Stop Self-Sabotage FOR GOOD

Do you struggle to follow through with what you want to do? Do you commit to doing something different or better, only to end up doing the opposite of what you know you should? You are NOT alone. Every woman I know and work with wrestles with self-sabotage. 

In this episode, I delve into what's really going on when you self-sabotage and, most importantly, how to finally stop sabotaging yourself for good.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER: 

• Why self-sabotage becomes a vicious, never-ending cycle if you’re not careful
• What makes self-sabotage a problem and why willpower, motivation, and even desire aren’t enough to prevent it
• The real, root causes of self-sabotage (they’re so much deeper than you know!)
• The most common ways women tend to self-sabotage (and what’s really happening in your subconscious brain in those moments)
• Eight practical tips to overcome self-sabotage

FOR SO MUCH MORE:

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HOMEWORK:

Your homework for this episode is to identify one area where you tend to sabotage yourself. Journal on what you think might really be going on based on all we covered, then commit to one or more of the techniques mentioned for NOT succumbing to self-sabotage in the future. Share your answers with me via email or DM me on Instagram @solutionsforsimplicity.

COMING UP NEXT:

 Join me back next episode to learn about attachment styles and how childhood experiences shape your—and your kids’—degree and kind of connection to others.

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Transcript

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Do you struggle to follow through with what you want to do? Do you commit to doing something different or better, only to end up doing the opposite of what you know you should? Every woman I know and work with wrestles with self-sabotage. In this episode, we are delving into what's really going on when you self-sabotage and, most importantly, how to finally stop sabotaging yourself for good. Welcome to More Time for Mom, where overwhelmed moms get science-backed strategies to overcome the hidden sources of stress stealing your time and joy. I'm your host, Dr. Amber Curtis. Ready to make more time for you? Let's dive in. Welcome to the More Time for Mom podcast, or big welcome if you are new. I had originally intended to talk about attachment styles this episode, but my little sister just had her first baby, so I am heading out to go help her and meet my sweet little nephew. We will definitely talk about attachment styles soon because they are so important for understanding yourself and even more crucial to think about when it comes to parenting your own kids. But thanks for your understanding and flexibility. In the interest of time, I am repurposing something for this episode as I'm headed out to the airport in just a few minutes. I want to offer you this recording of a 55-minute paid training I gave inside my monthly membership. It used to be called Goalslayer Gals and has now evolved into the Moms Making Time Society, which I highly encourage you to check out if you want motivation, support, accountability, and community to help you live your best mom life. Our members are incredible, and we do new live personal development trainings like this every single month. So more info on that in the show notes. As you will hear in this training, I first define self-sabotage versus its opposites, motivation, willpower, self-discipline, self-care, and then I review very important new psychological research on where self-sabotage really comes from. After discussing common examples of how self-sabotage manifests itself, I go into a series of mental and practical strategies for overcoming self-sabotage so you can be more aware of it when it pops up and then stop it from derailing your progress. Hope you love it. And I really believe that with the tools I'm going to give you in this training, you will have a whole new perspective on it, you will be much better suited to catch it more quickly, and then break free of its grasp so that you can keep moving forward in the direction of your dreams. As always, a pretty ambitious agenda starting out. A couple of housekeeping reminders, but we're going to get right into defining self-sabotage, throwing out some common examples, and really underscoring that this is a normal thing. It is just part of being human. But the important material from today is going to be how we can better identify the things that might lead us to self-sabotage And then the more we recognize these patterns in ourselves, obviously the faster we can break the bad habit. And then I will equip you with a whole bunch of thoughts and strategies so that we don't have to let this continue to keep us from where we're trying to go. So what is self-sabotage? I know that each of you probably has something that comes to mind. I imagine that you're here because you wrestle with this problem. And I want to underscore again, that it is so, Common. We all do this. And if you would, maybe throw in the chat some of the past times that you think you might have sabotaged your own progress, whether it's related to goals or just life in general, maybe relationships. I mean, this is something that is just part of our normal brain and how we're wired. But again, like a lot of