STOP Self Sabotage!
16 Nov 2025 · 0 min
Pamela Jean explores why people sabotage their own progress, tracing it to childhood experiences and fear. She offers concrete tools: identify your sabotaging behaviors, replace negative thoughts, break goals into small steps, build accountability, and practice self-compassion when old patterns resurface.
Welcome to A New Life podcast with Pamela Jean, where it's all about empowering women to empower more women. Get ready, friends, to create a new life. And here is your host, Pamela Jean.
Hello, my friends and welcome to this week's episode of A New Life podcast. I'm Pamela Jean, your host and thank you so much for being here. It is always a thrill to know that you are on the other end of this podcast. And thank you, thank you for being here. I hope today resonates with you. I think it will because I think we all do this to ourselves. Today we're going to talk about overcoming self sabotage. The self sabotage that keeps you from reaching your goals. How frustrating is that? You have a dream, you have a vision, you have a business that you're building or a business that you've built. And then self, self doubt and sabotage and negative self talk creeps into your brain and you're like, who do you think you are? You can't do this. What makes you think you can be the best? Whatever, you're nothing. Why do we do this? Oh my gosh, it's so frustrating. I've been there too, my friends, and sometimes I'm there once in a while, not very often anymore. It's definitely something I've worked really hard to overcome. But I want to talk about this today because in my coaching classes with my clients, self sabotage is something that many of us do or have done and it's frustrating. But we're going to talk about some strategies and get you in the right mindset to prevent yourself from kneecapping yourself every time you make some progress or start believing in yourself. That is just really, really frustrating. Before we get started, if you don't mind, I wanted to share with you my coaching course that I'm so excited about. It's a year long commitment, my friends. This is a year long commitment for high achieving people, primarily women that are stuck that you have accomplished greatness and now you don't know what is next for you. You've kind of reached your, your goals have been reached and now you're not sure what to do. You might be at an impasse in your career, you may be at an impasse with your business and you need to get to the next level and create the next thing. While you are building this amazing accomplishment, you have created an imbalance in your life. Your relationships are struggling. Your relationship with your spouse is not good. The relationship with your children is a little rocky. You just are off balance spiritually. You've lost your way. You just need some help getting back on track. Well, I am here for you. It is balanced life, balanced business. It's a year long course. It's not even a course, it's just year long coaching. Year long coaching that is custom created for you. It's not a group coach type of thing. It is a one on one coaching where it's one to one, you and me. You're not handed off to another coach or another specialist. It's you and me. And we will meet twice a month, two times a month. We will strategize, we will tackle hard issues, we will create action items and a path forward. And by the end of the year, you will be a brand new you. The accountability, the action items, the locking of arms will help you get where you want to be. I'm so excited. Hit me up on the website or email me pamela jeanannewlife.com and we will get you started. Or at least hold a strategy session, a virtual coffee and we'll talk. Okay? Okay. So let's start talking about overcoming self sabotage and reaching your goals within your sabotaging yourself because it is frustrating. First of all, the very first thing that you have to do is understand the root causes of your self sabotage, your unbelief, the unbelief of yourself. Where does this come from? Where does it come from? Almost always this is a past experience, it's a childhood influence or it's an underlying fear. Almost always, my friends, this is the case. It is because of something that you experienced as a child that has taken a grip on you. And that's what, you know, what's so crazy about, you know, if you were a kid growing up and you were bullied. I was bullied as a kid growing up. It was awful. My bullying happened in high school. It wasn't in grade school, but it happened in high school. And I will tell you, that was one of the most difficult times of my life. And there was a lot of work that I needed to do to believe in myself and to have that feeling that I could accomplish anything. And it's interesting because what I've learned and I've taught my kids this, and hopefully you can teach your children this, your young adults and your kids is that mean girls turn into mean women. They don't change. They don't change. And if you can learn and understand that the root of their behavior comes from their own insecurities, their insecurities that they have within themselves is what causes them to be the bully. If you can understand the Past experiences in your childhood influences or the underlying fears that you have. That is step number one in understanding why you self sabotage and where your unbelief in your abilities come from. Now if I lived under the umbrella of the bullying that I endured in high school, if I lived there, if I allowed the impact of what the girls did to me and said to me as I was growing up, I would, there would be absolutely no way I would be where I am today. I would not have accomplished what I've accomplished in my lifetime. I would still be that same bullied high school girl, 14, 15, 16 year old, whatever. I would still be her. And I realize and understand that the issues they had with me were their own personal issues. I didn't do anything wrong. I was a quiet kid, I didn't say a whole lot. But understanding that I do not have to become who they said I was is really, really powerful. You do not have to be what anyone said you were growing up or any way you felt growing up. If you had a hard parent, a parent that was abrasive, that criticized you over and over and over and you never felt like you could do anything good enough. You know, if you clean the house or if you wash the car or if you did the chores or if you whatever it was, but it