Today we explore another great listener question about self-sabotage and what we can do to limit its impact in our lives.
All of us have habits and behaviours that undermine us at times but there are things we can do to create change and momentum in our lives. In this episode I offer some important practical things you can do to lessen the impact of sabotage and get your life moving forward.
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Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome friends to the daily podcast.
Speaker:Great to be having some time with you as always.
Speaker:Uh, really enjoyed yesterday's episode on resilience.
Speaker:If you haven't listened to that, jump back to yesterday's episode.
Speaker:I think it's a hundred and something, a season six, but I really
Speaker:enjoyed that because today in a few hours, I'm speaking at a live
Speaker:Where I'm going to be talking about resilience and, uh, because
Speaker:I've sort of been planning.
Speaker:This a live event, it's been fascinating to sort of go down the rabbit hole
Speaker:of what resilience is, how we can get better So please make sure you
Speaker:go and check out yesterday's episode.
Speaker:And I'm hoping to get a live recording today.
Speaker:So listening over the next couple of days, because.
Speaker:Hopefully I will get some sort of live content to you from that event.
Speaker:All right, let's do this.
Speaker:Your time is precious.
Speaker:Uh, please make sure you've subscribed.
Speaker:Hit that big subscribe And, uh, there's a whole bunch of links under here.
Speaker:You can book me to speak live.
Speaker:You can get free access to my book, bridging the gap and go and
Speaker:check out Karen's masterclass.
Speaker:My amazing wife does this masterclass for women around the world.
Speaker:And, uh, there's links there to that.
Speaker:And there's a link across to the YouTube channel.
Speaker:If you want to see me do the shorter version on YouTube, that's where you
Speaker:will find the link just below here on the show notes, wherever you're listening
Speaker:friends today, we're going to talk Something that, uh, we can all relate to.
Speaker:I'm going to give you a, it's another one of these great listener questions where
Speaker:somebody has emailed in with a question and wants me to speak about it, but
Speaker:it's a topic that we can all relate to.
Speaker:Uh, maybe not in the exact details, but gosh, Did I just
Speaker:say, gosh, I'm gonna go shut deed.
Speaker:Oh, gosh.
Speaker:What am I going to do next?
Speaker:Because I done.
Speaker:All right, moving right along.
Speaker:Uh, when I shared the details of this question, you might not
Speaker:deal with a specific issue, but.
Speaker:You're going to be dealing with something.
Speaker:You know, something similar, right?
Speaker:We're all dealing with different challenges in life.
Speaker:The reason you are listening today,
Speaker:Is because you are the kind of person that in some way is seeking to grow to
Speaker:have be, do contribute more in your life.
Speaker:So here's the question.
Speaker:It's, um, it's really poignant.
Speaker:This person says, Jonathan, I feel stuck in many areas of my life.
Speaker:But the most annoying at the moment is sabotaging myself.
Speaker:I've decided again, to try to lose some weight.
Speaker:I know I'll feel great when I do it.
Speaker:And really even 10 kilos would be wonderful, but as I start
Speaker:going to whitewash weight watches, I'm eating silly things.
Speaker:Such as putting brown sugar onto strawberries and blueberries eating
Speaker:the morning tea at work, which is most of the time yummy and things.
Speaker:I should not be eating.
Speaker:I also, I'm stuck being too fearful to go outside of my house for
Speaker:a walk or bike ride by myself.
Speaker:I live alone.
Speaker:Anyway, the baby steps.
Speaker:I'll try this weekend to go for a bike ride or walk if I can.
Speaker:Thanks for this opportunity to vent well, you are very welcome.
Speaker:My friend, you are very welcome to vent.
Speaker:We all need good people around us that we can talk to.
Speaker:And,
Speaker:You know, just to be the recipient of some of the great questions in recent
Speaker:weeks has been a real privilege.
Speaker:So friends, uh, just on a tangent, make sure you have good people
Speaker:around you that you can talk to.
