Stop Self-Sabotage by Rewiring Your Brain
Recently a friend asked me, "How can I stop self-sabotaging out of fear?"
Self-sabotage is something I have experience with (I think we all do) but not something I had thought about in years. It wasn't a topic on my list of things to write about, but because my friend had reached out, it felt important and timely, and I imagine it's a question a lot of people think about. So here we go.
What is Self-Sabotage?
Psychology Today describes self-sabotage as "any action that gets in the way of your intent." If you are trying to lose weight but keep bags of potato chips and boxes of doughnuts in your pantry, that's self-sabotage. But sometimes it's not so obvious. We can self-sabotage and not even have an awareness of it.
Think about a time when you were about to interview for a job or audition for a play. You were probably an adrenaline-fueled mix of excitement and nerves. You showed up with every intention of nailing the interview/audition and could already envision yourself sharing the good news of an offer with your family and friends.
Then somewhere in the middle of it, self-sabotage sneaks in. When the company asks you if you'd be willing to travel as part of this new job, you hesitate and start talking about all the logistics you'd have to manage in order to travel. Or during the audition, they mention that they'll have several rehearsals that will go late on weeknights and you explain that you'll try to work around that, but there may be days when you can't make it work.
What are you doing?!
Most likely you knew about these expectations beforehand and were still extremely interested in the opportunity. Yet when faced with the chance to exclaim your excitement, can-do attitude, and a passionate interest in the role, you threw something out there to cause doubt that they had the right person for the job/part.
Self-Sabotage (photo via Alamy)
Why We Do It: Traditional Explanations
There are a number of explanations why we self-sabotage:
Self-worth
The underlying feeling that we don't deserve the good things we desire in life. We feel the need to earn everything, and when the universe gives us something we feel we didn't earn, or worse, we feel like we did something bad and don't deserve good things as a result. A great book that may help with changing your ideas around self-worth is You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero. Check it out; you won't be disappointed.
Past Experiences
If we've made mistakes in the past that resulted in losing something we wanted, we may expect to repeat that experience, and so we self-sabotage to expedite what we think is inevitable. For example, if your heart was broken after your last relationship, you may self-sabotage during the early stages of a new relationship to expedite its ending. Your heart is going to get broken again anyway so why not avoid all the in-between stuff, right?
An incredibly insightful book about relationships and the patterns we are compelled to repeat is Coming Apart: Why Relationships End and How to Live Through the Ending of Yoursby Daphne Rose Kingma. I firmly believe that every single adult should read this book. You don't have to be ending a relationship - you can be happily in love, newly single, or a committed bachelor/bachelorette - you will benefit from it.
A Sense of Control
Sometimes the action of self-sabotage is merely to give us a sense of control over our destiny. If I can point to something that I did to cause things to go wrong, I may still be disappointed when it happens, but at least I can take ownership of the result. Having this sense of control, misguided though it is, allows us to take that control away from other people and unknown sources. If I flaked on lunch with a friend for the second time, then the reason they don't want to hang out with me anymore is because I am a flake, not because they don't find me interesting or fun to be around. Blaming ourselves allows us to feel in control of what happens to us. Because many people have a need for control over some aspect of their life (if not their whole life), this can be a subtle way they exercise that control.
And while these are all important ways to consider any self-sabotage in your life, let's dig a little deeper.
Misalignment of the Soul and Personality
Gary Zukav Wellspring 2018 Lotus Pathway
One of my favorite authors, Gary Zukav, first wrote about "Authentic Power" in his book, Seat of the Soul.
"Authentic power results when our soul is in alignment with the personality."
Without diving into too much detail of his description of the soul and personality, let's define the soul as our eternal/higher-self and our personality as our soul's expression in this life. Our soul is that which is aware of our existence, and our personality is that which interacts with this world. Our personality was developed over the course of this lifetime through our experiences from childhood through adulthood. It is molded by the societal, familial, and communal expectations of our time.
When our soul and personality are in alignment, we act from a place of love; we remember that we are all one and so we do not see joy and prosperity as separate from ourselves. We interact with this life with a sense of connection and trust. We know that every experience, every encounter, every challenge has a purpose and intended to help our souls evolve.
When our soul and personality are not in alignment, we act from a place of fear. Our personality, without its soul connection, does not experience itself as boundless or abundant. We adopt a scarcity mindset and feel like there isn't enough prosperity and love to go around so we must fight for it and we suffer deeply when it is perceived to be lost.
At a spiritual level, self-sabotage comes from this place of fear. It is our personality forgetting that we are eternal beings, that we are the universe experiencing itself.
Turning Belief Into Action
Okay, so let's say that all of this resonates with you and you have a desire to change so that you no longer self-sabotage. Where do you begin?
You have to rewire your brain, and that starts with changing one thought at a time.
"Neurons that fire together, wire together." - Donald Hebb, Neuropsychologist
Our behaviors are the result of a series of feelings and thoughts, followed by actions, followed by more feelings and thoughts. For example, as a child, you may have felt hungry, cried out for your mother, received food, and then felt happy once you were full. After you did this repeatedly, you unconsciously associated the action of crying with satiating your hunger. As this was happening, new neural pathways were being etched in your brain, and each time you repeated the same behavior and got the same response, those pathways were carved deeper and deeper.
This is how habit and subconscious responses develop and one of the reasons we may self-sabotage without even realizing it. (Learn more about how habits are formed here.)
To change your response (output), you have to change your thoughts (input) first.
Rewire Your Brain
Changing your response can be extremely difficult when you're already in the moment, so I suggest that you get ahead of it. To do that, you have to begin visualizing a different outcome.
Create new neural pathways
If there is a particular area of your life where you recognize a self-sabotaging behavior, visualize what it would look like if you achieved success in that area. If you sabotage relationships, begin visualizing what a happy and fulfilling relationship would look like. See yourself laughing with that person, enjoying romantic evenings, and sharing intimate moments. Most importantly, you must feel the feelings that you associate with that experience. As you imagine that new future, feel those feelings of joy and love, gratitude and connection.
As you repeat this visualization (with feeling) day after day, you begin to create new neural pathways. Because the brain doesn't distinguish between imagined feelings and real ones, it accepts those thoughts and emotions as it would any other. Then, if/when the opportunity to self-sabotage arises, you may find that you respond differently because you've created a new mind which has set its sights on a different outcome.
To learn more about the science and practice of how to do this, read Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One by Dr. Joe Dispenza.
A Next Step on Your Path
The first and most important step is awareness. Recognize whether you are self-sabotaging in areas of your life and spend some time thinking about why. What was the root cause of that action? What might you do differently next step given this new awareness?
Second, don't be too hard on yourself as you work through this. Self-sabotage is not something we overcome overnight. Be patient with yourself and remember to always be kind, loving, and forgiving towards yourself. An easy way to do this is to visualize yourself as the 7-year old version of you before you engage in any negative self-talk. And I highly recommend that you read Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav to learn more about the soul and the personality and how they interact. I've read it twice already, am reading it for the third time now, and plan to re-read it at least every one to two years because I gain new insight every time I read it. He talks about the soul, authentic power, spiritual relationships, and SO much more.
Third, begin visualizing your desired outcome and create the positive feelings associated with that in your own mind. Repeat this daily so that one day when an opportunity to self-sabotage arises, you may respond differently.
Finally, consider working with a life coach or therapist to help you identify and work through any self-sabotaging behavior you might still have.
Thank You
It's my deepest wish that this post has provided you with something to think about and perhaps even the inspiration to make a small change in your life. I am always eager to hear your thoughts so please leave any feedback you have in the comments below.
With gratitude,
Bindi