Connor Beaton argues sabotage isn't about losing control but regaining it. When things feel uncertain, we sabotage with familiar habits like drinking or procrastination because they feel safe and known. The fix: notice the urge, find what control you're chasing, then swap in something generative like running or calling a friend.
Today we're going to be talking about the greatest misconception about sabotage. Now, this is one of those things that, as I learned this over time, really shifted my perspective and actually helped me to stop sabotaging. And I sabotaged a lot in my life. I feel like I practiced every form of sabotage, whether it was unhealthy relationships, staying up late, not doing the work, making excuses, falling into patterns of watching porn when I didn't want to, or drinking too much or drugs or whatever it is, right? Just. I mean, I really tried the gamut of sabotaging mechanisms. So I speak both from personal experience and professional here. One of the things that I think is the greatest misconception of sabotage is that you are sabotaging to feel out of control, to let go of responsibility or your power or what have you. And that's the misconception, that's the falsity, that's the lie. The truth about sabotage that most people don't know or don't want to admit is that it is known you're not sabotaging to be out of control. Sabotage is the ultimate form of control. It's where all. All people feel the most in control, right? So think about when you're sabotaging, whether it's you hitting the alarm first thing in the morning seven times before getting up and not going to the gym, whether it's texting somebody that you know you shouldn't be texting, or watching porn when you said you haven't wanted to watch it, or however you sabotage. Right? Drinking too much late at night and. And, you know, shitting the bed the next morning in a meeting, not actually shitting the bed. You know what I mean? Metaphorically, that sabotage is you being in control. And you're doing that. I was doing that in my own life because that's what felt comfortable, right? Sabotage for most people is comfortable. It is known. We know what it looks like. We know how it's going to go. We know how we're going to feel. We know what people are going to think about us. We know what's going to go wrong the next day, and we know exactly, usually what's going to happen during that sabotage. We actually know how we're going to feel while we're sabotaging, whether it's shame or disappointment or embarrassment or anger or a sense of peace, a sense of release, a sense of freedom. We know. Right? If you think about your most common sabotage mechanism, whatever it is for you, and if I had you sit down and say, okay, write out the cycle of. Of this sabotage, whenever it comes up, you'd probably be able to in depth and in detail describe, okay, I feel this way before I sabotage, and then I do this, and then I say that, and then I make this decision, and then after I make that decision, I feel this way, and then after the sabotage is done, I feel that way. And you actually know the whole cycle. So sabotage isn't a response to being out of control. Sabotage is often a response to try and gain control back. Back, to try and regain some semblance of control in your life when you are feeling out of control. And here's the thing about this notion of feeling out of control. You can be feeling out of control because things are going well. You can be feeling out of control because things are going so well at work, in your career, in your marriage, in your relationship. And that's what feels foreign. And so you sabotage it to move back into this space of comfort, into the space of I know what this feels like, I know what this dysfunction feels like. I know what this thing that even though I know I consciously don't want it, I know what it feels like. And that feels safe. For many people, there's a lack of safety in the unknown. There's a lack of safety in feeling, feeling out of control. And so lots of people are sabotaging to move back into this known state, into what feels comfortable, into what they feel is known. And so I'll give you a personal example. For me, for a very long time, I could not let go of pornography. I really struggled to quit porn because it felt comfortable. It was something that I could turn to when I felt stressed or overwhelmed or bored or lonely or frustrated or whatever it was. Anytime that I was feeling something where I was feeling overwhelmed or I was feeling out of control in my life, Even when things were going really well and I had lots of cause to celebrate, I could turn to pornography and it would be the thing that would help me feel better because I could return to something that I knew. I knew how I would feel. I knew what I wanted to watch, I knew how I would feel after. It felt safe and it felt comfortable. And even the emotions that I would feel after, if I was ashamed or angry that I stayed up too late or whatever it was, I still knew what that was going to look like and how that was going to feel. And all of that brought me a certain level of comfort and safety in times in my life where I felt wildly uncomfortable. I felt really not unsafe necessarily, but I was grasping for Feeling in control. And so we have to practice when we want to end self sabotage, when we want to work on letting go of a sabotage behavior, we have to begin to realize that those moments of wanting to feel, wanting to sabotage, when we feel that start to come up, that's happening because we are wanting to be in control, because we are wanting to control something in our life. And maybe we're feeling that way because we feel out of control in many aspects of our life. And that's okay. So we actually have to be able to start to build a tolerance towards not necessarily feeling out of control in a negative sense, but letting go of this notion that control equals power or control equals stability or safety. And I think as men, we have equated those two things for a very long time, that if I'm in control of something, that I'm safe or I'm powerful. And so one of the things that I started to do was to figure out when I was wanting to sabotage. What was I actually experiencing in those moments? Did I feel out of control? Did I feel overwhelmed? Was I grasping for some form of control? And then I would go and execute or exercise something that would give me a more generative version of that. So rather than regaining the sense of control and sabotaging by watching pornography, I would choose to go and do yoga or go for a run or work out or do breath work or, you know, call a friend and have a conversation and just sort of talk about this, like, desire to sabotage. And I would just out myself. And slowly, over time, the thing that became more comfortable was the generative meditative experience that I was replacing this medicative experience of pornography with. So start to make that shift. Notice how this might support you and help you comment below in the video, in the comments with your thoughts. Don't forget to, like, subscribe to the channel if you want to learn more content like this. And don't forget to share this man, this forward, man it forward to somebody in your life that you know could use it. So thanks so much for tuning in. Until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.
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