Evidence Against: The Saboteur of Success

This is episode 286 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Welcome.

Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast. I'm so excited to be with you.

Today to introduce you to this topic about sabotaging with all this evidence against Dun dun, dun dun. That's right. The reason I'm bringing you this topic is because we've seen this so many times with so many people where when things get a little bit tough in whatever their journey is, whether it's a business journey, whether it's a personal relationship journey, whether it is a fitness or a health journey, and there's this little bit of evidence or something happens, it gets a little tough. And that sabotage is the success. It sabotages the action, it sabotages the direction. It sabotages the success. Now, before we dive into this topic, I've experienced a little bit of this this morning. This morning is a cold day, but it's a Monday. I get up, I get up a little bit earlier on Mondays because we do a power up for our group coaching membership. We do this every single Monday morning. So I'm up a little earlier to get my workout done. I always like to get outside in the outdoors before I get into the gym. And so I walk my dog for a few minutes and then I get into the gym. And this morning it was tough. We've got the time change had sprung forward about a week ago. I still haven't seemed to adapt to that. Furthermore, the temperature plummeted. It had gone from being sort of balmy and warmish for spring coming to then snow on the ground minus 5 degrees Celsius. And then with the time change, of course, there's not as much daylight. So when I'm up a little earlier and I'm out there, it's completely dark. There's no sunrise that I'm walking to. There's nothing enticing about the day in the moment. And so these are all little bits of evidence against for me to do the thing that I want to do for my outcome. My outcome is having my workout done. My outcome is being prepared for my day. My outcome is feeling really good and serving my future self with my wonderful health that I'm going to have in the future by doing the walk, by stimulating my brain, by serving my body. And the evidence against starts to stack. It's very dark when I wake up. I don't feel, feel like waking up, I can feel that it's colder out. I finally get my clothes on and get to go outside and it's still dark and there's snow and it's colder than I thought and I don't want to go for the walk. I feel like skipping that part and getting right into the gym and I don't. Even though there's all these little bits of evidence saying you can just sleep a little longer, it's too cold out there, you, you can just skip the walk part, just get into the gym, do a couple less sets because we're in a bit of a time crunch to get onto the powerup call. There's all this evidence showing me not to do what I committed to do for my future self. I am sure that on a Monday, on a Monday, especially after a time change on a Monday, especially when you're not feeling like getting up, that you have experienced some evidence against, like this in some, some area, some form of your life, like I have this morning. So let's dive into this. Why do I think this is an important concept? Why do I think it's an important topic? Simply because you get the opportunity to have better decision making, to actually overcome our primal brain. You get the opportunity to increase your resilience because when you feel the friction and you don't want to do it and you overcome that, you are teaching your own brain that you can do that not only in that situation situation, but in other situations too. And that is very powerful for having resilience not just in that context, but also in other areas too. Your brain goes, if I could do that, maybe I could do blank. And then lastly, it boosts your own personal growth, could be your professional growth too. It boosts your own growth when you can overcome the evidence that's against the direction that you want to go. And they're popping up like little whack a moles. You start to go, okay, who did I have to become to overcome that evidence against. What did I have to take action on in order to overcome that evidence against. These are the benefits that are going to come from this and I'm going to tell you how. And first I'm going to go back and tell you a little bit of a story story so that you can relate perhaps for yourself. Maybe it's in your business, maybe it's in your health, maybe it's in your personal life. There's going to be some evidence against that you're bumping up somewhere and it's going to be the thing that tends to sabotage your success. Even though, you know, consciously, you know, you really want that outcome. You really want the business success, you really want the amazing relationship, you really want the health, you really want that trip, whatever it is, you really, really want it. I know you really, really want it. But that isn't. When push comes to shove in that push back of evidence against, it's literally against your movement forward. It's literally pushing you back. Like you're, you're going in the direction and somebody's just kind of standing in your way. They're a screen in basketball. They are pushing you and giving you. They're blocking you from the direction that you want to go. That's what it feels like when you have evidence against. So I remember when this is back in 2005, end of 2005, beginning of 2006, I was opening my business and I knew why I wanted this business. I had so much evidence for, I had evidence for why I wanted to go in this direction. The evidence for were all kinds of reasons. It included that an Olympic team, multiple Olympic teams were flooded out of their training space. We had an Olympic qualifier coming up. I also had gotten to a point in my dream job and that I had felt that kind of grazing at the top of my head. I don't know if you've felt that before, that there's kind of something that you're about to bump into and then you, you smack your head on something. It's called the ceiling. It's