Self-Sabotage Isn’t Real (Here’s What’s Actually Happening)

If you’ve ever felt like you keep getting in your own way… this episode is going to change how you see that.

Because what if you’re not actually self-sabotaging?

What if your brain is just trying to protect you?

In this episode, I’m breaking down:
 – Why “self-sabotage” isn’t actually what’s happening
 – How your beliefs shape your actions (without you realizing it)
 – The role your subconscious mind plays in your habits
 – What a “protector part” is and why it shows up
 – How to start rewiring your brain so you can actually change

This is the deeper work that allows you to:
 → stay consistent
 → stop repeating the same patterns
 → and finally become the version of you that you know you’re capable of

If you’ve been feeling stuck, frustrated, or like you “know what to do but aren’t doing it”… this is for you.

—

If this episode helped you, share it with someone who needs to hear it 🤍

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lainijojo

* (downloadable worksheet I mentioned in the episode is available in the description box, video Stop Self-Sabotaging: How to Rewire Your Brain & Finally Change)

My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lainijojo/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Self-sabotage isn't actually real. And believe me when I say this is actually a good thing. And especially if you are someone who heard me say that and you said, I don't know, girl, I've been self-sabotaging a lot lately, and it's really getting in my way. This is great news for you. And I'm gonna explain exactly what I mean, why you're doing what you're doing, and how to finally overcome it so you stop getting in your own way of what you want and who you actually want to be in this life. When I say self-sabotage isn't actually real, what I mean by this is rooted in psychology and in neuroscience. Your brain is always going to act in a way that backs the beliefs that you have and who you believe that you are. Your brain will never try to get you to do something that isn't in alignment with who you believe that you are. So if you really want to be someone who loses 20 pounds and you finally get fit and healthy and you've got a flat stomach or some arm definition, but you've always been someone who could just never get motivated to go to the gym or eat healthy, or you always binge at night when you had a stressful day. If you believe that's how you are, your brain will not get you to act in a way as the person who has that body that you want. If you want to start a business or start making more money and you wanna be someone who's financially abundant, but you've always heard that money's really hard to come by, or people that have a lot of money are bad. Money is the root of all evil and problems. You believe that you're someone who's never gonna be able to make a bunch of money and that's just not realistic for you. If that's your belief, your brain is always gonna act in a way that backs those beliefs that you have. So if you wanna have a different reality, you need to have different beliefs. You need to believe something different about yourself. So you're not actually sabotaging yourself, your brain is fully aligning with what you've been telling it to do this entire time. What you're sabotaging is that future version of you, that goal that you actually want. Now, how we get there is to actually change those beliefs. And I want to explain why your brain does this in the first place. Your brain is not wired to have these crazy big goals and be abundant and successful and just have everything that you want in life. Your brain is wired to keep you safe, to keep you alive. Think all the way back to like evolution. Your brain needed to be able to scan for threats, keep you alive, and that was really all that mattered. That was the only thing our brains cared about. It wasn't wired for us to have these crazy big, amazing goals and to do something scary outside of our comfort zone and risk things a little bit to be able to get what we want. Your brain is always going to try to just keep you comfortable and safe. So if something is outside of what you feel comfortable with now, of who you believe that you are, of what you believe you're capable of, of what you believe is comfortable for you, your brain is going to do everything it can to pull you back from doing those other things back into the comfort and the safety. And the catch here is you might not like that comfortable spot. You might not like the relationships that you have, you might not like the financial situation that you're in, you might not like the habits that you have in the body that you have, but it is comfortable and therefore it is safe because your brain can predict the outcome and it's not your dream outcome, but at least you are, by your brain's definition, safe. So we are gonna have to do something different to be able to get that different result. Kind of a duh, right? However, we need to understand your brain is likely going to be fighting you along those lines, hence the self-sabotage. But we can make it easier for you to take a step outside of that comfort zone and make these different actions. And your brain can be okay, stop getting in the way and sabotaging those actions so you can finally get where you want to go. Now, this is a process that I found helped me overcome self-sabotage with any goal that I had. First, I had to get clear with what I actually wanted. What was the goal with my fitness journey, with my career, with my finances, with my relationships, with how I showed up for myself? What was the specific goal that I wanted that I was consistently sabotaging? I'm gonna use the example of being consistent on social media and posting because I think the root of it is relatable to others as well. So I really wanted to be able to start posting more and talking to the camera and just sharing more knowledge and information because I felt that I had a lot I was able to help people with. And logically, I saw all of the good that would come from it, all of the help I'd be able to give people, all of the potential opportunities that would open up for myself. Logically, I really wanted that goal. However, I kept self-sabotaging. I would not make a video where this thing or that thing would come up, and I just never could consistently do the actions that I needed to to get to that goal. And I wondered, why am I doing this? Because it's not that I don't actually want it. I sat down with myself and I figured I do actually want that thing. What I had to then look at was why am I not letting myself do these things to have that