
How To Avoid Self-Sabotage
One of the questions I get asked most by Life Coaching clients is a version of:
“Why do I always seem to self-sabotage at crucial times in my life”
Fortunately, years of experience in dealing with hundreds of clients means I can always answer the question with the total and utter confidence that I’m right. Even without knowing anything more about the situation.
“You don’t self-sabotage, because nobody ever self-sabotages, it’s a self development myth.”
My answer is nearly always followed up by some form of protestation and metaphorical finger pointing at an action or behaviors that prove conclusively that the client most definitely has self-sabotaged.
Yet I still insist they haven’t. And nothing they can say or do will make me change my mind.
Hindsight is 20/20
The reality is, the actions I’m offered as evidence to support their belief are all viewed with the benefit of hindsight.
In other words, they can look at the event afterward and see clearly it didn’t help them get whatever result it was they were looking for. Therefore, it must have been self-sabotage, right?
Nobody has ever said to me, “Don’t believe me huh? Well watch this for some serious self-sabotage Mr Cocky Life Coach” as he then proceeded to hurl himself out of his 3rd floor apartment window without even opening it first, with me watching helplessly on Skype.
But even if that did happen, I’d still refuse to believe it was self-sabotage.
If the person in question dragged themselves back to their computer with blood pouring from numerous wounds and a couple of mangled limbs, but looking slightly smug at proving me wrong, I’d simply say:
“There was a positive intent with what you just did, it wasn’t self-sabotage”
And the key to this is the positive intent aspect because:
Every human behavior has a positive intent behind it.
Take my window jumping friend as an example. The positive intent behind that behavior was to prove me wrong.
Now I know in the great scheme of things that’s quite a lame reason, almost as lame as he was after the fall, but it’s a reason nevertheless.
When people point to examples of self-sabotage I always ask them to tell me what they think was the positive intent driving that particular action or behavior. Quite often they will deny there was one, but I won’t leave it at that, because there always is.
And the reason I won’t leave it at that, is because if you don’t acknowledge the positive intent, you’re effectively telling your unconscious mind it’s an idiot.
And it isn’t, it’s super cool, smart and sexy and trying to help you as best it can.
It gets worse though.
Ignore your unconscious mind at your peril!
By denying the positive intent you’re making it incredibly difficult to change the behavior in the future in a similar way that it’s almost impossible for an alcoholic to quit until they acknowledge their situation.
Once you search for, find, and then acknowledge the positive intent, you can look for alternative ways to achieve the same aim that are more constructive.
Smoking is a great example because it’s a behavior that people often believe is self-sabotage and they will often refuse to believe it has any positive intent behind it.
When I used to help people quit smoking I’d always ask them, “What’s great about smoking?”
They’d nearly always look at me like I’d asked then, “What’s great about clubbing baby seals to death?” Before answering, “Nothing, it’s disgusting, unhealthy, anti-social, blah, blah, blah”
I’d know however the persons unconscious was thinking something altogether different.
Maybe it was thinking, “Actually, it gives me time out a few times a day to clear my head and forget about work.” Or that, “It lowers my stress levels”. Or even. “It makes me look like a rebel”
Knowing which one (or more) reasons it is, means that you can then look for alternative ways to achieve the same end.
It doesn’t necessarily mean the problem then magically goes away, but it does mean you get to remove a large proportion of the internal resistance that can, and will, trip you up if you’re unaware of it.
Knowing you smoke to relax allows you to look for alternative ways to relax and to start incorporating them into your life before you quit.
Knowing you don’t finish projects because you’re afraid of criticism, means you can look at ways of dealing with criticism rather than beating yourself up for not finishing projects.
And sometimes it pays to look at the big picture and wonder if what you think of as self-sabotage, is actually an attempt by your unconscious to get you to make beneficial changes.
‘Self-Sabotage’ Isn’t Always Bad Thing
Shortly before I left sales I went through a process of talking myself out of promotions, by shooting my mouth off in meetings about things I thought were unethical.
