Sick and tired of Self-Sabotage? Join me and Chris Stefanick 9/25 at Noon est.

BlogTalkRadio. Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at BlogTalkRadio.com/SheddingtheBitch. The bitch, or share your stories on our website at sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to the fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back.

818-572-2910. Good day, good day, good day everyone. How are you on this somewhat cloudy and moody Tuesday, at least here in Atlanta, Georgia. We are finally into fall. So I think we're a couple days into fall now and finally breaking the 90-degree point, or I should say getting below it finally. And hopefully, hopefully over the next few days, we're expecting a lot of rain, which we can certainly use here. But I hope you're having a glorious day wherever you might be. We have a fun, fun, fun conversation to be had today for the next 50 minutes or so. But before we get into that, I'll just mention we have Ask Bernadette coming up. So ask me anything. You could post your questions, stories, or challenges out on Facebook, Twitter, our Shedding the Bitch pages. You can email me directly at BernadetteBoas@balloffireinc.com. You can go to LinkedIn is where I get a good many of you that reach out to me directly. You'll go on to LinkedIn and send me a private message, which is perfectly, perfectly fine as well. So whatever it is, however you need to reach me, and whatever your challenge story or even just your question is, be sure to reach out. And what we do is I'll answer them right then and there when I see them., come across, and Deborah of Parker House Virtual Services, our guru, is always out there on Facebook and Twitter as well, so she'll make sure I'm aware of them, and I'll answer them and address them right then and there, but then we bring them right here onto the first Tuesday of every month's program so we can drill into them even further than what we might be able to do on a Facebook or a Twitter post. At the same time, it gives you an opportunity to be able to call in, which some of you like to do. I won't say all of you do, uh, some of you are shy, but then you could call in and have a direct conversation with me, provide me more backstory, that kind of thing. So that's the first Tuesday of every month, which will be next Tuesday, October 2nd, if you can believe it that we are into October. Now, things to think about is it is the fourth quarter from a business perspective, so if there's anything from your own business, your company perspective. You can certainly ask any sort of question in that regard. If you have some career advice, maybe you are looking to, you know, get ahead of your performance reviews in January, or you're looking to change up things in the new year, let's start getting them addressed now because the fourth quarter, a lot of our episodes are focused on really preparing for the new year and kind of recycling and reassessing what's gone on in the current year. So that's next Tuesday noon Eastern time, and I'll look forward to addressing your, your questions. Then October is full. We've got conversations with August Cruz coming up, Terry Crook, and Elliot Katz. And of course, it's all top-of-mind issues that women are dealing with day in, day out in all areas of their life, and helping you to enrich it so you can create and accelerate and achieve the goals and the riches that you want in life. So let's see what else is happening in the Shedding the Bitch community. There's sometimes when it's nice and quiet, it's a good thing, and there isn't a lot of noise around us, so we will just jump right into our conversation for today. So our conversation is overcoming self-sabotage. So if you, you know, have any aspect of your world that you tend to be your worst enemy, then you know you're raising your hand and/or you're shaking your head. We're going to be talking about what the biggest thing is that's keeping you from being successful. And everyone self-sabotages, and the impact can be seen in all areas of our lives—career, wealth, health, relationships. And the subconscious mind where all that self-sabotaging is going on is very powerful and within unseen, and it lies in the root cause for issues in all areas of your life. That self-sabotage is what is holding you back, and it's actually great news. Why is that? Because you have tremendous ability to stop self-sabotaging and achieve great change in your life. And if that is what is holding you back, with something external— I, I totally messed that up— if what is holding you back is something external, you would not have nearly as much power as you do when you're dealing with internal. So 3 things I want you to be listening for that we're going to talk about with our guest is how do we self-sabotage, and why is it that we self-sabotage ourselves? Why would we set ourselves up for failure or disappointment or hurt or pain? And what can you do to stop self-sabotaging? Now, as many of you know, if you are listening for the first time, I'll let you know, uh, we ground our conversations with a rich question that we want you to be thinking about as we talk with our guest. And 9 out of 10 times, even higher than that, they will address that question. But if they do not, we make sure that you know how to get to that individual, that expert, directly so you can be sure that you get your questions answered. So your rich question for today is, what area of your life and how are you self-sabotaging? What area of your life and how are you self-sabotaging? And if you're gonna reach out to us on Facebook, Twitter, or any number of places, You can use our rich tags of personal development, tag emotional intelligence, or you can tag growth. And of course, we're always tagging Shed the Bitch. So when we get back, we're going to just take a quick break. When we get back, we're going to introduce you to our guests and we're going to get into this conversation, because as many of us know, the sooner we can identify and address how we're self-sabotaging ourselves, the quicker and sooner we will be creating riches in our lives. So we'll be right back.

