There are only three reasons things don't get done in your business. You don't know what to do, you don't know how to do it, or you just don't do it. Hey, it's Samantha. Stopping in to share this encore episode with you. This one is required viewing for all my clients because I want to have a vocabulary with them about how we unintentionally and unconsciously undermine ourselves. I also want them to know about the special and surprisingly beneficial relationship that we can build with our inner saboteurs. If you have an accountability buddy, aka accountabilibuddy, share this one with them and discuss. Welcome to Profitable Joyful Consulting, where you'll discover how to multiply your revenues without exhaustion, working with perfect clients on transformational engagements. I'm your host, Samantha Hartley. If you're a woman consultant ready to increase your profits and enjoy your business more, you're in the right place. Today we're going to talk about a very unconventional growth strategy for your business, which is overcoming self sabotage. Imagine what would be possible for you if you didn't self sabotage yourself at certain times. We're going to get completely into that topic, and I have a guest with me today who's going to help me expound upon this topic. And this is Christopher Carrick. He is a spiritual director who works with his clients on finding the meaning and the breakdowns and blocks that happen in their lives. And one of the ways that we discovered that he could be helpful with self sabotage is that I was struggling with myself at the time and also with my clients sabotaging themselves so much that they couldn't get the results that they wanted from my programs. And so I called upon him, which was not difficult to do because he is my husband as well. So he happened to be in the same household. And I could say, why am I doing this to myself? Why are my clients doing this to themselves? And what can we do about it? And so today we are going to talk about why we sabotage ourselves, what it actually means, what kind of things we're doing when we do sabotage, and how we can stop doing it so that we can get on and be the productive and effective people that we know ourselves to be. So, first of all, welcome.

Thank you.

I'm super excited to have you. And for some people, it may seem weird to have your spouse on, but this is the person that I have worked with on this issue most of all, and also who has helped, as I've said, my clients. So I want to start with some crazy examples because I've never met anyone who said, I don't self sabotage. It's something that artists, entrepreneurs and human beings struggle with. But I think what's really interesting is the unusual ways that it can show up. I had a client who was writing her speeches, like, the night before, she was going to do this big keynote kind of thing. And I would say, well, how did the keynote go? And she'd say, well, it didn't really, you know, it could have been better. And I would say, you know, just as an idea, like, maybe you could, I don't know, like, rehearse that a little bit in advance, you know, being gentle about this, because clearly that's a self sabotage strategy. But then there are other things that are not as clear. And I'm just going to put a couple of examples on the table for us to come back and unpack later. Another one of them is, you know, my promise to you is that you can grow your business, actually double and triple and five x your business, without exhaustion. Like, you don't have to exhaust yourself in the process because exhaustion is a sabotage strategy. So what is self sabotage and how might we recognize it?

I look at it as an archetypal entity, sort of like that you've been possessed by. It's sort of like when we talk about the inner child or, like warrior energy or something like that. It's a thing that we all have and we all deal with and we all have some kind of relationship to. And I think it really helps to personify it, too, because otherwise, when I self sabotage, I am the saboteur. It overtakes me in a way. So if it's a part of me, then I can deal with it and I can change my relationship to it. I think one thing that's interesting, in the first example you gave about doing the speech is, I bet when you asked her what happened or why, she had no idea. Our initial understanding is it's that that tendency I have to get in my own way. So, like you said, people self identify very quickly, but they almost never can really tell you how or why they're doing it. They might notice, like, something like, oh, get to the end of the day and I just wasted a lot of time. But that doesn't really put you in a position to know what to do about it.

So you have chosen this term saboteur to personify it. And when you do that, it makes it like it's a different aspect of yourself, so that I'm not doing that to myself. And I also think other ways that you talk about interacting with the saboteur. It actually makes it kind of fun to deal with and not like, so shaming.

