As promised, I will be focusing on How you can deal with “Precursors of Failure” patterns in this post. Some simple strategies.

1) Threshold blow-out

What I mean by threshold blow-out is to exaggerate your pattern to the extent that it becomes ridiculous. You will know you have done it when you find yourself laughing at what you are doing, behaving like an idiot or when someone comes up to you and ask “What are you doing?!” (For those who knows NLP, yes, this is a pattern interrupt)

Let’s take Alvin’s case as an example:

Go buy lots of Vanilla Coke and place them at your workplace, bedroom and basically at every places you can see them. Buy not just a dozen cans but by the cartons! Maybe stack up a few cartons as footrest under your computer desk. Yes! This is what I mean by ridiculous! I bet now Vanilla Coke kicks in as a motivator to work instead.

I used this quite often in my coaching and it has broken many limiting patterns with much success.

2) Practise what you are going to do instead

Part of re-conditioning is to practise. Practise in your mind what you want to happen instead when a “Precursors of Failure” pattern occurs. You can use simple visualizations or even the Swish pattern for those who know. Another way is to get your friend to practise with you what you say you will do instead (that’s why I say share)

Of course, the above 2 strategies may not resolve every single “Precursors of Failure” pattern. So go ahead and leave a comment on what has worked for you and what has not or even share some of your successful strategies. I’m eager to learn too. What else is possible?