The Brain Science Behind Why You Keep Self-Sabotaging Your Money

You're not lazy. You're not undisciplined. You're not broken. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was built to do, which is protect you from anything unfamiliar. And until you understand that, no budget, no business plan, no Q2 goal is going to stick.

This week on NoBS Wealth, Tessa Santarpia walks me through why self-sabotage has nothing to do with willpower. It's a mismatch. Your conscious mind wants more money, more visibility, more growth. Your subconscious identity thinks that's a threat to survival. And identity wins every single time.

We break down why success triggers just as much threat as failure. Why high earners have just as many mindset problems as everyone else, they just have more zeros on the mess. Why "just automate it" is only half the answer. And why the moment you say "this always happens to me," that's your nervous system telling on itself.

Tessa gives you three real moves you can make this week to rewire the pattern. Not more doing. Not more planning. Actual regulation of the system that's been pulling you back to baseline your entire adult life. Walk outside. Slow your breathing. Splash cold water on your face. Sounds simple. It's not. And it works.

If you've been blaming yourself for not hitting your Q1 goals, this is the episode. Stop beating up the version of you that was just trying to stay safe. Start training the patterns you actually want to run.

Connect with Tessa at Santaia Health: https://santaia.health/

Ready to stop running the same pattern and actually look at your money with someone who sees what you can't? Book your Power Hour at https://www.blackmammoth.com/powerhour. 60 minutes, 1:1. Your real numbers. A plan you can actually run.

If this hit home, drop a comment. Tell me where you're feeling it most. I read every single one.

New episodes every week on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Subscribe so you never miss a real conversation.

Transcript

Some of you are stuck before you even start

Tessa Santarpia 0:21

Well then it's time.

Stoy Hall 0:29

Some of you aren't stuck because of your own mind. Some of you, you aren't stuck because you don't know what to do or you're not successful. You're stuck from the beginning. You're stuck because inherently you are self-sabotaging your, your own brain from the success that you have laid out. And today, who better else to have talking about the brain than Tessa herself, which you all know her, and it's going to be a great conversation because it's different, right? There's the mindset side, there's the mental health side, but then there's also just the brain functioning side and exercises and things that we could do to, to help ourselves. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. So for those, um, that are listening, it's the end of, it's the beginning of Q2, it's the end of Q1. And you've either met your Q1 goals or you have not met your Q1 goals. You either have, feel yourself successful or you're not. But I bet we all could be a little more disciplined in what we wanna do. In our lives and in our goals. So I wanna start with that. The disciplines speak when people say I'm undisciplined or I haven't followed through with my plans and I'm not sticking to being disciplined. What's really happening in our brain now? There's a lot of out, out knowers, there's a lot of things, variables. But like internally when I'm saying, Hey, I'm on disciplined and I'm not reaching what I'm doing, what's really going on in our heads?

Tessa Santarpia 1:56

Yeah. Um, so. What I really wanna start off with is that

Self-sabotage is not laziness. Here's what it really is.

Tessa Santarpia 2:00

self-sabotage is not laziness. It's not a lack of discipline, and it's not even a lack of clarity. It's happens when your conscious goals are moving in one direction and your subconscious identity is pulling you in another, and identity is always gonna win. So let's break these concepts down a little bit. If you think of your nervous system, your brain, and all of the nerves going throughout your body. That's your hardware and that's what's actually sensing, processing, reacting to the world in real time. Now your mind is like the operating system. It's kind of your experience of that system going through that processing. So these think of your thoughts, your feelings, your perceptions, your interpretations. So then inside the mind starts to get into two different layers. There's that conscious mind. This is where we make our goals. This is what we can actively influence. This is, you know, what we're actively aware of. So think of you saying, I want to make more money. I'm ready to scale. I'm ready to be consistent this quarter. The conscious mind is very small. It has a very limited capacity of what it can hold and process at any given time. So the subconscious mind is everything else. It's not just in your head. It's actually connected to your entire nervous system, which runs throughout your body, and that subconscious is really connected to all of your past experiences stemming since birth, your emotional memories. Your repeated patterns. So the subconscious is holding way more data than the conscious mind ever could, and that's where that identity lives. So consciously when you really want something, but subconsciously the system's like, that's not who we are, we're not familiar here. That's when you start to get that mismatch. And unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, you can't talk your subconscious into or out of anything.

Why your brain treats growth like a threat

Stoy Hall 4:02

And we're gonna get into some later, some action steps to help you with that. But why I, I guess you kind of answered it, but now I'm gonna ask it anyway. Why does the brain then treat like our growth, like we do grow, whether that's, you know, physically, mentally, or in our business? Why does the brain start to treat that more like something dangerous and, and not part of our identity?