the glass ceiling. It's that ceiling where you realize that, wait a second, in this role, I could grow a little bit more, but it might be a bit lateral. Or I could maybe make another improvement or move, but I might have to get a PhD to do it. Or you might realize that, wait a second, this is the cap, or very close to it, of what my salary is going to be in this environment. Plus I had some people I was working with, with. Well, one person I was working with which I wasn't particularly fond of. And most of my other peers who I adored working with had literally left that industry, that business, that entity because of the same reasons. But I didn't have another household income. So it was longer and longer for me to actually leave an environment that many would call toxic nowadays, which I'm sensitive to that description. But it just wasn't as functional as I would have liked at that level of high performance sport. So I knew that one of the options was opening my own space. So there were so many reasons for the evidence for was that I could create a space that would fill a void and fill a need for the people. The Olympic level athletes that I was working with. All these national teams didn't have a place to train because our facility was flooded out. An Olympic qualifier was coming up. There was a time urgency. I didn't want a ceiling bumping on my head. And I had this notion that maybe being my own boss would be kind of cool. I also saw that I could create more opportunity not only for myself, but I could create more opportunity for the people I employed and also more clients or more customers, more people that we could serve. So I saw this as an opportunity to create opportunity for other people. And I also could see this picture way down the road that if I did open my business and let's say I even leased a spot space, then in the long run, I would love to own my own building and continue to expand my business into things that were even beyond that. I wanted to have a clinic in my space. I was going to make this amazing training space, this Olympic level training space for athletes and private clients could come in. I had this vision. It was there. There was so much compelling evidence for it. It was beautiful. However, I wasn't really looking at the evidence against. I wasn't really looking at what could go wrong. And when I looked at all the business loans, it turned out that the best path for not paying interest through the nose would be for me to take a home line of credit on the equity that I had built personally. But this meant that my personal neck was on the line. My personal equity, the finances. I'm the one that supported as a single mom, my daughter with loved my house, owned my house, but still had a mortgage, still had bills to pay. And I was really putting my neck out by putting a home line as my business capital to start the business. So the evidence against once I actually. I could go through all kinds of hurdles, all kinds of challenging things to actually get the doors open. But it was kind of fun. There was still so much excitement and evidence for. We'd even done a grand opening and lots of people showed up. So many people were curious and excited and intrigued by the space and could see the need and could see how it would fill a real void that was existing in our community. And then there was evidence against that I wasn't planning for. And it looked like this. We had some contracts, we had some people coming in that were all my athletes that I used to work with in my salaried position before I opened the business. But Then there was this downtime and I had hired people, I'd contracted people to work for me. And there's this downtime in between some of the groups of athletes that we had coming in and some of the private clients that were coming in. And I'm looking at the square footage in the gym and, and it was quiet. There were crickets chirping. As soon as these busy realms of time had gone by, these chunks of where there were bookings, there was so much extra time that was not booked. There weren't clients coming in, there weren't extra athletes, there weren't other people. And I'm looking at the overhead going, well, I got to get more income coming in, there has to be more people. And it was a huge point of evidence against where there was too much time that wasn't filled by revenue generating business coming in. And then the landlord, I was signed on a rental contract that was fixed for 5 year rental lease. So I'm leasing this building space. I've got 6,000 square foot of building space that was all occupied by my business. And then they send me a notice that these rates are going to go up. And I thought, well, I signed a contract, they can't increase my rates. But then I looked at the fine print, there were fees, extra fees for things and stuff like plowing the snow. And I'm like, well, that didn't change from last year. In fact, we had less snow and more fees for just management services. These vague fees. And my, over the course of a five year lease, my overall payments to the landlord doubled in that five year span of time. So those little bits of evidence against when it came to more fees, more costs, more everything, overhead kept going up. Every year that I was there, the wonderful family owned company that I was leasing from sold to a larger entity and it just kept going up. So there's more evidence against. And then I went through my first winter when I was in this space. And this is in Winnipeg, Manitoba. And in Winnipeg, Manitoba the winters are extremely cold. And I was in this huge warehouse space with huge high ceilings and two huge bay doors at the back, which were lovely in the summer, but it was spring when I first took on that lease. And so the, the heating bills were going down and down and down. They seemed very tolerable. Then the summer came along. There were really no heating bills. We'd have those big bay doors open. The summer we'd be training inside and out. It was awesome. So awesome. And then that first real winter from November all the way through Holy