At the time I used to get frustrated with myself for scuppering my chances. On reflection it was my unconscious poking me with a big stick and saying “Get your ass out of here, you’re in the wrong job sunshine and a promotion will only tighten the golden handcuffs”
So what do you reckon? Do you still think you self-sabotage. If so, give me an example in the comments and I’ll come up with a positive intent for your actions. I won’t even invoice you!
By the way, if you haven’t grabbed my latest book on core values yet, you may not be self-sabotaging, but you’re missing out on some self development gold with a 100% money back guarantee if you disagree.
This is very usefull post. Anyway, it was hard to find it – maybe consider doing some SEO for your blog?
We need to exercise and eat the right food possible for us to keep our life healthy as possible.
We must maintain our body healthy at all cost. Since we have only one life.
I’ve recently felt like I’m pressing self destruct. Recently made redundant. Not in a financial position to have much time off. I have spent time having long weekends with friends shopping, eating out, socialising, etc. Each day I plan to get my CV done and out but it’s like the weeks are becoming like days, by the end of each week I still haven’t done it and I just think I’ll do it the next week and before I know it it’s the weekend. I want to move location, I want a job. I wonder if some of it is fear of making the right decision, fear of what the reaction will be when I do get out into the market, fear of interviews, etc. What are your thoughts?
Tough to answer without knowing you and your situation a bit better. Having said that, there are a couple of obvious positive intents that it *may* be and you touched on them.
The positive intent could be a desire to avoid being turned down or a desire not to have to apply if you haven’t got your CV done.
To fix it, I’d probably suggest you up the ante by visualizing what your life will look like in 6 months of you don’t do anything to change things. This is a situation where upping the stress levels may prove the most effective approach.
I don’t know for sure, but that would be my guess.
This is by far the most destructive state of mind I have ever experienced. I have a crushing lack of self belief when it comes to starting and completing projects. I am in the process of starting an affiliate marketing business but lack of self belief and procrastination are killing the business before its even begun. What can I do to counter, especially the procrastination, from ruining my efforts?
I don’t want to sound like a broken record Peter, but if you were a client of mine I’d want to fully expose your values and look for conflicts.
I hate going hard sell, but the book I just released ‘Aligning With Your Core Values’ may help with that. OTOH procrastination can be caused by a number of things and it’s really difficult to tell from so little information bud.
Dear Sir,
There is no such thing as sabotage,and the mind is not a terrorist wanting to explode you and create mayhem. I think no one actually sabotages his will. For example you begin a ‘project’ and leave it midway, the reason can be that you are burdened by that project, or you don’t fit in some how. The little guy working overtime inside has a very real opinion of you. So to avoid the unpleasantness that would follow if you proceed with the thing, it stops you. It is like the security guard who is to take care of you. You wont question the security guard if he asked you to duck under the table. You do it then and there. It is funny that after the guard actually saved you, you plan ‘how to trick the security guard into not meddling with me’ Chances are that you will be stiff soon. The little guy can be obsessive and is slightly suffering from ADHD, Autism and even bipolar disorder. The guys who manifest these diseases have their subconscious in total control and their conscious mind blown off. A case of the security man hitting his own subject and pretending to be the boss. If you feel chucking up the project of writing another blog piece now and rather find it better to have a glass of beer and listen to music now, indulge your self for some time.
Thanks
Ravi
That’s pretty much what I said Ravi.
Fantastic article, and well stated! I’ve believed this point of view for a while now, but it can still be a little frustrating when that little voice jumps in and says, “Time to do what we’re used to doing because it worked in the past!”
I have to laugh and shake my head at the same time. But each event is a new opportunity to understand – We’re REALLY trying to right by ourselves… AND there can be more productive ways of doing that.
Thanks for the great words ~
I agree and I’m not immune to forgetting from time to time and doing the same ole same ole. Just writing blog posts like this help me as well as hopefully helping others.
I’ve always seemed to find ways of losing myself in pleasure to avoid doing things that I knew I needed to do because it was easier to do the pleasurable thing and because of a fear of failure. Just the other day, I was calling this self sabotage. But after reading this post, I can see the positive intent behind my actions. Thanks for this great post!
You’re welcome Grady and hopefully you can slide in some alternative ways to get the results you really want.