Tessa Santarpia 4:25

Yeah, so the subconsciously and the nervous system and biologically we like what's familiar because the familiar is perceived as safe. If you think about it, we've experienced it before we repeat it, we're used to it. That's kind of where that homeostasis comes from. We like to hold onto that, what's familiar. So when we encounter any sort of uncertainty or change that brings a level of. Well, we don't know about this. We don't know if we can handle this. We don't know if we're going to, you know, have a threat to our survival. So what happens is the nervous system doesn't start fighting with you like the conscious mind was. You know, you don't start overthinking and justifying and things. It actually just starts to slow you down. It creates hesitation. It makes things feel harder than they should, and that's its way of kind of bringing you back to that familiar baseline. Because this is subconscious, you're not even really actively aware it's even happening, and by the time it does happen, you just think, oh, this is who I am. This is who I'll always be.

Stoy Hall 5:31

So that just came up. I just had, it's the end of the month. We're recording this, folks. Yeah, I know. We, we don't do it live of course yet. We will be. But I just had this conversation with one of my clients. She's, she's gone through a divorce last year. Business is not doing well, trying to get back ahead, kind of wants to rebrand and redo herself. And she had brought this exact same thing up of, she said, it feels like this always happens to me like. I was born into this world and this is always what happens. Is that kind of what you're talking about, where like your yourself says, makes you feel like that? This is, this is your path. You were, you deserve to be this way. This is the only thing that we have. Is that kind of along those lines?

Tessa Santarpia 6:14

Yes, definitely. So what's happening is your system is actually just returning to its baseline, which is a familiar state, which is the feeling of. Being you, which for, for a lot of us comes down to, oh, this always happens. Oh, this negative thing always happens. We don't weigh the positives as much because of that negativity bias in the brain. But that's exactly what is happening. And we think that it's just, you know, the circumstances that keep happening to us when it's really coming from the state of our nervous system.

Stoy Hall 6:47

So is that then, I know we had talked about mindset a little bit, but is that an active mindset thing? Issue. Or is that an act of like, I need to train my brain like a muscle situation?

Survival mode is a brain state, not a vibe

Tessa Santarpia 7:00

Yeah. So. It's not a mindset issue because that would all stem in the conscious mind. So the conscious mind is what we can reason, plan, strategize. We can create logic, we can fight with ourselves. You know, all of these things live in the realm of the conscious mind. But unless we're targeting the subconscious and bringing the body into our mind, then we're not gonna be able to create that change. Because we could tell ourselves all day that we now are better with, you know, certain things or we are capable of change. But if the body doesn't feel that and the body doesn't feel safe in attaining that new state, it's always gonna keep pulling us back down to baseline. And that's something that all humans share. It's not one person versus the other.

Stoy Hall 7:46

Before we move on to the next segment, people talk about this all the time. Survival mode, right? I'm in survival mode. I, I feel like I'm just trying to survive. Hell, I say it to myself all the time, although when you look at today's, you know, situation and the things that are going on, sometimes it's true. I'm just trying to survive. But is that like feeling? And when we say those things, is that because that's our comfort level, that's our baseline, is just that survival mode due to whether it's how we were raised our trauma or whatever. Is that what like our body resets back to and that's why we feel like we're just surviving?

Tessa Santarpia 8:21

Yeah. Well, so survival mode is a thing that we share with all mammals. You know, primal instinct when our nervous system sense of threat, the reactive, primal parts of our brain immediately light up and all of our blood flow is directed there. And that is a literal survival instinct. It helps us narrow in on our environment. It helps us get really zeroed in on what we need to do immediately, and we start to tune out the bigger picture, right? Because we don't need that in the survival mode. So what. Separates us as a species is being able to quiet those

Noise vs truth: The willpower myth gets slapped

Tessa Santarpia 9:00

parts of the brain and actually redirect blood flow to the higher order regions that are responsible for strategizing, creative thinking, bigger picture kind of thoughts. You know, getting perspective in those survival modes. So when we say, you know, that we are locked in survival mode, it means we don't really, we're not employing the tools to be able to make that switch, and we're just kind of living in more of this. Limited capacity.

Stoy Hall 9:27

I like that. That tracks. That tracks very well with my brain. I dunno why, but it does. Alright. Favorite one of my favorite segments. Noise versus the truth. So I'm gonna give you a couple takes that we have pulled from the interwebs and I wanna give and let me know if that's just some bullshit or it's the kind of truth, right?

Tessa Santarpia 9:45

Okay.

Stoy Hall 9:46

So the statement, very simple, you just need more willpower.