cow. There's these huge heating fans and huge big ducts that were heating the space and these major high ceilings. And I'm going, oh, my gosh, another hydro bill. Oh, my gosh, another bill. And they were so expensive. And I hadn't budgeted that in. More evidence against what I was doing. And I'm toting my little daughter around. She's six years old. She's five years old and then turned six. And I'm toting her around. I created an office space so she could be comfortable in there. There's a window facing into the big gym. There's a clinical space. There's all these amazing things. But I'm hauling her back and forth and back and forth and having fun some of the time. But some of the time it was tough. And then the neighbors complained about the noise. I had four Olympic lifting platforms. I had multiple volleyball, football, hockey, track, all kinds of athletes. Big, beastly athletes who were Olympic lifting. And when that happens, they're dropping the weight. We had these big platforms, but the weight with the big guys would go boom. And there was an office business next door. So the people who are working in the office during the day, as we're training for an Olympic qualifier all year long, get this boom about two or three times a week, depending on who was in the gym. And they start complaining, and they want to complain to the landlord. And then they're complaining about our music because we got this motivating music. We gotta keep our athletes going day in and day out. And it felt tough. There was so much evidence against. And this is where it happens. This is where the brain starts to put more weight on the evidence against. Because we have a negative bias. This is very commonly known in psychological research. Look at authors like Daniel Kahneman, who talks about thinking fast and thinking slow and what happens with our brain. And this negative bias is one of those things there. And that basically has us default to do not go this direction anymore. There's too much negative. This is the evidence against. You're seeing it all over the place. And when there's more and more evidence against that, negative bias has a. Stop looking at the evidence for. Remember when the evidence 4 was there, when I was very certain that this was going to be amazing when having my own space, being my own boss, helping other people, giving more opportunities to myself and others, potentially making more money, which I definitely wasn't. All of those things were the evidence for. But we forget about the evidence for because our brain is going to default and weight the evidence. Against more heavily than we will the evidence for. So then we're in this situation where we're looking at it going, h. So, for instance, let's say you are going to work out. One of my colleagues, one of the people I employed, we decided we were going to do a tougher mutter. And when we did, we were so excited. Oh, you're going to be in such good shape after we train for this tougher mutter. It's going to be such a team bonding experience. We're going to love it. It's going to be amazing. And then when we're in our second month of training and we were so sore and so tired and we built in the recovery, but it was still just getting tedious and hard. Then the evidence against stacks, and this is the stuff that stops you from. From getting to that pinnacle of outcome of the best shape of my life. Competing in an event that I've never done before. That's so awesome. And team bonding and working through it together. That's so amazing. We've got memories for life and we feel like we're on top of the world. That's what we're going for. But in the moment when we're so sore and we've got our sixth workout of the week and we're just not sure that it's worth it anymore, that's when that wonderful guy, his name's Jeff, by the way, in case you're listening. Jeff. Jeff Watson. Jeff Watson says, as I'm complaining about how sore my butt is one day and we're training together and Paul was training with us, and Paul wasn't there at the workout that day, and Jeff and I are trying to plow through it and we are both struggling. And he says, but it's worth it. But it's worth it. But it's worth it. And we just kept defaulting back to that statement of this is so worth it. This is worth it. It's going to be worth it. It's worth it right now. It's worth it. That little statement kept reminding us to keep going that where we were going. Despite the sore butt, despite the tired bodies, despite the difficulty scheduling the time to do what we wanted to do, despite all those things, it's going to be worth it. It's worth it. We're gonna get there. And it's worth it right now, just for today. It's not even about the outcome. When you're struggling in the now, when the evidence against is facing you right in front of your nose, when the evidence against is saying no, no, no, no right now, not now. Don't do this now, please not now. That's when you're worth it. Has to be telling you has to be telling ourselves that it's worth it right now. Because if you tell yourself worth it for when this amazing outcome happens down the road three months from now, your brain doesn't care. Your brain cares about right now. And right now you have to know that it's worth it going through this right now. Because my self in an hour is going to thank me for doing it myself. Later today is going to thank me for doing it. So it's worth it right now. What I'm gaining from this right now is worth it. So we have to subtly tell ourselves the things that will get us through the friction of the evidence against that's happening in the moment. So here we go. I'm going to give you a few things that's going to help you when you face this. So some techniques not only when you face it, but when you are planning for the thing so that you know how to deal with the evidence against when it shows up. We're going to pre plan and I want you to by all means dive into growth mindset. Wonderful, wonderful material by Carol Duick. Daniel Kahneman is thinking fast and thinking slow. He has some wonderful psychological research and that's where a lot of what I'm referencing when it comes to negative biases. And this next point that I'm going to talk about, which is pre mortem analysis. Daniel Kahneman talks about this a lot and what it is. This is number one, we're going to, I'm going to give you three things. Three things to combat the saboteur called this evidence against. You do not want to stop those amazing outcomes that you're creating for yourself. You want to be able to get through the evidence against. And I'm not suggesting that you do everything in that direction at all costs and you sacrifice your home and you sacrifice your health and you sacrifice everything to get in the direction you want to go. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you're going to have to reanalyze every once in a while. So these three steps are going to help you. You number one, your pre mortem analysis. Pre mortem analysis, not post mortem premortem analysis. What is the worst case scenario? What could absolutely go wrong? What are five or ten things that could go awfully in this situation? So when I started my business, clearly one of them was I could Lose my house, I've just left my job, I could be incomeless with no house. That was a pretty big pre mortem if that happened. I was in a tough spot as a single mom with no other family in the city that I lived in. That was a big daunting thing. But when I understood that that's what the possibility was, then I'm far more likely to deal with anything that's putting me in that potential direction because I don't want to go in that direction. That's the worst case outcome. Don't want that. One of the things I did at the time, having a young daughter was purchase life insurance and disability insurance. I realized that and this is truly a pre mortem. I realized that, wow, I am out of a salaried job, I'm starting my own business and I have a little girl and she means everything to me. So I went and purchased life insurance and disability insurance because if something happened to me, we were in big trouble. And I did that as soon as right when I was in that, that stage of pre mortem, really understanding if I was going to go for this. So before you make this significant move going towards it, imagine the decision's been made. Imagine that the worst case scenario happens and work backwards. What could you have done to prevent that from happening? So now if I understood the cost, losing my house, not having a career or salary, if everything went wrong, not being able to support my child, what could I do to make sure that those things were not going to be. Even if they did happen, they weren't going to really derail everything in my entire life. This will help identify the pitfalls. And I did this. I made sure I had enough money in my savings account. I make sure I had life insurance, disability insurance. I made sure everybody around me knew what was going on so they could tell everybody as well and support this business actually getting off of the ground. So that pre mortem is so important. When it looked, when it took that training that I talked about with myself and Paul and Jeff and we're going for that tougher mudder, what could happen? We could get injured. That was a big one for all of us. None of us wanted to get injured. We knew how hard we were working and we knew how tough that race was going to be. And if any one of us got injured, it impacted our work, it impacted our families, it impacted our bodies, our health. We didn't want to get injured. So understand what some of these poor outcomes can be from the decision you're about to make. That's going to help you deal with the evidence against free mortem. Understand. Small things. Number two, predecide pre decide when you're going to make progress, when you're going to make a progress point of analysis, when are you going to do your progress analysis? Is it going the way you thought it would? So pre decide ahead of time, when is that going to happen? You're also going to pre decide your evidence for the reason you want to be really clear about. Your evidence for why you're doing what you're doing is because you're going to need a whole list of things when the evidence against pops up. I needed to remind myself, remember you wanted to be your own boss. Remember being your own boss is better than having a boss that you don't align with. Oh, remember you didn't want a ceiling. Remember that you can pay and decide and have autonomy over what the financial signature scenario is in the business. Redecide what the evidence for is and make sure that you've listed all of those points. And then the next thing on pre deciding is how are you going to deal with some of those pre mortem things that you've, you've figured out? Some people go, no, I'm not even. These things aren't even an option. I'm not even going to look at them. Absolutely not. I'm going to tell you right now as a coach, I'm going to tell you right now as somebody who has coached thousands of humans. Do not ignore what the negative possibilities are when you do that. When some of them, one of them, or any of that evidence against the direction you want to go comes up in your face, then you're not prepared. It's like showing up to a gunfight without a gun. You showed up with your knife and you're not prepared. So make sure that you actually know how you're going to deal with any of the setbacks. If, if you're starting a business like the example that I gave, I would wish for you to have a mentor. I didn't have a mentor in that situation. I wished I had a mentor. But you know who I had that ended up helping me a ton. I had a bookkeeper. She was amazing and it was the perfect scenario for me to do progress analysis. It was a perfect scenario for her to help me understand the numbers. They were neutral and it helped me see exactly what I needed to see. So make sure you know exactly how you're going to deal with some of the setbacks that are going to come up that you've already been aware of in your pre mortem and be aware that there's going to be setbacks that you didn't predict in your pre mortem. But