I am highly analytical of myself and when I start self-sabotaging myself – I ask myself why I am doing it. It’s usually because there is some reason why (duh) and so I don’t stress about it. I just let it go. It’s obviously not something I really want in life so I don’t push it unless it’s something I really need to do that affects a huge part of my life. Anyway, sorry to interject in the discussion here but I just wanted to say that. I also don’t believe there is any such thing as self-sabotage – you just don’t want to do something – so you don’t do it.
Worry not M. that’s the reason for the comments and I welcome your interjection!
Thank you for this greast post Tim! I’m sure this will give a huge boost of self-confidence to many of your readers.
Around a year ago, after years of self-blame (often unconscious), I had the epiphany (partly thanks to your blog) that there is absolutely no doubt that I already everything in me I need to develop into the person I aspire to be, that at heart I’m a unique, beautiful person and that we all are.
Realizing that (and that there is no self-sabotage) was definitely a game-changer, everyone can have faith in him/herself, and you do a great job in helping us.
IMHO this is the idea behind the sufi poet Rumi’s verses :
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Rumi.
Brilliant quote, thanks so much for that, I’m off to tweet it and look all intelligent like ;-)
You’re welcome, I’m glad you liked it and plan to tweet it to your advantage ;)
This quote is almost 800 years old, from an eastern culture, I find it comforting to think that we are at the same time unique and all alike, across ages and cultures.
Yeh I’ve heard some Rumi stuff before, Wayne Dyer is big on him, and I agree it is comforting.
There’s nothing new under the sun bud ;-)
Intellectually I kinda knew that the reason I overheat is to make me feel good, but I hadn’t made the leap to finding something to plug that gap. Cheers, Tim. But now that I think about it, I have no idea what I will use to fill the gap. I find it hard enough convincing myself to meditate as it is, but doing it on the spot whenever I get a food crAving seems nigh on impossible! Exercise makes me feel good, but forcing myself to do 10 star jumps when I want cake just feels like punishment! I’ll have to think about this one!
One thing that really it working for me is having a massive financial penalty if I overeat. I think I first heard about this in Think Your Way To Happiness, a book on REBT. So now if I can a KitKat from the vending machine at work, I have to pay £20 to Nick Griffin at the BNP. That’s expensive in anyone’s book! This seems to fit with the’manufacture motivation’ tip you mentioned in your link above. Thanks!
I read that first line about 9 times thinking “WTF does he mean overheat” Then I read the rest and realized you meant overeat.
Check out Karen Paritees blog from above and leave the fucking KitKats alone!
Stikk dot com is whole site dedicated to manufacturing motivation, including putting your money where your mouth is, if that motivates you. You can set things up so you get penalized whatever dollar amount you choose sent automatically to whoever you choose if you don’t do whatever it is that you commit to doing, and you can makes things even more unpalatable by setting it up so the money goes to an “anti-charity.”
I like the idea in principle, but wouldn’t people be tempted to just lie?
Sure, you can lie, but you also don’t have to get involved on the site at all. It seems like one of those tools you use when telling someone else and/or not wanting to lie (if integrity is one of your values) makes you feel more motivated. The site seems to designed to make you feel like you are Big Brother, if you looking over your own shoulder floats your boat.
You little minx using the integrity value card on me ;-)
I only remember the things you tell me – like integrity is one of your top values – because you’re so good at getting me to listen. Apparently I’m not the only one susceptible.
And that is certainly enough about how I feel about you for now!
Thanks Karen, I’ll check that out!
Tim – Is it possible to edit our comments after we’ve made them to avoid typo overheating nightmares?!
Sorry mate no it isn’t. I’ll ask my web guy if there’s a plug in though as it can be useful.
Wow!! This is awesome. It makes so much sense.
I quit smoking about 6 years ago after several failed attempts. It finally dawned on me that the problem wasn’t so much a physical addiction (although that is a major issue for many), but that I hadn’t figured out how to fill the smoking spaces with more healthy, but fun habits. Once I figured out how to substitute the spaces, all went smoothly. Now the smell of cigarettes grosses me out, go figure.
