Charlie Houpert explains how self-sabotage stems from limiting beliefs about what you deserve, and how adjusting your internal success thermostat can break the pattern. The key is recognizing when you're unconsciously pulling yourself back down to match your self-image.
Whether it's stopping ourselves from succeeding in work or our personal lives, we are often our own biggest obstacles on the path to success. We know what we should do, but somehow just don't do it. So in this video, we're going to explore why we self sabotage and what we can do to reverse it. First, it's important to realize that self sabotage is actually a defense mechanism. It prevents us from experiencing something that we fear will hurt us. Now, obviously we worry that failure and rejection could hurt us. But the same, the same is true of success. If it's different and unknown, our subconscious might retreat no matter how much we think that we actually want that thing. It's like we have an internal thermostat that defines our comfort zone and regulates our actions. When things begin to exit that comfortable range, even if it's an improvement, our subconscious minds direct us to do whatever is necessary to return things to the familiar homeostasis. This is always occurring, but we just call it self sabotage when the thermostat is set so low that it's almost unbearable Now. I experienced this firsthand with regards to finances. Years ago when I lived in New York, I knew many wealthy people who were miserable. It seemed like everyone that earned beyond a middle class income was slaving away to earn more money to buy more things that didn't make them happy. I didn't know it, but those impressions stuck with me. So years later, anytime that the business of charisma on command began to do well, I'd pull back and work less in order to avoid the misery that I associated with earning more money. It wasn't until I uncovered these limiting beliefs that the the business began to grow almost easily. And the same is likely true for you. The results that you have in every aspect of your life are regulated like a thermostat. If you want to boost your thermostat, you'll first have to explore what defines your upper boundaries, AKA your limiting beliefs. So let's do it now. Start by picking the area of your life that you sabotage in the most. It can be business, relationships, health, whatever you like. The next thing you want to do is inquire deeply into your beliefs. So at the end of this video, spend two minutes writing down every association you can with whatever you're sabotaging. Maybe you feel like earning more is going to mean that you're greedy, that a relationship means fighting with your significant other all the time, or that staying healthy requires pain and sacrifice. Write down every association you can as fast as you can for two minutes. What you want to do then, is to inquire deeply into the associations that would be most likely to hold you back. For instance, maybe eating healthy doesn't mean that you'll feel hungry and deprived, and maybe waking up early doesn't mean that you'll be miserable and but instead energized. Really sit and ruminate on the possible counterexamples that might exist. For me, Bill Gates was the perfect counterexample. His foundation made me recognize that earning more money didn't mean that I'd have to be unhappy and a slave to money. It could mean instead that I'd have more to give. Next, write down a new, more true belief. That would be empowering. In my case, it was that pursuing money blindly could lead to unhappiness, but pursuing it with an aim to help others could not only bring more joy to my life, but also to the world as large. Finally, create incentives that push you to change. I started by committing to donating $1,000 a month to charity. It was a significant stretch, but it reinforced my new belief that earning more could be done for good reasons. And it also provided some concrete motivation because I had a thousand fewer dollars to spend on myself every month. I like using financial stakes to motivate myself and if you want to learn more about that, I'm gonna link to a video in the description where I talk about the exactly how to do that. What you'll have at the end is a new belief that adjusts your thermostat up rather than self sabotaging. Your beliefs will pull you towards your highest potential and you can always reinforce these beliefs by visualizing the success you desire beforehand. If social confidence is something that you would like to develop more of, I actually created an eight minute guided meditation specifically for that. It helps you to avoid that feeling of freezing that can come with nerve wracking situations at work or in your personal life, as long as that involves other people. You can check out this piece for free courtesy of our sponsor Simple Habit.
The way it works is that you can get a free week long trial of the Simple Habit app by downloading it to your phone with the link in the description. And once you do that, you'll be able to listen to the meditation on social confidence that I created as well as explore more of Simple Habit's library of guided meditations. If you like it and decide to stay for more than that week, you can use every meditation for 1199amonth and I have personally found this to be well worth the investment, especially for those meditations on joy.
So I recommend testing it to see.
If this social confidence meditation is something that you find beneficial to add to your daily routine. And if you check that app out, you can look forward to hearing my voice coaching you through that visualization. So either way, I look forward to seeing you again in the next video, and I hope that you enjoyed this one.