that's okay, because at least you've got progress analysis, you've got some evidence for and you've got how to deal with your setbacks. These are the things that are happening in point 2, which is pre deciding what you're going to do in those points. And number three is feel the bloody friction. Feel it. Because what happens when evidence against comes up for us, we want to run and hide, we want to ignore it, we want to run and hide, we don't want to deal with it. And that is the last thing that's going to serve us. We're going to have to go through the feeling of the friction and the resistance that comes with the evidence against and what that might look like. It might just look like, okay, this is not fun. I didn't think this was going to be here. And just being with it could be as simple as that. It could be just understanding where you're feeling the friction the most and processing it with the mentor, with the bookkeeper, with somebody else. Process it, talk about it, okay, this is what's going on. Have a network group, have a business network group, have a training network group, have a relationship network, whatever area you're going for something in. But the point is, is that when the friction comes, when the setback comes, if you're dealing with addiction, whatever you are dealing with, it's going to come. And when that friction, that evidence against doing what you really want shows up, you're going to have to feel what it feels like to be in that friction, to be in that resistance, to be in that icky feeling, that feeling of self doubt, that feeling of you're not being able to do it, that feeling of soreness in your body if it's a workout thing, that feeling of not knowing the answer in a business, when it's brand new, those feelings are going to be the stuff that sabotages where you want to go. It's an emotional thing. And that emotional thing, you're going to have to feel it, you're going to have to process it. You may even have to get help to process it. And then you're going to remind yourself again of the evidence for the evidence for what you're really working for, the evidence for the outcome you really want. Remind yourself, are those reasons still enough to overcome the evidence against? Because typically they are. But we've just forgotten them because we've got the negative bias and the evidence against seems so much bigger than it actually is. So we have to remind ourselves when we're feeling the friction, we have to remind ourselves how amazing, how awesome, how incredible those reasons for going for what you're going for are in your life. So this morning I did my walk in the dark, I went out in the snow, I went back in the cold and then I went in the gym and I did my workout and I did the sets that I was was promising myself I would do. I didn't cut it short and I got onto that power up on time and it was amazing. And all that evidence for was there but all I could see at the time was the evidence against. But I kept reminding myself that it's worth it, kept reminding myself what I really wanted. Do that for yourself in your life, in your business, wherever you need to do that for yourself. So quick recap number one, pre mortem analysis. See absolutely all the things that could go wrong and the worst thing that could go wrong. See it, be with it. Oh, look at that. Look what all could go horribly wrong. See it don't make it wrong, just see what could happen. Number two, pre decide, pre decide your progress and analysis points. Pre decide your all your evidence for all the reasons why you're going in this direction and pre decide how to deal with the setbacks. Who are you going to get to help? A mentor, a bookkeeper like I had other people to support your family. How are you going to deal with the setbacks? Because there's going to be setbacks that you didn't predict in the premortem. There usually are. And number three, feel the friction process, the emotional stuff that you have to deal with because it's the emotion that's going to sabotage you ta you really it's the feeling of self doubt, the feeling of resistance, the feeling of friction, the feeling of not being able to do it, the feeling of losing confidence, the feeling of not knowing the answer. Those are going to be the things. So bring that stuff to your mentor, bring that stuff to someone else, feel the feels, let it out and that will then allow you to remind yourself of all that evidence for remind yourself of the outcome you're working for. Remind yourself of why it's worth it right now, why you're going to get gifts right now from doing what you're doing. You are learning, you are growing, you are adapting. There are gifts every moment in whatever you have to work through in when it comes to working through that evidence against. I am pretty sure that someone in your life is going to need to hear this. So I'm pretty sure that someone in your life you want to hear this so that they can help you in what you're going to be going to. So please consider who that might be. Because if they need to hear this, by all means share the episode, share the podcast and if this has served you today, do me a favor and pop in a rating. Even if it's not the rating that I might want. I want a five star rating because I'm putting it out there. Everything I got for you. However, those ratings help us reach other people. So if this is a message that really lands for you and you think it can serve someone else, then get it out into the world. Share it. It's a gift that you can give and it's the gift that you're giving me because it's my mission to help empower other people live their best lives. So go do it. Do the stuff. Don't let the evidence against sabotage your success. Let yourself see what's there and move forward using the evidence for using your amazing brain, using your amazing support system and using the motivation, that carrot of what you really want and that wonderful journey that you're on to keep going. Great work everyone. Keep being you. Keep being your best so you can give your best.

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