times, we're not even fully aware of how our actions or even our thoughts are contributing to the negative outcome that is directly opposed to what we really want. Firstly, to define self-sabotage, good old Google and many of these other resources online underscore that it is any kind of behavior that interferes with whatever we really want. And it especially tends to come in the form of these detrimental habits that are directly leading us in a direction opposite where we're trying to go. We can really think about the thoughts that are behind some of the actions and behaviors we take, but all of it is undermining our better self. And we know that for the most part, right? So it's oftentimes anything we are engaging in because it feels more easy or more comfortable than doing the hard stuff that we know is really in our best interest. Another website underscores that self-sabotage can be not just taking action, but it can also be inaction. It can be refraining from doing the things that we know are good for us and from doing the things that would accomplish our goals. So I love this second part here that self-sabotage is hindering our own success. And that's what we obviously want to stop. So it's doing things that are directly opposite what we say we want or what we know deep down we need. And then the opposite of self-sabotage is self-care, but not in the indulgent like, Oh, I'm going to go get a facial or go to the spa kind of thing. That would be amazing. But self-care really comes down to the daily actions and habits that are going to help us live a long, happy, fulfilling life that is obviously unique to each of us. We all have these ideas of what that good life looks like, but we can very quickly pinpoint self-sabotaging behavior as anything that is leading us in a direction away from our best self and our best life. So that being said, then it's also not, self-sabotage doesn't include the random events or the big hardships that come at us, right? Those unexpected things that are out of our control. The big thing to keep in mind is that self-sabotage is something that we can affect and that we can hopefully stop and break free of. Enter in the chat if this resonates with you. But I think we so naturally fall into this vicious cycle where we, up on the top right, we have some ambition, some dream, or some sense of how we want our life to be. And then usually we start out pretty well motivated. We want to make progress. And we're working hard. We make our plans. And then it can either be some obstacle arising, usually out of our control, but it can also be just a normal kind of reaction on our part where we just are experiencing feelings, whether physical or emotional, in response to the actions we are supposed to take. It gets hard. We feel sore. We wake up tired. We are sad and depressed about something else. And so for whatever reason, something more negative is arising between us and our goal. And so then we consciously or unconsciously start engaging in actions and behavioral patterns that are not only not helping, but usually then hurting us and really setting us far back from where we're trying to go. And then we berate ourselves, and we think that we're so awful, and we kind of further turn to coping mechanisms. to break free of that and feel more psychologically okay. But oftentimes then we'll kind of have that second wind and we'll think, okay, I'm going to double down. I'm going to work harder. I'm going to push through this. But it just kind of ends up being stuck in this hard, vicious cycle. So self-sabotage is then a recurring pattern. It's not the single one-off event. It is something that has been happening for a while or that you always tend to default to. Again, it can be conscious or subconscious. And I want to define a couple of other phenomena that we really want to be aware of, right? So motivation is having the willingness and the desire to do something. And that's obviously what we want. I think we set our goals and we start out very well motivated. And then we encounter situations where we need willpower in order to push through the obstacles. Willpower is defined as exerting control over yourself or over the situation. And this is much easier under certain circumstances than others. And furthermore then, it requires self-discipline, which is having restraint and not engaging in the actions or behaviors that would feel good or would feel easy in that precise moment. And this is where a lot of us tend to end up in self-sabotage because we lack the willpower or the self-discipline, the self-restraint that we need in those moments where things do feel hard and we are seeking comfort, right? We are uncomfortable because of some external circumstance or just the natural reality that going after our goals is hard and change is hard and physical changes are hard. And so we just we slip back into the recurring negative patterns we're trying to get out of. There's a lot of research on why we engage in self-sabotage. I, of course, don't want to cover all the ins and outs. There's so much we could talk about here. So I'm going to kind of gloss over and give you the big picture overview. But the reality is that there are always underlying psychological reasons why we engage in these behaviors. And the faster we can recognize the root behind our action, the psychology behind why we do