
The iamthepossible Podcast
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The iamthepossible Podcast
Breaking the Cycle of Self-Sabotage
Breaking the Cycle of Self-Sabotage
Are you tired of always taking 2 steps forward but then finding a way to take 2 steps back?
There is a reason you do this and it's something not many people are talking about and even less people, i believe are even aware it exists!
In this episode I share what this thing is and provide some simple first steps on how to use it to work for you and not against you!
Summary
In this conversation, Treveal introduces the idea of self-concept, explaining how it is formed through influences from parents, peers, and personal experiences. Treveal emphasizes the importance of understanding one's self-concept and how it leads to confirmation bias, which can hinder personal growth.
He provides insights on how to break this cycle through training, awareness, and altering beliefs to create a new, positive self-concept that aligns with desired behaviors and success.
Takeaways
•Self-sabotage is a common cycle of progress and regression.
•Self-concept is formed through influences from parents, peers, and experiences.
•Confirmation bias reinforces existing beliefs about oneself.
•Awareness of self-concept can help break the cycle of self-sabotage.
•Training and practice are essential for personal growth.
•Beliefs dictate behaviors; changing beliefs can change outcomes.
•You can consciously choose who you want to be.
•Incremental changes in behavior can lead to significant growth.
•New experiences can be intimidating but are necessary for progress.
•Understanding and training the mind can create new pathways for success.
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Treveal C.W. Lynch (00:20.148)
Hey guys, today I want to talk to the brother that may be experiencing what we normally describe as taking two steps forward and then taking two steps back. Other people know it as self-sabotage. Or in other words, we somehow consistently find ourselves in these cycles of a little progress or so we think, and then we shrink back, we fall back. It's like we can never truly get ahead.
It's like we can never experience the kind of progress that we desire to experience. Maybe we start something, but we never finish it. Maybe we get really excited, pumped up, motivated to try something, to do something, but then soon we just find a way to fail. We just find a way to never follow through, to never stay consistent, to never finish the thing that we started. And this can be true
in the area of a given project, but in the worst case, it can be true in just the overall quality of your life. You just aren't where you want to be in life. And you just don't feel like you have the tools that you need to move forward, to really have sustained success. If that's you, my brother, today I'm talking to you. And I just want to take a few minutes and I want to introduce you to something.
that I believe will be extremely helpful in helping you to develop the necessary capacity to begin to create that consistency in your life in a given project, task, or achieving a given goal. So I don't know if you've ever heard this term before.
but today I want to introduce you to something called the self-concept. Many people talk about image, but this is a little bit more than image. It's truly a concept. It's something that's been constructed over time. Usually it's been constructed over years, usually your entire lifetime since you were a child, first being born and then thrown into an environment.
Treveal C.W. Lynch (02:43.84)
good or bad, positive or negative. And then in those formative years as you were growing up, there's three influences or inputs. And usually they're a little misinformed, okay? But there's these inputs that begin to help you. And this is not something that you're conscious of. You're doing it, but you don't really know that you're doing it, right? But you're constructing this concept, and I'll share with you in just a moment why this concept is so important.
but you're constructing this concept of yourself and this concept is informing you on what you can do, and be in this world. You're constructing something that's going to then continue to confirm to you the kind of life that you are able to experience. Now the three P's to constructing your self-concept, your parents, your peers,
and your personal experiences. Those three things help you as you're growing up, as you're going through different things, you're seeing different things, you're experiencing different things. Your parents, your peers, and your personal experiences are informing you of who you are. Now again, this is usually misinformed information because only God knows you like that.
Your parents, don't know you like that. Your peers, they really don't know you like that. And you as a child growing up, you don't really know who you are and what you are and why you are. And the experiences that you're going through, you're usually filtering them through a mind that is not fully developed. So the cognitive skills have not been developed for you to make quality informed decisions and interpretations about the things that are occurring in your life. And so now you're...
getting all of this bad information from your parents. And I'm not saying all parents are bad or misinformed, but if you grew up like me and you can identify like me, you grew up with parents or absentee parents that just didn't provide you great information about yourself, your peers, they sometimes bullied you, made fun of you, called you names, did things, said things, exposed you to things that were not good, that were not positive, that were not of high quality.