My self-sabotage also has to do with the weight issue. (I’m going to check out Karen’s site!) I do well with the diet and exercise and get thinner, but then I always freak out and gain back again. It’s like I don’t feel like myself, as if I had another person’s body. It’s unsettling when it should be a joyous experience. Maybe the positive intention is that my sub-conscious would like to make sure I survive longer on the extra fat should I ever get stranded on a deserted island, LOL.
check this out:
http://adaringadventure.com/life-coaching/7-keys-to-successful-self-development/
Ah hah! #2 FTW. Thank you. :)
Holy crap, I just clicked on a few of the commenters from that post to see what they were up to. At least half of them are no longer blogging (at least at that URL) and Chris’s link took me to a Viagra site! I removed it.
Blogging on self development is easy!
Except when it isn’t.
Hi Tim,
This post would have been even better on video, sorry , my imagination just got the better of me.
Great work as usual, you paint the picture well
be good to yourself
David
If a client ever decides to do the above, of course I’ll be sure to post the video mate.
I really think I could actually be a vegetarian…if I didn’t have to give up meat to do it!
Tim, look at all the minds you’ve blown today! You better be careful! :)
I totally, one-million-percent agree with you. And when someone can look at it this way, it just takes all the judgment out of it — judgment of self and others.
I went through a training program once where they taught us that there’s always a payoff of some kind for every behavior — even if you don’t always know what it is, there’s always a payoff. And if you can figure out what the payoff is, then you move things into the realm of choice rather than reaction. I think one of their catch phrases was “Learn to manage your payoffs, and you can manage your life.” Sounds a lot like what you’re saying here.
(And, yet, even though I know all this, I still haven’t quit the damn smoking yet! Funny how knowledge sometimes takes its sweet time actually translating into behavior!)
And you haven’t quit because you don’t want to! You know my take on that, until you want to and not want to want to, it’s almost impossible.
I want to want to be vegetarian, but I really don’t want to because I love fish and meat.
Wow, this is great. I have been working on why I have hung on to 50 extra pounds for about 25 years. I love my life except for the weight. How would I handle a perfect life if the weight was gone? I will work on that question. Again thank you for this wonderful blog. This is a keeper in my books.
Thanks Joanna and weight is a really common one. There can be loads of great benefits to not losing weight, just ask the expert, Karen Paritee!
Thanks, Tim! Effindiets was born the day that I realized how very interested and invested I was in overeating. Why would I have tried to fix something that wasn’t a problem? I’m too smart to work overlong on that, as are my clients. To your point, I was eating when I wasn’t hungry, because if I didn’t, then I’d feel like I was sabotaging myself. I posted your piece on Twitter, FB, Google+ and saved it for future reference for my clients. It’s not just that you make a lot of sense, it’s how you make things make sense that I so appreciate. Thanks for doing what you do!
One piece of the self-sabotage process for me is that I enjoy the experience of getting totally focused and immersed in a project. For some reason, I assumed that I could only get there if I was really, really stressed, so it was logical to procrastinate until the last minute and generate that head of steam before starting up. Unfortunately life does not always cooperate and make that time slot available for meeting the deadline, and sometimes I underestimate the time and effort that will be needed. I’m slowly learning to begin earlier and work more systematically. Though there is still always a burst of energy and ideas at the end, it is the icing on the cake rather than the cake itself.
I actually wrote a newsletter article on that Maggie. What you describe is very common and works exactly how you described it. Stress is a brilliant motivator and allows us to often focus intensely for periods of time.
The problems arise when we generate too much stress and cognitive function starts to break down, or as you just described, you simply misjudge the time.
Absolutely agree, Tim!
I tell my clients that, without exception, people are always trying to figure out how to make their lives better…not worse. It’s sometimes tricky to discover what they think they will get from what they’re doing that will improve their lives, and it usually involves some measure of stinkin’ thinkin’, but once they figure that out, it’s easier to help them find ways to get what they want that will work better than what they are doing!
Wow stinkin’ thinkin’ I never even knew that was a real phrase I just thought it was a Happy Mondays track. I like it though.
