Self-Sabotage: What Are You Avoiding?

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Hey 👋

I’m in the middle of reading and listening to a few books that are all weirdly connected to the idea of getting in your own way.

Pretty great timing for me if I am being honest 😅

One of them is Brianna Wiest’s The Mountain Is You.

In it, one of the things she calls out explicitly is reasons why we self-sabotage.

We are genetically wired to want to be more comfortable vs. uncomfortable and be in more predictable vs. less predictable situations.

Any discomfort - a variance from our normal baseline - can send off alarms, even if the change is a good thing. This is amped up even more for highly sensitive people.

Things often happen in life that are beyond our control, but there are a lot of things that are in our control that we subconsciously derail because of discomfort avoidance, self-limiting beliefs, and deep identity associations.

For example, if, growing up, your parents struggled with money and painted a picture of being rich or having money being a bad thing (i.e. “rich people are mean and self-centered”), subconsciously this might make it harder for you to accumulate money and resources because you do not want to identify as the negatively-perceived thing you were programmed to avoid.

If your baseline was being in anxious-avoidant attachment pattern situations, you will probably subconsciously seek this in relationships without even being aware of it because it’s what you’re used to.

If growing up you were taught that being beautiful or attractive or simply your authentic self is a bad thing because it attracts dangerous people and situations, you will likely subconsciously make efforts to dim your light and be less attractive, make yourself smaller or take up less space, and be less “you”.

On top of this, we usually also have beliefs about ourselves that we learned growing up that are not actually objectively true - they serve to protect us but actually end up limiting us.

For me, some examples are “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not smart enough”, “I am not worthy of this/I don’t deserve this”, “I’m unlovable”, “Feeling good is a bad thing - it means the other shoe is about to drop”, and a whole lot more like this.

We often go on like this, repeating the same patterns and seeing the same problems come up for us again, and again and again until…

1. We either have the awareness to see what is happening, create space and take a step back and consciously approach these things with curiosity and action with intent with appropriate support in a gentle, progressive way.

2. We are backed against the wall and put in a situation where we literally cannot go on like this and NEED to change NOW - our bodies shut down or our lives implode. Often, both happen at the same time.

Part of the reason I’m writing about this is because I fall into bucket 2 and my hope is that by writing more about some of these things, if you’re reading this and recognize some of these patterns in yourself, you can avoid bucket 2 altogether by planting yourself firmly in bucket 1.

Most of the ways we self-sabotage involve substituting one thing for another…and we usually choose the easier thing vs. the hard thing.

For example:

Hard thing: Asking for a promotion.

Risks: Failure, shame, blow to confidence if denied.

Easier thing: Don’t ask to avoid potential risks.

Another one:

Hard thing: Setting boundaries for yourself in any relationship

Risks: Boundaries are not respected, relationship does not work out, getting hurt when vulnerable.

Easier thing: Avoiding relationships.

Are you avoiding relationships so you avoid getting hurt?

Are you avoiding investing in your business idea or asking for a promotion because you’re afraid of failing?

Are you making yourself smaller to avoid having to deal with any conflict that could arise by being your big, awesome, authentic, self?

From my own rollercoasters of experiences, I think having some awareness can go a long way and will also say that a lot of this work is MUCH easier said than done. Pain substitution is kind of how I think about it. What small pain do you I want to deal with now (i.e. having a hard conversation) to avoid bigger pain down the line (i.e. regretting a life path you took for 30+ years because you didn’t have the conversation)?

In The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein, she talks about these hard things we must do to avoid worse hard things down the line as “our assignments". I kind of love the idea of taking the feeling of being on our heels and flipping it on it’s head into something that we can own and be proactive about.

What are some of the ways you recognize you are limiting yourself? Feel free to drop me a note and let me know.

Soulwork 💜

📚 I just read a book that I loved and wanted to share with you:

• We Were Dreamers (Simu Liu’s Memoir) (Fun fact - I decided to read it after bumping into him while ago while he was filming a movie in Toronto. He seems like a great guy and very genuine).

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Here’s to navigating life off of autopilot.

Lisa ✌️