Treveal C.W. Lynch (05:05.556)
And so all of this stuff is coming at you and you're creating, unconsciously you're creating this concept of who and what you believe that you are. And so after this concept has been constructed, what you now move into is something called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias basically says the brain works in such a way that it has to continue to prove to you that you are who you say you are. And that's where these cycles of self-sabotage come from.
That's where you start to do the two steps forward and two steps back because your concept that you've constructed by all of this misinformation tells you you're not a winner. You don't finish things. You don't get across the finish line. You don't come in first place. And so because you have this concept, your confirmation bias says I am biased to confirming that I am who I currently believe that I am. You shrink back.
You have to become congruent. Your mind says, I need to align my behaviors with my belief of me. So when you attempt new things, exciting things, things that you really want to do in life, that mechanism in your mind, in your brain is saying, no, no, no, you don't do this. You don't make a million dollars. You don't start a business. You're not successful. Your relationships don't grow and flourish. No, no, no, you're this over here.
Let's sabotage that situation. Let's ruin that relationship. Let's find a way to fail. Let's find a way to lose that money. Let's find a way to give away that opportunity. Let's find a way to find yourself back in a ditch because of this confirmation bias. I've shared with you many times this quote that I love, Zig Ziglar. He says that you cannot consistently perform in a manner
that is inconsistent with the way that you see yourself. That truly summarizes this confirmation bias. You cannot consistently perform in a manner that is inconsistent with the way that you see yourself. This is why this self-concept is so important. Remember guys, I preach and I teach this thing. The two most important things that you will ever learn, that you will ever develop, that you will ever...
Treveal C.W. Lynch (07:32.947)
get good at, great at, the two most important things for you to really hone your skills in on is what you see in yourself and what you say to yourself. What you see in yourself, that's your concept. What you say to yourself is your communication or that inner dialogue or that intrapersonal communication. Guys, now that I've exposed what is
Causing you to sabotage yourself and why you keep going through the cycles Why you keep taking two steps forward and two steps back is not because you're a bad person. It's not because you're lousy or lazy It's not because you're worthless. It's not because you're some deadbeat not because any of these things and not because of what they said or done It's because there was something that was developing that you had no idea was developing and now You've been suffering because of it. But today you've been made aware of it
your self-concept and the confirmation bias. So how do we break this cycle? What are the things that we need to do to begin to move forward consistently? How do we begin to perform in a way that we desire to perform and in a manner that we desire to perform in? Well, good old training. You guys know one of my favorite quotes in the world.
We do not rise to the level of our expectations. Or in some translations, we don't rise to the occasion, but rather we fall to the level of our training. And here's the good news, training is possible. If you don't like where you are, you can train your way out of it. If you don't know something, you can train your way into knowing it. Wherever you are, here is the good news. You can train better. So we practice.
Because the one thing about the confirmation bias, which I didn't share earlier, but I share now, and then we'll get into the training, is that it seeks only information that reinforces and reaffirms what you already believe. I want you to think about that in your own personal life. Do you tend to go around the same people and hear the same stuff? Do you tend to go on the same social media feeds?
Treveal C.W. Lynch (09:56.65)
Do you tend to, if you're into books, read the same books, read the same articles, watch the same movies, watch the same content, listen to the same music, go to the same places, hang out in the same spaces? Do you continue to kind of have this Groundhog Day mentality with the information that you're receiving, the company that you keep, the areas and the places and the spaces that you occupy? Is there a consistent thread in what you're consistently doing? Well, see,
the mechanism in your brain, that confirmation, bias, it wants to keep you there. So it continues to push and prod you in the direction of spaces and places and people and information that's going to reaffirm, reinforce, further press upon you the information that aligns with the...
stinking thinking concept that you already have and so and so the cycle continues. You see how that works? So with the training we have to interrupt this belief. We have to interrupt this because remember beliefs dictate behavior. Belief dictates behavior. If you want your behavior to change then you have to start with changing your belief. New belief, new behavior. And so I want you to begin to train. I want you to begin to entertain this new word.
objectivity, right? Because right now you're biased. It means that you are just so steeped in your own view of things. You just know how it is and you just know who you are and can't nobody tell you nothing and you're just steeped in this thing. And so the only way for you to really break this cycle is for you to consciously with awareness, right? With acknowledgement and with incremental alterations to your behavior over time.
