Newsletter

Vol. I, No. 1 October, 2013

Displacement and the Evils of Avoidance Under the Guise of Self Help

For a good while I have been harboring the notion that thoughts about change or goal achievement can too often substitute for real action. Thoughts alone don’t do anything except lay the ground work. They don’t take the place of actions needed to reduce the discrepancy between ideals and actual achievement.

The whole self help field is filled with pleas to do the right thing by the light of your BETTER SELF yet these pleas go unheeded if all you do is read about change rather than do the hard work necessary

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I believe that these thoughts fill the vestibule of change and are needed to facilitate change and carry forward the action plan.
The psychological definition of displacement is that it is the transference of an affect of emotional attachment from its proper object to a substitute. Or, it is the substitute of one response for another when the first is blocked such as occurs in displaced aggression

For the self improvement enthusiast, there is a trap here. The trap is that you become held hostage by the promise of great progress and allow the delusion of progress by thinking and reading to substitute for the hard work of change or striving for goals. In effect, you feed yourself with words and concepts of redemption, change and sought for results and this blinds you to the unabiding need for implementation.

It’s writing/thinking about rather than doing about.

I have spent months and years thinking about smoking cessation, weight loss, writer’s block, you name it. Years. And now that I have finally mastered the obstacles associated with attaining these goals, at least for periods of time, I can truth fully say I wasted SO MUCH TIME thinking rather than acting. It just hurts me to think about.

SEE MORE AT BLOG ON SELF COACHING: http://selfcoachingforsuccess.blogspot.com/