Self Sabotage or Just Kinda stupid?

innerwork mindset Jan 28, 2023

Today we are going to have conversation around how to eliminate self sabotage. So many times when I get women to talk about what it is thety really want for themselves, they will tell me that there have been times where they have felt really committed, and really gone for it – but just when they are about to get to the next level of themselves, all of a sudden they back out of something they had committed to, or they say the wrong thing, or they say something nasty, or they just don’t follow through.

Often women will say – I just don’t understand, I just don’t know why I keep sabotaging myself in this way.

 

Lets get clear on what sabotage is – it only comes from one reason, and its important to really get this because it is the foundation to understanding human behaviour, why we do what we do.

If you are sabotaging yourself it means you are pumping the brakes on yourself and stopping yourself from following through – why would you do that?

Its actually very simple – you associate more pain to following through.

 

Your sabotaging yourself as a way of stopping yourself from doing something that you think on some level is going to create a lot of pain in your life.

 

The tricky thing? Some people actually think that the success they have said they want is actually going to cause pain. Its common that people fear that their success is actually going to put them in a position where they feel alone or separate from other people.

 

This happens a lot – people will do all the ground work to build momentum in some area of their life, but as they start to get closed to succeeding – they sabotage.

 

Why?

Why do people do this?

Its because the brain notices. Lets get real – the brain notices that one we start to succeed, people around us aren’t always that excited about it, they aren’t that into it.

But when you fail – theres always people going “ohh girl, how you doing? Whats going on? Lets talk about it”

But when you succeed they are like “oh, ok – easy for you I guess”

It happens right?

Well, with that kind of conditioning, no wonder people sabotage.

We have to take control back for ourselves – and the way that we do this is by changing our associations to the things we are sabotaging.

As a coach for the last 15 years, Ive also noticed something that Im going to call out today in a big way – a lot of people just assume that they can blame their lack of progress on self sabotage.

 

A lot of people say “oh I just keep sabotaging my success” – but its worth asking, is this really self sabotage, or are you just being half assed? Are you just doing dumb shit that’s getting in the way of your progress?

What I mean by that is  - not everything that you do that takes away from your possibility to succed is a result of self sabotage.

 

Sometimes you just make shitty decisions – or you aren’t organised enough, you don’t want to make up some story for yourself that there is this big, giant, pattern controlling your life.

A lot of people do that – they decide for themselves that they are a person tha self sabotages.. and of course, because that’s what they have decided, that’s who they are.

 

So, get clear for yourself, do I self sabotage or am I just being stupid with myself?

If you do in fact self sabotage, you might beat yourself up about it because you haven’t yet understood why you keep doing it.

When it comes to self sabotage – all human beings do it with a positive intent. I want you to really understand that. Pretty much everything we do, we do for a positive intent.

 

For example, if like me, you are eating chocolate every night – its not because you are actively choosing to eat sugar, and goodness knows what else is in there, you aren’t trying to make yourself unhealthy – its that long ago your brain linked up that “hey, if Im bored, or frustrated, or I am feeling some kind of pain of some sort.. this is a way to distract myself. This is a way to find a moment of freedom from the pain AND create some pleasure.

 

That’s what your brain has learned to do.

 

The intent of eating chocolate at night is not to sabotage you, its actually about creating pleasure and avoiding pain.

 

Do you get that?

 

People do the same thing with cigarettes, or alcohol or if you use drugs, you do the same thing if you scroll on social media too much, or if you cancel plans you had agreed to.. when you do these things there is actually always a positive intent.

Your brain is trying to do something that is good for you in the form of getting pleasure and avoiding pain.

 

So, whats the real challenge for ourselves here?

What are we working with?

For many of us, the problem is we have what has been referred to as an association avoidance – we have mixed neural associations where we sabotage a relationship, why?

Because on the one side e are really aware of the pleasure – omgosh if I can be in this relationship its going to be so great, I wont be alone and Ill feel special and I can share my life – but on the other hand, we have had many experiences where relationships have meant pain.

So our brain freaks out.