You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette's books Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business. Available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate size clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, who provides virtual assistance and and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com .com/shuttingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone, we're about to get into a conversation all about around self-sabotage and our guest is Chris Stepanak. He is the host of the podcast Choice Conversations. Since 2013, he has been delivering to his audience sessions that dive deep into the various topics of personal development— holistic health, relationships, financial success, parenting, healing and growth, purpose and meaning. His goal is to help as many people as possible improve in all area of their— all areas of their lives. As a life coach, he works one-on-one with those who want to take their life to the next level. Specializing in holistic health and overcoming self-sabotage, he helps his clients to make the positive changes he discusses on Choice Conversations. Welcome to the program, Chris. Hey Bernadette, how you doing? I am great, and I'm all pumped up about this because one, I definitely wanted to learn more and have our community learn more about your podcast, Choice Conversations. Because I, you know, I, I believe that, um, especially in our, uh, busy world, uh, podcasts and the ability to get help, uh, directly through those type of discussions and conversations is tremendous. And then of course, because you do help with self-sabotage, and who doesn't self-sabotage them— themselves in, you know, in some areas of their lives at some point in time, wouldn't you agree?

Oh, absolutely. That's been my experience. Everybody does it right. Well, and that's—

I'm glad you said that because that was the first place I wanted to start, is love to hear your journey, your, your backstory, and how did you also come to the point of wanting to share that through your podcast Choice Conversations and the coaching work that you do, right?

Right. Yeah, well, I was somebody who used to self-sabotage a whole lot more than I do now. I was somebody that— I was very sports addicted. I was one of these kind of guys that I'd start watching football Saturday at noon and would be watching through Monday night pretty much nonstop and would be in fantasy football leagues, pouring countless hours into researching my fantasy team and going into the forums and debating who's the best running back and all this kind of stuff that's not really very important, right? It was an escape for me, right? Like so many addictions are, it's a way to avoid discomfort, a way to avoid pain and the like. Sure. It was for me around 2008, I kind of woke up from the slumber. I felt like I was just kind of sleepwalking through life, no self-awareness, and very sports addicted. I started realizing at that point that I was in a lot of pain. I stopped avoiding the pain and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm really not happy with my life. There's all these areas I'm not happy about." was ignoring it. That was a very important first step, but it was painful coming out of that slumber. My wife calls it my midlife crisis. I call it my awakening. Nice. Yeah, so that led me down the path of discovering, looking for help. A lot of it originally was found through podcasts. Podcasts pointed me towards various topics in personal development, which led me to books and courses and things of that nature, and going and getting some help from coaches. After a while of going through hundreds of books and thousands of hours of podcasts and all of the personal development stuff that's out there, most of it does have at least something of use. There's some grains of wisdom in pretty much any of the stuff that's out there, but definitely some of it was more high impact than others. What I really found to be the biggest impact on my life was when I discovered this thing with self-sabotage and some of the primary, the root causes of self-sabotage and ways to address those.. And when I got to that, that's when I started seeing really rapid improvement in my life. And I was podcasting about all these different topics that I was learning about in personal development and started podcasting about self-sabotage. And my listeners would contact me, ask me for advice, and start having conversations with them on Facebook or even some of them through Skype and the like. And they were like, a couple of different people were like, "You're really good at this and you've really helped me out a lot." "You should be a coach. You should start charging for this and get some compensation for it." I really enjoyed it. When I was doing it, it was just so fulfilling to be able to help other people in that way. I just was passionate about it and loved doing it. That's when I was like, "Yeah, you know what? Maybe I should do that." So I started coaching, and I just love it. I feel like it's my passion is to help other people. So I mean, right now what that looks like is my podcast and coaching. Down the road, I'm definitely looking at setting up workshops and retreats and things of that nature, maybe some courses. But I just love to get to work with people and help them in whatever way I can.

Yeah, it's that aha moment, right? You know, that look on their face that they just go, oh yes, I understand. But help people, but help people, because those of us in the personal development arena You know, the idea of self-sabotage is, you know, pretty common. It's, it's, you know, a known term. But other people who really haven't come to that awakening, as you said, or even long before the awakening, they just aren't the one— they're not reading and they're not going and listening to podcasts and they're not really doing a lot of personal development. Help us understand what self-sabotage looks like.

Sure, sure. Right, so self-sabotage is when you do something and then after the fact you regret that you did it. Or you were like, "Why did I do that? I knew I wasn't supposed to do that." You know, maybe you say some harsh words to your child. You know, they were "pushing your buttons" and you say some things that you really shouldn't have, and then after the fact you're like, "Man, you know what?" Why did I do that? I know that's not— I sounded like my dad there, or whatever. A gentler touch would have been so much better there. Or you get in an argument with your spouse or significant other, and afterwards you're like, "Wow, how did that happen? How did that— we were just talking and all of a sudden we went ballistic." Or maybe it looks like you sit down to— you're like, "Oh, I shouldn't have it." I'm trying to lose weight. The doctors say I'm having this health problem, that health problem. I'm pre-diabetic or whatever. Well, I'll just have a bite, and the next thing you know, the whole cake's gone kind of thing.