Right. One thing that I think is really confusing is that when we sabotage, we don't understand why we would do that to ourselves. It just makes no sense. I think it's helpful to think of it this way. We exist on many levels simultaneously, but they don't all agree. So the saboteur is the part that doesn't agree with what you're doing or what you want. And so you get conflicting commands. And it's a little like a computer program. When you get conflicting commands, it either freezes or crashes. And that's what the saboteur is looking to create. So as you begin to learn how your saboteur operates, when we talk about personifying it, it kind of has a personality, and it kind of talks a certain way, and it introduces beliefs. It has a worldview. So it's a part of you. It's the part of you that has the worldview that says, I don't want to go any further, and most of us don't want to honor that. We aren't able to acknowledge. I don't want to be more successful. I don't want to have a better relationship, those kinds of things, because that doesn't make any sense. So that makes the saboteur very mysterious. So the more we learn about it, the more we can hear. Oh, it talks to me this way. It sort of has this tone of voice. It reminds me of me in this situation, or it reminds me of, like, my mother's voice when I was growing up. And that helps us recognize it, because the saboteur really thrives in mystery. It likes to stay in the shadows. It can be very aggressive and very obvious and really overwhelm you and beat you up. But a lot of times it's just murmuring in your ear. It's just lurking behind you, saying the thing that will launch the program to get you to crash the plane because you had that internal conflict.

I really want to hear more about the voice, but one thing that you said is, like, it's a part of you that doesn't want you to double the business or crush it at that workshop or, like, get the new clients. Like, what part of me doesn't want that? And why doesn't it want that?

As we begin to understand the saboteur better, the definition goes from that part of me that just seems to get in my own way for reasons I can't understand. Then it goes to the part of me that tries to protect me from change by removing choice.

So why does it want to protect me from change?

So one of the hardest things to convince people of in my business is how destabilizing change is. We all have a comfort zone, and we all understand what a comfort zone is. We think of it as a place where I'm really comfortable and I feel good. But actually, your comfort zone is just the known. So a lot of people don't get any further because they really know how to be what they are and where they are. And moving past that, it takes them out of their comfort zone. And that's nice for a while. We stretch a little, but then it becomes stressful. That speaks to those levels that don't agree with what we want. So we say, I want a promotion, or I want to make more money, or I want to be more successful, or I want to be more high profile, okay? But when you do that, it will take you into the unknown. And so the main level that disagrees with this is your ego. And your ego position will often be, yes, I do want those things. And that is true. But what's more true is that the ego fears change, because the ego is all about knowing, feeling in control, knowing who I am, defining myself. And that means staying in the known so I can have the ambition to grow. I can feel like, oh, I want all that stuff. But the ego is always understanding things based on its past experiences. So when you introduce the possibility of something different, the ego kind of panics. Then it pulls back and it says, I want to have control. And that's the part that comes in and sabotages us, actually.

So this is amazing because it reminds me that the most messed up version of this, to me are the people who are addicted to struggle, people that I've worked with over the years who are, like, up against a revenue ceiling and they can't cross it. And I feel like success eludes them because they can't cross that barrier. My version of it wasn't that they were constantly self sabotaging. It was that they were addicted to the struggle. The charge of, like, well, here I am. It's really bad. Nothing I do works. And then kind of the being right about that, about how right I am that, no, that won't work for me. Whenever I've met people who were like, I'm like, here's 14 ideas for how you can do this. And they're like, that won't work for me. And I'm like, oh, my God, like, how are you so sure?

Well, yes. They get to feel right, which is really big. Ego loves to feel right. It is addicted to being right. But in a way, what they're also saying is, this makes me safe. Now, that's not a thing we want to acknowledge to ourselves. It's really painful. Imagine staring yourself in the mirror and saying, today I was really afraid and I chose to stay small. That's just heartbreaking. And so we have to hide that from ourselves again. That's why I go back to your first example where if you said, hey, why didn't you rehearse your speech? Why didn't you prepare? She would say, I don't know. Right?

So that she would say, I was too busy. I had all these other commitments. I don't know. I felt like it fell to the bottom of the list. I just couldn't get to it. There was just no way. It was impossible.

So what she's telling you is these are the things that are persuasive to me. These are, in a way, my excuses that cover up that I'm not going to do this. It's hard to believe that that speech wasn't her highest priority. Right?

Yeah.

So why wouldn't she do that first? Why wouldn't she put the most energy into that? The saboteur works really well when it starts to introduce things without you really acknowledging that I'm using these, I'm putting these in the way so that later you go, wow, stuff just happened to people called and I had to attend to that. Well, maybe you didn't, or maybe you shouldn't take the call. Saboteur lures us into unconsciousness, which doesn't mean asleep. It means I'm unaware of my motivation. I'm not really sure what's driving me. So just a little part of your brain turns off, and when that happens, we go into habit. So she has pre programmed mental habits which say, I will respond to these things or I will prioritize this over my highest priority, or I will become unclear. That's another really fuzzy overwhelm. Yeah, we have these little programs and we have these agreements that say, well, I can't work. If I'm unclear or if I'm overwhelmed, what can I do? That's not a very productive place to be. So that means I should go over here and do this instead. Or even those distractions, like, boy, the house really is clean. And you have that little voice that says, let me just get this out of the way. Better?