Tessa Santarpia 9:53

I am gonna say that that's gotta be noise because again, your willpower is not like, I think the way we think of willpower is that you just need to want it more. You just need to send more emails, do more things, put in more hours. And the problem is you are not getting these outcomes based on that strategy alone. That would just be operating from the conscious mind. So you are going to have success with when your system can hold that success without threat. Because when the threat is triggered, that's when you're going to hesitate. Overthink instead of execute. Create that friction so you can have all the willpower in the world, but if your body's not feeling that, you know that's safe and that's right for you to do. It's just gonna slow you down.

Stoy Hall 10:38

And this one is, is kind of roughly the same, but I'm, and I'm guilty of saying this to my kids specifically when it comes to sports. Now that I've read this and, and learning about the conscious and subconsciousness, that's a problem. But hey, this one is, if you really wanted to, you do it like that one. When I say it now, it kind of makes me cringe a little bit because like I've, I've heard it so many times. I

Why success triggers just as much threat as failure

Stoy Hall 11:00

say it to, you know, my kids and, and stuff like that. But if I really wanted it, I would do it. Isn't that, that same battle of subconscious first conscious mind and kind of the, the willpower conversation?

Tessa Santarpia 11:11

Absolutely. Um, and I also think what's interesting with this particular comment is, and something that no one really talks about is that the idea of success sometimes triggers just as much threat as failure. So. Because any sort of next level is going to bring more pressure, more visibility, more responsibility. All of that is risky because it's unknown, it's unfamiliar to the system. So change of any kind is still going to feel unsafe. So we may consciously want it really bad, but to our systems, it's like we can't go there just yet. We haven't found safety in that reality because the brain doesn't have a way to navigate it.

Stoy Hall 11:55

Okay. Okay, next one. High earners don't have mindset problems. They have math problems.

Tessa Santarpia 12:03

No. I work with a lot of high earners and they have a lot of mindset problems and mindset really, just in terms of the mind is running wild with overthinking and patterns that are actually self-sabotaging their efforts forward. So it's definitely not just an earner thing. I

Stoy Hall 12:20

think what you had just said previously too, of like success brings it out just as much as the failure part. And I think those that I, I should say I know those that I've worked with as well. It's that same thing, and it's that exposure you talked about. It comes with more responsibilities. It comes with more and more in this, and everyone always asks me, they're like, how do I become rich? Well, first of all, you don't wanna become rich, okay? You just wanna be wealthy in the way you want to because it does come with. Unforeseen things that you, you don't know the stresses that you don't know that you might not want or your body might not want to deal with. Right. And I think that has to do with the higher

High earners, automation, and the math problem lie

Stoy Hall 13:00

earners as well, is some of 'em get lucky enough and they're designed that way. Others, it's a lot, it's a lot to take on to be making $500,000. Right. Like that's, that's more than a lot of people make in a, a, a decade almost. Right. Like so to, to transition that. That's, that's interesting. Now this one. This one's a little, little, uh, a little different, I think. And I don't even have an answer for this one, so I'm really excited about this. Alright, ready? Just automate it and you're fine.

Tessa Santarpia 13:31

Uh ooh. This is a good one because. Automating things helps with a lot of decision fatigue. Then that builds up cognitive load in the brain, and that is what actually makes you feel more drained throughout the day, and you have less cognitive resources to be able to devote to your strategies and your plans and whatnot. So I believe that automating is really important to help the brain in that way. But you can't automate everything because if you do, you're really taking

Three moves to rewire the pattern this week

Tessa Santarpia 14:00

out your heart and soul. Effort that needs to go into building what you're building. So if you automate everything and you detach from it completely, you're not actually giving yourself the focus and the effort that's needed.

Stoy Hall 14:15

And I just thought of another topic for us this year to talk about, and I'm gonna throw it in here and tease it, but is 'cause with automation. We think of efficiencies, we think of ai, that type of stuff. I bet you have some type of data in in your database that talks about the effects of AI and our brain, cognitive ability and all of that stuff. Probably. I think we have a, we'll, we'll have another topic on that later this year, folks, but without further ado, though, we had promised it from the beginning. We've teased it. I know everyone's asking. Okay, cool. Tessa, this is awesome. I know my subconscious and, and my conscious, well, how do I improve? How do I make it better? What can I do? What are some exercises? What are steps that can actually allow me to become better and grow that side?

