Self-sabotage 145 Gunna is someone with a dream, or a plan, that they are gunna do as soon as they have time / retire / win the lottery. Failure fear will stop people from getting started and moving into the execution phase. Interestingly, when people move into the execution phase the fear of failure can become a positive force as it used to ensure they do well. Elite athletes, students and businesspeople can often transmute the fear of failure into a drive that pushes them on if they are past the nice idea phase. Another way to put all this is that people don’ t want to risk failing and finding out that they don’ t have what it takes to execute their dream. This is the first benefit of staying in the nice idea phase. Execution also requires people to take an often vague and poorly defined goal and define it into something more workable. This takes effort and requires the individual to confront the fact that their goal may not be very well thought out. Why not have no dream, no plan, no goals? That would solve the problem of failure fear! The problem is that having no plan, no goals, does not look good – we all know that is unhealthy. Every self-help book in the world yells,‘ YOU MUST HAVE GOALS’. No, we can’ t have no goals. We must have a goal to keep up appearances. The trick is to go through the motions but never really act on them in case we fail and, even worse, get found out. For example, there are lots of intimacy phobic people out there who unconsciously do not want to be in a close relationship. To admit this would be a big problem – because then they would have to either accept being alone, live in an emotionally distant relationship, or get help. Each of these is a hard, confronting option. It’ s easier for them to look as if they want a relationship and then sabotage it so no one gets too close. They get dumped – or get in first and become the dumper rather than the dumpee. They then start the process over again. Problem solved. Sometimes we would be much better off admitting to ourselves that we don’ t have a goal and decide whether we can live with that, or decide that we need to do something about it.