I had the opportunity

to deliver a workshop on

self-sabotage & self-empowerment

earlier this week to an amazing group of

social impact entrepreneurs and I’m still buzzing from it.

​

The two topics go

hand-in-hand because

while all of us experience

the seeds of self-sabotage,

we also each have the power

to stop self-sabotage before it stops us.

​

And in doing so, we build self-trust and spark self-love.

​

Stopping self-sabotage isn’t

just about unlocking your progress,

it’s about reestablishing your agency,

building awareness of your “tells” and

shedding entrenched beliefs about yourself

from an earlier version of your life that no longer serve.

​

Pretty powerful stuff.

Strategy #1: Identify the early indicators of your self-sabotage

The sooner you become aware that

self-sabotage is setting in,

the easier it is to stop it

before it stops you.

​

Know your tells…

the impulses and behaviors

that crop up when you’re beginning

to deviate from your own best interest

and get in your own way — of progress or happiness.

​

Early indicators of self-sabotage come in many forms:

​

Frequent Excuses

🚩 Rationalizing why tasks aren’t completed or goals aren’t met.

​

Chronic Procrastination

🚩 Consistently delaying important tasks or decisions.

​

Spending excessive time on minor details

🚩 Obsessing over details that aren’t important at the expense of ones that matter.

​

Inconsistent Performance

🚩 Alternating between high productivity and inactivity.

​

Self-Doubt

🚩 Constantly questioning your decisions and abilities.

​

Cancelling Feedback Meetings

🚩 Dodging mentors, ghosting advisors, avoiding friends & family that tell it like it is.

​

Overcommitment

🚩 Violating your own boundaries and agreeing to every request or invitation.

​

Negative Self-Talk

🚩 Turning up the volume and air time of your inner critic.

​

Some tells are particularly hard to identify

because they start out as positive behaviors

that become problematic when taken to an extreme.

​

Before you know it, they've shifted

from keeping you safe to keeping you stuck.

​

It’s always a good idea to buckle your seat belt…

but if “keeping yourself safe” looks more like

keeping your car in the garage,

you’ve gone too far.

​

Over-functioning

🚩 Too much doing, not enough being.

​

Over-scheduling

🚩 Over-committing yourself at the expense of yourself.

​

Over-thinking

🚩 Creating self-imposed requirements for excessive research, preparation and planning.

​

Excessive Worrying

🚩 Triggering anxiety and preventing action by getting stuck in a worry spiral.

​

Hyper-Independence

🚩 Insisting on doing everything yourself, resisting help, refusing to delegate.

​

Do you recognize any

of your personal tells here?

​

Did these examples

spark a realization of

a tell not included here?

​

(Email and let me know — I’d love to add to my list!)

​

My biggest are:

🚩 defensiveness

🚩 social withdrawal (hard no to networking)

🚩 impulse to prove (conspicuous contribution)

​

Write down the tells that come to mind for you

and set an intention to start noticing them?

​

🔍 What are their earliest incarnations?

🔍 How do they feel in your body?

🔍 What are their triggers?

​

Building awareness of your early tells

is a powerful way to stop self-sabotage &

support yourself when you need it the most.

Now you know what to look for…

but what you can do when you

notice those tells in action?

​

The first thing to remember is that

self-sabotage is a form of self-protection.

​

While your conscious mind may want to

take on new challenges,

set and achieve goals,

embrace adventure,

reinvent yourself

and blaze trails,

​

your subconscious mind

needs acceptance,

seeks attachment,

craves comfort,

resists change.

​

That’s why it sometimes feels like an internal battle,

like you’re your own worst enemy,

when really, it’s more of a

misguided attempt

to be your own

best friend.

#frenemies

​

It’s like you have your very own, built-in helicopter parent.

​

Left unchecked, your subconscious mind would keep you

in a sterilized, padded room full of trophies,

with no chance of insult or injury…

and also no chance of growth.

​

That protective impulse

is even stronger the more fragile

your sense of self-worth.

​

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

​

You want to do the thing but you’re afraid and unsure of yourself.

Your inner voice tells you that “you shouldn’t”, “ you can’t”,

“you’re not enough”, “you’re not the one”.

​

Then the self-sabotage behaviors kick in to protect you.

​

They start working against your conscious desire to go forward,

providing evidence that “you shouldn’t”, “ you can’t”

“you’re not enough”, “you’re not the one”.

​

It’s a really tough cycle to break out of.

Trust me, I’ve been there.

​

So what can you do?

​

Embrace the underlying fear &

Acknowledge the upside.