Speaker:You know, we're a very social species, so having good people around us, That
Speaker:we can talk to is so important, right?
Speaker:So, as I said, you may not be dealing with this exact issue.
Speaker:You may not be dealing with.
Speaker:You know, trying to get off weight or increase exercise, but there
Speaker:will be something in your life.
Speaker:That'll be similar that you're trying to change, but you
Speaker:find really hard to change.
Speaker:I have these things.
Speaker:People go, Jonathan, you do a podcast on personal development, peak performance.
Speaker:You must have all this sorted out in correct.
Speaker:I am right.
Speaker:Besides you on the journey.
Speaker:I am.
Speaker:A complete self-help project myself.
Speaker:I find every single day that I have to work and strive and struggle.
Speaker:To wrestle with the challenges that I have, but let's talk about.
Speaker:What unites us through this question?
Speaker:It's the question of self-sabotage.
Speaker:You know, I've worked with senior executives running multi-billion dollar,
Speaker:um, uh, funds, corporations charities who are dealing with this exact same issue.
Speaker:I remember a while ago, talking to somebody who was responsible
Speaker:for, uh, a big peak group over the thinking I, one of the biggest
Speaker:sectors of the economy, it was a.
Speaker:And they were just massively wrestling with self-sabotage.
Speaker:They just didn't feel that they belong there.
Speaker:They were remarkable.
Speaker:They had, excuse me, so many skills.
Speaker:But they just felt that they didn't belong this.
Speaker:And no matter where we are, You know, sweeping the streets or whether
Speaker:we're at the top of the boardroom.
Speaker:This issue of self sabotage is such a crucial one.
Speaker:What is it?
Speaker:Look first, I keep trying to tell us, tell people that we are complex, right?
Speaker:We are a complex.
Speaker:Creatures.
Speaker:The reasons that we struggle with self doubt and can be very deep, you
Speaker:know, they can be extremely deep.
Speaker:It can involve trauma.
Speaker:It can involve, you know, damaging relationships.
Speaker:There's so many things that can trigger this.
Speaker:Experience of, of inadequacy.
Speaker:It's a journey.
Speaker:It's a process.
Speaker:You know, I find journaling incredibly helpful.
Speaker:I find a reading very helpful.
Speaker:I read a great deal around topics related to trauma, PTSD,
Speaker:growing through different things.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Really at the heart of self-sabotage is the experience of inadequacy
Speaker:or the belief of inadequacy that somehow for some reason,
Speaker:We are not good enough.
Speaker:We are not lovable.
Speaker:That we don't deserve whatever we have in our I would suggest that there are maybe
Speaker:two ways to think about addressing it.
Speaker:One is that we need to do things.
Speaker:That are contrary to the sabotage narrative.
Speaker:So in the NAB, the self-sabotage narrative says, you can't do
Speaker:this, or you can never do this.
Speaker:You have to, it's basically that concept of feel the fear and do it anyway.
Speaker:You actually have to force yourself to jump off the diving platform.
Speaker:One of the ways you beat self sabotage is by overwhelming it with data.
Speaker:And by that, I mean that you, you do things Overwhelm
Speaker:that sense of self sabotage.
Speaker:You give me example when I did my first keynote major keynote for 10,000 people.
Speaker:Uh, I was in a, in the U S and you know, that experience of walking up there on
Speaker:the stage and having the most remarkable experience was incredibly successful.
Speaker:Keynote.
Speaker:Um, thing, praise God.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:You know, once you've done that, it's pretty hard to tell yourself, oh, you're
Speaker:not very good at speaking, or you can't do this, or nobody wants to, because you've
Speaker:had the experience of that kind of when.
Speaker:So, I guess the first thing to suggest would be that the
Speaker:way through self-sabotage one of the ways is behaviourally.