That's me.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, so there's— Yeah, and so you're like, okay, well, wait, what happened there? So those are just different ways, like really any kind of addiction, there's a lot of addictions that are out there. That some of them are not socially acceptable, of course, like being into drugs and gambling and that sort of thing, but there's a lot of socially acceptable addictions as well, like food, being a workaholic, a very socially accepted one. A lot of times people are praised for their work ethic and look how well they're doing, and they can be really successful in their career because of that. The hours they're putting in, the hard work, but in the other areas of their life, they're really suffering. Maybe their family life is really suffering. Maybe their health is really suffering.

That was my issue. That was my self-sabotage, is I worked to kind of build myself up and hide from everything else that I should have been dealing with and never wanted to deal with. Right, right. So let me ask you a question, 'cause I saw this on, I saw this, I was watching The Voice last night, and I love in your introduction, that you also talk about, you know, the internal versus the external and the fact that self-sabotage is all that internal, which is great because— and you say that's a great thing because, you know, and your point probably is that you can control that. So I'm watching The Voice last night and I've watched it regularly over the last several years. But the one thing that drives me crazy every time one of them is being profiled, one of the singers is being profiled, is they'll say, this is my last chance. This is, you know, they're only 20, you know, whether they're 20 or 50, right? It's like, this is my last opportunity. Isn't that— so you talk the internal— isn't that a form of self-sabotage, or am I looking at that not, you know, differently?

Right, right. Yeah, so there's, there's, there's, there's different forms that it takes. There's two primary forms for lack of a better term, lenses I use to diagnose self-sabotage, to view self-sabotage. Something like, "This is my last chance." I would put this under the category of a false belief. One of the ways that people self-sabotage is they have negative core beliefs. They might believe something And a lot of times they don't even realize they believe it. Beliefs are almost like a tree, and your thoughts that you have, the story you tell yourself as you're going through your life, is built on top of these thoughts, right? So they're kind of like the leaves, or the thoughts, I'm sorry, these beliefs. The thoughts you have in your head are like the leaves in the tree, but they don't exist without the beliefs that are holding them up. So there's some surface beliefs below that would be like the branches, and then you get into some beliefs below that more like the core, the trunk of the tree, and then at the foundation of it all is your root beliefs, very deep down where you've gone as deep down as you can go. And the beliefs are built on one another. And so something like, "This is my last chance," that's probably not down at the root level. It's probably somewhere in the middle there. Between the leaves and the roots. But it's, you know, when I'm evaluating beliefs, I mean, ideally you want to get to the root because if you're up there in the branches and resolving false beliefs, resolving beliefs that don't serve you at the branch level, there's just other branches that are going to grow back in their place if you still haven't addressed the root belief. So one of the strategies for fixing these, this way you self-sabotage by having false beliefs, is digging down until you get to that root and then addressing that. When you do that, it tends to— the rest of the beliefs that are on top of it tend to fall away. You know, just like if you strike at the root, you kill the whole tree. You kill the whole plant. Right. Right. So when I'm doing, like when I'm working with a client or if I'm evaluating my own beliefs, I try to dig down deep, but then I also, with beliefs, whether they're at the surface or deep down, I ask myself two questions. I ask, "Is this true?" and "Does it serve me?" If I can't say yes to both of those, that yes, the belief is true, and yes, the belief serves me, then I think long and hard about, "Do I choose to believe this?" Because you can change what you believe. You have a choice, and this is the thing that most people don't realize. Most people, they're living their life with beliefs they never chose. They just kind of inherited them. Their beliefs were thrust on them by their environment, by primarily their family that they grew up around, their environment, the caregivers around them, as well as the media they're absorbing, what they're hearing on TV, what their teachers are telling them, that sort of thing. But you're getting this belief and you don't realize that you're absorbing these beliefs. You know, some of those core beliefs that you absorb that you might not realize that are at like the root of your misery would be something like maybe, you know, "I'm not good enough," you know, or "I'm a bad little boy" or "I'm a bad little girl" or one of those things where you pick that up along the way. And, you know, when you look at it and you ask those questions, you know, Is this true? Well, no. There might be times when you're doing things that could be evaluated by a system of ethics to be bad, but you're not that all the time. There's times when you're doing things that if you looked at it through that ethics lens, right, could be good as well. So to define yourself as I am bad, that's not true. I can be a variety of things at any different moment. And does that serve me? And of course, absolutely not serving you, you know. So it's like, okay, well, there's a, there's a good belief to dismantle, right? And so you want to dismantle the belief and then replace it with one that is true, that does serve you. Yeah, once you start doing that, the ripple effects throughout your whole life are astounding.

Amen. Amen to that. They are. They are. But I have to go back to In order to understand how people get down to that point or get to that point where they want to dig out the roots, you had made mention about your wife and that, you know, she used— I believe she used a term like slumber, that it's just, you know, you're in a slumber and you were feeling that you were in awakening. How much— what influence does like an immediate partner, spouse, friend parent, sibling have on not only a person changing and what, you know, and, and shifting their beliefs, but even wanting to acknowledge them and then support. And then once they do acknowledge and they do decide they want to change, then it's a matter of whether or not they're successful in that because of all of these influencers, I guess you're calling them. Around them, right? Right. So what do you— so do you suggest people do when it comes to, yeah, I want to change, but everybody else around me isn't on the same page?