never felt like you were good enough. You know, if you buy into that knowledge that you are not good enough or you don't have the abilities, you will continue to live in the vicious cycle of self sabotage. You have to understand that you are not what someone else says you are. You are what you say you are. You are what God says you are. And if you look at what God says you are, you are a perfect perfectly made in the eyes of the Lord. You are perfection. Which means no one outside of you can tell you anything differently unless you choose to believe what they say. In my coaching, I talk a lot to people about the most important relationship that you have in your life outside of that with your maker is the relationship you have with yourself. Your behavior, your attitudes, your work ethic, everything that you do comes from the relationship that you have with yourself. The relationship you have with you teaches other people around you how to treat you. You put a line in the sand in what you will and will not tolerate. So when you start to really dive into why you self sabotage and why you, you have an unbelief about yourself. You're going to have to do some hard work, friends. This isn't going to come easy to you. You will have to pick Open up some scars, pick off some scabs and go dive into what made you the way you are today and understand why you self sabotage. Once you understand the root cause, once you can get to where it came from and have an understanding, it's important to work on identifying your self sabotaging behavior. When you can recognize the behaviors or the thoughts and patterns that hold you back, you'll be able to avoid the outcome of self sabotaging. Those behaviors might be procrastination that if you are just procrastinating and you're not doing anything, if you just are telling yourself that you can't do this, who do you think you are? That's a behavior that's negative. Self talk. Perfectionism. When you dive so deep into perfectionism that you paralyze yourself and you don't do anything and you just stay stagnant and stale, those are all behaviors that you're going to want to watch out for if you're trying to stop self sabotaging yourself. Cultivating self awareness is the next thing I want to talk about because self awareness is really, really important. When you create and develop a healthy relationship with yourself, you will be very, very self aware. You will be able to pay attention to your thoughts and your emotions. You'll notice right away when you start self sabotaging and you'll be able to acknowledge them without judging yourself. Awareness of your self sabotage behavior is the first step in changing that. You have to be self aware and you have to be able to say to hey, I know what you're doing, I'm onto you. I know what you're thinking right now and that is not okay. You are not going to sabotage your progress today. You're not doing it. So cultivate and developing healthy self awareness. Really, really important. Replacing negative thoughts. Challenge and replace that negative self talk with positive constructive thoughts. Instead of thinking I can't do this, I can't do this. Replace that with I can learn how. How can I do this? I can't do this. Replace that with how can I do this? If you are able to replace those negative thoughts with a positive spin, you will make huge changes in your life when it comes to self sabotage. I can't do this. How many times have something been put in front of your face and you've said I can't do that. I don't know how to do that. I can't do that. What if you say I can learn how or how can I do that? Have you ever been challenged? I mean, I get challenged at the gym all the time. And there are times where I'm thinking, I don't think I can do that. But this is what I tell myself. I can try to do that. I may not do it perfectly, but I can try to do that. And I'm going to give it my best shot. That's all you do. Instead of saying, I can't do that and not try, you can say, how can I do that? I'm going to give it my all. Now maybe it's not perfect, but that's okay because I can walk away from that circumstance with positivity and great adrenaline and energy. But replace your negative thoughts. Don't let yourself go there. Do not let yourself go there. Create a support system. My friend. You're not the only one out there that deals with self sabotage. The problem is with most people is that they keep it a secret. They don't tell anyone that they self sabotage and they just suffer in silence. Oh my gosh. That's the worst. Stop doing that to yourself. Create a support system. Share your goals with supportive friends. Now don't share your goals with negative people. Supportive friends or family members can encourage you and help hold you accountable. I want to talk a little bit beyond that. I'm a little hesitant to say family members because sometimes family members are the worst to go to for support. They just are. They're too close to the situation. So create an accountability group. Join a group with other people that have similar goals that can provide motivation and accountability. I have a monthly coaching that I do. It's monthly coaching and we've created an incredible little community of people that just come in to be coached on different topics. Some are business related, some are life related, some are mindset related, some are motivational. But it's a community of like minded people to bounce ideas off of each other that are in the same boat that get you Sometimes a family member and even some friends are a little afraid to see you be successful because if you're successful then they might have to be held accountable to be successful. So be careful with who you bring into your circle. Be careful with who becomes your accountability crew by friends and family. Just be careful with that. I caution you a little there. You would be better off joining a group outside of friends and family that are filled with like minded, motivated and accountable people. The next thing I want to talk to you about is breaking goals into smaller steps. When you have a giant goal sitting in front of you, it's like this big elephant and how are you going to eat your Elephant. You're. You can't, you can't eat the elephant whole, right? You have to take tiny little bites out of the elephant to devour it. Eventually break your big goals into smaller steps and look at each of those steps as a win and celebrate after each of