Self sabotage is self defense

After doing my own training for close to 2 years now, I notice among my participants, friends and relatives, there are many who are good at being bad. Strange? Not really when I explain further. Have you spoken to someone who is in trouble and tell you how down he is. However, when you start giving suggestions, suddenly he transforms into a super energetic guy to tell you why he can't change or act on his problem. Suddenly, he is motivated to convince you that he is NOT motivated. Still sounds strange? I call this act Self sabotage. It is aplenty. If only this guy can use the motivation for a better objective, things will be really different. Then, the next question is 'why not he does that?'

I believe the root causes are lack of self confidence and fear. When a person lacks confidence, he does not only sees his weaknesses and not his strengths, he also wants to tell the whole world his weaknesses. When you ask someone who has fear in presenting, they will tell you all the weaknesses they have 'confidently'. Hence, telling the world his weaknesses seems to be his way of boosting confidence (although it makes things worse at the end of the day).

For those who have fear, not knowing is the biggest fear of all. Between a fear of something and a fear of nothing, fear of nothing is definitely more scary because it can mean ANYTHING. Logically, it makes sense too. Which one will you choose: a fixed problem or an ever changing problem?

If we look at both the factors, the reactions we see are generally how a person is trying to defend himself. His defense techniques may not be effective, but that is what he knows until now.

How can we help them? Give them a metaphor. A good example will be if a guy normally lets the girlfriend get into a taxi before he goes in thinking that it is his way of protecting others, what happen if the taxi speeds off before he gets in? Wouldn't that jeopardize his gf? This metaphor will help us convince the person that he has a need to defend and protect but at the same time, he needs to know better methods. This will open up the person more and at the same time allowing them to hold to their mode of 'protecting themselves.

So for a person who has trouble presenting, would it be easier and more effective to ask :
'Do you want to learn how to present well?' versus
'Do you want to know more how to protect yourself better when you give a presentation?'

Second question will have better alignment. More importantly, it will not trigger off the person's defense mechanism of convincing you that he or she cannot do it.

Self sabo to self defense to self realization to self motivation.