Right, right. So this is a really tough one for a couple reasons. First of all, that's not a simple answer. So the simple answer, the answer I want to give is— you've heard that, I'm sure you've heard this before— like, you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Yes. So look around. Are the people that you spend the time with, are they living lives you want to live? Are they full of energy? Are they happy? Are they positive? Are they successful? Are they doing the things you want to do? Are they achieving the things you want to achieve? And if you're not, then replace those with other people. So that's the answer I want to give. And in general, that actually is pretty good advice. It's because it's giving you, it's going to help lift you up and make, it's going to help you to swim with the current rather than against it. Right. Right. You're surrounding yourself with negative people and like— but the reason why I say that's, that's like the simple answer is once you get far enough into this where you get really good at your beliefs and in choosing the thoughts you want to have in your head, choosing the story you're going to tell yourself, you can actually find— you can be around people like this and they don't have that power over you anymore. You've taken that power back to allow other people to influence you and to make you feel like you're less, like you're worthless, like you're not good enough. Again, the example I gave earlier of the child pushing your buttons, and they push my buttons, they made me angry. Well, no, they didn't make you anything. You got angry on your own, but once you master this, once you become like a, for lack of a better term, like a Zen master, you can get to the point where you're pretty close to immune to this influence of other people, but the danger there though is so few of us are at that level, especially if you're just new at this, that you're still going to be really influenced by other people and it is going to make it a lot harder for you to progress. At a very minimum, it's going to slow down your growth. It's going to slow down your progress if you're around people who are negative and who are not supportive to you, who are not giving you energy. Instead, they're taking your energy. I shouldn't even use that term taking because like I said, you're allowing them to take your energy is probably a more empowering way of putting it, right? Right. Yeah, you know, so that's that. I, I hate that that answer is not very simple. No, no, that's really not.

No, I understand, and that's very, very, very fair. Um, what— so when you said earlier too that, um, you know, you started having your podcast and then people would call you, and obviously they were asking you questions, you were giving them advice, and they were really enjoying and getting great benefit. Let's put it that way, getting great benefit and impact from your advice. What is it? At what stage? What is it that brings them to you to ask that question? It's one thing for people to listen to a podcast or to a show of any kind, read a book, but then take action to kind of ask that question. What are they coming to you with initially to where then you find that there's some some roots that you need to dig out.

Right, right. Well, it's probably two things. The first of all is usually they're in pain. Sometimes it's just like a specific problem. They're like, Chris, I'm, I'm pretty happy with my life, but I've got this one specific thing. You know, I'm glad I'm really hung up on this, this investment, you know, I made a bad investment and it's, it's really bugging me, or I'm really have a common one would be I've really got this relationship that "that is causing me a lot of pain, a lot of grief in my life." And, you know, maybe financially they're tied together, maybe they have children or whatever, and it's not just as simple as cutting it off and starting fresh. It's like, "You know, I really need to work on this. I owe it to my children to make the best effort to try to salvage this if possible," kind of thing. So they'll come to me because they're in a lot of pain, want help. That's one part of it. The other is It's people, the people that come to me almost, I would say, invariably are people that they found, they felt like they connected with me. They listen to the podcast and for whatever reason there's a chemistry, even though a podcast is kind of one-directional, where coaching of course is very much two-way, but podcast is one-directional. They just feel like, "Man, I feel like I know Chris. I feel like he's somebody that—" We could be really good friends. We're on the same wavelength, right? That's one of the great things you had mentioned about podcasting as a medium. It's phenomenal for that because there's so many great podcasters out there, but everybody is different. Everybody has different preferences. There's probably hundreds if not thousands of personal development podcasts out there., and these people are doing great work, but a couple of them you're going to really resonate with and you're going to feel like a bond with that person, and they're going to help. When you find somebody like that, you're going to be more motivated to keep coming back and listening, to learning more, and to acting on that and being like, "You know what? I'm starting to believe it. What Chris is telling me, I didn't really think I could improve my life, but now that I'm listening to it." Chris is resonating with me and I believe it. Like I said, there's plenty of people I'm sure that listen to me and are like, "Yeah, that's not the right guy for me," but then they find somebody else. Maybe they listen to you. Like Bernadette and her are on the same wavelength. That's the awesome thing about podcasting. Those are the two components I've seen for the people that seek me out. It's just they feel like they really connect with me. They're in a lot of pain. Right. Yep.

Yep. And I do want to—

to the point where like they need to act, you know. It's like everybody's like got something that's bothering them, right? But if it's not strong enough, if it's not agitating you enough, we tend to just put up with it, right? It's when it gets to that point where like, you know what, I can't take this anymore.

That's when people contact me. Yeah, cool. And I do want to mention to everybody too, um, Choice Conversations .com is where you can find his podcast. So you certainly want to, um, you know, get out there and check him out, look over, over the site, and then definitely, definitely take part in, um, in listening to his podcasts. Now, um, we didn't get an opportunity to finish it, uh, talking about it before we jumped on, on the, uh, show. Can you also explain— you, you were starting to tell me some resources that you had as far as them can get in touch with you, uh, at chris@choiceconversations.com. But then you have some resources, some articles or, or downloads. Could you go into that a little bit so others can know how to connect with you? Sure, sure.