 

We start to take actions that lead us to the potential of a relationship and all of a sudden our brain comes HOLD up, this might mean pain.

We are confused and overwhelmed because we get these mixed sensations because our brain doesn’t know – is it going to be pain or pleasure??

 

When our brain doesn’t know – it stops everything. It tries to stop the process of progress.

 

The stories that we tell ourselves about what we have experienced and what we make that mean for our future create the associations that keep us stuck in a pattern of self sabotage. If for example, you experienced a painful break up – and assume that breaking up with someone will always be a really difficult, almost unbearable experience, then the potential and possibility of being in a new relationship is always clouded with that association. Break ups are terrible and should be avoided at all costs – how easy will it be then for you to be open to a new relationship??

We have to work to release the associations we have about things in our lives – because when we don’t, we pay the ultimate price.

 

You don’t have to live like that  - you can develop the skills to take experiences that were painful and liberate yourself from it. Your biography is not your destiny.

 

There are many techniques you can learn and apply to support you in this – you can even just begin to consciously ask yourself better questions, for example, ok this may have not been the relationship for me, but what did I learn so that I don’t have to experience pain in the future?

Not all relationships are painful. That one was – but what can I learn from it so the next experience I have in relationship can be more pleasurable.

 

Or so that I can rewire the way I am thinking about that relationship so that it supports me.

We can apply this to any area of our lives.

 

I recently had a phone call with a friend who has been part of my life for a really long time – she recently decided to have the covid 19 vaccine and suffered some really uncomfortable side effects afterwards. So much so that she drove herself to hospital so that you could be seen immediately. This didn’t surprise me – at all.

 

I wasn’t shocked or concerned or worried. That makes me sound like a terrible friend, right? Well, whats true is that this is a friend that always seems to get the shit end of every stick, if something can go wrong for her – it will. There is always some high drama she is sharing in her life.

It used to drive me crazy. Id get so angry at her because in the past she would call me and say that she had all sorts of crazy symptoms and I would panic and think “omg, this sounds terrible, it sounds serious” but luckily, nothing was ever wrong. She would see doctors or specialists and everything was always fine.

This was going on for years – and I really got fed up with it. It was hard to take her seriously. I know a lot of people turned their back on her – but heres what I came to realise. She associated being unwell with having more love and attention. What she is trying to get out of this behaviour is the affirmation that people love her. The bottom line – she wanted to feel love.

 

Somewhere in her lived experience, she linked up that if she was unwell, or hurt, there would be people that would be with her and worried about her and checking up on her – but that isn’t really love is it?

That’s obligation. And making people feel obligated is actually sabotaging her ability to create safe, meaningful, connected relationships.

Im not her coach, she hasn’t asked for my feedback, and so Ive never had a conversation with her about any of this.

We can learn so much from the way we experience relationships and this has really highlighted for me that its important to be conscious of the ways that we are fulfilling our needs – in this case, if she wants to experience more love in her life, the best way for her to do that would be to not create drama, but to just give more love.

To be loving to people – to give them so much love that they have to give you loving back.
There is a law in life called reciprocation.

What you put out – people just feel like they have to get it back.

 

People stay in relationships for longer than they should sometimes because they feel like the other person just loves them so much.

 

My beautiful friend should just be her beautiful self and pour love into everyone around her and she would get it all back ten fold. The connection and conversation she is craving -  and people would remember how funny she is and how much fun she is, rather than everyone always feeling kind of obligated and worn down by her vibe and talking shit about her.

 

Any pattern of self sabotage comes from a positive intent – we are always trying to get something that is good for us.

 

You can free yourself from self sabotage right now from knowing that from this point forward, you don’t have to think that every mistake you make is self sabotage and feel like you are up against this big scary part of you that is out to get you – chill a little. Try another approach. Maybe you just have some shitty habits, or you aren’t paying attention or you aren’t focusing, it may not be a self sabotage pattern so don’t jump to conclusions.

it might just be bad habits, you can refocus, decide what you do want and go for it.