Speaker:So you actually have to do behavioral things that make it impossible for you
Speaker:to keep believing the sabotage narrative.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Please trust me to do that requires courage.
Speaker:Courage has developed by practicing it in small, daily, regular steps.
Speaker:So sometimes we just have to act our way.
Speaker:Beyond the self-sabotage right.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:I hope I'm not getting convoluted here.
Speaker:I hope this is straightforward to understand.
Speaker:That the way you beat this.
Speaker:Uh, one of two ways, I think you'd beat.
Speaker:This is by, by just doing what the sabotage narrative says.
Speaker:You can't And there is no shortcut to that.
Speaker:It's literally just stepping
Speaker:The other option is to sort of take a more therapeutic path, which is to
Speaker:just start working with professionals or with the spiritual directors
Speaker:or people that you deeply trust.
Speaker:Will you really just talk through that deep interior now narrative.
Speaker:Why am I doing this to myself?
Speaker:What is it that I believe what's behind it?
Speaker:You know, look, most of the literature suggests that something
Speaker:like 95% of our beliefs and behaviors are semi-conscious right.
Speaker:Subconscious semi-conscious things that we believe that.
Speaker:You know, it just, just below the surface that are swimming away under the, under
Speaker:the surface of our daily reality, the way are used to prove this to people
Speaker:on stage was I would, you know, let's say it was in the middle of the year.
Speaker:Let's say I was speaking in August.
Speaker:I'd ask everybody in the room to remember where they were
Speaker:on the previous Christmas day.
Speaker:And you can even do that experiment.
Speaker:Now, if I said to you, do you remember where you were last
Speaker:Christmas day and many of you.
Speaker:Probably will.
Speaker:What's the point.
Speaker:Is that think about it before I asked you.
Speaker:Where was that memory?
Speaker:Where was that memory?
Speaker:And the truth is that it was swimming away in your semi-conscious subconscious.
Speaker:And if we're holding.
Speaker:Memories like that.
Speaker:We're obviously holding memories and experiences all the way back through our
Speaker:lives all the way back through childhood.
Speaker:I'm going to think of things like you've one of your favorite
Speaker:songs from high school, right?
Speaker:Just pick something that you used to listen to when you're in
Speaker:high school, your favorite album.
Speaker:Like you could probably go back and remember the lyrics of
Speaker:every song on the album, right?
Speaker:Maybe.
Speaker:I mean, I'm talking to the, the more mature members of my.
Speaker:Listeners.
Speaker:Cause I know that a lot of younger people don't listen to full albums.
Speaker:It's one of the problems with this world.
Speaker:But, um, you know what I mean?
Speaker:That, that stuff is there.
Speaker:So my point here is that sometimes the self-sabotage is deeply embedded
Speaker:in long-term memories and trauma.
Speaker:And the way through that is through a therapeutic model.
Speaker:I haven't found that particularly successful for myself.
Speaker:I'm not saying you shouldn't I'm just saying that I've learned over time
Speaker:to act my way through things, to do difficult things that scare me sometimes.
Speaker:And also just to read, I learned a great deal from reading.
Speaker:So
Speaker:Kind of how to do it.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So let's move on.
Speaker:So summary of that, Is self-sabotage is rooted in a deep belief of
Speaker:unworthiness of, and inadequacy and not being lovable or good enough.
Speaker:So what we do is we try and we see why do we do it?
Speaker:And then the question is, why would we self-sabotage.
Speaker:Really simple answer.
Speaker:Humans want congruence, right?
Speaker:Humans want congruence.
Speaker:We want to be congruent.
Speaker:We want to, we want to act in ways or experience in life based upon what we
Speaker:actually truly believe about ourselves.
Speaker:So if we have a deep fractured belief that we are unlovable and unworthy.
Speaker:Then we are going to find ways to manifest that in the real world.
Speaker:If you think you're a bad person.
Speaker:Then you are going to subtly shape reality to reinforce that belief, right?