the self-sabotage, the more aware we can be and then the more we can consciously break free of that negative pattern. So psychologists have identified that many times, self-sabotaging behavior is related to some form of trauma that you might have experienced in your life, whether this comes from having issues in your childhood, having an insecure, unstable home, emotionally unavailable parents, being criticized, having something major and horrible happen to you. A lot of times, this self-sabotage manifests after something big and hard has caused us to doubt ourselves and our self-worth. It's related to low self-esteem and negative self-image where then a lot of times people who don't have a strong sense of confidence and self-worth really can't hold these dissonant beliefs that they are a good person and they are worthy of so much love and belonging with the view that they have of themselves. And so they tend to gravitate towards self-sabotaging behavior because it reinforces the negative self-image and the low confidence that they already have. And conversely then, right, they really want good things, but they're so not used to having those nice things and that nice life or to believing that they are worthy of it that they self-sabotage because it's easier to feel bad than it is to do the hard psychological and actual work of overcoming that negative self-belief. A lot of times we do turn to these coping mechanisms They can be quite extreme like alcoholism or eating disorders, the good old retail therapy. There are so many different kinds of coping behaviors. But then again, it tends to arise whenever we are feeling something hard and uncomfortable and we don't have a good way of processing that we're not good at handling the emotion that we're experiencing. So we just want to escape it and turn into something else that's going to make us feel better more quickly. Here's where I think it gets really interesting and definitely plays into our goals is that self-sabotage can be rooted in these distinct fears. One is fear of failure, but the other is fear of success. And I think this is really counterintuitive. A lot of times, if we'd start with the first fear, we hold ourselves back because we're so uncertain that we have what it takes to reach our goals that it just feels easier to make an excuse, right? That if we self-sabotage, then we don't have to face the potential failure of not reaching our goal. And so again, like we're kind of reiterating to ourself that, yeah, I knew I couldn't do it, so I just didn't even try. But interestingly, then something I have really wrestled with is fear of success and thinking that if you achieve your goal, you don't know exactly what's going to happen and who you're going to be and what changes might come as a result of being the new person you are having reached your goal. And so we have to be very aware that sometimes that fear is also behind our tendency to self-sabotage. And we have to get really deep and thoughtful. How likely is that? And what can we do to avoid that fear from becoming reality? Because we obviously want to succeed at our goals. And it's important to step back and think about whether the assumptions we are holding about what success means are even true. And then there's definitely fear of the unknown because change is hard. Any kind of change is hard. And we are creatures of habit. It's so easy to want to just stay in our comfort zones. And that can lead us to all of these these self-sabotaging behaviors because at least they are familiar. And then I've already covered unworthiness as part of low self-esteem and negative self-image. But again, especially if you have not had positive relationships or a good family early childhood experience, then you might wrestle with believing that you deserve love and happiness and the great life that you desire. through your goals, right? And so it's a different thing to want a better life versus believe that you are worthy of that better life. And again, a lot of times these beliefs are not conscious thoughts, but they manifest themselves in really negative self-sabotaging behavior. So let's talk about a few examples and ways that we might self-sabotage. Please enter in the chat if any of these resonate with you or if you think of any others. But the most common form of self-sabotage, especially related to goals, is procrastination, where you know what you should be doing, But everything else feels more urgent. And so your brain just thinks that you need to do all these other things before you sit down and do the work that you should be doing. And so here, the example is that you should be, say, working out. But instead, you're going to clean the house because you can't clean or you can't work out when there's things all over the living room floor. One example, but again, just this tendency to procrastinate the real hard work we know we should be doing because there's something more immediate that feels like it should take precedence, but it's really not that important. Second example of self-sabotaging behavior is perfectionism. This one has been so big for me, and it's that tendency to think that things are not good enough unless they are perfect, and then to hold ourselves back because we're afraid that we won't perform as well as we want, or it won't be perfect enough, or others will see that we are