 

But if it really is a pattern of self sabotage where you are getting in your own way and screwing things up – its cool. Don’t get down on yourself about it, remind yourself that your brain is doing what it does best.

 

It thinks it is keeping you out of pain and giving you pleasure – you just have to teach your brain a better pattern, that’s all.

 

Just ask yourself – whats the intent. That’s how you dissolve self sabotage.

 

Lets break this down into a few steps really quickly:

 

  1. Identify the behaviour that’s keeping you from getting your goals; something that’s stopping you or holding you back.
  2. Once you have identified it – whats the positive intent here? What is my brain trying to give me? So for example, if you have a great idea and you want to share it with your boss, but everytime you go to share it, you cant bring yourself to say anything..well whats the intent? My guess would be your brain is working to keep you from feeling shut down or rejected, and so in that moment you figure, if I don’t say anything I cant be rejected. Rejection is pain, I don’t want pain.

 

So you have to get clear on what the positive intent is – and you can go, ok, I see whats happening in this moment, my brain is trying to protect me from rejection.

 

  1. Teach your brain that its important for you to actually take action. We do this by getting really clear for ourselves, what the consequence of not taking the appropriate action in the moment is. So for example, the little akward pain you might feel if your boss isn’t as excited about your idea as you are is probably more manageable than starting to resent and hate your job every day. And lets not forget the possibility of your idea being well received – how good would that feel.

 

We do this on paper – have a conversation with yourself, write down all the ways it will hold you back in your life if you don’t change this pattern, and all the pleasure youll get by making the pattern work.  

 

Finally, interrupt the pattern & recondition yourself – visualisation can help here. You see yourself sabotaging, and you scramble the pattern of that within your mind. You see yourself doing something different.

 

We can change and eliminate self sabotage – some of the most successful people have patterns of self sabotage. So remember, if you are doing things that aren’t supporting you in the long term, don’t feel bad about it. Its just a pattern we can create, but it’s a tendency we can change. It feels bigger than it is and it is a lot easier to change than we might have thought.

 

 

 

Self Sabotage or Just Kinda stupid?

Today we are going to have conversation around how to eliminate self sabotage. So many times when I get women to talk about what it is thety really want for themselves, they will tell me that there have been times where they have felt really committed, and really gone for it – but just when they are about to get to the next level of themselves, all of a sudden they back out of something they had committed to, or they say the wrong thing, or they say something nasty, or they just don’t follow through.

Often women will say – I just don’t understand, I just don’t know why I keep sabotaging myself in this way.

 

Lets get clear on what sabotage is – it only comes from one reason, and its important to really get this because it is the foundation to understanding human behaviour, why we do what we do.

If you are sabotaging yourself it means you are pumping the brakes on yourself and stopping yourself from following through – why would you do that?

Its actually very simple – you associate more pain to following through.

 

Your sabotaging yourself as a way of stopping yourself from doing something that you think on some level is going to create a lot of pain in your life.

 

The tricky thing? Some people actually think that the success they have said they want is actually going to cause pain. Its common that people fear that their success is actually going to put them in a position where they feel alone or separate from other people.

 

This happens a lot – people will do all the ground work to build momentum in some area of their life, but as they start to get closed to succeeding – they sabotage.

 

Why?

Why do people do this?

Its because the brain notices. Lets get real – the brain notices that one we start to succeed, people around us aren’t always that excited about it, they aren’t that into it.

But when you fail – theres always people going “ohh girl, how you doing? Whats going on? Lets talk about it”

But when you succeed they are like “oh, ok – easy for you I guess”

It happens right?

Well, with that kind of conditioning, no wonder people sabotage.

We have to take control back for ourselves – and the way that we do this is by changing our associations to the things we are sabotaging.

As a coach for the last 15 years, Ive also noticed something that Im going to call out today in a big way – a lot of people just assume that they can blame their lack of progress on self sabotage.

 

A lot of people say “oh I just keep sabotaging my success” – but its worth asking, is this really self sabotage, or are you just being half assed? Are you just doing dumb shit that’s getting in the way of your progress?

