In this episode of The GenTwenty Podcast, Nicole and Marina discuss self-sabotage and how we get in our own way when it comes to setting and reaching our goals.
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Nicole Booz: Welcome back to The GenTwenty Podcast and Nicole…
Marina Crouse: … and I’m Marina and today we’re talking about self-sabotage. So, what is self-sabotage and getting in your own way? Ah Nicole take it away.
Nicole Booz: Okay, okay, okay, so when we sabotage ourselves, it’s when our behaviors and our actions create problems in our lives that get in the way of reaching our goals and I think we are all guilty of this.
Marina Crouse: 1000% and if you listen well if you’ve listened to any of our episodes, we always talk about this so what are some signs of self-sabotaging and procrastination which hurts to hear but it’s true.
Feeling overwhelmed, burnout, being disorganized, perfectionism, overcommitting, not taking action, resisting change, overindulging… these are this is just a few so self-sabotage can take on many different forms. It’s a chameleon.
Nicole Booz: So let’s talk a little bit about what that looks in real life. So let’s say for example, you want to wake up early and you keep saying that this is your goal – “I want to be a morning person I Want to get up with the sun and do yoga and blah blah Blah blah.”
But every night you say up way too late and you think oh I can’t get up early tomorrow because I stayed up too late I’ll have to start again the next day. Okay, but you’re sabotaging yourself.
Marina Crouse: Yeah, or if you want to be on your phone less I know a guy ah who but you’re rewarding yourself for completing tasks throughout your day by taking a little Instagram break or a little tiktok break and that turns into hours.
Nicole Booz: Or say for example, you want to eat healthier meals. But you tend to fill your cabinets with healthier treats only and not you know, filling whole grains and protein then fruits and vegetables. You just are trying to make healthier treat versions of everything that you normally eat that is full of refined sugar.
So when something you want something sweet you just end ah overindulging on this whole box and then you’re well I tried it didn’t work out for me this time.
Marina Crouse: Yeah, or if you’re working on something and you want to complete the task whether you’re on your laptop for work or just trying to put your laundry away but you keep jumping from thing to thing to prevent yourself from actually completing what you do distracting yourself. This is self sabotage. So Nicole why? Why do we do this? Why are we this way.
Nicole Booz: Why are we the way that we are? Well I think that it comes from the subconscious mind and so we don’t necessarily realize we’re doing it at first It’s our subconscious mind’s way of resisting change and it’s in my opinion usually driven by a fear of rejection or a feeling of failure or I think the one way that’s really overlooked is the fear of success.
I think people are afraid of succeeding because you know what success means? It means more responsibility and means more change it means new unknowns, new commitments, and your subconscious brain can be afraid of that.
Marina Crouse: Yeah, and I think also we self-sabotage because we have limiting beliefs right? We have a scarcity mindset a fixed mindset.
A lot of our beliefs come from what we’ve been told our entire lives by other people external factors not by what we’ve experienced ourselves or actually believed to be true and also you know trauma abandonment violence all of this plays to it and we just recorded right before this an episode about knowing your own worth I think a lot of that comes from a lot of self sabotage comes from not not honoring your own worth or not knowing your own worth. So so when you are chronically self-sabotaging what happens what can that lead to Nicole…
Nicole Booz: I think it leads to poor boundaries both setting and enforcing them you you know, kind of start having that whole doormat feeling that you probably want to jump back to the episode before this so we talk about it more in depth there and also being a yes man where you just say yes to everything.
Whether you want to or not people pleasing again. We have a whole other episode on this very topic.
It also can lead to poor performance that you’re not doing as well and you’re not able to focus. You’re not able to reach your goals. You may not even really be able to set goals. It leads to negative self-talk which is the way you speak to yourself in your head also out loud but you’re not talking about yourself in positive way and also low self- eeem and self-worth.
Marina Crouse: We swallowed the hard pill of facing the facts that we may or may not be definitely self-sabotaging ourselves and I know I do this I as I we were outlining this episode I was here’s example 42 47 I have so many. Ways that I I know I do this to myself. , so how can we stop.
Nicole Booz: Well, there’s the the big question mark in the room if you will I don’t know I think at different points of your life. There’s going to be different methods that you find out work for you.
And I think one of the first steps to stopping these self-sabotaging behaviors is recognizing them. If any of the things we mentioned at the beginning of this episode really struck a nerve for you, there’s probably something there.
Because, for example, for me I feel I’ve just kept saying for months and months and months I don’t maybe years if you’ve known me a long time that I want to wake up early and I want to be a morning person and I want to do XYZ and then until a few weeks ago. It just kind of hit me that I just have to do it.
Marina Crouse: No one’s going to do it for you.
Nicole Booz: And I have to be consistent about it there’s no secret tricks or anything that truly that are going to make you set the goals you want and reach the goals you want and that that to me is just a hard truth you can put all of these methods and tactics in place but you have to truly want to do it to get started.
Nicole Booz: Okay, a little bit of technical difficulty on the back end. We’ve lost Marina but I’m just going to finish out this episode for us.
I think you really have to remind yourself that motivation can be fleeting and discipline is that what truly matters and sometimes that could be putting in a system that seans that if you want to get up early… It doesn’t you set your alarm in the middle of the day for the next day and it doesn’t matter if you stayed up too late you you still have to get up with your alarm and I think having those kinds of rules in place are what going to help you set and reach your rules over time and. You know you kind of also kind of had to figure out what motivates you to be disciplined right?
So for me with the whole waking up early thing I really enjoy the 2 hours of silence and quiet before my kids wake up to start my day in a slow pace and in the way that I want to and that feeling means more to me than an extra hour of sleep.
And since I’ve started waking up early I just I started waking up before my alarm every day because that’s just what my body’s doing naturally and I really enjoy it and I think that a lot of us have areas in our lives where we want to make these changes but we sabotage ourselves because we are scared of the change and we’re scared it’s not going to work out or even scared that we’re going to fail and that’s a scarcity mindset over growth mindset.
We do have some blog posts that I can link in the show notes. for more information on that. But another thing I wanted to touch on quickly is to avoid the short-term dopamine hits so that’s scrolling on Instagram Facebook treating yourself to an ice cream multiple times a week those kinds of things because those aren’t helping you reach your goals in the long term.
In our last episode, we talked about the book during in your twenties but making “habit rules” Gretchen Reuben talks about this in her book “Better Than Before” and I think that book is really it was life changing to me the the way she discusses habits and taking a more objective view at your life and I think it’s really worth reading.
So if any of this really resonated with you please email me or Marina, we’d love to talk to you about it and if you have time we’d love for you to leave a rating review of the podcast and thank you so much for listening. Bye!
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