If you have a horse and want to keep it from running off, one solution is to hobble the critter. It's the equine equivalent of wearing a denim maxi-skirt and trying to go up a flight of stairs.

(No, I do NOT want to know why my image search for "hobble" included pictures of women's legs roped together.)

In the same way, we can hobble our heads with hindering beliefs.
Remember this?

Your thoughts + your feelings = your beliefs.

Thoughts and feelings can come from anywhere ... the news, a magazine, a catalog, a friend, school, family, authority figures, experiences ... One bad experience in life, unchecked by truth and wisdom, can grow into a virtual jungle of negative, hindering beliefs that hamper our ability to enjoy life.

Fictional characterizations are frequently based around these hindering beliefs that stem from some experience the character had during childhood. The storyline stems directly out of said character overcoming the hindering belief that has plagued him or her throughout fictional life.

In order to overcome these hindering beliefs, we must first identify them...
Let's look at few popular ones: (taken from Correct Change Required, p. 48-49)

God is a mean God.
I could never do that.
I am not worthy.
I'm not good enough.
I am a failure.
I'm a bad parent.
God does not want me to succeed.
Other people are better than me.
I can't do this because I'm not talented enough.
I can't help people because I'm not friendly enough.
I can't because I was never loved.
I can't due to my past.
I can't love again because life is so disappointing.
I can't forgive myself because God won't forgive me.

That's just a few common possibilities. Finding your own personal hindering beliefs may require some detective work...

Where's the emotional resistance?
(i.e. You may not even realize you have a hindering belief about food until someone tries to put you on a certain kind of diet, at which time you snivel into the meal plan and feel pitiful about life in general... yes, I've done that.) Jesus experienced incredible emotional resistance in the Garden of Gethsemane (literally "olive press") to the degree that his capillaries ruptured beneath his skin and his sweat became bloodied. But He didn't let that emotional resistance stop Him from fulfilling His calling as Savior. Most of us will never experience that kind of resistance, thank God, but what we do go through is difficult and uncomfortable... knowing that emotional resistance is a normal part of the process of change helps! Don't stop and camp out there, in the midst of the resistance! Keep moving!

What labels are you wearing?
Do you think you're dumb? Ugly? Clumsy? Selfish? Lazy? Slow? Where did that label come from? I spent years believing myself physically incapable of aerobic exercise because of hereditary "bad knees." Guess what? My knees were fine. It was my hindering belief that kept me from running, jogging, jumping, etc.

Check your life filter.
If the air filter in your car is dirty or clogged, your car won't run right. If your "life filter" turns everything that happens into a weird shade of negative, just "waiting for the other shoe to drop," you've probably got a hindering belief that's coloring your life.

Hearing trouble?
Where we have hindering beliefs, we stop receiving new information. We can't be helped, because we stop hearing. It's the person who wants to lose weight/stop smoking/find God/save their marriage who holds up a hand at the first hint of "advice" and says, "Yeah, I've already heard all that." Whatever information/ideas/suggestions are presented end up being rejected because of the hindering belief.

I hate hindering beliefs. They've been stopping me up since childhood, caused me great pain in adolescence, and tried to shut me down in adulthood more than once. I'm through. When I find a hindering belief, I'm kicking that sucker to the curb... no more buying into the lie.

I got in trouble in first grade... I know — shocker. We were given a mimeographed picture of cars to color. I colored my cars black. With black windows. The teacher saved it to show my mom during parent-teacher conferences. She was concerned that I was a sociopath or something. It never occurred to her that maybe I LIKED black. My first car and second car were black, my previous and current car are black. All with tinted windows, before tinted windows were cool. Maybe I was having a vision of the future back in first grade, maybe it had nothing to do with my emotional state.
 See how those silly labels and filters get slapped on?
What weird beliefs have hobbled you?

IT'S YOUR LIFE. PICK YOUR OWN DARN CRAYON AND USE THE COLORS YOU WANT TO USE!

No, it's not some kind of strange sexual predilection. A self-saboteur is someone who specializes in willfully and maliciously destroying or impeding his or her progress toward a desired goal.

