Thanks for your comment, and especially for this great quote:

Ignore the demons and create your own destiny.

That’s quality stuff right there. Let’s all keep those new and different ideas coming. As you indicate in your comment, Kyle, where would we be without that?

You have to find the passion in your life to reach your potential. We should be looking at the glass being half full instead of half empty. Stay positive.

Ignore the demons and create your own destiny. You would be surprised what you just might come up with. Listen to yourself and do what is right for you.

If you find new behavior or a new strategy that will satisfy both the needs of you and your inner demon (the positive needs), you will find that it won’t bother you that much anymore.

Even as Lodewijk and I have discussed the amount of listening to the inner demons that we should allow ourselves to do, the flip side of that is that we should always listen to empowering and inspiring thoughts and feelings that come from our inner beings (heart, soul, whatever you want to call it).

Each of us is the person who knows best what we need, and when it “feels” right to us, that’s because it IS!

Thanks, Jen!

Thank you SO much for sharing that interesting take on this article from the NLP perspective.

I would definitely classify this as one of those “semantic” point of view situations, because on one hand, I totally agree with you, and somewhat expressed that in this post. Our desire to do something is our desire to grow, but on that same token, our desire to NOT do something (not be broke, not smoke, etc.), can also be a desire to grow, even if all we are trying to grow is confidence in our own will power.

So, when it comes to either ignoring the inner demons, or embracing their message, I would say that we need to first do one, then the other:

1) Embrace the inner demon and make a conscious effort to ask what we are supposed to be learning from that screamin’ demon (sorry, couldn’t resist!).

2) THEN ignore it. A demon that is screaming for us to do things that we don’t want to do is often one that has been growing for years, but now that we have grown consciously over the years, the “old” demon is no longer relevant to our lives.

Like I said, semantics, but still good food for thought either way. Thanks a bunch for adding to the conversation, Lodewijk!

The presupposition, as defined by Richard Bandler, is: Feedback vs. Failure – All results and behaviors are achievements, whether they are desired outcomes for a given task/context, or not. And it’s a beauty It place the responsibility for everything we create right on our own hands.

But NLP also leads me to disagree with you on ignoring the inner demons. Another presupposition is: There is a positive intention motivating every behavior, and a context in which every behavior has value. So there is a positive intention to the behavior that the inner demon is showing.

When you ignore the inner demon, and you do not satisfy the positive intention it’s trying to achieve, it will only scream louder. So to effectively vanquish the demon, you should embrace it first and find out what it is trying to achieve for you.

I’ll take Steve’s smoking as an example. The positive intention of smoking can be:
- having several micro breaks a day
- a feeling of belonging to a group
- relaxation
- … (you fill it in)

If you ignore those benefits, the inner demon will roar it’s head viciously. But as soon as you find new behavior that incorporates the benefits of the old behavior, without the negatives, only then will you succeed in my opinion.

So to really vanquish the demon, you should embrace it first and find out what it is that it’s trying to do for you. Once you find that out, you can thank it for doing that for you, and find new behavior

Now I’ll step of my NLP soapbox…

Definitely no need for you to take up smoking again, but thank you so much for that ringing endorsement!

As you said, those past less-than successful attempts to do something can work both for us, and against us. It boils down to remembering the lessons that we learned, but not allowing them to color our future endeavors.

Thank you so much for sharing your personal story with us, Steve. It really adds to the value of this post to hear how these concepts have applied to people’s lives.

Thanks again!

If this doesn’t make digg, I’m going to take up smoking again. No No No Just kidding.

I especially like what you say about inner demons. They are a catch 22. If you keep doing a thing and failing we are programming our subconscious for failure and that is where our inner demons come from. But past performance is not indicative of future results, that is why we need to keep trying. It took me over 10 attempts to finally quit smoking. Each failure taught me a lesson. But there was always the little devil on my should who would say, “you failed last time, you’ll never do it, why bother” and that voice came from my subconscious which is feeding me my past failure. But that is why it so important to ignore negative mental talk. Force positive thought into your head, even if you don’t believe them yet, if you do, you’ll persist and eventually succeed. Since failure is almost required to succeed, ingnoring your inner demons is required as well.

Yes, I do want the “stuff” that I am working towards, yet the freedom of being able to have those things is the wonderful and rich reward that comes from growing into that type of person. It’s a total win/win situation!