thing? So, what we you need to do after you get clear on the goal that you want and you know that you want that goal and why you want that goal. So we have that clear, grounded why that we're anchored in. Then you need to ask yourself, what are the beliefs that I'm subconsciously holding about this thing? Maybe you're subconsciously believing that just like the rest of your family, you'll never be financially abundant. You always just kind of scrape to get by, you're living paycheck to paycheck, and that's how it's always been. And money's really hard to get, and you have to work really, really hard, and just not everybody can be successful, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Maybe you believe that you've always been overweight and you've always struggled with your relationship with food and always struggled to be consistent with exercise, and you're just never gonna be somebody who's able to be consistent with those things and change your habits. Maybe with relationships, you believe that guys will always cheat on you and always treat you poorly and never respect you, and it's just always gonna be all guys are like this, right? I feel like I hear that a lot. So if you keep believing the things that you've been believing, your subconscious will always try to pull you back into the familiar and keep you safe and not let you change these behaviors to get a different outcome. Partially because it is unfamiliar and it is therefore unsafe to your brain, but also because you have these negative beliefs that make this thing feel even more unsafe. That's why we need to understand what these beliefs actually are so we can address them at the root and where they came from. How a belief actually gets into your subconscious, I can make a whole other video on this, but just an overview of it. What a belief is, is it's a thought that was backed by either enough emotion or repetition to then get pushed into your subconscious as a belief. So if we want to create a new belief, it's very helpful to understand where that first one came from. Because then now with where we're at in life and the information that we have and the experiences that we've had, sometimes we can just logically look at that belief and question it and create a different one, and that's all that it needs to be. For example, maybe it's the money one. You always thought you'll just never be someone who can make a lot of money. That's just not what you were born into, that's not what your reality can be. You have to work really hard and you're just always going to struggle for money. And that's the belief that you've you've had since you've grown up. Maybe that's how your family, your parents, your environment was. But you can look around at all of the people that make a lot of money doing sometimes a lot of work, sometimes not a lot of work, and you see there's examples of ways that people who came from a not great start can actually build up to something really substantial. So you have this example that it's possible, and that could be enough for some people to just rewire that belief right there. Otherwise, if it's a little bit deeper, that's where we look a little bit more into the subconscious of what's actually going on here. Now, sometimes when we're younger, we have an experience that is a bit traumatic, especially when we're younger and we don't really know how to process what's going on. This could be bullying, this could be maybe an unsafe or unstable household, maybe some kind of financial stress. Maybe you were cut from the baseball team. A teacher told you that you are never gonna be smarter amount to anything. Like it doesn't have to be this big, crazy, traumatic thing, but it can be. A lot of times when that happens, it affects us so deeply that our brain just wants to protect us. Again, it wants to keep us protected and safe. It develops this, you can call it a protector part of you that kind of changes how you normally show up. So you act a little bit differently to protect yourself from that happening again. As an example, maybe your parents weren't as loving or attentive, or maybe you were bullied when you were younger. So you just kind of had this feeling that you just you were never actually enough. You were just never quite enough. So, in order to cope with that, your brain created this protector part that had perfectionism and just thought if I just am so perfect at things, if I just really focus on all the details and I really get it right, it'll finally be enough and it'll be valuable and people will want me and choose me, and I'll be enough for it. So that's where that's a lot of times where perfectionism comes from. It's not usually a positive thing that we have that, especially if it causes you to procrastinate and hold you back in self-sabotage to not be able to actually go towards the goal that you want. So we have this protector part. What do we do with it? This is an exercise that I think is so, so helpful. And I didn't really realize what I was doing at the time, but now I understand that there's so much like psychology and neuroscience backed behind this. So we have this protector part. And especially if you get people use the word triggered, but basically something comes up and it makes that protector part or that emotion that was initially just kind of tied to that experience that caused that protector part to come up, that emotion comes up, right? That's what people say when they're triggered. We actually have this emotion that's suppressed inside your body because you weren't able to process it in your conscious mind in that moment. So it got suppressed into your subconscious mind and now it's getting pulled up. And as an aside, there's a quote that I love, and it really changed my perspective of this when I heard it that your triggers are your teachers. So a trigger comes up and it's able to teach you where do I have something that's not resolved that's maybe causing my experience in life to not be as good as it could be, or that's causing me to kind of hold myself back and I don't realize it. So it teaches you where there's this thing that you can dive into a little bit deeper and work through and release. So we have this come up, and what you're able to do, whether in that moment or a separate time, that you want to figure out where this protector part came from and basically tell it, hey, I actually don't need you to protect me anymore. Because it's not really protecting you, it's kind of holding you back at this point. So, what you can do is if you know where it came from, you can envision maybe you have a photo of yourself from about that age. Maybe you were seven years old or 