imperfect. And so then we spend too long on planning or on working on something. We're afraid to just put it out there and risk potential failure. And sometimes we don't even start. We don't even like actually begin making progress towards our goals because we're afraid that it won't be perfect. Example number three is avoiding what it is that you might need to to do. This could take any number of forms, but oftentimes we do avoid the discomfort. It doesn't feel good to put ourselves under physical or mental stress. And stress is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is pressure that is required to enact change. And so we have to have strong willpower in order to make ourselves uncomfortable and allow ourselves that discomfort as part of the process of reaching our goals. But it's way easier to just do nothing and sit around and, again, here, even sabotage your progress by doing the exact opposite. If your goal is to be healthy, then There's nothing wrong with having pizza and Coke, but if you do that a lot, obviously, and you're not working out, then that's not going to be helping you tip the scale or get in the shape that you might be desiring. Here's one that I think is really fascinating. And this affects women way more than men. But we tend to isolate ourselves and withdraw whenever we are feeling nervous or skeptical or self-critical. And we are our own worst critics. And so we are just so hard on ourselves that we like depart and withdraw and don't want to be anywhere near people because we don't even want them to know that we're struggling. When in reality, what is proven to help us break out of those ruts faster is the connection, is the camaraderie and the sense of support that we get from having accountability, having people that are invested in our success and that want what's best for us. Example number five is any kind of behavior that is like that coping mechanism I talked about, where you are numbing the pain or just deliberately escaping from the hard reality in front of you. Here, the example is in retail therapy, but could take any form. Another kind of self-sabotaging behavior is avoiding responsibility and constantly blaming the world or other people for your problems and for the hard things that you're experiencing instead of acknowledging that whether this thing is your fault or not, there is something you can do about it. That's been a big truth that I think a lot of us have to come to terms with as we get older is this reality that no, we can't control everything that happens to us, but we can control our reaction. We can control how much we let it bother us. We can still take a lot of steps to make the situation better or remove ourselves from a bad situation. And we are not passive observers here. We need to take control of our own life and do what we can in order to reach our desired goal and our desired situation. So blaming other people or blaming circumstances, playing the victim, These are common default tendencies, but they are really self-sabotage at its best. Or worst, I guess we should say. And then another way that we tend to self-sabotage is through imposter syndrome. Especially if you are a creator or you are someone that is trying to do original work or you're trying to start something big that requires other people's support or They need to be invested in your success. It's very easy to doubt yourself and your mind plays all these tricks on you to make you believe that you do not have what it takes. And who are you to think that you could do this and everybody else already knows this or knows so much more than you. They're so much farther along. No one would want what you are trying to offer. And the reality is then that we just, we compare and despair. We think everyone else has it figured out and something is wrong with us instead of recognizing that it's not a competition. We are trying to be our best self and there are surely other people that will benefit from our experience and from our offer. So we are, you know, imposter syndrome is very common and normal, but it's not the truth. And then the thing that I see a lot of times when I work with my productivity coaching clients is that it's easier to just not even try, right? It's easier to just try and accept what is and again, play the victim instead of taking agency and even wanting, allowing yourself to want things to be different. And so you just believe that this is the way it is. This is just something you've got to grin and bear or grit your teeth and get through. and you don't even try to make the situation better. I want to take a quick minute and just check the chat to see if anybody has any comments in there about ways that you have experienced self-sabotage or that you feel like it pops up for you. So I don't see anything just yet, but give me a thumbs up or any kind of comment in the chat if you can relate to all of that. I know I'm not the only one. All right. Hopefully everyone can see my slides again. Jenny, good. Yes, Jenny says she can definitely relate. No. All right. So how do we make it better? That's why we're here. A couple of different things. Obviously, the first step to any kind of change is becoming aware of the problem. And this is a big step because we oftentimes self-sabotage without even realizing it. And we are so comforted by our coping mechanisms that even just