The term “stinkin’ thinkin'” comes out of the addictions field and refers to the kind of thinking addicts get into that makes them say things like…”I can have just 1-2 beers, surely that won’t hurt anyone”…even tho they have had oodles of blatant examples of alcohol (or whatever it is) causing them all kinds of problems in their life. The term can apply to any time someone says or thinks something that is delusional and only makes sense in their head (private logic) but not when they say it out loud (common sense).
Now you know!
Now THAT makes sense as the Happy Mondays were well known for their love of all things mind altering!
Dude. I’m a convert. Michael Martine sent me, and I’m so damn glad he did. ‘Cause that, what just happened to me after reading this? Was not a lightbulb moment. That, my friend, was a full-on nuclear explosion. I have about a seven different clients I need to go email this to. Right the frak now.
Thanks Annie and also for introducing me to a new word. I shall try and get frak into at least two conversations this evening!
Tim,
You must not be a fan of Battlestar Galactica if you’re not familiar with the word “frak”… Great Show! Very sad when they took it off the air…
I’m not big on Sci-Fi or as my dad used to call it, skifee.
Found your article through someone posting it on twitter. I’ve been dealing with what I’ve called self-sabotage for a while. Most of what I deal with is procrastination and not finishing work by deadlines. I have aspirations to publish more writings and finish books I’m currently writing but have difficulty with staying on track. I procrastinate, backing myself into a corner, until I either finish the project in question or crash and burn.
That’s interesting Shaun because you are talking about 2 different end results. If I had a client in that situation I’d want to look at the differences between the projects you finished and the ones you didn’t.
Trust me when you start to unpack it they will exist.
Tim, I think you’d appreciate this. I’m fond of telling my clients that the only problem with overeating is that it isn’t one.
I bet that gets some weird looks.responses.
You tell enough people you have a festering crush on Tim Brownson, you get used to the weird looks.
Karen, I first found your website & blog through Tim’s here…and I love your approach and philosophy! I can totally see why you two were a good fit. I think you’re both amazing!
Well thank you, Lynn, and I appreciate you connecting you and me via my site! Guess I’ll just add that to my list of things to thank Tim for. And you’re right, Tim was the such a great fit for me. I just could not get anything by him, fortunately for me.
Tim, you had me the first time I read “there’s no such thing as self-sabotage, and I defy you to give me one single solitary example to the contrary” from “You’re Not Broken.” You know I’ve linked to that a few times. Wait, wait, it was something I read of yours before then, but on the same theme, that told me I knew you were the coach for me… it was the piece that you wrote on quitting smoking that I sent on to a couple of my family members, and I remember in the piece you talked about suicide having a positive intention. Immediate crush on you that has only grown since. I don’t know how many debates I’ve had with people about that (suicide et al being a positive intention, not whether or not I should have a crush on you–that is not up for debate) and how important it is that if you want to see your way out of a hole, you’re better off knowing first what you’re getting out of being in it, rather than yelling about how much you want to get out.
Agree 100% with that last bit, but it can be tricky to explain to people.
And of course our crushes are mutual! Don’t tell Helen though ;-)
I don’t think Helen’s worried, which is good, because I don’t think the crush is going away anytime soon.
I think she might be a bit worried about your sanity as she spends half her time trying to give me away ;-)
You’re on!
Why do I procrastinate on big projects?? I pile the stress on when I do that, and I know in my mind the successful completion of the project will make me feel great. So what’s the positive action behind pushing things aside and making my life more stressful as the deadline becomes closer and closer?
Let me say it’s impossible to know exactly without more info, but let me ask you one question.
Do you enjoy starting the projects?
Forget about finishing them because if you don’t like starting them then the positive intent is to avoid that immediate pain.
It’s like instant gratification in reverse. Your mind (like mine) is, largely speaking, crap at working out how it will feel in the future. But it’s great at knowing what will give it pleasure or pain right now.
I’m guessing your unconscious has associated starting projects with pain and thus puts them off whenever possible.
I think for many this might be the most valuable thing you’ve ever written. I’m still picking up the pieces of my head because it exploded.
I’m sure the beard caught it all ;-)