those wins have happened. Make them more manageable, smaller tasks. This makes that journey less overwhelming and it's going to prevent you from spiraling into that negative mindset of I can't do this. Who do you think you are? Self sabotaging yourself will become less likely if you break things into smaller steps and smaller goals that are more manageable. And you can easily do that. What that also does, this is outside of self sabotaging. This also helps you with momentum. It helps create momentum as you hit your goals. You know when you can scratch off your list that one step that you did and then you look at the next step, there's something that feels like so accomplishing there. It really provides an incredible positive mindset and momentum. Developing routine. You know, I feel like I'm always talking to you about routine and how important it is, but creating a daily and weekly routine with time dedicated to work on that goal, on that particular thing that you're trying to create, the consistency of that is vital. If you're business building right now, you have got to have time carved out every single day for prospecting. If you don't prospect every day, you, you, your company, your business will not survive. You have to have prospecting every single day. If you don't have time carved out daily to work on prospecting, where do you think your business is going to be in a month or two months or six months or a year? Most likely you won't have your business if you don't have time allocated to prospect. You're going to be tempted to fall into self sabotage of nobody wants me, nobody wants to work with me. I'm not a business owner, I can't do this. Well, you're capping yourself. You're sabotaging yourself into really thinking that you can't do it. But yet you haven't even created and developed a healthy routine to accomplish what you need to accomplish. So consistency is vital to progress and you have to have the time allocated and carved out to work towards whatever your goal is and prevent yourself from falling into that self sabotage. Celebrate achievements. I'm not always very good about this. I just kind of check it off the list and move on to the next thing because there's always so many things that I want to Do I need to remind myself just to celebrate? Pop the cork, have a little party once in a while when I accomplish what I want to accomplish. This positive reinforcement really can boost your motivation and get you moved on to the next thing. But for me, I'm just kind of like, okay, good, check, it's done. Woohoo. Did it. And then I move to the next thing. I might need to slow down in that area just a little bit and celebrate my accomplishments a little bit more. Don't forget, friends, you've got to stay flexible. You have to be open to the ebb and flow of what you think your plan is. I mean, how many times you not plan the perfect vacation or the perfect birthday party or the perfect course or the perfect business and you get completely derailed? Oh my gosh, all the time. I've really had to learn this in my lifetime is being more flex. That definitely was a stumbling block for myself that if my schedule didn't stay the way I planned it to be, I was not very flexible and sometimes would not be very pleasant for those people around me. I'm just gonna be honest because if it's not on the calendar, it doesn't happen. And if it's not on my. And if you try to put something on my calendar that shouldn't be there. I was not always flexible with those changes and it was something that I really needed to work on. You may need to adj. And it's okay, it's okay to adjust. There's going to be things that are unpredictable, that cannot be foreseen, that you know life happens. Right? You have to be flexible when it comes to business building, relationship building, whatever it is you're trying to conquer and create and goals that you're trying to reach, you have to be flexible. And I can just honestly say that was an area that I needed to work on. And I've worked on it and I'm good now. But it was not always an easy thing for me, that is for sure. Another thing, Gosh, practice some self compassion. Okay, friends, my goodness, be kind to yourself even when you face the setbacks and make mistakes. Sometimes when we face a setback or we've made a mistake, it sets us back far. And we have to remind ourselves always that setbacks are setups. If you don't have setbacks, you're not going to have the setup for the next big thing. If you don't have a failure, I use that. I put quotation marks around failure because without failure, nothing is learned. If you don't fail from time to time. You don't learn a new process, you don't learn a new system. You have to have those failures. If you do a marketing campaign for your business and it's a flop, nobody buys your product, nobody signs up whatever you're selling, nobody locks in with you. You might look at that and go, I failed. I suck. My, my product is awful. Nobody wants me. And you make it personal. It's not personal. It's not about you. Maybe your marketing message was off. Maybe you don't have the right ideal client in front of you. Maybe the median that you used in your marketing campaign is not to your product. All that tells you is what you tried didn't work. You need to try something else. You need to make it better this time. You need to make some changes. It's teaching you something. Without a failure, you wouldn't have the opportunity to learn and grow. It's quite valuable. Failures are incredibly valuable. You just have to stop thinking about a failure as something negative. Failure is the process of education. It's the process of learning something new. But give yourself some grace and seek some compassion. Because you know what? If you're not going to be kind to you, no one else in the world is. You have to be kind to you first. As I've said before, the relationship with yourself is one of the most important relationships that you have to work on. Okay, next. Clear set goals. The goals that you want to accomplish have to be very, very clear. Defining your goals very specifically. Measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. You have to have all of those metrics when setting your goals by just saying, I'm going to hit six figures this year in my business. Okay, well, you can say that. How are you going to reach six figures? You have to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time