Goal sabotage 58 My experience of working with people who want to change something about themselves is that they confuse the‘ nice idea’ phase with the execution phase. The execution phase is when we find out if we are motivated or not. A simple test of whether losing weight is just a nice idea for you, or more, will be your preparedness to put into place some of the strategic structures necessary to lose weight. If you can’ t bring yourself to do some of the things that I will be suggesting, then you might need to wait until some‘ motivation’ comes along. The best motivator, in my experience is a heart attack – but sometimes they can make their point a little too profoundly … To explain the difference between the nice idea phase and the execution phase in psychological terms we need to bring in the unconscious mind. In very simple terms, a nice idea is something our conscious mind has. Our conscious mind establishes the goal, but whether we are allowed to execute it will be determined by our unconscious mind. So watch yourself very closely as you move into the execution phase. This is when you will learn how motivated you are at an unconscious level. What I am trying to do is decrease the amount of sacrifice needed so that even moderate doses of intrinsic motivation will have a chance of success. But remember, if you find that you need lots of self-discipline this is a sign that there are some deeper motivations for staying overweight, or at least for over-eating, that you might need to see a therapist to deal with. I will talk more about this in Chapters 13 and 14 as we move deeper into the sabotage area. One of my clients, who had done some psychotherapy before meeting me, was able to speak very articulately about why she was not that motivated to lose weight. Her father, ever since she had been a young