Tessa Santarpia 15:02

Yeah. Um, okay. So let's talk about three big things to start doing this week. Number one is starting to identify the pattern. Not the behavior, just the pattern kind of behind it. So the real question is starting to ask yourself, when do I pull back? Look before those times, right before visibility or responsibility increases, maybe right after a win or a loss when you're perceiving maybe judgment, criticism, or even when you're, you know, the stakes are getting higher and you're getting into that level. Because the pattern is not what you're actually doing, which is what everyone wants to focus on and say, you know, this is what I always do. It's the why behind it. And then understanding that protection. So every sabotage pattern is doing something for you. It the system senses the threat. It's creating the sense of delay, distraction, unnecessary complexity just to regulate you and bring you back to that familiar state of thinking and feeling. Even if that familiar is what's uncomfortable. So the patterns you repeat, the decisions you avoid, the ceilings that you keep hitting, that is what actually needs your attention. But not from the stance of what's wrong with me, I'm never going to be able to overcome this. It's more from. How has my system learned to protect me in these ways? Because what we need to remember is that an emotion is not just a feeling. It is an electrical, chemical and hormonal signature that runs throughout the body. So if you approach these issues or these sabotaging patterns as. Frustration, shame, anger, that chemistry is actually affecting your next move. It's affecting the opportunities that you see. It's affecting your ability to move forward. But if you approach them with more understanding and a lens of this awareness rather than, you know, again, this frustration, you're actually changing the chemical signature of your body and you're opening your brain to more opportunities to move forward. So number two are very awareness based. Um, and the third is starting to regulate the system in a new way. So right now, you are regulating yourself even though it doesn't feel like that by bringing yourself back to baseline and doing things that you typically always do. So instead of trying to fix the procrastination, the inconsistency, the overthinking with just outputs that are of the conscious mind. Start to really bring your system into a different kind of safety mode. So instead of those immediate moments where, okay, this just happened, and now all I wanna do is make this work, go walk outside and be in nature without distraction. Do, do a slow breathing technique for just two minutes. Set a quick phone or set a quick timer for that. Splash some cold water on your face. Just shake out the body and like discharge some of that stress metabolism because what's happening then is you are now turning off protection mode, redirecting blood flow up to those higher order regions of the brain, and you are now going to start feeling differently about the situation at hand, and that's what's gonna look like is more available to you.

Stoy Hall 18:19

It's a very good idea. First of all, we all should be outside in nature as much as possible. Like let's all be real. Yes. Now some of us have to deal with shitty winters and, and, and stuff like that, but I I, I've been taking that when we went on spring break, and I just posted about this too, is like, I was going through a lot, taking on a lot of weight for my clients and stuff like that, and I recognized because we have no service and when you're driving 10 hour days, there's boredom that sets in, but you get a lot of time to reflect. And that's kind of what I challenge myself with too, is those, those things are gonna happen, those feelings are gonna happen, those situations are gonna happen. But instead of whether it's spiraling or going this route, what I'm going to do is put it down. I'm gonna

The mistakes keeping you stuck in the same loop

Stoy Hall 19:00

go either read a book, go outside, or do some type of exercise to kind of like for me. Without knowing what you just said, was purely just to distract myself and to hopefully breathe better and then deal with that situation later. Because in life I've learned there's really not that many emergencies. Our brain makes more emergencies than there actually are, and so if I could take that time, maybe I can come back to it. So now I actually have you being the expert telling me that's exactly what you should do. So now my brain better do it.

Tessa Santarpia 19:30

Yes. Yeah. And that's the difference. Like we think of, I don't really wanna do this 'cause I know it's just a distraction, but it's actually a vital part of regulation

Stoy Hall 19:41

now that we, we told people what to do, like we have some steps there, but what are like a couple of mistakes people need to try to avoid or that they do and that we try to get them not to do.

Tessa Santarpia 19:54

Well, number one is trying to fix it with more doing and more structure. So when you're already in kind of a reactive survival mode, let's say you, you know, experienced a loss, something didn't go the way that you wanted. Typically what we wanna do, what feels safe to do. Is to just start doing more, start planning, start strategizing, and again, when you're only doing that from the reactive part of the brain, you're only kind of operating at a limited capacity. So take that time to just regulate the system. Even if it is for 10 minutes, that's already going to shift the nervous system back into a more regulated state. Another big thing that people always do is they wait to feel ready for things. We think that, you know, we're just gonna feel ready once we're confident enough, or once we've done enough. But readiness is actually the result of taking those steps forward and kind of acting on what scares you and, and what feels unfamiliar. Um, and then the last one is definitely thinking that, you know, all of this is personal and

The hard truth: You don't rise to goals. You repeat patterns.

Tessa Santarpia 21:00

something is wrong with you. It's just that something is patterned within you. And all of those patterns can be trained.