So the best way to learn more about me is definitely to listen to my podcast. Like you said, it's at choiceconversations.com. Or anywhere, you know, people don't go to websites to listen to podcasts. They have apps on their phones, right? Right, right, right. I'm at all the different apps. You go to, you know, if you're going to iTunes or Stitcher or Google Play or these various places where you would find apps, if you do a search for Choice Conversations, I come right up. So that's going to be your best spot. And you can also contact me if you would like some coaching. Chris@choiceconversations.com. That's all lowercase for some reason. If you capitalize the C in Chris or something like that, it doesn't get to me. I had to learn that the hard way. Oh, really? But all lowercase. Yeah, is that not bizarre? Most email providers will allow you to capitalize however you want. It's case insensitive. And I think even if you do a Gmail account, you can even put other strange characters in there like dots, chris.stefanik.dogs.whatever. You could put dots in there. It will strip out all of that stuff. Just send it. But yeah, mine is very specific, Chris of Choice Conversations. At any rate, you could do that or look me up on Facebook. A link to Facebook, the best way to get to that would be just to go to choiceconversations.com and there's a link to Facebook from there.

Yeah, there is. Everyone appears here. Right.

I do have some short ebooks, some like guidebooks that if people wanted to look at those as well, they can. And those are like, they're just like specific topics that I created. I'm going to create more of these. I've got a few in the works that I haven't released yet, but like an example would be, you know, I have a guidebook for how to get a great night's sleep, and that's at sleep.choiceconversations.com. You know, or turning arguments into discussions. You know, one on a little relationships handbook that's at discussions.choiceconversations.com. Or, you know, I've got like my recommended reading list, which is at books.choiceconversations.com. So, and there's more that are coming.

He's everywhere. Yeah. He's everywhere. Well, we're going to take a quick break, and when we get back, I still want to kind of want to learn from Chris for all of you. Is, you know, why is self-sabotaging a big deal to anyone, and then some strategies to stop it. And he's obviously mentioned some and given us some great examples, and we're gonna dive into that a little bit more. So we are talking with Chris Stefanok, and he is our self-sabotage guru, and you can go to conversations, I'm sorry, choiceconversations.com to learn more. And then when we get back, we'll continue this conversation and get you those tips and advice that you need in order to create the riches in life that you deserve.

We'll be right back. You are listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. We are inspiring individuals around the globe to discover, confront, and shed their bitches of fear, insecurity, and negativity so they can create the riches in their career, business, and life they deserve. Be sure to check out Bernadette Boas' book, Shedding the Corporate Bitch: Shifting from Bitch to Rich in Life and Business, available on Amazon and sheddingthebitch.com. We also want to thank our sponsors, North Georgia Tax Solutions, who offers a broad range of tax services for small to corporate-sized clients. Go to ngtaxsolutions.com to learn more. And Parker House Virtual Services, Services, who provides virtual assistance and social media support for small to medium-sized businesses. Email Deborah Parker at deborahparker.va@gmail.com for more information. To become a sponsor or advertiser on our program, email us at mediarelations@sheddingthebitch.com. Shedding the Bitch Radio airs every Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Be sure to go to blogtalkradio.com/shuttingthebitchradio and follow the program for all of the updates and announcements of our guests and show topics. Now let's return to Bernadette and Shedding the Bitch Radio.

Welcome back everyone. We are talking to self-sabotage guru Chris Stefanak. And we are getting into kind of what it is, how it is. And what I really want to understand is why self-sabotage is so critical— not critical. I don't want to make it sound as if it's a positive— why it's so detrimental to ourselves. So, Chris, could you kind of give us some hard reasonings as to why we need to make sure that we reach out to someone like yourself as a coach to rid ourselves of self-sabotage?

