3 Hidden Self Sabotaging Behavior Blocks That Crush Desires

What if the reason your manifestations feel off isn’t because you’re doing it wrong… but because you’ve been manifesting from a version of yourself that’s been edited, diluted, or delayed?

In this episode, Shannon dives deep into the hidden self sabotaging behavior patterns that quietly derail your deepest desires. Not the obvious ones, but the ones that sound like wisdom, like responsibility, like spiritual growth. The ones that tell you to shrink your desires so they’re easier to digest. To wait until you’re more “healed” before you claim what you want. To be practical instead of aligned.

This is a call back to the bigness of your soul. The wholeness of your truth. And the honesty required to stop manifesting what looks good on paper and start creating what actually feels like home.

In this episode, you’ll explore:

• The ways we shrink our desires to make them more “acceptable”
• How we delay our dreams, waiting to be more “worthy”
• Why practicality can become a mask for fear
• A journaling prompt to reconnect with your unfiltered desire
• The energetic shift required to manifest a life that’s true to you

🌾 Ready to deepen this work? Join Shannon this September for the Harvest Your Desires Gathering — a soul-centered space to reclaim your desires and manifest from your fullest, most expanded truth.

Chapters

• 0:00 When Manifestations Miss the Mark
• 3:22 Shrinking Desires to Make Them Digestible
• 5:39 Postponing Desires Until You Feel Worthy
• 7:21 Disguising Fear as Practicality
• 10:18 Reclaiming Your True Desires
• 12:08 Honor Your Desires Now

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Manifest you podcast. Today I really want to speak with you about what happens when you're manifesting stuff that you really don't want to manifest. Because what if the things that you're calling in the manifestations you're journaling about, visualizing, affirming, aren't actually what you truly desire? What if your heart is whispering one thing, but your conditioning, your fear and your self-sabotaging behaviors are choosing something entirely different? It's a painful realization, but it's also a very incredibly powerful one, because if you're manifesting a life that feels almost right, kinda close, but not quite what your soul is craving, then something is off, and most often it is not your manifestation process. So I want to get that clear right now. A lot of times we're like maybe I don't visualize, maybe I need another method, and we keep looking for other stuff. What if it's not that at all? You have the process. You've got that down, girl. What if it's really about the source code that you're manifesting from and that source code is compromised Because so many of us are unconsciously shaping our desires to be more acceptable, more digestible, more realistic?

Speaker 1: 1:19

You tweak them to fit in, you tone them down so you don't intimidate, alienate or inconvenience anyone else. You negotiate with your own heart in the name of being wise or practical. But today I think we should call it what it really is, and that's self-sabotaging behavior in disguise. It's not wisdom, it's not practicality. We're derailing our desires and it's costing you so much more than missed manifestations. It's costing you your deepest alignment, your fullest joy and that wild, radiant life you came here to live. So today, I want to take you on a deeper journey into the hidden ways. We block our desires Because it comes from deep conditioning that says it's safer to settle. So grab your favorite drink, cozy up and let's get started.

Speaker 1: 2:13

First and foremost, your desires are not random. Your desires are sacred. That is your soul language. However, we've been taught to treat it with suspicion. From an early age. You've been trained to second-guess the wild, expansive dreams that come from within. You're praised for being low-maintenance. You're encouraged to be reasonable. You're conditioned to dim the light just enough so you don't offend or outshine others. And so you internalized this message right. You internalized that your deepest desires are too much and that you're too much To protect yourself. You adapted, you learned to want things that wouldn't rock the boat. You convinced yourself that you were satisfied with crumbs. You played small, not because you didn't want more, but you were afraid of what more might cost you. This is where self-sabotaging behavior takes root, not as some kind of conscious defiance, but as a quiet, well-meaning misalignment.

Speaker 1: 3:23

We're going to unpack three ways that this shows up and what to do when you recognize yourself in these patterns, so you can stop manifesting the crumbs, the little, the watered-down version where you're not truly fulfilled, and you can start manifesting and do what lights your soul on fire. The first block is shrinking your desires to make it more digestible, and this one runs deep, especially for tender-hearted loves. You get a download, a desire that is so pure it makes your whole body light up. Maybe it's a love so true it melts you, or a version of life that feels expansive, easeful, abundant. And then, almost immediately, you start to trim the edges. You make it smaller, more realistic. You start saying things like, well, that would be nice to have, but I'd be okay with less, as long as I'm not alone, it doesn't really matter if it's that kind of love. Maybe I don't need that kind of joy all the time.

Speaker 1: 4:22

The truth is, the original desire, the one that lit you up, was never the problem. It was the reaction to it, the internalized belief that your desires need to be edited to be acceptable. This is one of the most common and heartbreaking self-sabotaging behaviors, because it disconnects you from your truth. It trained you to mistrust what you know in your bones is meant for you. The most wild part about all this is you might still be manifesting something, but it won't feel like the full body. Yes, you were seeking. It feels close, like a version of your dream, but it doesn't have the sparkle. So if you're looking for a quick win, if you relate to this, if you're like, yes, girl, that is me. What I want you to do is just revisit one of your desires and ask where have I made this more palatable for others? And then I want you to write out an unfiltered version, the one that makes you nervous because it's so freaking honest. Now the next block I want to talk about is a behavior that's very subtle, but it's deeply woven in into how we've been taught to view our desires, and that's postponing a desire until you feel worthy enough. It can sound something like once I heal this part of me, then I'll be ready for X, y, z desire. Or after I get my finances back on track, then I'll be ready for X, y, z.