Yeah.

That's the COVID story for you have this space for this work, and I'm going to put stuff in it, and then later I can go, look what happened. And I don't really know how it happened. And that's another key thing, is the unconsciousness at the end of the process. You get to feel a lack of responsibility. It can't be changed. So when they're saying to you, that won't work, they're saying, it can't be changed. That's my position, because it's safe. There's nothing I can do that gets me off the hook.

So I want to go back to this concept of identifying the saboteur. You mentioned the voice. Christopher has a workshop on saboteur, and I did this workshop with him. And one of the things that we do in it is we identify the voice that it talks to inside your head. And mine has this kind of like, hey, you work hard, I'm gonna let.

You off the hook.

Oh, you shouldn't do that. Oh, you listen so you can hear. It has, like, a specific tone of voice. And I know other people had different voices. I'm not sure if you can speak to what other people's voices were, but it's just so interesting to me because I feel like it gives you a little. That mystery you're talking about. Like, you can kind of crack the code and get in there and recognize when you're self sabotaging yourself.

Yeah. Like, when you were just doing that, you kind of get like, ooh, this is the character of my saboteur, and it'll have a bunch of them. Like, that's not your only one, but as it's seducing you into, hey, why don't you go take a nap? Or it's bullying you, or it's accessing, like, an experience you had and saying, you don't want to repeat that. Those are the things you want to listen for. It's great when it's happening. It's hard to do, but it's great when it's happening to notice. Next time you feel lost, take a second and say, what's going on here? What was my intention? What actually happened? Now, a lot of times, people won't be able to tell you. They'll say, like, one thing led to another. So if it's at the end of the day, look back, see if you can get it. If it's happening and you can notice, it's a great time to collect information. Like, what's the voice? What's it actually saying? What was the story I told myself to get here. A lot of times, that's really difficult. So if you have to, I would say, set an alarm on your phone every hour just to check in and see what happened, see how far you drifted or what you started to do. Or if you can catch the story, the voice, the way that it bullies or persuades or intimidates or lulls you to sleep, whatever it is. And the more you can treat it like a person, the more you can have a relationship with it. Because the real trick to what we want to do is to change the relationship.

Okay, good. Say more about that. How do we want to change this relationship?

Everybody has the saboteur, but not everybody's saboteur is tormenting them, so. Not everybody, right. Not every person is self sabotaging. A lot of people are. People who aren't self sabotaging have a good relationship with their saboteur.

Okay.

The saboteur is neutral. That's the first key thing is that we are certain that it's out to get us, that it's this negative, evil force which just loves to screw with us. It is a neutral part of us which is collecting information on our behalf. So the problem is, when it comes at us, it has all this information to give us, but it doesn't tell us. It shows us. It induces the experience, and it doesn't feel good. So we immediately say, hey, you're not my friend. A friend wouldn't treat me that way. It attacked me. It must be my enemy. All it did was give you information. It says, this is how you do this. I'm going to show you feel that. But we don't perceive it that way.

We perceive it as you ruined my speech.

We pursued as I ruined my speech.

But I have no idea how my speech got ruined.

Yeah, so when the saboteur comes at us, we dictate the relationship. Unbeknownst to us, we say, oh, we're enemies. Saboteur is neutral. So when you say, you're my enemy, saboteur, it goes, oh, okay, it's like, that's the game we're playing, fine. It doesn't care. It's not investing. It's there to serve you. And if you say, serve me by being my enemy, it says, fine. So we have an adversarial relationship to it. What we want to do is make it an ally. So think of it this way. The negative version is the saboteur is actually me. So it knows every part of me, and it knows exactly how to defeat me. So I can't win. The converse of that is, what if I wanted to know the answers to what's in my way? Oh, I would ask somebody who really knows me very well. Well, you know who that is? That's the saboteur. So when you collect this information, when it's coming at you, and you listen to it and you learn about it and you start to get, oh, this is what it does to get me down, then you can say thank you. Then you have a chance to say, you're educating me. And here's the really big part of it, is that the saboteur doesn't come out for no reason. We think it comes out to mess up our life. But what it really does, it comes out to tell us you're in the presence of possibility. Now, if you have a negative relationship to the saboteur, it will convert the possibility to not possible. So again, when those people are saying, that won't work for me, I'm in my comfort zone, it's not possible. So what you're really saying is, hey, here's a possibility. And they're going, ah, change, which I can't perceive. Saboteur comes in and says, I don't think that'll work. Now I'm safe.

