Our brain is always seeking comfort. When we push against the comfort boundaries by doing something new or scary, it causes either a fight, flight or freeze response.
This primitive brain response would have served us back when we were running away from lions to keep us safe, but we’re not doing that anymore.
The issue is never the issue, there is always something more that is the underlying issue. We need to dig deep to find out what is really going on behind the scenes if we are to truly find freedom.
But first, we need to stop self sabotaging!
Anything new is a challenge to our brain and we become self critical when we don’t have all the answers. This results is postponing making decisions by making excuses. Excuses are a means of delaying getting down to business, and the saboteur likes to find any excuse not to move forward.
Slowing down may seem cumbersome and inconvenient, yet it is necessary to slow down to accelerate your progress.
So if you want to discover what the root of the issue is, you need to be willing to push yourself to the edge of your comfort zone, and stop your brain from freaking out!
Listen in to this episode of #MimikaTV and be inspired.
TRANSCRIPT
Stop the Self Sabotage
Welcome to the unstick, your mind podcast on Mimika TV, get ready to get unstuck align with your true purpose and unlock your God. Given potential.
You have to be able to take a step back and say clearly what I’m doing, ain and working, you know, cuz an Einstein says doing the same thing, expecting a different result is called insanity. So I had to have a real honest talk with myself and just understand, okay, what got me here? How can I get myself out of this? And how do I not repeat this again? And I’ve always said, even when I was doing marketing for clients, I always ended up in some form coaching them, like just to get them to understand that it’s okay to let go of something that worked before. If you are changing and pivoting to something new. And I always used to say business problems are personal problems in disguise.
Cause if you don’t have very, a very good healthy self-concept, you’re not gonna want to put yourself on there. A good example is the way that I see this is how do people feel about visibility? Do they shy away and like wanna get hives when the idea of putting themselves on Facebook live or you know, going out, out there and sharing their message, you know, they’re not ready to really take that step when they feel like that is something that’s out of their comfort zone. So for me, I’m, um, I also come from a, a classically trained ballet training, uh, background, and I’m also a, an adult figure skater. So I also like to use sports psychology. Like how do we overcome those moments of when you’re challenging your brain to do something new, which is what we call pushing against the comfort zones. Cuz here’s the thing.
Your brain is always seeking comfort. It’s always screaming at you like a two year old toddler having a hair fit when you push against those barriers and say, no it’s time for something new because initially the, those things would’ve served us back in the day when we were running away from lions to keep ourselves safe, but we no longer doing that. We pretty safe in the 21st century, but their primitive way of brain wiring is just built in us is the survival mechanism. It’s the fight flight or freeze. We’ve all heard of that before. And what I had realized is, you know, through working with clients that a lot of them are making decisions like the hustle and grind is about fear and lack. So how do we get into a place of moving ourselves to feel calm, cool, you know, making decisions out of forethought as opposed to just did a webinar.
I better do a webinar. Oh, so, and so was now look at the awesome website. I better go get new photos. Like always feeling like you’re chasing this never ending pinata that’s flying around that you can’t see. Right? So for me, I, part of what I do with my clients is no matter what their problem is in their business, whether it’s, they’re trying to scale and they’re finding it hard to get team members or they don’t wanna let go of things cuz it’s what their identity was. We worked through a lot of paces in order for them to sort of push past those comfort zones, which is why I call myself a mindset, me trainer, cuz my concepts are this. Isn’t just a quick fix. I’m not giving you a tool or a hack or a strategy. That’s do this and you’ll make six figures overnight.
Stop the Self Sabotage
No, what we are doing is we are training you to get out of the habitual habits and patterns that have got you where you you are. So how do we undo that? How do we go back and start to rebuild your self concept and who you are and how you wanna show up in the world. And oftentimes it’s, especially for women, I found we, we are very hard on ourselves. We are very self critical and oftentimes we hold back making decisions. Like I had one client that, you know, she was, she wanted to do a website, but she’d come up with every excuse under the sun for us to press publish and go, oh, well I think we need to check this. And oh I think we, and I’d say to, I think you’re avoiding the, the big issue here. What is the big issue?