acknowledging what we're doing is another type of discomfort and it can lead us right back into that vicious cycle. It's so important to be mindful of what you are doing and why you are doing it. And here, the big thing, the best way to stop self-sabotage for good is to refrain from being judgmental or critical of yourself. Having these coping mechanisms doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't mean that you won't reach your goals, but it does mean that there is something else going on that needs to be acknowledged and investigated. So the first step of breaking free of self-sabotage is recognizing that we are doing it, and calling it out and naming it what it is. It's very powerful to name your actions and acknowledge without judgment that, oh, OK, that was something really detrimental. That is not getting me where I want to go. And then again, refraining from judgment, it's so important that you get curious about why you are doing what you are doing. What exactly are you avoiding and why? Right? So as an example, So many people, myself included, tend to procrastinate and put off what we know we should be doing. And there's such fascinating research here that a lot of times the reason we procrastinate is because we are afraid of doing it wrong, or of others' bad, negative reactions, or we are afraid that we won't have what it takes. And so again, it kind of plays into that fear of failure, where we just refrain from doing the hard thing because it's easier to stay stagnant than to risk being called out or not reaching our goal. So just get really curious. What emotions, what thoughts, what is really at the root of why you are self-sabotaging? And what are you kind of trying to run away from? Because usually there's always something that we're doing and we're trying to escape from that's causing us to self-sabotage. Here, Socrates, I said, was it Socrates? Now I'm second guessing myself. One of those great Greek philosophers, ancient Greeks, was very famous for saying, we need to know thyself. We need to know ourself. And there are always clues, right? We never do anything at random. At best, it's subconscious, so we might not be aware of what we're doing. But as you are increasing your awareness, you can really notice when you tend to self-sabotage, what your individual triggers are, and what your default behaviors are, and then get really curious again about what's causing you to do that kind of stuff. Here, this is why I'm such an advocate of understanding your body and your natural energy rhythms and the way that you and your brain are wired, because there are such proven patterns in when we tend to engage in these negative behaviors more than others. And the more you can track and observe in yourself, specific times of the day, week, or month that you are more likely to self-sabotage, the more you can anticipate ahead of time that that desire or tendency is going to arise and counter it by being that much more intentional to not self-sabotage. And so I would really encourage each of you to just kind of keep a note, keep a running log of when you tend to engage in behaviors that you think are self-sabotage or that you wish you wouldn't do. And then over time, does that tend to occur more at a certain time of day, more on a certain day of the week, more at a certain time of the month? The science is very clear that our bodies have more and less willpower, more and less motivation around different times of these periods, right? Different time of day, different time of week, different time of month, different time of year. And that's what I teach in my Harness Your Energy program, but you can also observe it over time in yourself. Just be aware that there are these natural ups and downs in how you feel, how motivated you are, how much you can resist, et cetera. And there are inevitably times where you don't have the willpower you will need in order to refrain from the self-sabotaging behavior unless you are that much more intentional that it's likely, if that makes sense. All right, I don't know how many of you have ever read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Such a good book, especially if you are someone that's a creative or into writing or doing something where you're making your own whatever it is. But he has this concept called resistance that he terms as anything that comes up to obstruct you from your desired end. And the whole point is that this inevitably occurs anytime we put a goal out there. Anytime we desire to change, then we are going to encounter resistance. And it's not a bad thing. Steven Pressfield argues that it's a very neutral thing. Maybe it's even a positive sign that we are on the right path. Because if we were not trying to do something great, then we would just maybe be more easily able to do that. So experiencing resistance is something we are all going to face. And the question is for you, when that resistance occurs, how are you going to avoid succumbing to the pull to self-sabotage? That leads me to some very practical strategies to help us overcome our tendency to self-sabotage. And this is not all inclusive, but these are drawn from all kinds of research, all kinds of years of my own experience in coaching other clients. And I'll just put them out here for you. The most important thing is always to remember that you are good, right? Everything