What I mean by that is  - not everything that you do that takes away from your possibility to succed is a result of self sabotage.

 

Sometimes you just make shitty decisions – or you aren’t organised enough, you don’t want to make up some story for yourself that there is this big, giant, pattern controlling your life.

A lot of people do that – they decide for themselves that they are a person tha self sabotages.. and of course, because that’s what they have decided, that’s who they are.

 

So, get clear for yourself, do I self sabotage or am I just being stupid with myself?

If you do in fact self sabotage, you might beat yourself up about it because you haven’t yet understood why you keep doing it.

When it comes to self sabotage – all human beings do it with a positive intent. I want you to really understand that. Pretty much everything we do, we do for a positive intent.

 

For example, if like me, you are eating chocolate every night – its not because you are actively choosing to eat sugar, and goodness knows what else is in there, you aren’t trying to make yourself unhealthy – its that long ago your brain linked up that “hey, if Im bored, or frustrated, or I am feeling some kind of pain of some sort.. this is a way to distract myself. This is a way to find a moment of freedom from the pain AND create some pleasure.

 

That’s what your brain has learned to do.

 

The intent of eating chocolate at night is not to sabotage you, its actually about creating pleasure and avoiding pain.

 

Do you get that?

 

People do the same thing with cigarettes, or alcohol or if you use drugs, you do the same thing if you scroll on social media too much, or if you cancel plans you had agreed to.. when you do these things there is actually always a positive intent.

Your brain is trying to do something that is good for you in the form of getting pleasure and avoiding pain.

 

So, whats the real challenge for ourselves here?

What are we working with?

For many of us, the problem is we have what has been referred to as an association avoidance – we have mixed neural associations where we sabotage a relationship, why?

Because on the one side e are really aware of the pleasure – omgosh if I can be in this relationship its going to be so great, I wont be alone and Ill feel special and I can share my life – but on the other hand, we have had many experiences where relationships have meant pain.

So our brain freaks out.

 

We start to take actions that lead us to the potential of a relationship and all of a sudden our brain comes HOLD up, this might mean pain.

We are confused and overwhelmed because we get these mixed sensations because our brain doesn’t know – is it going to be pain or pleasure??

 

When our brain doesn’t know – it stops everything. It tries to stop the process of progress.

 

The stories that we tell ourselves about what we have experienced and what we make that mean for our future create the associations that keep us stuck in a pattern of self sabotage. If for example, you experienced a painful break up – and assume that breaking up with someone will always be a really difficult, almost unbearable experience, then the potential and possibility of being in a new relationship is always clouded with that association. Break ups are terrible and should be avoided at all costs – how easy will it be then for you to be open to a new relationship??

We have to work to release the associations we have about things in our lives – because when we don’t, we pay the ultimate price.

 

You don’t have to live like that  - you can develop the skills to take experiences that were painful and liberate yourself from it. Your biography is not your destiny.

 

There are many techniques you can learn and apply to support you in this – you can even just begin to consciously ask yourself better questions, for example, ok this may have not been the relationship for me, but what did I learn so that I don’t have to experience pain in the future?

Not all relationships are painful. That one was – but what can I learn from it so the next experience I have in relationship can be more pleasurable.

 

Or so that I can rewire the way I am thinking about that relationship so that it supports me.

We can apply this to any area of our lives.

 

I recently had a phone call with a friend who has been part of my life for a really long time – she recently decided to have the covid 19 vaccine and suffered some really uncomfortable side effects afterwards. So much so that she drove herself to hospital so that you could be seen immediately. This didn’t surprise me – at all.

 

I wasn’t shocked or concerned or worried. That makes me sound like a terrible friend, right? Well, whats true is that this is a friend that always seems to get the shit end of every stick, if something can go wrong for her – it will. There is always some high drama she is sharing in her life.

It used to drive me crazy. Id get so angry at her because in the past she would call me and say that she had all sorts of crazy symptoms and I would panic and think “omg, this sounds terrible, it sounds serious” but luckily, nothing was ever wrong. She would see doctors or specialists and everything was always fine.

