Ending Self-Sabotage

Recently, I've been getting a lot of questions about self sabotage and why we do it, why we sabotage, why we make the same mistakes over and over and over again. And so today I'm going to talk about self sabotage, give you an example, and give you some very clear steps that you can take to stop making the same mistakes over and over again. First, I want to share a quote with you that I wrote and put out on Instagram recently that got a lot of attention and there were some follow up questions, so I wanted to address that here. So I wrote, self sabotage is not meaningless. It is your unconscious mind trying to resolve something that needs your attention. When you shame yourself for the sabotage, you miss out on what needs attention and effort. So when most people sabotage, if you're like most people, when you sabotage, you probably find yourself saying, why did I do that? Right? Why did I sabotage? What's wrong with me? How could I?

You likely find yourself moving into a place of naturally shaming yourself for the behavior, for the action, for the decision, and you likely find yourself questioning why you did it in the first place. Now, why did I sabotage is not an effective question, right? Because for most intensive purposes, we sabotage in unconscious ways. We've sometimes sabotaged in conscious and very direct ways where we know that we're doing something, we're observing ourself doing it, and we're like, I'm sabotaging right now. But for the most part, we sabotage in unconscious ways and we sabotage unconsciously because there is something that needs our attention. There is something within us that is trying to be resolved, rectified, bettered, worked on, accepted, embraced. And so the more effective question to ask yourself when you catch yourself sabotaging or after having sabotaged is not why am I sabotaging? But rather to ask yourself, what am I trying to resolve? What is this behavior trying to resolve? Or what am I trying to resolve by sabotaging? So I'll give you a couple examples of this. Let's say that you're somebody that gets into relationships and you're needy, right? You get into a relationship with somebody that you really like, that you want a relationship with, and you find yourself over texting, over sharing. You can feel yourself getting a little anxious, getting a little clingy. Rather than saying, I know I'm sabotaging this relationship or why am I sabotaging this relationship that's wrong with me? Ask yourself the question as a reminder, what's trying to be resolved? What am I trying to resolve with this behavior? And what you might find is that it points to a behavior shift that's trying to manifest. Right? So I'll just continue on with this example. Let's say that what's trying to be resolved is that you have that needy, clingy behavior in relationships because.

You grew up in a household where you were neglected, and so you had to sort of vie for and fight for any scrap of attention that you could get, or you had a very serious relationship or were married and you were cheated on. And so there's this part of you that feels like if you can just get close enough to that person, then maybe the relationship will last. Right? Maybe you can hold on and that's an effective strategy. So in those examples, what's trying to be resolved is that your unconscious mind is trying to teach you and try to show you that you need to develop some form of independence, some form of sovereignty to be independent in the relationship and repair and rectify.

That limiting belief or that limitation that you've held internally of I'm not enough or people will leave me or whatever the base foundational belief is. So here's how you move through making the same mistake over and over again. Here's how you start to rectify self sabotage. So step one, what I was just pointing to, right there is a big component, is being able to clearly identify the old belief, the old story that feels unresolved. And you can ask yourself the question, what's the old belief or story that I am trying, that I'm proving to myself when I sabotage? What is the old belief and story that I prove to myself when I sabotage? So again, if you're trying to get into better shape, if you're trying to save more money and you find yourself spending money in sort of absurd ways, or you find yourself sabotaging your gym and workout routines or your eating habits, ask yourself the question, what is the old belief that I am proving to be true when I sabotage? Likely you'll find something like, I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'll never be. I'll never have the body that I want. You know, money is the root of all evil, right? You'll find some old limiting belief that has rooted itself in your consciousness that is trying to be resolved and upheld simultaneously. So step two is confrontation. It's moving into a space of realizing at some point you're going to have to confront this old belief. You're going to have to say at some point to yourself, this old belief doesn't serve me anymore. And, and I Know, it doesn't serve me anymore. I know that believing that all people, you know, all men cheat or all women cheat, or, you know, everyone I date's going to leave me, or, you know, money is the money is the problem, at some point you're gonna have to confront that belief and begin to rewrite a new script. The next step that you can interject is meeting yourself with compassion whenever we sabotage. Again, like I said, the tendency is to move straight into self sham. And that shaming acts as a kind of blinding mechanism that blinds us from the truth of our behavior, of the belief system that's at play, and specifically blinds us from the action that needs to be taken, right? So we need to meet ourselves with compassion. Not to let ourselves off the hook, not to say my action, the action that I took is okay, the sabotage is okay, but rather to acknowledge that there's something within you that is trying to be resolved, that is trying to work itself out. And so in this way, we actually create a little bit of psychological, emotional, physical, spiritual, financial, relational space where there's room to work. And rather than shaming ourselves, which closes off the space, right, Closes off the options that we have. And then step number four is to ruthlessly recognize the small wins when you do make progress, right? So as you are ending this habit that you've made, right, this self sabotage mechanism that's been in place, again, I'll give you another example. Let's just say that you have had a chronic pornography usage and you find yourself in a relationship where you're trying to more openly sexually express yourself and ask for your sexual wants and needs, but you still find yourself limited in the capacity to ask for those things and very much focused in on still using pornography. And that seems to be the way that you sabotage, right? So you don't express what you want, you don't express what you need, and instead you turn to using pornography and then you shame yourself for it after, rather than doing that, recognize yourself in the moments where you don't watch porn, recognize yourself in the moments where you ask for what you want, where you initiate sex, where you initiate a conversation that's about a broader kind of sexual exploration. So start to recognize yourself for the things that you are doing to shift that narrative, and again, finally write and journal and explore the question, what is my sabotage trying to resolve? What psychologically, emotionally, physically, relationally, financially is my sabotage trying to resolve? And it's likely trying to resolve an old limiting belief, an old limiting pattern. So you'll probably need to rewrite that pattern. And you do that through your conscious intention and choice of choosing a new narrative and then acting in accordance with that narrative and celebrating yourself as you move closer and closer towards it. So that's a sort of very tactical approach to dealing with self sabotage. But if you take one thing away from everything that I said today, it's exploring the question, what is my sabotage trying to resolve? It's really important and shifting the internal lens that self sabotage is meaningless, that it's something that you need to eradicate from your life. It's going to continue to happen. The reality is that as human beings, I don't know of any human beings that don't sabotage. I just don't know of them. And so relinquish yourself from the expectation that you should never sabotage. And maybe in that relinquishment you'll create a little bit of space where you can begin to work with your sabotage, where you can begin to understand it, comprehend it in a more effective manner. And this is how betterment happens, right? You welcome that sabotage in you say, okay, I'm going to observe this in a different way. I'm going to ask myself what this mechanism, what the sabotage is trying to resolve and, and just notice what comes out of that space. So if you enjoyed this, if you have follow up questions, feel free to hit me up man talks on Instagram. Otherwise, if you're watching this on YouTube, comment below, let me know what you thought. I would love to hear your thoughts. Don't forget to subscribe and rate on whatever platform you are listening to this on or viewing this on. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.