self-sabotage

$UBCON$CIOUS $ELF-$ABOTAGE – Money!

Unlock your money magnet!

When I was a teenager, living in an upper middle community, I looked around and (mostly unconsciously) judged the people around me who had lots of money. There were lots of ‘them’ to observe and, after deciding that my family was on the poor side, I made a slew of decisions about rich people. It wasn’t conscious, but it was pretty ugly and the rich folks didn’t fare well with me at all.

People – well, kids, with lots of money, I decided, were catty, popular and phony. As a group they were self-centered and self-important, unbalanced, unspiritual (but went to church to be social), wasteful, never satisfied, stuck-up, good looking (with great taste in clothes) and lucky… very, very lucky. I saw their parents – when I bothered to even give them a thought, as absent, cold, busy, powerful, snobby, and cruel to those who weren’t rich. And that was just the start of what I determined! I also ‘learned’ that men controlled the money, women overspent the money and that there was a finite amount of money – and these people were hogging it! That was my story and for me it was real.

As I moved out of the early chapters of my life, making the next level of my decisions – far more ‘adult’ decisions about people who had lots of money – I decided that people who did things with the intent to make a lot of money:

Didn’t do things that ‘made a difference on the planet’ (Which was fine with me because ‘everyone knows’ that teaching will never make you rich and ‘doing good’ wasn’t lucrative.)
Were never satisfied with what they did make. (Enter the workaholics.)
Were always afraid of losing what they had.
Were afraid of failing.

So I didn’t set out to make LOTS of money, I simply followed my passions and had FUN. It was working. At one point, years ago when the dollar was worth a lot more, I earned $500 every 15 minutes!

That was then… Years later, my ‘abundance’ began to disappear. What??? I decided that I needed a minimum of $2M (in savings and assets) to support my ‘golden years’. Desperation set in (dangerous stuff). Why wasn’t the money coming in? This wasn’t fun anymore.

And, that’s when I started to became CONSCIOUS about my relationship with money. It was going to take lots of money to get everything I wanted and needed. How was I going to make that happen? And, what was blocking me now? It was so easy in the past.

The BIG AHA MOMENT: My life was no longer about the passion and FUN; it was all about making lots of money. I was so attached to that end result that my happiness and self-worth had become dependent on it. My inner peace and balance were attached to having something ‘happen’ instead of being present and enjoying the NOW. The first step to creating change is awareness, right? Questions followed…

Who would I have to BE to have it all? Why would my unconscious mind – there to protect me – let me become one of ‘those’ people? Simple answer, it wouldn’t! My subconscious mind stealthily reminded me that I didn’t actually like rich people; that I said I didn’t want to be like them. I said I want to have $2M and a comfortable monthly income that allows me to live and give in abundance. Rich people have that – and more. But, at some level, I didn’t want to be a rich person! My subconscious mind was sabotaging my moneymaking efforts based on how negatively I’d judged high earners. My silly subconscious was actually protecting me… from me!

My beliefs weren’t necessarily bad or wrong, they were just… mine; appropriate and realistic at the time I formed them. They were partially true, but incomplete and simplified.

Now that I have brought my old beliefs about money up to the conscious level, I can move out of my old pattern of unconsciously following them—even (and especially) when they’re not working—and create a whole new, healthier, passionate and FUN relationship with money. Old $ubcon$ciou$ belief$… you’re not welcome in my new world!

SELF-SABOTAGE: THE GAME FOR ALL AGES

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!

IF YOU’RE GONNA PLAY WITH YOURSELF… MAKE IT A GOOD GAME!

I seldom procrastinate. I’m not a druggie or a drinker, don’t self medicate and I quit smoking. Lord knows I’m not overly modest. Self-injury and cutting don’t appeal to me nor do shopping sprees. So, I’m fine, right? I don’t play the self-sabotage game, do I? I mean, seriously, I did a lot of research on self-sabotage and those things seem to be the most common ways that we shoot ourselves in the foot (so to speak). And, yet, somehow, deep down inside, I have this crazy feeling that, even though I don’t see it, maybe… just maybe… I may be getting in my own way and sabotaging my greatness. I like to play Sudoku, candy crush and solitaire, but self-sabotage is not the game I want to play with myself!

Okay, I admit it, I am a people pleasing, comfort eating, put the other guy first type of humanoid. And I do have a very LOUD inner critic that I constantly have to ignore, but what does all that mean? How could that stuff be stopping me? Is it possible that those silly little habitual behaviors – including the things I do that (I think) make me a nice person, are also the things that are holding me back and tripping me up? Naw, it couldn’t be, could it?