you do, is neutral and it never changes how good you are. I think so often we have been programmed to believe that our self-worth and our worthiness really come from our productivity or our performance or our ability to make other people happy. And whenever we fear that we're not doing those things well, then we are critical and we tend to self-sabotage. But if we start from a place of self-love and we recognize that nothing we do or don't do changes how wonderful and worthy we are, then we can again be more objective and curious about why we are thinking of self-sabotaging or why we engaged in that behavior and just acknowledge very plainly for ourselves. Oh, honey, you were so tired. You were really under a lot of stress in this other situation. And so instead of acknowledging the stress and giving yourself some downtime, you tried to push through and you stayed up all night. And then the next morning, you were not in a good, healthy state of mind to resist that triple espresso or something like that. Okay, then we have to, we have to acknowledge our emotions. Every action, every action. is caused by some emotion we are feeling. The whole realm of cognitive and behavioral psychology underscores that our feelings drive, our feelings cause our behavior. And if we are not aware of our feelings and processing them in a conscious, healthy way, then they will manifest in this more negative self-sabotage kind of way. So what are you feeling? Where are those feelings really coming from? And here, as before, it's so important not to judge yourself for the feelings that you are having. A feeling is just a feeling. It does come and go. And the research really underscores that the typical feeling, good or bad, takes about 90 seconds. If we allow ourselves some time and space to process it and to wash over us, it's about 90 seconds. before we start to feel something else. But when we resist our emotions and we dig our heels in and we are trying so hard not to feel our feelings, then they are suppressed and they tend to build up and build up until they overspill in some eruptive way. So emotions are not good or bad. How we feel is unique to us. No one can tell us what to feel. And others might think that you are overreacting or that you shouldn't feel the way that you do. You might find yourself judging other people for their feelings and actions. But the reality is that feelings are very neutral. and subjective and we just need to hurry up and let ourselves feel what we are feeling and then we can move on and take a more proactive approach. Here's where we get really practical. I don't know how many of you are aware of the model as it is called, but there is a woman named Brooke Castillo who runs the Life Coach School, and she has kind of taken the cognitive behavioral therapy approach and turned it into her method for life coaching, if you will. And this resonates so strongly with me. And it's also something that a lot of other coaches have taken and applied as well. But her model underscores that we go through this very linear process in life. We always first encounter some circumstance. And the circumstance is neutral. It is outside of our control. It just is what is. And so let me run through the model and then we'll maybe think through some examples. But the circumstances are neutral. They just happen. It is what it is. It's what you are. It's your environment. It's what you're born into. It's what is right in front of you in any given moment, outside of your control. But here's where we do have control. We inevitably have a thought about the circumstance we are in. And that thought drives our emotions and causes us to feel something, good or bad, in response to the circumstance. And then that feeling drives our actions and our response, which produces the result. So a common example is, let me think of one in regards to our goals here. But say you wake up and it is a really gray, rainy day. And so you just right off the bat, the circumstances that it's dark and gray and not going to be a good day to go out and run or be active or do the things you thought that you had planned. So your thought might be, Oh, you know, like, this is just awful. And I can't now I can't do what I want. And so your feeling is going to be very disheartened, maybe even discouraged and depressed. And your actions are going to be that instead of say, working out or proceeding with Your plan, you're just gonna sit on the couch and watch a movie or do something because there's no point in going outside. And then the result is that you didn't do anything that is going to push you forward on your health journey, if that was your goal. Conversely, we can't change the weather outside, but we could have a thought that is very different. And instead of thinking, man, this is going to be such a bad day, we could say, oh, OK, so now I have the opportunity to do something else inside. And your feeling can still be one of excitement, empowerment, curiosity, like, what else can I do? Your actions could be to take an alternative approach and know you can't go outside and run, perhaps, although maybe you could if it's not thundering and lightning. Maybe you could do a workout video, do some stretches, Maybe you have a treadmill or something inside. These are just minor examples, but you can see how then that different reaction, that different