Why on earth would anyone choose to sabotage themselves? That's crazy! I wouldn't do that to anyone, much less to myself!

Are you sure about that?

The trouble with sabotage is saboteurs are sneaky. Sabotage makes things look like accidents, like unavoidable flaws in the system. And sabotage springs up wherever progress, or change, is underway. 

Think about it. If you want to win a war, sabotaging the enemy's efforts toward establishing permanent change is one of the greatest tools in your arsenal of resistance. 

For today, let's hit one of the most common and basic forms of self-sabotage: procrastination. Procrastination is time thievery. Interestingly, though most of us think the source of procrastination is simply a bad case of laziness, most research suggests a tendency to procrastinate stems from anxiety, fear, and low self-esteem.


Like I said yesterday, I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month this year. Writing 50,000 words in 30 days. That's 1,667 words per day. Not much for a writer, really. I churn out that many words just replying to e-mails, changing my FB status, tweeting on Twitter and writing blog posts! But when it comes to sitting down in the chair and saying, "I'm going to put 1,667 words together in a novel format, so at the end of this month I'll have a completed first draft to work from," the procrastination saboteur sneaks in, grabs me from behind, and wheels me around to another room, to do some other project.


I come from a long line of workaholics, so relaxing makes me feel guilty. I don't go do something fun when self-sabotage strikes (my husband will rent a movie, or take a nap, or plop on the sofa and watch hours of Japanese ninja competition... in Japanese). I'll find myself darning socks (who darns socks these days, anyway?), or watching my computer defragment its hard drive, or suddenly having a need to clean the grunge from around the dishwasher seal.

By the time my inner saboteur is through with me, it's either too late or I'm too exhausted to set fingers to keyboard and be creative. And the inner saboteur slinks away with a wicked grin, mission accomplished.

Students procrastinate homework assignments until it's too late to do the job right. Some students do their work, then fail to turn it in. That's self-sabotage, and it springs from some source of internal resistance. Maybe he or she believes she's dumb, maybe she's afraid of being labeled a nerd or a geek if she gets good grades.


Adults procrastinate balancing their checkbooks and paying bills until their finances are tohu va bohu (Hebrew for "without form and void," or "a literal mess.") Have you ever procrastinated car or home repairs? Our home repair procrastination resulted in a broken arm (mine) and a collapsed bedroom ceiling, all in one night. Oops. 


I know a man who procrastinated a doctor's visit until he was bleeding so badly internally he had to undergo emergency surgery. That's self-sabotage at its worst.


Have you ever sabotaged your own diet or exercise program? Nah. Nobody does that, right? No, we all do, and that may just explain why 70 percent of Americans are overweight. Here's the classic application of dietary self-sabotage: "I'll start my diet tomorrow. But tonight I'm going to finish off this bag of Double-Stuff Oreos so there won't be anything tempting in the cupboard tomorrow."

Image via unprose

The crux of the issue is this:  All change - good or bad - creates resistance. It's just a law. Yielding to self-sabotage just multiplies the resistance that's already there. It's like a boxer hitting himself in the face twice for every swing he takes at his opponent. You're making your own life more difficult, on purpose! 

Right now, I want you to pick ONE project, one task, one action you've delayed or procrastinated (not all of them, because that might push you over the edge of sanity). Is it cleaning the fridge? Calling your mother-in-law? Having that difficult talk with your teenager? 

Just pick ONE thing you can do right this minute. Even if it's midnight, you can still clean the fridge (or talk to the teenager). You could even call your MIL, though that might not be very productive!

Picture yourself squashing that self-saboteur under the bottom of your shoe. You'll be amazed how good you feel when you've broken through that resistance and accomplished a task! 