Maybe this is one of those areas of life where it’s waaaay easier to see where someone else is screwing up than it is to recognize where you’re doing it. I’ll put you under the microscope. Okay… sit back and relax, then, while I look at YOU (That’s the ‘global’ you, not YOU you)!

Let me think… what have I noticed, or said to ‘them’ about their obvious bouts of ‘self-defeating doings’? It’s so much easier to recognize that stuff when someone else is doing it.

“By the time I got there the job was taken.”

You might have gotten the job if you had gotten there a little bit earlier. Remember we talked about you being first in line. (Wait a minute, I’ve done that.)

“I’m so angry at myself for skipping my workout!”

Wait, now you’re going to eat the cupcake because you already blew it today by skipping the gym? (Oops, this might have been me once or twice.)

“That jerk finally called after I waited for three full days, so I didn’t take his call.”

You spent three days hoping he’d call and then when he finally did call you didn’t even talk to him? (Hmm, I may have “cut off my nose to spite my face” a time or two.)

“It’s fine. I don’t need the help. I can do it myself.”

Of course you can, but wouldn’t it be a lot faster and easier if you let someone help you

(There may have been a time or two when my stubbornness got in the way.)

Okay, ENOUGH ALREADY!!! I’m getting it. You don’t have to hit me over the head with a two by four! I self-sabotage. I see that. It’s a stupid game. No one ever plays it with me and I never seem to win! I QUIT!!!

When WINNING = LOSING…

I’m a winner. And I do like winning. There’s something about setting out to accomplish an objective and making it happen. The adrenaline rush – particularly when the goal is one that scares me at least a little – is awesome. And, of course, there’s nothing that breeds success like success. When you win it simply increases the chance that you’ll win again, right? When I accomplish a goal – when I have a ‘win’, my confidence and self-esteem take a ride on the happy train! “I think I can” and I did!

Case in point was the Turkey Trot this past Thanksgiving morning. 10k! I did it without stopping. At no point did I give in to that persistent yakky voice in my head that kept shouting, “Turn around now, no one will know”! I’m 66. I ran a 10k… and I lived to tell about it.

There are so many games in my life where I am a (sometimes ‘self-declared’) winner. One in particular where winning doesn’t make me happy. Why not? Simple… in that arena, winning is not gonna be a good thing for me. It seems that I have been the team captain for Extreme Self-Sabotage and my team is a winning machine.

SELF-SABOTAGE is not a sport that anyone can actually win. It’s not even about the competition. There is none. When I play, I’m it. I’m the competition. It’s all about me setting out to subversively undermine all that is possible – all that I can be~do~have. Being successful at self-sabotage (listening to that negative, malevolent, naysaying voice in my head) pretty much guarantees that I’ll ‘win’… which then absolutely guarantees that, finally, I lose.

We’ve all heard that “the only thing between you and everything you’ve ever wanted is YOU”. And, most of us believe that, but you may be like me… and not been able to see where or how you were in your own way. How many times have I said, “ Awareness is always the first step”? Many times, Sandye. Yup… many times and it’s definitely true in this case.

I say I want to be healthy and fit. I profess love and appreciate for this little body that has served me so well for so long… and then I silently screw it all up. Note: Of course I could blame my parents – we all could – we have history and stories and explanations for where our stories about ourselves came from, and, while that info might be very interesting, it’s the PAST and we’re not there any more! Instead of being the victim of my history, I am choosing to be the result of it… with the ability to use it; to be~do~have a life not just worth living, but also worth celebrating! And it started last week… when I realized that another year of my life was beginning and I wanted it to be the best yet.

So, I asked myself, WTF? What am I doing to sabotage myself? And then I discovered: Sometimes it’s what I do. Sometimes it’s what I don’t do. Our behavior becomes self-sabotaging when we attempt to solve or cope with a problem (that we may not even be able to precisely identify), and in the process, we instigate new problems. Like, with the body thing… I lost my glasses about 9 years ago and never bothered to get new ones. I run almost every day but I stopped working out – which I know is what keeps me fit and keeps the extra pounds off. I quit smoking 6 years ago… and have started and stopped 3 times since then. There are days when the only water I drink is when I brush my teeth. Sometimes I run and then come home to bake and eat cookies… ‘cuz I ‘earned’ them. Really, Sandye????

Self-sabotage is a complex, invasive, insidious process, which feeds on our deepest fears and leads us to mutiny; having us rebel and revolt against our more positive thoughts and impulses. Sure, we all make mistakes, but a true self-saboteur keeps fixing those mistakes by top-loading them with increasingly bad decisions.

Okay, I’m starting with my body. I have an appointment with an eye doctor next week. I joined a gym. When that voice pops up and tells me I don’t have to work out ‘today’ or You’re upset. It’s okay to have a cigarette when you’re upset’. I will simply reply: