and the principles that meant the most to me. The first objective is

      7 min read

    • Article

      Fearless Conversations Can Help You Grow Your Money – and Your Relationships Too

      Jun 7, 2022

      Let’s face it. Talking about money is not one of those conversations most people look forward to. Everyone has different opinions about money: How it’s used, how much you need, how much you should save, how much you should spend. The list is truly en

      3 min read

    • Article

      8 Skills To Achieve Success

      Aug 25, 2022

      8 Skills To Achieve Success
      5 min read

    • Article

      All Well And Good

      Jan 6, 2023

      All Well And Good
      10 min read

    • Article

      Estate Planning: 3 Tips to Get Your Family Talking More Effectively

      Oct 23, 2018

      Picture this. You've decided to tell your kids about your estate plan. This is a big step for you and your family. You want to be more transparent, you want to share more information, and you want the kids to be thrilled that they are being brought i

      3 min read

    • Article

      It’s Always Up to You

      Dec 31, 2019

      It’s Always Up to You
      5 min read

    • Article

      The 5 Best Money and Retirement Podcasts You Haven't Heard of Yet

      Nov 4, 2019

      Want to cue up a brand new podcast, but not sure where to start? Most "best of" lists for financial podcasts tend to feature the same well-known shows over and over again, which isn't all that helpful for those of us who want to branch out and discov

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Complaining

      Oct 5, 2022

      The Art Of Complaining
      4 min read

    • Article

      Lessons Of Love

      Mar 17, 2022

      Lessons Of Love
      3 min read

    • Article

      Communicating With Empathy

      Nov 23, 2022

      Communicating With Empathy
      7 min read

    • Article

      Moving On

      Nov 5, 2023

      Moving On
      4 min read

    • Article

      Redesign YOUR LIFE

      Mar 5, 2020

      Redesign YOUR LIFE
      3 min read

    • Article

      Editor's

      Jul 11, 2019

      Everyone’s rushing around trying to make sure they’re across everything – so as not to be left behind in this age of rapid change. This issue looks at it all, from mentoring, to education, to skills, career progression, leadership and everything in b

      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Stop the Sabotage

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Stop the Sabotage - Herman "Ray" Barber

      Introduction

      Articles and books on the topic of change are as ubiquitous as fast food restaurants on the urban landscape. Changes that involve altering our attitude, motivation, and actions can allow us to move into better employment opportunities, relationships and a higher quality of life. Articles and books on weight loss and increasing health related behavior loom at us everywhere from the grocery store checkout line to the home pages of bookseller’s websites. Thus the appeal of change is widely apparent.

      Whether we are looking to improve our attitude, coping skills, income, relationships or any other facet of our life, most of us are not attempting this change for the first time. We have tried and we have failed. Repeated failures make future changes more difficult, and lower our expectations of ourselves. Like the cycle of poverty, the cycle of failing at changing ourselves can be self-perpetuating and overwhelming to break.

      Stop the Sabotage differs from most because it explores the primary reasons why people don’t succeed with making and then maintaining personal change. Personal sabotages stop us and we often have little insight as to why we fail. If these sabotages aren’t recognized and addressed, the content of much self-help information is the equivalent of putting perfume on without ever taking a bath. If you have a lot of good self-help information stored from years of personal research, the content of Stop the Sabotage may allow it to finally work for you. In many ways, the first chapters of Stop the Sabotage are analogous to taking a bath to rid you of layers of dirt in the form of personal sabotages.

      Stop the Sabotage is for anyone that struggles with making and maintaining change. It is also for those who teach change principles that are inspirational, motivational, and spiritual but who have somehow lost their way in a sea of theoretical principles. Here you have a concrete and systematic process to guide you to achieve and then maintain your goals.

      Use Stop the Sabotage as a workbook. One problem with the information age is that we can access too much information without being challenged to think critically and creatively. The purpose of Stop the Sabotage is to gain personal clarity. However, it is important to realize that this text was not written to focus on hypothetical situations with which others struggle. Stop the Sabotage isn’t a novel or a biography. Stop the Sabotage is about and for you.

      Clarity will come when you make sure you understand each point before moving on to the next. With each point, ask yourself how this relates to you. I cannot connect all of your dots; this is your job in your search for reason and understanding. It is necessary for you to make and to maintain change.

      I have spent most of the past 30 years working with people served by non-profit and public human services. I also teach parenting skills as a volunteer in a homeless shelter. Thus, I have a frame of reference for people who really struggle without the benefit of a decent income, health insurance or support networks. I take your feelings and your struggles very seriously and I don’t have any vested interests in selling you fantasies and theories.

      Let us now begin with eliminating those sabotages that have kept you from moving forward with life. This will be an adventure—a journey towards both knowing yourself better, realizing your strengths and removing any roadblocks to making and maintaining change.

      Discounting

      Information

      Where do we begin in our increasingly important quest to make and to maintain change? With the advent of the information age, we can access information with a few strokes on the keyboard, watch an on-line video or listen to discussion about the topic of change. Thus, the quantity of information isn’t at issue and much of the available information is excellent. However, we seem to be stuck. My opinion is that people increasingly discount perfectly good information.

      In selecting the order of Stop the Sabotage, I placed discounting information at the beginning because this can sabotage the utilization of the remainder of the book and all self-help information. Unfortunately discounting information is one of the major reasons why people do not benefit from therapy, self-help books, CDs, podcasts, talk shows and many other sources of good information that could be helpful in making life changes.

      Those who discount educational and self-help information often impose the supposition that, unless the information is perfectly aligned with their personal beliefs and their exact circumstances, it is flawed information and thus could not possibly be useful. This is a common excuse for not moving forward. This reasoning also feeds our need to be terminally unique.

      If you are reading Stop the Sabotage, evidently your methods of trying to make and maintain change have not been totally successful. Thus you must not have the answers and/or the motivation to do it on your own. Tell yourself that you will read Stop the Sabotage with an open mind and without spending time and energy pointing out things with which you don’t agree. This advice will put you on the right track and will serve as a long-term life lesson. Finding and using good information that works for you isn’t some sort of reality show where you are voting people off an island. In the world of making and maintaining personal change, you are the biggest loser when you become too judgmental about self-help information.

      If someone is really striving to make lasting change, lessons can be found anywhere and from anyone. Many of the lessons found in Stop the Sabotage have been derived from those who had problems with segments of their lives, but who also had areas of great insight, wisdom and success.

      If you wish to learn acting techniques, would you listen to an award-winning actor who had problems with infidelity or drug addiction? If you are a talented singer, would you take advice about singing from someone with three Grammy Awards but who had problems with personal relationships? Great actors, singers, athletes and politicians often have noticeable character flaws, but they know their area of expertise and have a great deal to teach.

      Take a look back at your own history and select some of the most profound lessons that have stuck with you. Did these lessons come from perfect people or perfect events? We may find perfection in one area of a person’s life and may consider them a role model. But people we admire for certain strengths often have imperfections. A great deal of our current media is built around pointing out people’s flaws and shortcomings. We are exposed to an on-going barrage of invitations to discredit others. This often leads us to discount excellent information because we are becoming much too cynical.

      Can you name a few professional athletes and movie stars that, although experts in their profession have fallen into some serious problems of their own making? Hopefully you don’t discount the importance of their contributions because of imperfections. If you struggle with discounting people and thus their lessons, make an effort to get past their imperfections. Looking at the imperfections of others is a way of not looking at yourself and your own imperfections.

      During my first two years of graduate school, I worked in a therapeutic community for the treatment of drug addiction. This community consisted of mostly heroin addicts and many were very adept at using their defenses to fend off any sort of change. One common problem among people in long-term substance abuse treatment is that they will look for faults in the staff so that they don’t have to look at their own issues. Their magical thinking was that they would not have to change unless the staff members were paragons of virtue. Thus a focus of treatment was to teach the residents that taking stock of other people’s imperfections was not going to help them become drug-free, happy and productive.

      As children we all learn how to best control our environment so to maintain as much comfort as possible. Children often learn the skill of refocusing attention away from themselves and onto others. When confronting these children they quickly point out any imperfections in the adult. Discrediting others is a common defense against change and is often perfected with age as we begin building our ego—that part of us that we totally construct. Discounting the ideas of others is an inherent part of the process of internally defending against change.

      Tabloid news is a classic example of media that discounts others. Tabloid news is a paradise for those who enjoy keeping the focus on others while not spending time and effort in self-improvement activities. It appears that when we get overly focused on Tiger Wood, Al Gore, or others who have made errors in judgment, we tend to spend less time looking at ourselves.

      Take a moment to look at the ways that you have traditionally discounted information that may have been helpful? Do you find yourself increasingly looking at the misfortunes of others to realize how well you are doing? If you are overweight, do you tend to focus on those who have a much more severe weight problem or those are too underweight to really be healthy? As you confront yourself with such questions, are you also saying yes, but?

      I have known many people who say yes, but to every piece of advice. Some seem to be looking for an exact prescription for their special problems, however they will take prescription medication that was not specifically designed and manufactured for their exact physical problem. One useful exercise is to be aware of each time that you say yes, but. Once you become aware of saying these words think about why you are saying them. The utterance of these words is often a symptom of terminal uniqueness.

      Terminal uniqueness is one of the biggest excuses for discounting useful information. It means you believe your problem or situation is

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1