Sure, sure. So as best as I can tell, it's at the root of basically everything that's wrong in your life. I'm not sure if I can make it any more clear than that, but it's my experience both with myself and with the, my clients I've definitely found this to be that that's where it's at. I mean, people will often blame things externally. That's a strategy that's a very— what's the term I should use here? I guess disempowering strategy. You know, not taking responsibility for your life, not taking responsibility for where you are at in this current moment. But if you take responsibility for it and then start looking at how did you get here, why, and you've got the right strategies, the right tools to diagnose that and dig down to the core of your self-sabotage, you can— all the things that you're struggling with, all of the things that are getting in your way, all the sources of your discontentment and misery, your suffering, can all be— they're all at the root of the self-sabotage. A world where you're self-sabotaging to one where you've— I don't know if anybody ever eliminates it 100%. It's a journey, not a destination, right? Right, right. Good point. But when you've reduced it, like I have, from— you know, let's put it this way. I do like a nightly practice of self-sabotage where we review Did I self-sabotage today? And then if I did, I'll process it. And when I first started doing this, like every day over the last 24 hours, there would be at least one incident, if not two or three, for me to process. And I would just pick one and go with that. And in a matter of months, it got down to the point where it was like, okay, instead of two or three a day, it was like now two or three a week. So now we're at the point where it's maybe one a week. Sometimes I go a whole week and I don't really notice these things. And so what does this look like? So here's, you know, when I sit down at night to do my practice, I usually don't say, "Did I self-sabotage in the last day?" Instead, what I'll say is, "Did something bother me in the last day? Did I have maybe a strong emotional reaction that didn't feel good?" Maybe I got angry, maybe I felt sad, maybe I was frustrated, one of those things. What, over the last day, you know, what kind of, was there an emotional, a strong, like, I guess for lack of a better term I'll say negative emotion, although I don't necessarily think emotions are negative. Emotions are just, they're like lights on a dashboard telling you what's going on, right? Right, right, right. If your check engine light comes on in your car, is that a negative thing or is it actually a good thing because it helps you to fix a problem before it gets worse? Exactly. But for lack of a better term, we're talking about the ones, the emotions that are not so fun, right? So the sadness, the anger, the jealousy, these various things as opposed to joy, happiness, love, humor, and various things like that that are more like the positive. You know, satisfaction and a light gratitude, those kind of emotions that we all love to have.

Yep. Well, and so I love that. So I'm hoping everybody's really took that in, that, you know, you could sit there at the end of the day and really just go back and assess. And because wouldn't you agree that a lot of this self-sabotaging, addressing it, is all about awareness. It's all about making sure that you're staying present in your— and if not present to your strategy, you know, even if you don't catch it right there in the moment, you're actually providing a, a time at the end of the day where you can kind of sit and reflect and therefore identify and become aware of where you might have you know, done something to hurt yourself. And so, so would you say that it is about awareness is what helps people to start that change and start that shift?

Well, I would say awareness is necessary but not sufficient to get rid of your self-sabotage. So you're not going to be able to get rid of self-sabotage without awareness, but if, if that's your only tool, it's not going to be sufficient. To get rid of it. You can maybe reduce it with awareness, but I don't think you're going to be able to eliminate it. And I can give you an example of that. Would love it. If you would. Okay. Absolutely. Love it. So here's an example of where using the beliefs, the things you believe, the stories you're telling yourself, can actually get rid of an area of self-sabotaging rather than just bringing you awareness to it. So say you're, you know, you're somebody like me who works at home, or maybe you're not even working from home, but you're doing something, you're busy on your laptop. You're sitting on the couch working on your laptop, you know, you're really focused on something, and your significant other comes home. They walk through the room, they don't say hello to you or anything, and just kind of walk in one side and walk out the other and don't say anything to you. And you immediately are like, "Oh my God." They, you know, my, I'll just say, I'll put myself in there to make this easier. Be like, "Oh, my wife, she's pissed off at me. There she is, she's pissed off at me. She didn't say hello. She's walked right through. She's doing this whole passive-aggressive thing where she's ignoring me." I didn't do anything and here she is attacking me again, using these passive-aggressive strategies, and I start to get angry. Now, awareness, I can kind of catch myself and be like, "Okay, you're getting angry. Take some deep breaths. Don't fly off the handle and go say something you're going to regret later, and maybe go talk to my wife and—" try to be curious and, you know, say, you know, "What's wrong? Why did you do that?" kind of thing, right? Where, you know, maybe, you know, I was feeling like, you know, my need to be, to be like connected with and understood and, you know, part of part of the family or part of the community or whatever. These things were like just not— those needs weren't getting met when she came in and walked through like that and ignored me. You know, I felt really ignored. It felt like attack almost, like this was her way of being passive-aggressive, right? So the awareness can continue there, but I'm still getting like there's this incident coming up where I feel like Oh my God, I'm like, my needs to be loved and my need for attention and my need for this and that or the other are not being fulfilled and this is a problem and I need to go deal with that and all of that. That's still all there where like, now if you take it and look at it from the strategy of like, well, what are the beliefs beneath this? And you could dig into these beliefs and find out that like, There's nothing— none of that stuff even had to be there at all. So if instead, instead of having that story come up in your mind when your wife came in, when my wife came in, and, you know, I'm like, oh, she's mad at me, and this is— she's doing that passive-aggressive again. Instead of having that story, maybe I'm like, ah, you know what, she sees I'm really busy right now and she's being respectful of me and my work and not disturbing me and allowing me to keep focused and work through that. God, I just love her and I'm thankful for her for respecting me and being so understanding and just really understanding what I need in this moment, which is I really need to get— I got this project that's looming and I need to get this done. You know, it's like my wife in those two scenarios, my wife did absolutely nothing different. She came in one side of the room and walked out the other. "But the story I'm telling myself changes everything, changes absolutely everything." That story is built upon your beliefs below it. The truth be told is actually probably you don't know either of those. If you really dig down into your core things, you don't know what was going on. I'm making a lot of assumptions there. If you do some beliefs work there, you might find out that you're like, "I have no idea what my wife was thinking when she walked into that room." and to make assumptions about it is sending me down a trail that could be a false one. So like I said before— That's a great example. Right, so your beliefs are— I ask myself, "Is this belief true? Is it serving me?" and I really need them to both kind of come into alignment. I want all my beliefs to be both true and serving me and to say, "Well, I believe that my wife had—" some motive when she came through. I don't know if that's true, right? So it's like right there, I'm— if I'm starting to build any kind of belief on top of that, I'm doing it on a shaky foundation because it might be built on something false. So it's best, right, to just be like, you know what, I, I don't know what she was thinking about, and, um, and that's fine. I don't need to get upset about it. I don't need to, um, you know, I'll assume the best until I know otherwise. If I If I want clarity on that, I can always take responsibility for that and find out and go initiate a conversation. And that way I know and I don't have to make an assumption. Or just be content with not knowing. You know, and say, "You know, I don't know. There's a lot of things I don't know right at this moment, and that's fine." Well, and at the same time, I think what you're— No reason to get charged up about it.