Speaker 1: 5:53

Abundance. It is the energy of waiting, of putting your desire on a shelf until you feel like you've done enough inner work, you've cleared enough blocks or you become so spiritually mature enough that you deserve it. But a desire is not a reward for being perfect. It is not something you earn once you've done all your healing homework. It is something that you allow, no matter what your life looks like. It's about allowing, even if it feels like, oh, I'm not ready. This behavior keeps you in a loop of self-improvement with no end. You're never going to be perfect. Let it go, just allow. You're always going to find one more thing to fix, one more thing to clean up, and meanwhile your truest desires are gathering dust in the corner of your life.

Speaker 1: 6:40

Ask yourself what have I been postponing until I'm better or more put together? And then I want you to write out the desire as if you're fully worthy, because you are fully worthy. So if you're looking to move past this block, this unconscious self-sabotage, if this kind of fits you now that you're aware that's your quick win is feeling worthy now and letting yourself ride it out, knowing that you're worthy just because you exist. And then the third one that I see a lot when it comes to this is disguising your fear as practicality, and this one's really tricky because it also sounds super responsible. I'm so guilty of this If I'm the most. Oh, I have to be practical, I have to think things through, I have to be responsible. I can't let loose, I can't take risk, I can't. That's me through and through, and so I have to talk myself through this quite often, because we tell ourselves, yep, I'm being practical.

Speaker 1: 7:43

You say things like I don't want to be naive, you don't want to get your hopes up, you want to make safe choices that really have nothing to do with alignment. You convince yourself to stay in situations that drain, you delay your joy, or waiting until it's the right time, which usually means never, because there's never a right time. Some of us may call it being grounded, many of us call it being realistic, but in truth it's fear. You may fear disappointment. You may fear disappointment. You may fear judgment. You may fear failure. I fear failure all the time. I am a recovering perfectionist and I fear failure, and it's something I have to work through. But what I've learned is baby steps right. I'm working on my nervous system regulation around failure, and that's okay. In all of this, please know it is okay.

Speaker 1: 8:40

The awareness is the power, because once you're aware, you just move and you work through it. It doesn't mean that you suck I say this every episode Coming across blocks, limiting beliefs, all this stuff it doesn't mean you suck Truly. I want you to get that in your brain, because what are we talking about here right now? How we've been conditioned in life to exhibit these behaviors, Something that was put in you from a young age. Now we're aware, now we can move past it. Because, like this one, this block of being practical, if you're practical but you're not aligned, you're never going to get where you want to go anyway. It's going to get you a version of life that looks okay on paper but feels hollow in your body. If you want a quick win in this area, then pick an area of your life where you've chosen to be practical over aligned and ask yourself if I didn't care what anyone else thought, what would I do instead?

Speaker 1: 9:48

Within all of this, it is so essential that you remember who you are. That desire is not something you have to earn, it's something you get to remember. It's the language of your soul, reminding you of the version of life you came here to live, not the one that's the safest or the most accepted or the easiest to explain. So many of us are manifesting lives that are technically fine and yet we wake up feeling disconnected, uninspired or even numb. Not because we're doing something wrong, but we stopped being honest about what we really want, and that honesty is where your power lives. That's really why I'm so excited for the Harvest your Desires gathering that I'm having, because it's going to be a space where we go beyond vision boards and into real raw reclamation of desire. I want you to think about vision boards that you've done in the past and the pictures you've pasted on there. I bet you I'm going to say nine times out of 10, you put something on there that was socially acceptable or something that was kind of whittled down right, that was digestible, or something that you think you're worthy of now, but it really isn't what you want, or maybe something that's very practical, that seems like a practical thing. Let me put that on my vision board. No, at the harvest your, your Desires, we're going beyond that. First of all, I don't do vision boards, I do vision diaries, and there's a whole bunch that goes into it besides just pictures, but that's going to be taught in the class.

Speaker 1: 11:21

The Harvest your Desires gathering we are reclaiming the true desire, the unfiltered desire, and then we're going to look at what's been blocking it, how to expand, receiving it and making space for the things that the ladies in the group haven't let themselves ask for in years. It is going to be so powerful I will link it in the show notes. So if you're in the DFW area, you're going to want to come to this event. There are limited spots. It's a very intimate gathering, so make sure you grab that spot. Like, do not wait, Go get it now.

Speaker 1: 11:55

And if you take nothing else from this episode, I really want it to be this and it's that you're not too much, your desires are not too big and you don't have to settle for a life that almost fits. And for my ladies out there that are a little bit older like me, almost fits. And for my ladies out there that are a little bit older like me, it is not too late. You didn't miss something Like I think when we get to our 40s we think, well, that's it, I didn't get it, so it's too late now we haven't even lived half our life, my goodness. So it isn't too late either.

Speaker 1: 12:28

And once again, I just want to reiterate that self-sabotaging behavior doesn't mean that you're broken. It means that you're human. It means that you've been a part of the society that puts these ideas in our head that we have to be smaller than what we should be. But now you're aware, and now you get to make a choice. So start today, pick one of the desires that we talked about and do the quick win exercise and let it breathe and write it out and say it out loud and honor it and then begin to align with it, not someday Now, because you're worthy of a life that excites you and expands you and reflects who you really are. Until next week, keep dreaming bigger than what is digestible or practical or what you even think. You're worthy of Dream so big. I'll chat with you next week.