When you get close to a breakthrough, your nervous system pulls you back to keep you safe. The coach uses a thermostat metaphor to explain how your body senses rising success and automatically triggers retreat, trapping you in your comfort zone.
Welcome to 5 Minutes of Momentum. These episodes are a short 5-minute burst of inspiration, motivation, and massive action. If you need that little kick up the butt to get things moving and to inspire you to take massive action, then every single Thursday I'll be sending you through a 5-minute episode to download, digest, and implement to finish your week off strong. Are you ready to get started?
Let's go. Today I want to talk to you about why you pull back every time you get close to your next level. Now, one of the really interesting things about this kind of self-sabotage, it's like a thermostat, right? Like, if you think about your thermostat, and every time that you start to stretch outside your comfort zone and do things you've never done before, or it starts to get good, like actually good stuff starts coming your way, new opportunities, new clients, all the things, and it feels like your dreams are coming true, that can sometimes trigger your nervous system to cause you to respond in a way where you self-sabotage.
Have you ever noticed that?
Like sometimes when you get close to your next level, where you feel like it's all happening, or you end up like slowly, like slowing down, or you end up overthinking, or you doubt yourself, or you end up doing the opposite of what you know you should be doing. You know, I often see this with clients where sometimes they get really tired or they get sick, right? And sometimes we might go, oh, but that's just, you know, what happens in life. But what if it's actually your nervous system responding in a self-sabotaging way because your next level feels unsafe? Because that's exactly what is happening. It's got nothing to do with you should be working harder, you should have better discipline, or you don't want it enough. Like, honestly, it's actually got to do with your nervous system and your subconscious mind triggering that response because your next level feels unsafe. It's, it's your protection mechanism, and it shows up in really funny, interesting ways, right? Sometimes it shows up when things start working well and it feels unfamiliar because you're so used to struggling, you're so used to, you know, figuring it out. Or even like if your identity is so locked into being a problem solver and always needing something to fix to feel valuable, when things are actually working and going well, you make a problem. So you actually stuff something up, or you create a problem that wasn't necessarily needed to be created, but it gives you then a reason to get back into problem-solving mode because that's where you feel the most valuable. It could show up in lots of different ways. So I literally could spend all day literally speaking to all the different ways that it shows up. I've seen it happen with a client where she gets really, really tired and overwhelmed and just so stressed that she ends up having to pull back instead of going all in or creating a great result because it was just about to happen. And we, we identified that that was actually a fear of success. She had this fear that if she was actually to succeed at that next level, then she would have to be someone she didn't want to be. And your nervous system and your subconscious mind is always working behind the scenes to protect you. And so we needed to work through that pattern and uncover where that root cause had come from, because it actually had come from a really deep-seated belief system about what it meant to be successful and when you weren't the battler and you weren't struggling all the time. And her nervous system being so comfortable and familiar with things not going well and always being challenging and always being really hard and always having to have that struggle. And so we needed to work through shifting that belief system and the pattern that it was attached to it so that she could actually enjoy things when it started to work instead of fearing that the next shoe was going to drop or something was going to happen, right? Because so she ended up creating the thing that happened because she would pull back, get tired, get sick, and then of course it didn't come to fruition. And so then she'd go back to the more familiar thing of being struck, like she was struggling. But so I would love for you to start asking yourself, like, when things start to get good, or you start noticing things were going well, or things working for you, what is your initial response? Now sometimes you won't notice, right? And sometimes you'll end up being on the other side of the self-sabotaging behavior and then looking back and being like, why did I do that? Why didn't I take the action? Why didn't I show up more powerfully? Why didn't I go all in? And it's really, really interesting when we start to really just unlock why that's happening for you. And it's just literally asking yourself the question, why do I do that behavior? And what, what is it about my next level that I'm so afraid of? And if you pay attention and you quieten your mind and you stay present with it without pushing to the side, because I know it's uncomfortable, it's definitely uncomfortable, but you can absolutely unlock this internal knowing and this awareness around why you self-sabotage. So with that self-reflection, you can look back and realize like, oh, It feels unsafe because no one else in my family has achieved this level of success. Or it feels unsafe because the last time something really good happened to me, it all fell apart. Or it feels unsafe because I feel like if I go to that next level and become more recognizable, people will judge me, people will reject me. When you start to truly unlock those next levels of self-sabotage, you start to realize where you're holding yourself back, and you can start to address it and rewire your brain so you can go after your next level and you don't self-sabotage. So the question is, what are you going to do about it? The more you become aware of it, the more that you can address it, and you can notice when you do it, and then you can rewire it for the better. I love working on this with my clients. So if you ever get stuck with this and you really want to work with a coach on it, come reach out to me, because I absolutely love exploring it and exploring the ins and outs of our brain and why we do what we do, and never from a place of judgment. I'm just so fascinated with human behavior and so fascinated with why we do what we do and how our brains are wired, and we're so uniquely individual with the way that happens, right? Because your life experience has wired you. And when we start to really look at that programming, we can start to reprogram your mind for the better so it serves the growth of your business, it serves the growth of your life, and you end up creating something so exciting and so enjoyable, and you then actually get to enjoy it. Pretty cool, huh? Reach out to me if you're done with your self-sabotage.
758 How to Stop Over-Delivering Without Feeling Like You’re Letting Clients Down