Strategy #2: Identify & release the fear at the root of your self-sabotage

​

Just like helicopter parenting,

self-sabotage is fundamentally fear-based:

• fear of disappointment
• fear of rejection
• fear of failure

​

Figuring out the underlying fear at play

when self-sabotage starts to set in

can release you from its grip and

put an end to the behavior.

​

When self-sabotage surfaces, ask yourself:

🔍 What am I afraid might happen?

🔍 What am I trying to protect myself from?

​

Processing the fear that is

triggering your self-sabotage

invites the sense of safety you need

to release the fear and

stop the behavior.

​

This two-step process works wonders.

​

1. Define the worst case scenario

​

Explore the underlying fear:

What do you believe is the worst thing that could happen?

​

2. Objectively assess the likelihood of that scenario

​

Do a quick reality check:

How likely is it that the thing I’m most afraid of will actually happen?

​

Often investigating the worst case

reveals that it isn’t so bad,

and/or that it’s not

very likely.

​

The underlying fear

has no basis in reality

and the behavior or belief

that has been holding you back

doesn’t have a reason to exist, so

you don’t have a reason to let it stop you.

Strategy #3: Approach your self-sabotage with self-compassion

In self-sabotage as in life,

it helps to acknowledge the upside.

​

Find gratitude in and

self-compassion for

the self-sabotage.

​

By acknowledging

the self-protective impulse

at the root of your self-sabotage,

you can tap into self-compassion.

​

That opens the door to a new narrative & breaks that vicious validation cycle.

​

Approaching your self-sabotage with self-compassion

decouples your identity from the self-sabotage behavior

(and the labels that come with it, like procrastinator, people-pleaser, perfectionist)

​

It let's you accept that

the behavior isn't who you are (identity)

it’s just a defense mechanism (behavior)

​

You're not a Procrastinator (identity)

you're someone who procrastinates (behavior),

and you're procrastinating because you're trying to protect yourself (self-compassion).

​

When the self-sabotage behavior surfaces,

separate it from your sense of self:

​

This separation is incredibly liberating

and it can be transformational.

​

It creates an opportunity to build an identity around

your conscious desires instead of

your subconscious fears.

​

This was huge for me.

​

(Please forgive the bad language in the personal anecdote that follows.)

​

I believed I was a total asshole for a really long time.

I used to tell people that I was preemptively,

as if it were a matter of irreversible fact —

a fact of my identity.

​

I reasoned (OUT LOUD!):

“I’m an asshole, but at least I’m a self-aware asshole”. 🤦‍♀️

​

I believed that about myself so completely (identity)

that, while I was very attentive to addressing the aftermath of my behavior,

it never occurred to me that I could change the behavior itself.

​

This was just who I understood myself to be.

​

One day, I read a

360 review from a colleague

that included the following insight:

“She always says she’s an asshole… why not just stop being an asshole?”

​

By that point, I’d started to do some work on myself

so I understood my capacity for change,

though I still considered “asshole”

to be a hardened identity.

​

My initial thought was

“well if I could do that, I obviously would do it”.

​

Then I wondered “could I do it?”

and I started to do the work.

​

Sometimes the behaviors we adopt to keep ourselves safe

stick around well past the point when they’re

adding any self-protective value.

​

We lose or escape the context that

gave rise to the behaviors,

but the behaviors remain —

beliefs that hold us back,

walls that keep us separate,

dispositions that disconnect us.

​

We start to believe that’s just who we are.

The behavior becomes our identity.

​

You could go your whole life

stuck in that self-protective armor

and not even realize you’re wearing it.

​

I’m so grateful that I got curious

and started to challenge my beliefs

about the behaviors I thought were “just who I am”.

​

It turns out, I’m not an asshole (identity)

although I certainly can be one (behavior).

​

It’s a big difference.

One that leaves room for me to grow, and

break down the barriers that kept me safe, but that I no longer need

so that I can show up in my life in a way that aligns with who I really am and who I want to be.

​

Check in with yourself.

Explore the underlying fear.

Tap into your self-compassion.

Question the reactions that seem automatic but don’t feel like you.

​

That behavior is not who you are --

it's who you think you have to be in order to be safe.

​

There's another way.

You've got this.

Looking for more actionable strategies to stop self-sabotage?

Check out this prior issue on Limiting Beliefs

and Worry Habit Loops.

​

Want to help others live their best lives too? Forward this issue.

​

And, if you know of a group, organization or team (like yours!) that would benefit from

the self-sabotage & self-empowerment workshop I mentioned (or one of several others on

themes like healthy high performance, work-life integration and mindset mastery)…

Send me an email and I’ll send you an overview:

​nicole@timebydesign.com​

​

Have a wonderful week!

​