Slay your Self-Sabotage!

“Self-sabotage is when we say we want something and then go about making sure it doesn’t happen.”

Alyce Cornyn-Selby

You’re a hair’s breadth from the finish line, the project is ready to launch, the ducks are lined up in a row, the moment for you to shine arrives and……. You hesitate for a moment. You hide, you do something to justify the belief that ‘nothing ever goes right for me’.

Sound familiar? Welcome to the sting of self-sabotage.

I can tell you it’s happened to me many times. I’m on the brink of launching a new website and wondering if it’s good enough, if it’s ‘me’ enough, will people find the content useful? I’m even sabotaging myself writing this blog - I jumped into my emails a minute ago because I lost my train of thought on the next sentence I want to write!

I still feel nervous and fearful when I hit the Publish button on my blogs, podcasts and new courses – what if it’s not good enough, what if someone criticises it, what if no one likes it on the socials? And it goes on and on.

Self-sabotage can knock at any time – helped along by best friends the inner critic and imposter syndrome – often triggered by childhood memories where you felt less than, or hurt in some way or humiliated. Memories flash back to the sports hall when you were the last to be picked for the football or basketball team. 

Situations can sabotage your day from the get-go, someone will trigger you on social media and make you feel ‘less than’, spill coffee on you in the café, say something passive aggressive to you in a meeting. We are sensitive timid creatures in the face of criticism, any small event can cause a self-sabotage spiral into despair. You feel you don’t deserve the successes you crave and so you bid a hasty retreat into obscurity and mediocrity, hiding your talents and genius from the world.

While believing in ourselves and wanting it to work is admirable, we still have to flex our sabotaging and inner critic muscles every day regardless of how we feel. We can’t just want it badly enough, we need to do the work to make it happen – the Law of Attraction is all well and good, but the Law of Action is even more important to keep your dreams of having a successful business alive. The hard work of believing that we are worthy to have our dreams come true, that we are deserving of good things and opening ourselves up to these possibilities is the hardest work of all. And it doesn’t come easily to us as humans.

Why do we sabotage ourselves then? It usually stems from childhood – a vulnerable time where we weren’t emotionally capable of figuring out the big world around us, and got hurt by throwaway comments from frustrated parents, family members or friends lashing out. These comments or events can affect us for years, make us believe things about ourselves that were never true in the first place. We carry that heavy baggage with us everywhere, just under the surface.

Sabotage can happen over a long period of time, you get excited about a project, tell a few people you’ve started it, and then over time the hard work sets in, the shine of the project dulls, and you stop doing it. Rinse and repeat.

Self-sabotage is a favourite human defence mechanism, your Lizard Brain telling you to go back to the safe and secure job and stop with all your ‘notions’ of running a business now. What were you thinking?

Self-sabotage is your nosy, pass-remarkable older relative, the one who can’t help spouting what’s on her mind and is not ashamed to say what she thinks. In saying that, she doesn’t want you to get your hopes up in case they fall, or put yourself out there only to be disappointed, she thinks she’s protecting you, like a helicopter parent watching your every move in case you make the wrong one.

Self -sabotage is the voice telling you it’s too hard to start a business because you’re no good at the numbers anyway, and you’ll only embarrass yourself by trying, so what’s the point?

Self-sabotage is the way we procrastinate every day on the big things, and even the small things, taking us away from our true purpose and plans for our lives. Death by a thousand cuts. ‘I’ll start that blog as soon as I’ve tidied the kitchen and neatly tidied my stationary drawer.’ (true story!).

Getting rid of self -sabotaging behaviours is all about prioritising what you really want from your life and taking time to identify what you want to do with this one precious life of yours – are you living it passively on the sidelines or standing in the arena? Working this out is the trickiest part.

Women in particular make themselves smaller and more compliant as a way to seem nicer and more likeable, dating back to when the men wore the trousers and paid a dowry for our hands in marriage. It was our only way to get ahead in the world and be looked after. Today that historical overhang is still there, we tend to let self-sabotage and imposter syndrome ride rough shod over our ambitions for fear of being ‘full of ourselves’ or ‘having notions’.

Every day is a battle with self-sabotage and inner critic chatter in your brain, so is there a way to manage these self-sabotaging tendencies? According to Emma Gannon’s latest book ‘Sabotage’ her advice is to choose self-worth over self-sabotage like this:

1, Normalise your successes – Recognise that having confidence in your abilities is a good thing, not something to hide from the world at large. Telling people about your successes and celebrating them will normalise the process and stop your inner critic from getting in the way.

2. Internalise your successes – Really believe in your successes and don’t focus on the parts of the process that didn’t go according to plan. This way you’re able to internalise praise and positive feedback to measure your progress and get a fuller picture of that success.

3. Have a success bank - Keep track of all your achievements to date no matter how small – the little wins pave the way for the bigger ones. It’s important to acknowledge compliments and stop belittling your achievements, a small daily win is still a win! Accept praise without qualifying it first.

4. Don’t wait for inspiration to do something – The trick is to get started, even doing 5 minutes of your task will fire you up enough to keep going at it. As Steven Pressfield says in his book The War of Art “The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” It may not be perfect, but it’s a start.

5. Connect with your Future Self – Have clarity on why you’re doing what you’re doing, how will your Future Self benefit from this process – what transformations or learnings are in it for her? Set your goals in motion and remind yourself of what you’ll gain from the goal when the going gets tough. Your future self depends on it.

Ditching the sabotaging tendencies means you get to fall in love with your own life and stop comparing it to others. Start accepting the compliments, celebrating the wins, and running with the opportunities. You’re just as good as everyone else, you deserve every accolade and award, you just have to believe it first.

If you’d like help managing your sabotaging tendencies and inner critic, I’m here to get to the bottom of it!

Working on managing triggers, blocks and sabotages is one of the first exercises I use with my clients because there’s no point in making plans and being productive if, at the last minute, they sabotage their efforts and go back to hiding.

I’ve helped lots of women manage these issues and move on in their businesses with clarity and confidence. Book a Clarity Call with me at calendly.com/hellolynsey and let’s get it sorted!