Self-sabotage 144 Our conscious mind has to forget all the unwritten rules otherwise it would become overwhelmed as every new lesson or rule crowded our consciousness with the hundreds that came before. We need to keep our conscious mind free to deal with our day-by-day, moment-by-moment problems. Our conscious mind is also responsible for setting our goals,( even if they conflict with the unwritten rules stored in the unconscious). It is this arrangement – these two minds with different jobs to do – that sets the scene for conflict. And when the two go to battle the unconscious always wins. Why? Because of the two roles, that of the unconscious is the more critical. Thus it is more powerful because its job is to keep us safe from pain and, ultimately, to keep us alive. Executing the nice idea –‘ failure fear’ Self-sabotage occurs when our conscious mind’ s‘ nice idea’ conflicts with the lessons learned by our unconscious mind. As we touched on in Chapter 6,‘ Goal Sabotage’, it is only when we have to move into the execution phase that we will finally understand what our unconscious mind thinks about our nice idea. For a lot of overweight people losing weight is just a‘ nice idea’. For this reason, no matter what it is you want to do in life, don’ t spend too long in the nice idea phase. I see some people spend years in this phase. Why might this be? What is the advantage of staying stuck in the‘ nice idea’ phase? There are two big benefits. First, you get to keep your fantasy untainted, in dreamy, pristine condition. You don’ t risk damaging it because then you might need to get a new one and that will take uncomfortable effort. The discomfort comes from having to admit that your nice idea was flawed and that you may not be able to actually make it work. If we move into the execution phase and crash our dream, just as if it had been a brand new car, we will feel devastated. We simply don’ t want to risk feeling that way. I call this‘ failure fear’. People who are stuck in the nice idea phase are known colloquially here in Oz as‘ Gunna’ s’. A Gunna has lots they are gunna do, one day. A