Speaker:You are going to create.
Speaker:Systems and outcomes and relationships that are going to
Speaker:keep reinforcing that belief.
Speaker:So we got to get to work on that.
Speaker:We got to believe different things.
Speaker:We've got to.
Speaker:So much of what I speak about.
Speaker:It's just, it's simple to explain it.
Speaker:People want a really complex answer, but we have to begin
Speaker:to believe different things.
Speaker:So you can see here that, you know, with this person sharing about, they want
Speaker:to be 10 kilos lighter, but they are.
Speaker:You know, doing something healthy, like eating strawberries and blueberries,
Speaker:and then coding them in brown sugar.
Speaker:There's a.
Speaker:There's an incongruence there.
Speaker:There's an undermining behavior.
Speaker:It could also be a drive towards comfort.
Speaker:So sometimes if we've had experiences in life of not being comforted, you
Speaker:know, we can go back to childhood and say that we weren't comforted very well.
Speaker:And that's not unusual because.
Speaker:Until relatively recently, we were deep down that cultural rabbit hole
Speaker:of controlled crying and, and, um, you know, just only feeding kids
Speaker:You know, certain times.
Speaker:So there's a fairly strong body of evidence that the last sort of 50 years.
Speaker:We haven't exactly been knocking them out of the park with raising infants.
Speaker:There's a brilliant interview recently between Joe Rogan and
Speaker:gabble, Marty and Our motto is the world expert on trauma and addiction.
Speaker:And that's his thesis.
Speaker:He reckons that so much trauma is, is, and, you know, self-sabotage and
Speaker:addiction is based in abandonment and attachment issues from childhood.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Please understand.
Speaker:I am not a licensed healthcare professional.
Speaker:So these are not prescriptive directions to you.
Speaker:They're just directions of inquiry or the things you can start thinking
Speaker:Because, you know, if you're coating food and sugar, While simultaneously
Speaker:wanting to be healthier and lighter.
Speaker:There's something going on here.
Speaker:There's a, there's a values clash, and that will be semi-conscious.
Speaker:So one of the things you can do is to make the semi-conscious conscious, right?
Speaker:So you actually got to get out a journal and
Speaker:Why am I doing this?
Speaker:Why, why, why, why, why, why?
Speaker:And, and begin to go.
Speaker:What do I truly believe underneath it?
Speaker:And I think behind all of this is the beautiful possibility
Speaker:of getting on our own team.
Speaker:Like we are not the enemy here.
Speaker:Like You are not the bad guy.
Speaker:Like you want to get on your own team.
Speaker:You're going to start believing things about yourself.
Speaker:And some people go, well, that's just arrogance.
Speaker:That's pride.
Speaker:I don't want to be a prideful person
Speaker:Let me fix that for you really quick.
Speaker:If you get on your own team and you start practicing genuine
Speaker:self acceptance and self love.
Speaker:What tends to happen is you become a more beautiful soul and you start
Speaker:to be more easy to live with, and you love people around you more.
Speaker:I mean, why did Jesus say, you know, love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Speaker:Jesus.
Speaker:Didn't say, love your neighbor, even though you actually
Speaker:secretly despise yourself and wish yourself nothing but bad.
Speaker:Oh, I still want you to go and love your neighbor.
Speaker:He said, no, you've got to, you've got to, you know, the way you're going to
Speaker:relate to other people is going to come out of the way that you treat yourself.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So we've got a lot going on here.
Speaker:Uh, and then of course, we've got this, this fear part where
Speaker:this person, you know, is fearful about going outside for a walk.
Speaker:Uh, And then beautifully, they say anyway, Jonathan baby steps.
Speaker:I'll try this weekend for a bike ride or walk That's really important.
Speaker:There's baby steps concept.
Speaker:If you are trying to change something.
Speaker:You got two paths you can go for radical change.
Speaker:Some people do that.