And we start to dig in and realize she’s actually scared to put herself out there. So, you know, you can’t make sound business decisions from luck, self sabotage. I should be surprised, publish on our website or publish my book, but oh, I’m gonna start nitpicking things and start finding holes or finding excuses. Cuz excuses is just a delay tactic for actually getting down to business about what is actually under the hood. That is the problem. Cuz the problem is never the problem. There’s always some, there’s a root issue. And what we are dealing with is the symptom. So we wanna kind of dig in and that’s what I’m good at is really pushing people. And that’s, what’s not, I’m not everybody’s cup of tea cuz some people might find like, well I don’t wanna answer that. Like why do I need to share that?
Then there’s a lack of awareness. So which brings me number two is not having awareness of the problem is part of the problem. It’s like, you know, you go alcoholics anonymous. Part of their strategy is they want you to admit that you’re an alcoholic because unless you come to that realization and say, I have a problem, we cannot move forward. Like I’ve had several clients that I’ve had to say goodbye to, which I just can’t work with. I’m like, they’re constantly resisting your suggestions. And it’s almost like a mini power struggle. Like they come to you for advice, but then they don’t wanna show weakness. And then they’re trying to pull the power back into their courts and then they wanna feel like they’re telling you what to do. And I’m like, listen, I’m not in here to battle you. I’m I’m here to be a mirror and to support you let’s figure out what the real problem is.
So not everybody is ready to do the important work. People wanna be in denial. That’s cool until something happens. And it’s usually when the wheels fall off the bus or something, some change happens or something, they lose money, relationships go sour business. Something has to, it’s almost like you have to have a tipping point for them to realize I cannot do this anymore. Yes. In my case, peel myself off the floor because I clearly wasn’t seeing the signs and I always, uh, have analogy of this. You know, life is like driving in a car and we all have different vehicles and we all have different things. But what high achieve achievers tend to do is to keep their foot on the gas. But we don’t necessarily see the signs cuz we’re going at such a fast pace that we don’t see the slow down signs.
We don’t see the detours. We’re kind of like, no, we’ve gotta keep going and going. Especially those with that hard household mentality. And then eventually what happens is you crash cuz you know, if you go over the speed limit for too long, you’re either gonna crash or you’re gonna run out of gas. Doesn’t matter how hard you push that car. If there ain’t gas that ain’t going anywhere. Even if Ferrari can’t go anywhere on no gas. So the whole point and I have a saying that I love to teach my te my clients is we need to go slow to go fast. Like if your car needs servicing, we need to take it to the shop, into the garage, get under the hood, start to tinker and see what needs to be fixed. And then we can retire it, put new, you know, pers on and get it back on the road because you’re never gonna go where you wanna go on a patched work.
Stop the Self Sabotage
Like if you imagine those old cars where they always bits and pieces from things, it’s like, they’re just barely making it down the road. And you know, it’s hard because not every, yeah, no, not everybody wants to take the time to pause and get, get the help they need to really fix thing. But what I’ve known and I’ve found with my clients is once they get back on the road and they realize that this is a shift in mindset, self concept, lifestyle habits, they’re on a different path. And then what happens is it speeds up because just like momentum, like things snowball, it feels slow and it’s frustrating to go slow, but it’s necessary to slow down in order to speed up. So, and I’d say the third thing. So, um, you know, awareness is a big one self sabotaged or avoiding in denial and perfectionism, like being hard on yourself.
I’m like, girl, give yourself a break. Did you see how, how well you did? And women essentially are very bad at this. We’ll have a list. Okay. Everyone can know they have their list and they have like 10 things. And then if she doesn’t get all 10 done, maybe she got one done. She will beat herself up to a pulp and just feel terrible about herself, about all the things she didn’t do. And she totally discounts the things she did do. So the whole concept is small wins. You did one thing today. Yay. And in my group program, everyone knows, it’s hilarious. We have a real hoot. We celebrate even the tiniest things. So even if she never takes care of herself, even if she goes to get her hair done, that is a reason for a party because the way the brain works, it, we need closure.
We need to be able to have a sense of accomplishment and we need to have that sense of resolution. I mean, why do you think we have funerals and weddings and graduations? It’s a, it’s a mental shift to make for the people like that old season is done. Now I’m moving into something else. And this is how you know, like this is a example. So I’m sure many of us who love to watch TV can get in these series. And if you ever notice, it’s called in writing, we call it the open closed concept and you, and you wonder why people binge on shows. So back in the day when I was a kid, you would have to wait for next week to watch the new program. Right now you can sit and binge in a few hours and get it all done. But really what’s happening in your brain is that if you see the beginning of the show, they open up like some kind of conflict or the characters have to do something.
Or there’s some unanswered question. You’re like, what is that? And you’re curious, you want to know, right? And throughout the, that episode, they’ll start to tease things. And then maybe towards like three quarters of the way they will come to some kind of resolution, but they don’t completely close the loop. They start another loop. So they might resolve the first one, but then they’ve enticed you for the next one. And they leave you on a cliff Hagner and that’s intentional because your brain is seeking closure. Your brain is seeking the old way of and now they live happily ever after the end, nothing happens like that anymore. We’re in a society. They keeping you plugged in your brain is saying, I need it. I need it. Like tell me what is that? So I, I think that is a big problem in our modern society.
That is, we don’t give ourselves closure. We don’t celebrate ourselves when we do achieve things. And then what happens is you never switch off. If you always feel like you’re always running, running, running, running, because literally the Facebooks of the world, the Instagrams are designed to keep us hooked on their, their platform. They want us, it’s designed intentionally to hijack your brain, to hijack your behavior. Cuz how many times, how many of us have set the scrolling and then an hour later, like, oh my gosh, we, the last hour ago, it’s literally hijacked your brain. So this is the thing is if you can become aware of that, you can be in charge of it. Like I understand what it’s like to be an entrepreneur where you wanna pull your hair out. And the clients it’s like project creep and they ask for this and then the next thing this is going on.
And then I don’t like it. I don’t want it. I’ve learned the skills of getting under the hurt of what is it that frustrates you don’t give me lip service. I wanna know. Let’s figure out what that root causes. Cuz think about it this way. When you see somebody who’s reacting and they have an emotional breakdown or they are very difficult, like bossy women who are really wanting to be in charge and like a fast pace. And but unfortunately, most people, they snap judgements on behavior and behavior. If you think about it, like if you look at a tree, a behavior is like a fruit is like a symptom. It’s like what you see on the outside. But as we go further down the tree and we start to go down the branches, okay? The behavior is, uh, is really a, a response to circumstances and how you’re feeling.
Stop the Self Sabotage
But as we go further down the tree and we go down the trunk and we realize our feelings are well, they are initiated by thoughts. And your thoughts is really what starts to dig dart deep into the sand. But then in the thought process, you look down and you look at the roots and you go, why do I think like that? And oftentimes it’s got to do with a lot of things that happened in childhood, maybe trauma, rejection, fear, anxiety, hustle, like it’s classic. Sometimes. You know, I love this, um, behavioral analysis, especially when you have these interviews with celebs and you know, high powered businessmen. And I can always spot the ones who either grew up poor or were rejected by parents because they have an innate built in desire to prove themselves. They will hustle hard until they literally fall off. They will, you know, sabotage themselves and their relationships because they are so fixated on the goal.
Like especially someone who’s was raised in, um, in poverty, they are very motivated to prove themselves. And money is a, is a form of, of, of measurement. Cuz once you know, you got more bank, you got more zeroes on the end of your bank balance. A lot of people unfortunately have confused their identity with what they earn. And eventually what happens is something’s gotta give because if we are not in tune with who we really are, we become something. We are not, we, we walk around with masks and then anybody knows trying to keep be something you’re not is exhausting. And that’s what the behaviors then is the frustration of perhaps she is, seems very micromanagement and she seems very difficult, but maybe she was raised by a really strict parents who didn’t didn’t allow her off the hook, that perfection, it was perfectional best.