driven. Clarity in each of your objectives will make it easier to work towards them. We can miscommunicate with ourselves. Have you ever thought about how many times you were not clear with your own thoughts? And then you get confused and then you end up into that vicious spin cycle of self sabotage. Well, who do you think you are? You can't do this. You can't run a business. You can't sell product. You can't reach six figures in your business. Who do you think you are? You have to be clear with yourself. Make your goals very specific and measurable. Achievable. Celebrate the wins. Break them down into small, tiny goals. Tiny steps, tiny bites of the elephant. Make them relevant and time Bound. Okay, you can do all of that. Now, if self sabotage for some people can be deeply, deeply ingrained, I mean, it can be to a point where professional help is necessary to overcome. And that is very real for some people. Now, I'm a coach, I'm a life coach and a business coach, and I can walk you through many things. One of the biggest difference between a therapist and a life coach or a business coach is a therapist will take you through what happened in the past. A coach is going to take you through what happened in the past and then take what happened in the past and help you bring yourself into the future and define your future and set the goals and create the goals and the roadmap, all of those things, that's where it's different. But there are times where you need professional psychiatric help, you need a therapist, you need a psychologist, psychiatrist to help you through the deep rooted, self sabotaging beginnings. And don't hesitate to seek that if you need to. But if you're ready to work on self sabotage in your business, in your daily life, on what you think of yourself, you let me know. We'll lock arms. We'll do it together. Okay? I have two more things that I want to share with you. The second to the last one is visualizing success. Have you ever visualized the success for your business, the success for your life, your relationships? Have you ever just visualized what that would look like? What would it look like to take the vacation you've always wanted to take? What would it feel like? Well, how would it smell? How would it taste? What would that be for you? What would it feel like to reach your financial goals of six figures or seven figures in your business? What would that feel like? What would it feel like to imagine yourself giving back abundantly to your favorite charity or philanthropy because you created abundance in your business by visualizing your success? This can help you stay focused and motivated and see it to fruition. The very last thing I want to share with you is to maintain a growth mindset. Now, each of the ideas that you have, every idea you have, you have to have that mindset that it's going to change because you learn something new. You keep growing, and through the effort of learning anything that you face, the challenges that you face, anything that's in front of you, you can persevere. Do you know of anyone who doesn't want to try something new because they're afraid of learning new technology? I don't want to have to learn a new program. I don't want to have to know more about the computer. I don't. They don't allow themselves to stay in a growth mindset because of their own fears. If you stay in a mindset of growth that there's nothing you can't do, everything in front of you is figureoutable. You can figure it out. You can learn it on the Internet for free by doing a search. That's true. You can look at what you might need to learn and save money to be able to buy the education to learn. Or you can look at what your company needs, what your business needs and invest in someone who has the knowledge and pay to have it done. But you personally have to always have a mindset of growth so you can persevere in those times of major challenges. Because in business and life you're going to have challenges all the time. Life is not always easy. You will always face challenges. And a positive growth mindset will allow you to walk through that time in your life with ease. With absolute ease. I want you to remember this as I close Overcoming self sabotage is a process, friends, and it takes time and effort. It's normal to encounter some setbacks along the way, but with persistence and the right strategies, you can make progress through self sabotage and you can get a hold of self sabotage in your life. I used to self sabotage. I really don't anymore. Every now and then I'll get a little bit of that going. Then I'm like, oh, not today. Get out of my brain. You are not allowed there. I don't let it sit there for long. But self sabotage, I think is somewhat of a normal thing. You're a normal. If you're experiencing this right now, so does a lot of other people. But you can work through it. And if you go through the steps that we've talked about, you can absolutely work through it. Give yourself that grace because it takes time and effort. It took most of your life to get to where you are with the mindset you have. It's going to take months, maybe even years to overcome self sabotage. That's normal. If you don't like how you think about yourself and what your abilities are, you can change that, set your mind to it, you're changing it, and it changes today and you start today. But it takes perseverance. You're going to have setbacks, you're going to fall off, off of your trajectory. It'll take some time, but give yourself that grace and know that you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. There's nothing that I've done in my that you listening cannot do. I 1000% believe that. My friends. Gosh, thank you so much. I absolutely love having you here. I love coaching you. I love sharing with you. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. If this has resonated with you, if you learned something today, will you please rate this podcast and will you give it a review? Will you share this with your friends? I know you know at least one person, maybe, maybe two people, maybe 10 people that need to hear this today about self sabotage. Please share this. Build a beautiful community, because community is what it's all about. Friends, I want you to go out and make it a great day and I'll talk to you next time.
Thank you for joining us today on a New Life podcast. We will see you next time.
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