You have to train it. And so this is how it could work. You may say to yourself, okay, let me take a moment and let me really think through where I'm trying to perform better. Let's say for example, at work and you may discover, okay, I want the promotion. I want to be a better leader, but my current concept keeps bringing me back to an entry level position and behavior and work ethic. So now with that awareness, you can acknowledge, hey, I have a concept.
Treveal C.W. Lynch (12:18.578)
about me that keeps me at this entry level at my job, but I want to excel, I want to level up. Okay, well now when it's time to do the things that a leveled up employee would do, maybe you wanna take on new projects, maybe you wanna take on more, you wanna do some new things. Well number one, you're have to learn and train whatever those new things are, but more importantly within yourself, you're gonna have to acknowledge and you have to alter through awareness.
Now, hey, that old concept of me, that is not true. I am whoever I decide to be. am whoever I decide to be. Now we're not whatever we decide to be. The creator, God alone decides what we are, but we get to choose who we are. And so who you are, this concept, this identity, this image of yourself, now you can begin to alter and say, no, no, no. If I could build the old concept, I can build a new concept.
If I can get stuck in a cycle with an old concept, then I can create a new cycle of achievement and success and progress with a new concept that I'm now going to consciously train. I'm going to acknowledge that the old one was keeping me back, but this new one that I desire, I'm going to incrementally alter my behavior, my thinking, my speaking to align, to be congruent, to be in agreement with who I
I desire to be. So now when those moments come up, you can pause and breathe and say, wait a minute, I'm about to shrink back. No, I decide I choose not to shrink back because I know what's going on. This is that confirmation bias at work within me. I'm now aware that it's trying to pull me and shrink me back to who I thought that I was, but I'm now deciding to be who I want to be.
So in this moment, I'm making a conscious decision and choice not to shrink back. And I'm going to press through the adversity. I'm going to press through the newness because that's one of the things that I didn't share earlier. The newness sometimes scares us. Something new scares us because anything that's new, we're not familiar with. So even though it may be for our good, we're unfamiliar with it. So sometimes it scares us and draws us back. And so we have to understand that, OK, listen, this is what's happening within me right now.
Treveal C.W. Lynch (14:39.392)
I'm a little scared, I'm a little timid because this is brand new to me, but because I have been so successful at training the old concept, I can now lean into that confidence to now create a new concept. Yeah, take what you've already done. Trust your concept that you created unknowingly got you stuck in a rut. It's the same energy, the same mind, the same brain.
that can now be leveraged to create the new you so that the cycle changes and becomes one that you want to experience. So now it's through your training, through your awareness, through your acknowledgement, through your altering over and over and over, and now you're building new pathways, neurological pathways, neurons are forming, brain.
Waves are forming, the mind is expanding, and now you're growing into this person that you desire to be, and you're breaking the old cycle, and you're no longer shrinking back, and you're no longer taking two steps forward and two steps back. Now you're taking two steps forward, and you're staying forward to take another two, and another two, and another two, and now you're actively, consciously, intentionally creating
a new version of yourself. Yeah. I hope you are excited about that. Yeah, that's how this thing works. All right. I just wanted to give you that quick preview. Just a little, you know, a little something, Obviously, man, we're go deeper into this in future episodes, future content.
I'm gonna create a whole course on this thing, man, where we can dive in together live and really break this thing down. But in this video, in this moment, I just wanted to begin to open up your mind to what might be holding you back so that you can leverage this information for your good. All right? That's it, brothers, that's it. Love y'all, praying for y'all, believing in y'all. Until next time, please remember.
Treveal C.W. Lynch (16:55.466)
The genius is your design. Greatness is your destiny. God loves you. I love you. Be encouraged. And yes, above all else, be what is possible. God bless you.