So her brain is constantly telling her you, you gotta go, you’ve gotta go. You’ve gotta go. It’s not good enough. Not good enough, not good enough. And unless we reprogram that thing, that thinking behavior’s gonna repeat itself, but she has to be ready and be, and want to change in order to make the change. But from somebody else looking in, if you’re dealing with a difficult client, understanding personality is also very good. Like all of these personality tests, I’m actually a certified disc behavioral personality analysis where it shows you how someone is actually behaving versus who they really are. And that oftentimes will show you where there’s a disconnect. But when you can understand somebody else’s perspective and it gives you a lot more empathy and understanding that it’s not necessarily them trying to be difficult, it’s just basically brain hijacking their thoughts because it’s how they were trained or how they were raised.
Or it’s, it’s like computer programming. If you’ve got, if you’ve got bad programming, the computer’s gonna crash. So it helps you understand like what is the real reason she’s being difficult? So you could ask your clients things like, you know, I know you, you you’re feeling a little nervous. Can you tell me what actually is bothering you? What is it about going, going live? That really worries you? Is it because you, you don’t want things perfect or help me understand your thinking. And oftentimes people are like, oh, I didn’t think about it. What I’m thinking really what they’re doing. They’re trying to find their identity. And that’s why I always believe your purpose and your identity and your self-concept are all interrelated. That how can you show up as something that you’re not? So we can paint a great picture. We can have all the pretty graphics and we can have all the fabulous, um, you know, branded photos.
But unless they are being true to themselves, it’s very, very exhausting to keep up appearances of something you’re not. So probably what happens is we try on, like, we try on an outfit. Like I found this myself, like it took a few tries for me to find the fit and the feel of who I wanna be and who I wanna serve. And it, it, it was a bit messy, like starting out. I look back at my website when I started and I was like, oh girl, oh, I can’t believe you put that out there. But I had to do that in order to get to where I’m at. And most people, especially the recovering perfectionist out there don’t want to do it unless it’s perfect. But here’s the thing. Perfection doesn’t come without practice without getting a bit messy without actually trying and tinkering and, or maybe it’s listen, maybe it’s that me and it’s okay to kind of change.
But re before you make a change, we wanna understand, is it a matter of, oh, oh my gosh, I’m getting close to actually hitting go. And now everyone’s gonna know everything about me. And now I, now I’m people are expecting things from me or is that, I don’t think this is truly me. Like I had a photo shoot once and they look gorgeous, but I was like, oh, that’s just, I just don’t come across the way. I, I think that I want people to, to know me by. So it’s just a lot of psychology in, in, in a lot of this process. What’s the worst thing you could happen. You make a wrong decision. So what back to the drawing board, is it really that bad? And I call this talk, bringing yourself to the edge. A lot of us fear things and the fear of something happen happening is worse than it actually happening.
So what if you went and put a website app and it wasn’t, it didn’t convert or it didn’t do as well or so what, then you tweak it and you tried, but you won’t know unless you have the elements. It’s like trying to build bake a cake. And you, you, you’re trying to experiment with what flavors you like. You won’t know until you start tasting a few things. Um, and it’s like, you, you only develop that as you go along only the process can teach you that. And, and I think, you know, coming from my marketing background, I know that mass marketing has done a bad number on people and niche drama. Like who’s my client. I need to know exactly who I’m serving. I’m like, I’ve had, I struggled with this too. Even starting my coaching businesses like, well, maybe it should be this and maybe it should be that.
Stop the Self Sabotage
And then somebody would come along and I look back and I go, that was actually an opportunity for me to learn. But I said, no, because they didn’t fit the perfect, it’s like women in dating. They have their dating profile. And unless he’s blue eyed, blonde hair six for two, I’m not even looking at you, honey, you don’t even fit them old. And what I’d realize is there’s actually a lot of conversation and growth to be had in maybe, maybe somebody doesn’t appear at first to be the ideal client. But what is it that I’m learning about myself in the process and what am I, what do I have to say about this that I feel I can contribute? Nobody gets out there perfect. The first time they just don’t, that’s just, that’s not life. Life is a messy. It is ch trial and tasting.