12 years old or five years old, whatever it was. Pull up a photo of yourself in your head of what you looked like at that point, and you're looking at that version of you because that's where this protector part was created. And you're able to look at that version of you and you're able to ask it, what's wrong? What do you actually need right now? Because it wasn't able to get what it needed. So you weren't able to process through that thing when it happened. So you ask it what it actually needed, and you're able to either give it to them. Maybe they didn't feel like they were enough, or you're finally able to tell them you are enough or you are loved, you are worthy, you are capable, whatever it is. Maybe you don't know where it came up from, and that's okay too. You can still go through this process to be able to let go of it or release it so it's no longer in your way. So, what you can tell this version of you, I think the visual is just really helpful because it helps you give yourself a little bit more compassion. Like it's not your fault. It's your responsibility to help yourself work through it, but it's not your fault that it happened. So it just gives you a little bit more compassion and you're able to tell it, thank you so much for protecting me, because it absolutely served a purpose at the time where that protector part was created. It served a purpose for it. However, when it was helpful to protect you at that point, it is now hindering you from living the full life that you want and reaching those goals that you have. So you tell it, thank you so much. I appreciate you, I love you, but I don't need you anymore. I'm safe. I'm not in that situation anymore. Like I'm okay, I'm safe. I've got it from here. I don't need you anymore. And then you're finally able to release it. So that is no longer changing how you show up and what you believe about yourself. Thus, you can have create different beliefs and then have different actions. So now we can come back to we figured out what we wanted, we got clear on it. We were clear on what the beliefs we actually have that are holding us back from reaching that goal and actually taking the actions that we need to. And then we're gonna decide what are new beliefs that we want to replace them with, because it's way easier to actually replace an old belief with a new belief versus just completely get rid of that old belief. We want to replace it somewhere. Because basically, your brain has some neural networks, some pathways that it's been going down for however long you've had that belief. If every day you wake up and you believe, I'm not motivated, I can't go to the gym and be consistent, I can't eat healthy, I can't resist myself at night when I go into the pantry. If you've believed that for a decade or however long of your life, your brain, think of it like a pathway that you think. If you walk across your front yard a hundred days in a row, that's a really well-trodden path. It's very easy to get down there. There's not a lot of resistance. So you want to create a new path. There's a little bit more resistance to it. So if we're able to get clear on where we actually want to be able to go or the belief that we want to be able to have, and then be intentional about rewiring that new belief consistently down that new path and redirecting your brain when it tries to go down that old path we no longer want anymore, is how we're able to replace that new belief. So sometimes it can happen in an instant, and sometimes it does take that little bit of repetition. But as long as you're consistent with it, you can actually do it. So we get clear on what that new belief is that we rather have instead. Maybe you want to believe that you are competent, that you are able to be self-disciplined, that you do value taking care of your body and making sure that you can exercise and eat healthy. Whatever those beliefs that you want to be able to have are, get very clear on that new one that you want. And then, like I said before, the way that we wire in a new belief to your subconscious mind is through repetition and or emotion. So when you're picturing this and you're picturing this new belief and what it's gonna be able to give for you, picture that emotion that you're gonna be able to feel when you have that thing that that belief allows you to now act in alignment with so you can get it. Because if your brain is very clear on that feeling you're gonna have when you finally get it, number one, we're linking that emotion to that belief. Now it can get wired into your subconscious mind. And number two, your brain doesn't actually know what's real or what's imagined vividly. So if you're imagining something vividly, your brain can just interpret that as an actual memory. Thus, it now feels familiar because it's done it before. So this new thing that you want to be able to have is no longer unfamiliar and new and scary. Your brain is like, oh, we've done that before, even though you haven't actually done it in real life just yet, just in your brain. Your brain is so powerful once you finally understand how to use it. And why I keep bringing up the subconscious mind and why you want to be intentional with the beliefs that you wire into your subconscious mind is your subconscious mind is controlling the majority of what you do throughout the day. Your brain wants to conserve energy. So basically, your subconscious mind is defaulting to how you react, what you do, how you show up, especially if you just always say the same kinds of things or you take the same path every day or you make the same decisions. Like you're not actually consciously doing a lot of things that you're doing. Most of it's your subconscious mind. So when you realize that you have these things coming up, these beliefs, these blocks, and that's causing you to self-sabotage and not act in alignment with who you actually want to be and the goals you want to have. You look inward at that subconscious mind, at those beliefs that you had, of who you believe that you are and what you believe is true about yourself and of the world. When you can zoom in on those and reprogram them into something, change them into something that actually serves you. That is how you can finally show up as a person who gets the results that you want and is able to keep them. If you want help going through this process, I'll leave a little PDF in the description that you can use to fill out and guide you through this process. I believe in you, and I hope that this video helped you believe a little bit more in yourself too. That's all I have for you today. Now go do something your future self would thank you for.