thought propels you to take positive action that keeps you getting a positive result instead of engaging in negative thoughts and negative self-sabotage that hinder your progress. I hope that makes sense. So I hope that you either are taking notes or that you jot this down. You will have access to the slides and the recording, obviously, when I post them on the GSG portal. But this model applies anywhere in life. And it's really powerful, I think, to step back and assess what we want ourselves to think or like how we want to think about our circumstances and acknowledge our default thought and the default feeling that we feel from that thought, but then consciously decide to think something else that leads us to a more positive outcome. And at a minimum, just be aware of this process and how it's always operating consciously or unconsciously. It's really, really something that has been very helpful for me. Um, definitely we have to watch our criticism. We are so often mean to ourselves when we don't perform up to our own expectations. And, um, I just want to throw in here that all of the research on motivation underscores that, yes, we might be motivated by shame or fear or the threat of punishment that can cause people to to take a different action, but their likelihood of success and of sustaining that behavior is very minimal. You are much more likely to succeed and to proceed over time on your way to reaching your goal if you always approach the situation with empathy and love, There was something else that was supposed to be there, but we are much more motivated by positive rewards than negative reinforcement, if that makes sense. So how are you talking to yourself? How are you motivating yourself? And how can you come from a place of understanding and appreciation of how hard you are working and how wonderful you are? And then What can you do to kind of positively motivate yourself to avoid the self-sabotage? All right, next one is acknowledging that life is gonna throw these obstacles at us and we can either choose our discomfort now or in the future. We humans are notoriously short-sighted and we want comfort. We want things to be easy. We don't like resistance. We don't like the pain, physical, mental, emotional. We don't like the pain. But what we tend to do is avoid short-term pain that then sabotages our long-term success instead of being aware of that trade-off and choosing the more immediate hard in the short term, because it's actually a lot shorter and will pass more quickly, and then have such a greater payoff if we repeatedly do the little hard things now that will benefit us down the road. And I love the perspective, the reminder that We do deserve to live our best life, right? But you have to believe that and think about how what you do today is affecting your future self. And I challenge you to affirm that your future self deserves better than your self-sabotage. Your future self deserves a clean kitchen, even if it's going to cost you a little bit of sleep the night before. Your future self the next morning is going to be so glad that you took a few extra minutes and put the dishes away and cleaned up. Your future self is going to be so glad that you did the workout, even if it causes you to have sore legs for the rest of the week. Your future self is going to be so glad that you got started and put your YouTube videos out there or You know, so many of you have amazing goals and all kinds of different goals, but it's going to take a lot of repeated action over time. And we start out with motivation, but then it gets hard. And we very often stop doing the hard thing, and then we won't get to the long-term benefit we seek. So choose your hard, remind yourself that you can do hard things and that the hard thing now is actually a lot smaller and a lot less painful than the big hard that would be your future if you didn't take these actions in the short term. Okay, next really practical strategy is to plan ahead of time what you will do in different circumstances. So going back to the example of having a health goal, for instance, and wanting to work out or eat healthy. The whole idea is that to make a protocol, a protocol is just a plan. It's like a pre-made template of the steps you will follow in different circumstances. If something happens, then how are you going to adjust? What response will you take? What actions will you engage in if that circumstance arises? So with the health example, say you wake up and it's cloudy. You know, you should know that your brain is going to fight you in that moment. Your brain is going to be thrown off. You are going to be disappointed that you can't go outside and run and proceed with what you had planned. But if you have made a protocol ahead of time, then you will have some notes that you can turn to and say, okay, I previously said that if the weather was bad, then I would do this workout video or go to the gym or skip today, but do two things tomorrow. If you, you know, plan to eat something and then you realize, oh, you were out of whatever it is, instead of pulling out the frozen lasagna, although I love frozen lasagna, but you know, maybe you're out of lettuce, you can't make a salad. So again, like there are all kinds of alternatives that you could think about ahead of time so that when you find yourself in that situation, you have other