Speaker:They just massively changed their lives in one.
Speaker:Great big seismic sweep.
Speaker:Uh, but otherwise for the rest of us, you know, I used to say to
Speaker:people when I was running ultra marathons people like you are crazy.
Speaker:How do you do that?
Speaker:And I say, well, the thing is, you don't have to.
Speaker:If all you're doing at the moment is walking to the letterbox once a day,
Speaker:then maybe walk that distance twice.
Speaker:And then maybe in a week, you'll walk to the end of the street.
Speaker:And then in a week, you know, after that, you might, uh, you might start
Speaker:walking three kilometers and then off you go, so it's baby steps, right?
Speaker:So if you're wanting to change something, relationship issues,
Speaker:Financial issues, career issues.
Speaker:Just take the next logical step.
Speaker:The other thing I wanted to say about all of what we're talking here about the
Speaker:self-sabotage, the food, the exercise.
Speaker:I think sometimes we need to look at what I call a structural interset,
Speaker:which is if you're doing a behavior such as, you know, this one here
Speaker:of putting sugar on food, that's undermining your health and weight goals.
Speaker:Sometimes we have to just be really intelligent about what
Speaker:I call structural intercepts.
Speaker:So the, you know, the person who is talking about where she works,
Speaker:the morning tea is just, you know, devastatingly delicious, and
Speaker:every morning it's there for me.
Speaker:That's a structural intercept.
Speaker:You can't be there and you just can't like it's, you know,
Speaker:our willpower is truly finite.
Speaker:Uh, and there's great studies done on this over the last few
Speaker:Where we know that, uh, if you.
Speaker:Uh, you know, willpower tends to be strong in the morning.
Speaker:It tends to be stronger if your well rested and as our day goes on and we
Speaker:deal with more stresses and problems and we get more fatigued, we know
Speaker:that the actual part of our brain that controls willpower begins to deplete.
Speaker:And so you don't want to be in that room.
Speaker:With deliciousness there.
Speaker:You don't want to be there.
Speaker:You need a structural intercept.
Speaker:You need to be somewhere else.
Speaker:You need to find a way.
Speaker:To be somewhere else.
Speaker:So you are not placing yourself constantly in that area of temptation.
Speaker:It's a reason why alcoholics anonymous had this great idea.
Speaker:Don't go to bars.
Speaker:That's right.
Speaker:If you go into a bar and you're an alcoholic.
Speaker:That's not great.
Speaker:You need a structural intercept.
Speaker:You need to not be in that place.
Speaker:You need to be somewhere else.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:We would like to think that we have this radical uncontained
Speaker:willpower, but we don't.
Speaker:So let's get really smart, whatever you're trying to change in your life,
Speaker:put yourself in the right place.
Speaker:So that you are not.
Speaker:Uh, I'm going to struggle I'm thinking about.
Speaker:Many years ago, I was, uh, on a gap year as a younger person.
Speaker:And I was at the school in Europe and every afternoon they
Speaker:just had this afternoon tea, which was just death on a stick.
Speaker:It was just.
Speaker:Cream buns and sticky.
Speaker:You know, buns and.
Speaker:I just went in there and ate it.
Speaker:All of it, everything.
Speaker:It was mine.
Speaker:It was like, stand back people.
Speaker:I'm going to work and you know, it's just, you just don't want to be there.
Speaker:You don't want to be in that space.
Speaker:So whatever it is for you, my friend, who's listening, structural intercepts,
Speaker:come up with something creative.
Speaker:That's what I tend to do.
Speaker:If I need to really change something, I come up with.
Speaker:Uh, really do, you know, doing something different, creating a new context
Speaker:that forces me out of the old pattern.
Speaker:And I've written here in my notes.
Speaker:Um, you know, leverage structure.
Speaker:Uh, this was, uh, with the exercise piece.
Speaker:Sometimes, if you're trying to increase your health thing, often
Speaker:say leverage structure, which means.