Right, right. Well, and at the same time, what you're pointing out to me that I tend to— for both my clients and myself is really, it's just not always about you. I had heard this quote like 5 or 6 years ago, um, or I read it somewhere that said something to the effect of, um, you'd be surprised at how little other people are thinking about you. Because we do tend to think that, right? We do. Isn't it funny? And it, it's so— it makes such sense that, yeah, when she walked in the room, you know, it's kind of like egotistical of you to think that it's always about you and that her response and her actions are just about you when actually it's not, so don't get in your head about it, right?

That's great. You're right. If you take responsibility for knowing about that and go ask questions and say, "Oh, hey, I just wanted to see how you were doing. Just checking in," you might find out that she was so head down, locked into her own problems that had nothing to do with you. Like, oh my God, I didn't even see you on the couch. I was just like, this thing happened at work today and it's got me, you know, I'm kind of in a hurry, I want to get it resolved or whatever, you know. Yeah, that's a really great point, Bernadette.

Yeah, yeah. So I want to make sure that we get some time because I know based on your experience and the work that you do and whatnot, there's some great other, you know, other great strategies for how people can kind of stop themselves before they go down a dark path. Uh, what does that look like? And maybe, maybe feel free to paint it in a picture of, uh, you know, a day in the life of coaching with Chris. You know, exactly kind of how do you, how do you take someone, uh, through a process to where they can, uh, stop sabotaging themselves, right? Right.

Yeah, so there's, you know, there's the whole strategy with changing core beliefs. And I did an episode on this, actually it just came out in June. So if you go to ChoiceConversations.com and you—

I'm looking at it. It's called Changing Core Beliefs.

Right, yeah, it came out on June 23rd, just a few episodes ago. So that would be one you could go listen to that. And I go over in pretty close detail about what the process is. To change core beliefs. There's another strategy that I really like as well, and it's somewhat related actually to that. And this is the concept that the self is not a monolithic entity. When you think of yourself, you think of yourself as like one monolithic being. You are who you are. But what we've found, when I say we, I guess I mean some certain psychologists in various branches, but predominantly in this one school of psychology. It's called Interfamily Systems Therapy, or IFS, developed by a gentleman named Dick Schwartz. And it's really like— have you seen the Disney movie Inside Out?

Not all of it, but I've seen a good part of it. Yep.

Yeah, okay, so it's kind of like that where you have inside of you, you know, there's different parts and there's a dashboard where like at any one time one part can go up to the dashboard and take control. I like to use the analogy of a wheel driving the car. You know, at some point you can have a part of you that just grabs the wheel and yanks it and then next thing you know you're in the ditch. And these parts, so like there's, you know, there's, yeah, the That was a cute movie and actually a really good movie. If you listeners have not seen it, I recommend go watch Inside Out. It's a really good movie for anyone, not just for kids, even though it's a Disney animated movie. But this is a concept that I'm sure you've heard of outside of that. So like an example would be an inner critic. We've all heard about having an inner critic. You know, your inner critic isn't you. It's a part of you. Part of you. It's just one voice in your head. Or you hear people talk about having an inner child, right? And healing your inner child. Or you even have the old thing where they say, "I've got a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, and they're whispering in my ear." You have parts of you. One part of you might feel one way, where another feels the other way. One part of you is like, I really need to lose some weight, I'm pre-diabetic, the doctor's yelling at me, I can tell I'm not really loving it when I look in the mirror these days, my jeans aren't fitting anymore, blah, blah, blah. Well, there's another part of you that's like, "Man, I really want that cake." And that's— to recognize that, that those are actually separate parts of you and deal with them separately So you know what, I'm going to heal this part over here who's maybe not in alignment with my goals, who's maybe not in alignment with— at the conscious level, I have these goals I want to reach, like I want to lose weight, I want to be more successful, I want to improve my marriage, I want to be a better parent, whatever it happens to be, right? But there's a part of you that might not be on board with that. So at the subconscious level, it's self-sabotaging you because it doesn't believe that that goal is really best for you. It believes something else is best for you. So this is, you know, one of the things people always ask is like, "Why would I do this thing? Why would I self-sabotage?" It's because you have a part of you who actually thinks it's doing you a favor, that you're better off.

