Is outsmarting syndrome killing your progress?

Ever met someone articulating goals passionately, yet not moving forward over time, changing goals often, shooting down possibilities, or quite adroitly presenting themselves as victims of circumstances? Very likely that one is dealing with someone with outsmarting syndrome.

All of us have some goals or a purpose, though some are aware and others are not. How we make progress towards them depends on how well we self-articulate them, and take consonant and consistent action. More often than not, non-awareness is relatively a better state to be in, rather than high awareness unsupported by action and even worse is stronger counter-thinking to destroy action. With quite a few that I coach, I find this quite rampant.

The genesis of destructive emotion of regret lies right here in our justifications with our own selves for either counter arguing with our inner beliefs to suppress them, or justifying inaction. These may be asymptomatic for long, or, may show up through irregularity, denial, procrastination, ridicule, defensive attitude, stubbornness or overconfidence.

Outsmarting is a limiting behaviour and keeps one from moving forward. It nearly acts like antibodies that begin killing productive cells by suppression, dominance or infecting them. We generate, and nourish such way of thinking that defeats every productive thought with a view to win over an argument or positive idea and feel victorious. The cacophony created by the distortions gains damaging proportions and quite certainly leads to repentance or regret later when one finds himself quite far from his desired goals. Change does cause discomfort, and most with this syndrome derail faster than others, and slip back to comfort zones.

It is therefore, a good idea to seek help, self- explore blind spots and take massive action to overpower barriers. Being aware that outsmarting only hurts back while we enjoy this self- destructive victory, is a good point to begin the process of change. This new-year vacation is a good time to sit back and mull over your thoughts and actions against your goals and conclude decisively on future course. A well thought out plan could well shape up much more productive resolution for the new-year. Getting a coach to help could be one strong building block in the direction. To know how coachable you are, do visit www.thegrowthevangelist.com and write back to Dr. Alok Purohit. Wish you a very happy and exciting new year.