This was going on for years – and I really got fed up with it. It was hard to take her seriously. I know a lot of people turned their back on her – but heres what I came to realise. She associated being unwell with having more love and attention. What she is trying to get out of this behaviour is the affirmation that people love her. The bottom line – she wanted to feel love.

 

Somewhere in her lived experience, she linked up that if she was unwell, or hurt, there would be people that would be with her and worried about her and checking up on her – but that isn’t really love is it?

That’s obligation. And making people feel obligated is actually sabotaging her ability to create safe, meaningful, connected relationships.

Im not her coach, she hasn’t asked for my feedback, and so Ive never had a conversation with her about any of this.

We can learn so much from the way we experience relationships and this has really highlighted for me that its important to be conscious of the ways that we are fulfilling our needs – in this case, if she wants to experience more love in her life, the best way for her to do that would be to not create drama, but to just give more love.

To be loving to people – to give them so much love that they have to give you loving back.
There is a law in life called reciprocation.

What you put out – people just feel like they have to get it back.

 

People stay in relationships for longer than they should sometimes because they feel like the other person just loves them so much.

 

My beautiful friend should just be her beautiful self and pour love into everyone around her and she would get it all back ten fold. The connection and conversation she is craving -  and people would remember how funny she is and how much fun she is, rather than everyone always feeling kind of obligated and worn down by her vibe and talking shit about her.

 

Any pattern of self sabotage comes from a positive intent – we are always trying to get something that is good for us.

 

You can free yourself from self sabotage right now from knowing that from this point forward, you don’t have to think that every mistake you make is self sabotage and feel like you are up against this big scary part of you that is out to get you – chill a little. Try another approach. Maybe you just have some shitty habits, or you aren’t paying attention or you aren’t focusing, it may not be a self sabotage pattern so don’t jump to conclusions.

it might just be bad habits, you can refocus, decide what you do want and go for it.

 

But if it really is a pattern of self sabotage where you are getting in your own way and screwing things up – its cool. Don’t get down on yourself about it, remind yourself that your brain is doing what it does best.

 

It thinks it is keeping you out of pain and giving you pleasure – you just have to teach your brain a better pattern, that’s all.

 

Just ask yourself – whats the intent. That’s how you dissolve self sabotage.

 

Lets break this down into a few steps really quickly:

 

  1. Identify the behaviour that’s keeping you from getting your goals; something that’s stopping you or holding you back.
  2. Once you have identified it – whats the positive intent here? What is my brain trying to give me? So for example, if you have a great idea and you want to share it with your boss, but everytime you go to share it, you cant bring yourself to say anything..well whats the intent? My guess would be your brain is working to keep you from feeling shut down or rejected, and so in that moment you figure, if I don’t say anything I cant be rejected. Rejection is pain, I don’t want pain.

 

So you have to get clear on what the positive intent is – and you can go, ok, I see whats happening in this moment, my brain is trying to protect me from rejection.

 

  1. Teach your brain that its important for you to actually take action. We do this by getting really clear for ourselves, what the consequence of not taking the appropriate action in the moment is. So for example, the little akward pain you might feel if your boss isn’t as excited about your idea as you are is probably more manageable than starting to resent and hate your job every day. And lets not forget the possibility of your idea being well received – how good would that feel.

 

We do this on paper – have a conversation with yourself, write down all the ways it will hold you back in your life if you don’t change this pattern, and all the pleasure youll get by making the pattern work.  

 

Finally, interrupt the pattern & recondition yourself – visualisation can help here. You see yourself sabotaging, and you scramble the pattern of that within your mind. You see yourself doing something different.

 

We can change and eliminate self sabotage – some of the most successful people have patterns of self sabotage. So remember, if you are doing things that aren’t supporting you in the long term, don’t feel bad about it. Its just a pattern we can create, but it’s a tendency we can change. It feels bigger than it is and it is a lot easier to change than we might have thought.

 

 

 

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