Speaker:Create structure around it.
Speaker:I meet with somebody.
Speaker:Join a club.
Speaker:Join a get a trainer, do something that creates more structure around it.
Speaker:Because often, if it's a case of, I've got to go out and do this and.
Speaker:It's horrible weather.
Speaker:And I don't want to do it.
Speaker:You might get hotter on yourself, but if you've got to meet somebody at 10:00 AM,
Speaker:if you've got to meet your trainer because you're paying them, it makes a difference.
Speaker:You know, the weather here in Australia has been so bad.
Speaker:It's been awful.
Speaker:We've had the worst weather for ages.
Speaker:And for someone like me who cycles and runs a great deal,
Speaker:it's been really challenging.
Speaker:So I've been using the swift platform, which is, uh, Um, I've got a really
Speaker:advanced stationary trainer bike set up the Bluetooth's into this software.
Speaker:So it's a, and you race against people and it's a really great program.
Speaker:So I find that when I wake up at 4:00 AM I look outside it's black.
Speaker:It's raining.
Speaker:It's miserable.
Speaker:Do I want to go and do a hundred kind on the bike outside?
Speaker:No, but I jumped on swift.
Speaker:And the thing is that if I just jumped on swift and peddled around, I'd get
Speaker:some benefit, but I raced there's this endless racist, sometimes hundreds
Speaker:of people from around the world.
Speaker:So it forces me into a much higher level of performance, right?
Speaker:Because I'm leveraging structure, I'm using the structure of the software,
Speaker:the indoor training software.
Speaker:And I'm using the structure of the races to improve my performance.
Speaker:So if you're trying to change something, look at those structural
Speaker:elements, that can be really helpful.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Summary
Speaker:We are all wounded people.
Speaker:We are all broken people at some level, in some parts of us,
Speaker:we all carry wounds and pain.
Speaker:And self-sabotage comes out of that.
Speaker:We are afraid to live a big, expensive, amazing life, because we're not sure we're
Speaker:allowed to, because we have these internal narratives that can do us so much damage.
Speaker:How do you do it?
Speaker:You act your way out of it.
Speaker:You start to either physically do things in the world.
Speaker:That forced, that narrative to change, or you begin to take the therapy
Speaker:journey and start working with it.
Speaker:Doesn't have to be professional therapy.
Speaker:It can be, but it can be just meeting with a good friend, telling
Speaker:him the truth, sharing your heart.
Speaker:It can be journaling, whatever you need Um, get those structural intercepts
Speaker:in place around other behaviors.
Speaker:And then if you want to start doing stuff like more exercise,
Speaker:get those baby steps in place.
Speaker:Just start, just get moving.
Speaker:And create structure around that.
Speaker:So it works.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:I'm going to stop there.
Speaker:Listen.
Speaker:Go check out the show notes.
Speaker:You can book me, live for conferences, working with businesses.
Speaker:Uh, to speak and training and all sorts of different issues.
Speaker:So go check out those links, get yourself a free copy of my book in that Go across
Speaker:and check out the YouTube channel and of course, check out Karen's master class.
Speaker:God bless everybody.
Speaker:Do me a favor.
Speaker:Make sure you've subscribed.
Speaker:Check this on your social media feeds.
Speaker:Share this with some friends and family.
Speaker:I reach@anytimeyoucanfindmeatjonathandoyledotcodotcojonathandoyle.co.
Speaker:If you've got a topic you want me to cover just jump on the contact
Speaker:page send me an email and i will get it done for you All right.
Speaker:listen i'm pumped i'm pumped for you i want you to hear this content i want
Speaker:you to get out there i want you to start building the life that you really want
Speaker:to live because when you come alive when you push through these issues you become
Speaker:such a blessing to the people around you all right everybody my name's jonathan
Speaker:doyle this has been the daily podcast and i'll have another message for you tomorrow
