Sometimes a topic is just too dang big to cover in one phone conversation… Self-sabotage turned out to be one of those topics – who knew! I thought an hour would be plenty of time. I mean, really, it’s not exactly ‘alert the media’ material; it’s not particularly sexy and it’s neither life- threatening nor shocking.
What it IS, however, is omnipresent, ubiquitous, all pervasive and deeply entrenched in the way we are as humanoids (I don’t even know if ‘humanoids’ is a real word, but I love it!). Self-sabotage a big issue because it’s EVERYWHERE we are! We all do it; most of us know we do it and want to STOP doing it. The problem is there seems to be this unspoken consensus that it just “is what it is” and there is little or nothing we can do about it. So we do it (again and again) and ignore that we are doing it. Seriously, why would WE do something so nasty to someone we ‘love’ so much??? Besides, we don’t do it ALL the time…
In the face of that, it becomes the elephant in the room… we don’t talk about it and seldom acknowledge it, so, ‘what we don’t know can’t hurt us’, right? WRONG!!! Self-sabotage is a complex, tragic process that pits us against our own thoughts and impulses. Yes, we all make occasional bad choices, mistakes and errors in judgment, but a true self-saboteur – one who really knows how to play with herself (if you’ll excuse the reference)… continually tries to fix those mistakes by top-loading them with more screw-ups and increasingly bad decisions. So the self-sabotage games ends – and you ‘win’ – when you completely lose!
Our self-sabotage may be conscious or unconscious, but really, what difference does it make? The end results are the same; we’re blowing it – for ourselves and by ourselves! How often do you (or I) stay awake when we’re exhausted, worry over things that shouldn’t matter, exaggerate other people’s achievements as we diminish our own, take unfair criticism to heart, speak negatively to and about ourselves… holy horse-feathers, this sucks!
Grabbing a doughnut once or twice a year won’t kill you (it’s comfort food), but every time you feel super stressed????? That could be 12 times a week (or 12 times a DAY), and your clothes are gonna get tight and your face is gonna break out and your sugar levels are gonna rise and what you did to feel better is going to end up causing you incredible levels of grief! The child in you will celebrate the sweet treat… the adult, not so much.
We all have an inner child – not just some random child, this kid sees life through YOUR history – your memories, fears, worries, decisions, and stories. Often the demands of that little munchkin (who is only trying to practice ‘self-defense’ and protect you) are out of sync with what the ‘adult you’ wants or needs. So what happens when our adult-me wants something and our inner child doesn’t want it… when, in fact, inner child wants the exact opposite?
BAM! Welcome to Self-Sabotage (carried out in the name of self-preservation and self-defense, of course).
And this, my friends is what we’ll be discussing this week in Motivate and Activate… taming the inner child, honing your self-parenting skills and my personal game plan for winning without ‘losing’! See you on the call!