Listening to it. Protecting you.

Protecting you, right. So like this, an addiction is a great example of this. Addiction is a way to distract you from something it thinks you can't handle. So maybe, you know, there's a lot of people that are emotional eaters. They start getting upset about something and they eat. That part of them says, oh, you can't handle that. If you were to actually deal with that, that would be so painful that I don't know what might happen. I mean, you might, you might kill yourself. So I'm going to distract you away from that because I know you can't handle that. And it's wrong, you can handle it if you, you know, but it's short-sighted, but it's really looking out for you. It really thinks like, you know, they're going to kill themselves if I let them deal with that, so I've got to get them to eat this cake. I've got to get them distracted with gambling or pornography or whatever your addiction happens to be. To the outside world, to outside observers, It seems like really destructive behavior, but this part truly believes that it's got your best interest at heart.

It's protecting you. Yeah. Wow.

Right. It's definitely a survival strategy, and it may have helped you to get through something traumatic when you were a child, and at that point you really needed it because you didn't have other tools. Right. But now you have other tools, and so now it's no longer in your best interest to do that. It just doesn't realize it, that part. What you do in the world of IFS, in Interfamily Systems Therapy, is you get to know these parts, you give them unconditional love, you give them empathy, and you help them to heal, get over that wound that caused them to go down the strategy that's now self-destructive. And teach them that there are better ways and teach them to trust you, that you know better strategies and that if there's like an emotion starts to trigger you, It's okay, I've got this. You don't need to grab the wheel. When you grab the wheel, we end up in the ditch. Just let me drive down the road. I promise I'll keep us on the road. I'm not going to kill myself. It's just building that trust and teaching it and bringing all the parts of you inside of you into harmony so that they're all on board with the strategy that are going to help you to be successful, so that they're all on board with the goals you have. Then now all of a sudden, those goals that keep getting in the way of yourself, you flow just naturally through them and are able to reach them.

Fabulous. Oh, it does. No, it does. And I'm sitting here just— and I'm a very visual person, so I'm here sitting here scribbling and, and painting a picture for myself because I'm putting, putting all those emotions and all those things into form. Because if I can see them in a form, then I can kind of almost like you're talking about them as if they're you know, you're using terms like them and, you know, we and, you know, so it's kind of fascinating because it's a way of not materializing or visual— well, it is visualizing, but in order for it to seem as if you're giving them names, you're giving them, you know, personalities, but at the same time you're working to also alter those personalities and to kind of bring them into harmony, as you say, which is which is fabulous. I love that. And everyone, I want you to be— I want you to go to choiceconversations.com. He does— he has some of his podcast episodes there, and then again, they're available on any of your podcasting apps. Each— is it each Friday morning, Chris?

Typically, yes. I have been on a little bit of a hiatus right now. I've got some projects I'm working on, but I do plan to return to doing it weekly once I get past these couple projects right here. Sure, I'm excited.

But go to torresproductions.com and you'll find his episodes and find out information regarding his podcast. And certainly be sure to be following him, whether it's on Facebook, whether it's on Twitter. And I love the guests that are kind of, you know, very well established, because if you were just to Google Chris Stefanik, you would find him, and you'll find his Twitter handle as Chris Stefanik. You'll find his— I'm sorry, I'm sorry, his Facebook handle is Chris Stefanik and his Twitter is ChoiceConvo. ChoiceConvo. But again, go to his website and he's got a whole string of all the different ways that you could be interacting with him. But more importantly, also email him and kind of, you know, figure out how you might be able to work with him. As you can tell, he's got a lot of great strategies to helping you overcome whatever pain or issue or sabotage you're dealing with. And you can email him at chris@choiceconversation.com. Chris, I want to thank you so much for being part of the program. This has been great.

Oh, it's been my pleasure, and thank you for having me on. I've really enjoyed it, and, um, you know, you're really doing great work, so keep it up.

Well, why thank you, and it's only because people like you are doing great work that we can get you to talk about it and share it with our community. So I appreciate that. Again, everyone also come back and download and listen to this program over again and/or share it because, you know, I'm sure you just look to your left and look to your right and you're going to find your friends, family, peers, colleagues, whomever that are dealing with something that could benefit from all the information that Chris has shared with us. So definitely do that, and you can go to blogtalkradio.com/jetinthebitchradio to download the episode. And of course, we upload it to iTunes and a number of the other streaming services. But thank you again, Chris. And everyone, keep in mind, next week is Ask Me Anything. So go out to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or send me an email, and let's get your story, question, or issue addressed. Uh, for everybody here within the Shedding the Bitch community, thank you so much for being part of this great episode, and I'll talk to you next Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Thanks everybody.

Thank you for listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio with Bernadette Boas. Join Bernadette every Tuesday at noon Eastern as she helps you shift your bitches to riches. And the dialogue is always going on at sheddingthebitch.com. Com. See you next week.