strategies you can employ short of the negative self-sabotage that you might default towards in the heat of the moment. So the more that you can think through these alternative plans and make protocols for different situations ahead of time, the easier it's going to be. Your brain is not going to have to think hard. You're not going to have to expend energy. You're not even really going to give yourself a chance to feel a negative response to the circumstance because you will just, you know, wake up, encounter the circumstance, and then based on the different circumstances, you already have a plan of how you are going to handle it. Let me know in the chat if you've ever done this before, or if you've thought about it, or if it's making sense now. But it's really, really powerful to have this set of instructions that you can use and turn to without getting thrown off when those new circumstances and obstacles arise. All right, so then Atomic Habits is really the buzz these days, right? But there's a different approach. It's a complementary approach, but I always feel bad for this author, B.J. Fogg, because he published his book, Tiny Habits, not long before Atomic Habits came out, and he's gotten hardly no attention. hardly any attention. But the tiny habits approach is one of the real psychology contributions underscoring that we are motivated by positive outcomes, not by pain, not by fear or shame. And so what this book really underscores is that in order to change your behavior and really follow through with your goals, you have to set up a system of instant rewards for every little action that you take that is getting you more in the direction you want to go. And so you're not only trying to Do what you can to create an environment where you're not tempted or challenged to do your self-sabotage, but where every time you refrain from doing self-sabotage or you take the positive action, you see an instant reward and you acknowledge and you compliment yourself and you maybe do something like a physical reward for yourself. whatever you find most rewarding and motivating, but you've got to make that reward instantaneous so that your brain builds up the synapses and neural connections that strengthen that line of action. And then we have to really acknowledge that self-sabotage isn't going anywhere, or the circumstances that would lead us to self-sabotage aren't going anywhere. So I termed this training, right, How to Overcome Self-Sabotage for Good, and the reality is that self-sabotage is always going to be an option. It's never going to be something that we don't feel tempted to do. But I want to really encourage and inspire you that you can resist it. And that even if you succumb to self-sabotage, you can use these tools to break free of it and get back on track so much more quickly than you might have in the past. Really come from that place of self-love and instead of berating yourself, try and preempt the bad situations. Try and have the protocols in place and do what it takes to avoid self-sabotage. But whenever you feel yourself start to fall, or maybe you did fall, hurry up and get back on track. There is the old tale of a young boy being told by his grandfather that there's good and bad in each of us. And the analogy was that each of us contains these two wolves inside of us, one that is really mean and vicious and one that is very peaceful and loving. And the little boy asks the grandfather, well, which wolf wins? Which one is going to be the one that comes out on top? And the grandfather very plainly says, whichever one you feed. And I think that's a great reminder for all of us that we have these dualistic tendencies. We know we're going to experience hardship, but we are in control of how we handle the hard and which hard we choose. And again, how we respond to everything we encounter. Okay, so quick reminder that every week you are encouraged to submit a filled out tracker to the Tracking Challenge channel on Slack in order to earn an entry towards the month's prize drawing. Next month, we're gonna regroup and talk all about why 10x is easier than 2x and how to really go all in on the big hard changes towards your goals to see the most amount of progress and the greatest chance of success. You know, we all self-sabotage, but let's just be aware of what we tend to do and when we're more likely to do it, and think ahead of time about how we can minimize that chance and catch ourselves in the moment, and then ultimately choose the short-term hard for the long-term game. There you have it, everything you need to know to stop self-sabotage for good. If you struggle with sticking to habits and goals, I hope this training gave you lots of food for thought and some really helpful practical tools moving forward. Don't forget to check out the Moms Making Time Society for so much more, because being part of not just an accountability group, but a close-knit community of like-minded moms is invaluable. Your homework for this episode is to identify one area where you tend to sabotage yourself. journal on what you think might really be going on based on all we covered, and then commit to one or more of the techniques mentioned for not succumbing to self-sabotage in the future. Join me back next episode, and until then, remember nothing you do changes how wonderful and worthy you are. Have a great day.