Image by apesara via Flickr

I'm one of those oddballs who likes change. I like to rearrange furniture, repaint walls, try new hairstyles and switch my wardrobe around. I even like to move! (No, I do not want to come help you pack.)
But for some people even small changes are excruciating, and I'm finding that I have my limits as well. In the last five months my only daughter turned 18, graduated from high school, and is getting married in three days. My oldest son got his driver's license. My second son turned 15 and got his driver's permit. And my 11-year-old proudly announced his need for deodorant and notified the household of the arrival of a long-awaited armpit hair. Lots of changes.
Why do we resist change? Because it hurts.
The status quo, no matter how uncomfortable, is always easier than changing behaviors and attitudes. It's easier, for example, to continue eating junk food and skipping exercise, even though you despise the extra 20 or 30 pounds of flab you're packing around. It's easier to continue using the credit card for purchases you really don't need and battle anxiety attacks when the bill comes due than it is to tell yourself "no" and commit to a get-out-of-debt plan. It's easier to whine about your kids' bad behavior than it is to expend the energy to discipline them. It's easier to moan and groan about a lousy relationship than it is to do something to reconcile the situation.
Human nature always tends toward the path of least resistance. Change, whether good or bad, brings resistance, and resistance is a source of pain, or stress, on the body and mind.
Think of resistance as a fork in the road of life. What you choose to do with the pain of change determines where you will end up tomorrow, next week, next year, or a decade from now.
Choose to let pain overwhelm you with sorrow for time lost and relationships stolen, and you will become bitter and filled with regret. What a waste!
Or, choose to embrace the pain of change. Let it restructure and reshape you the way weights sculpt your muscles. I know, that sounds crazy, especially if you're facing some horribly difficult situation, like a divorce or a death, or serious illness. But to survive and thrive in life, we must learn to accept change and be proactive instead of reactive.
My Bible reading schedule for today put me in 2 Kings 7. It's a story that never fails to inspire me to get up and DO something! The Bible is always best read with your imagination engaged, so shift into imagination mode and picture the following scene...

The city was under siege. The enemy had cut off all supply lines. The markets were empty. The cisterns were dry. Inflation had reached an all-time high. The situation looked hopeless to everyone, even the king.
Sitting just outside the city gates were four men, victims of leprosy. They were outcasts -- unable to work, rejected by their society and doomed to a miserable, lonely existence.
I can almost see the cartoon light bulb go off over their heads just prior to the third verse.

"...They said to one another, 'Why stay here until we die? If we say, 'We'll go into the city'--the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let's go over into the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.'"

Ever been there? Where every option looks like certain death?
I love these guys. They had the guts to do SOMETHING, even if it seemed completely crazy.
The four men got up at dusk (presumably hoping the low light would prevent the Arameans from noticing their diseased condition) and headed for the enemy's camp. To their surprise, the place was deserted. The Arameans had fled in terror when God made them hear the sound of a great army coming their way. Was God just waiting for someone to make a move, to step out and do something?
The lepers had a party. They ate and drank their fill and hauled off gold and silver and clothes for themselves. Satiated, their consciences pricked them, and they returned to the besieged city and shared the good news. The announcement created a stampede to outdo any Christmas clearance rush at Wal-Mart!
Here's your question. Take that painful change you're facing right now and ask yourself, "Why am I just sitting here? What are my options? What can I do?" Become proactive. Resist the temptation to take the easy way out by doing nothing. Instead, step out in faith and do something. Even little things that seem insignificant can have a tremendous impact on your future!
For myself, I can resist my children's growth and development by trying to hold them in the nest, tied tightly to my apron strings. But I will suffer misery, torment, and discomfort as they figure out ways to escape my grasp. I could sullenly sit back and pout, mourning the loss of my youth and making my children feel guilty for "abandoning" me to--gasp, how dare they?--live their own lives.
Or, I can view these changes not with dread, but with a sense of adventure. Every ending is a new beginning, an opportunity for growth and further sculpting of my soul and spirit into the person God created me to be. As a writer, I like this analogy: Every change opens a new chapter in the book of my life. And because God has all my days written in His book, I can trust that it will be a well-written story, penned by the author of faith Himself, and that He has a happy ending planned for me, something better than I could ever dream. And He has a story written for you, too! Just like those lepers, He might just be waiting for someone to stand up and make a move toward victory, toward success, toward a dream.
Will you be the one who says, "Let's roll!"?