And even from a marketing perspective, you know, the ones that come from a marketing analytical background will know that you have to test things. It’s AB testing, let’s try this so that doesn’t work. Let’s tweak and tweak in here, but I think we’ve become, become a society of per perfect pictures. And you know, everything’s gonna be perfect out the door, but maybe we need to think, well, so what we got it wrong, we can try it again. We get so involved in our lives and in our clients’ lives that we all wanna make it about ourselves and how it makes us feel or how they behavior. I like to look at it, take ourselves out. Like if I’m watching a movie at the movie theater, I’m not in the movie, I’m, I’m in the audience and it helps you separate your, your feelings and your thoughts.
And you realize it’s, it’s not about you. Their behavior is about them and how we react to their behavior is our decision. And we, once you can come back from, come back from that place of, okay, she’s having a little bit of a hissy foot. So something is clearly going on that maybe instead of me pressing, I could ask her, you know, what is, you know, share with me how you’re feeling or what thoughts come up? Like, how is there anything that you want me to know? Like, how can I help support you? Like coming from a side of, I’m observing this as a movie, you know, cuz you know, as, as when you are in the, the audience, you see things that people in there don’t know, like, you know, there’s mysteries where they’re like he’s behind you. So you, it just helps you create that perspective.
Right. And pull yourself away. And then so your emotions don’t get in the way because the worst thing is, if she’s crazy and you come crazy and it’s all lost so crazy. every social media platform is a tool. Every like YouTube, Instagram, you they’re all tools. And this is what I always wanna say to people. Don’t get hung up on the tools. What is more important is to test the messaging. So I use the same tools. I did five and 10 years ago. But over the, over the years as I’ve, uh, I’ve pivoted and I’ve changed, I kind of taste things by trying out things I’ll put out a post or I’ll do a, a Facebook live or I’ll do a, a, a podcast. And I actually did a whole series in my podcast. I did a about 50 interviews with people in a market that I thought that I wanted to serve.
Stop the Self Sabotage
But in the process of doing that and asking questions and learning about them, I realized they were not an ideal fit, but I wouldn’t have known that unless I had tried. So what I would say is, you know, even if I look back at my it’s just to start doing the new thing that, you know, if you need to throw yourself a party and go TA I’ve arrived and you wanna do a launch, great do that. But really it doesn’t matter if you had things wrong. What I I’ve realized is you just start to dilute the old message with the new, you just start to focus your attention on the new stuff and you start to mention, and if people will eventually like, oh, what is she talking about? That’s different. What is that? I don’t, I haven’t heard her say that you might have to do it, you know, 10, 20, a hundred times, because it’s a, it’s a matter of like priming and retraining your audience.
If, especially if you’re doing a rebrand or if you knew it’s to just start sharing about it. And it’s never gonna be an overnight thing it’s about consistent, uh, reliable and regular effort. It doesn’t have to be these huge grandiose, uh, things you don’t have to spend a, a bunch of money. You do things cheaply like, um, I’ve written eight books on busy writing number nine. And I’d realize early on that, before I go and publish the book best, I test that the content is actually resonating with people. So I’ll kind of say, I have this idea, send me your questions. And again, messy, like I’ll have posters. Well, that was a good one. And that was a good one. And kind of like build it on the way, but you are never really gonna know unless you actually just step out and try. So I just say bite the bullet, put yourself out there, get over yourself because you are gonna make a mess.
You’re probably gonna look back one day. And like, I look at my old YouTube videos and I’m like, oh my gosh, what was I wearing? Like who let me out the front door like that. you know, and it’s just be kind to yourself. You’re learning. We are growing. This is just life, right? It’s just take the pressure off. There’s no, there’s no perfection. Are you ready to change your brain to change your life?
Discover how to break limiting beliefs, stop self sabotage and unlock your full potential by rewiring your brain, using neuroscience, coaching and faith based principles. Come and join my coaching program. Unstick your mind today.
Come and join my coaching program Unstick Your Mind today!