Stoy Hall 21:06

I think that's a. What you just said was probably the most important piece is like all the patterns can be trained, right?

Tessa Santarpia 21:13

Everything,

Stoy Hall 21:13

the brain can be trained. You need to take the time to do so, which means you gotta slow the fuck down people, right? Like slow down and have a game plan for that. As we get towards the end, I, I love to end this way. Aside from that, we can always talk about your business, but I want you to punch everyone in the face with a very hard truth. The hardest truth you can tell someone that slaps 'em in the face right now, that gets them to wake up from wherever they are. But what is one hard truth?

Tessa Santarpia 21:44

Hard truth, I would say is that. You. You don't rise to your goals. Your goals are important. Your goals are, I would say, 10% of what you need to do and where your focus is. But you are going to repeat your patterns. If you don't work on this and you don't take this seriously enough day in and day out, this kind of consistency, you're just doomed. Kind of repeat all of these.

Stoy Hall 22:11

But it's so hard. It takes so much work. People, you have to do the work. I don't,

Tessa Santarpia 22:16

it's,

Stoy Hall 22:16

I don't know how much more to tell you as an adult at this point, um, in time, but like it takes time and effort to make sure your finances are going in the right way. It takes time and effort to make sure that your physical body is going in a certain way. It takes time for your mental side. It's gonna take time for your brain power as well in order to fix it too. Yeah, it sucks. We all wish we could be lazy or just be given to us. But that's not, that's not our adult world. Um, it's not where we live. Overall, go ahead.

Tessa Santarpia 22:47

I was just gonna say, it's so worth it. It takes time, but what the skills you're building with money are then also going to translate into other areas of your life. It's going to translate into your relationships and your ability to feel present and your ability, you know, it's, it's, it's all cohesive because it's all connected. So doing the work now where something that really motivates you, like money is going to pay off tenfold in ways that you can't even imagine.

Stoy Hall 23:13

If someone doesn't wanna try to do it themselves or doesn't know how, what's the best route for them to seek, help, get help or be coached in a way to, to do these exercises and to develop their own set of tools?

Tessa Santarpia 23:27

Yeah, I think it's. Definitely best to work with someone who can see your blind spots, someone who's trained to see patterns where you might only see like, this is just who I am. Because exposing those patterns and bringing it to the forefront and then giving you the tools to rewire them is really what is going to go a long way for all of the skills that we're talking about here. And working with your brain and being able to see changes in the brain is also really impactful because you don't just think, okay, I'm doing a bunch of mindset techniques and they're not working. You can actually see those changes. So now we have the tools to be able to do that,

Stoy Hall 24:07

which is amazing. You just gotta get to work people or just like Nike, which I'm sure this will not go well for the algorithm, but be like, Nike, just do it. Get out there and do it. Do do the work. The resources are out there. Tess and her team are out there. Obviously this episode's gonna be out there, so just make sure that you, you do put in the work. I know I'm gonna keep working on it. And so when we have our, probably not the next episode with you, but when we come back with the topic that we talked about earlier, maybe I'll give everyone feedback of, of what I've been working on, how it works for me. So, Tessa, I appreciate everything that you do. Love the rebrand for everyone. Go check it out. It'll be. I don't know, wherever the editors put it go. Check out the new rebrand. Give some thoughts and feedback. If at anything, reach out to us, comment DM us. We love to help you as much as possible. And again, thank you Tessa, for being part of the collective.

Tessa Santarpia 24:57

Thanks, Doy. Excited to be a part.

NoBS Wealth 25:14

The proceeding program was sponsored by Black Mammoth. Any awards, rankings, or recognition by unaffiliated third parties or publications are in no way indicative of the advisors future performance or any individual clients' investment success. No award ranking or recognition should be construed as a current or past endorsement of black mammoth. Information regarding specific awards, rankings, or recognitions is available on the Black Mammoth website, www.black mammoth.com. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss Investment strategies such as asset allocation, diversification, or rebalancing do not assure or guarantee better performance and cannot eliminate the risk of investment losses. There are no guarantees that a portfolio employing these or any other strategy will outperform a portfolio that does not engage in such strategies. This broadcast should not be construed by any client or prospective client as a solicitation to affect or attempt to affect transactions and securities or the rendering of personalized investment advice due to various factors including changing market conditions. The information discussed in this broadcast may no longer be reflective of current positions or recommendations. While information presented is believed to be factual and up to date, black mammoth, do not guarantee its accuracy and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. The tax and the state planning information discussed is general in nature and is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal or tax advice. Listeners should consult an attorney or tax professional regarding their specific legal or tax situation. Past performance is not indicative of future results.