I almost had to venture out of my comfort zone. I almost had to experience something.

And I don't have to be the bad guy because I already know that doesn't work. So that's not me being negative.

I can abdicate responsibility for.

Absolutely.

I'm really big on this, of claiming your power and your business and taking responsibility. I'm like, listen, if something goes wrong, take responsibility for it. My policy is always, no blame, no shame for anybody who works for me, for any of my clients, and for myself. No blame, no shame.

Why?

Because that doesn't help anybody. I want you to take responsibility for it. And when you take responsibility for it, you are able to then take new actions and empower yourselves to take new actions. So what I really like about this is a lot of clients come to me and what they're looking for is basically for me to name that. It's for me to say, here's what's in your way. Like, you have this huge opportunity. Like, you're about to really break through and be a star in your niche, or you're about to really break through and be able to cross the million dollar mark or the $250,000 mark, whatever. Is that that next thing, or, wow, your book is going to come out and then you're going to be like a sought after speaker. The reason that isn't happening for them, though, is, and that's, I think, where the saboteur piece comes in, I can say to them, you're taking these actions and that's preventing that from happening for you. And so a lot of times I think we can't identify our own self sabotaging behaviors. And so when I can say to them, well, listen, every time you've gotten a chance to go make a speech, you've kind of blown it because you haven't really done the preparation that needed to be done. Like, what if we did things this way? And I can also help them kind of break that down into steps so that it isn't like one to 100, it's like a gentler slope so that maybe there's less self sabotaging between those steps.

Sure. Sure. Well, you can always just take the next step.

Right.

You don't have to consume the whole thing. It's actually a lot easier to do it in manageable bites. So saboteur is telling you, first notice what you do to get in your own way. Notice the thoughts and the habits and the energy states and the agreements you have. I'm allowed to not work if you know. Because then you will do those things.

Yeah.

When, like, say, overwhelm or lack of clarity, come. It's not because you said, hmm, I think I'll do this. It's because you say, now look over here and just let this program run. So I only notice it maybe once it's running, once I can say, oh, I'm doing that thing where I fill the space so I don't have time to prepare. And I know what it feels like to do that. I know what the, the thoughts in my head are when I do that. I know what the energy state is, is I can recognize it, then I can wake up in the moment and say, thanks, saboteur. What you have alerted me to is that actually this is a big deal. This speech is important. I feel the presence of possibility. One of the things I tell people is we don't sabotage our dreams. Really? Because dreams can stay unattainable. They're really big. They're really over there. The saboteur comes in to saboteur our potential reality, and the potential realities build toward the dream. So that's the incremental thing I think, that you're talking about.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I. I'm all about, like, taking small steps. Because I think if you very often people try to do something that's super hard, and then it doesn't go well. And I'm like, you just took too big a bite, you know, let's just, like, break that down.

Well, and then what they've done is they've created a new thing for their saboteur to use. You collected more evidence for why this can't happen.

Right?

So next time, all your saboteurist has to do with is say, remember last time? Yeah.

And you go, yeah, all right, all right. Which is defeating and seems mean, but you're saying it's trying to protect me from feeling that terrible way again.

Right? So make a huge exaggeration. What if I said to you, if you jump off that cliff, you can fly? Seems like a bad idea. Right?

Right.

So you can understand why you might shoot yourself in the foot to not be able to jump off the cliff.

Right now.

It's not that obvious or absurd, but it's that kind of, like, this is a better idea than that, but I have to hide it from myself.

I have to do a thing that seems damaging to keep me small enough that I don't attempt the big thing that will be damaging in another way.

Which can really change my life. Yeah. Another example I use is people who win the lottery. They frequently. It ruins their life. There's support groups for people who won the lottery. That's insane. But why is that? Because that's a totally different life they've moved to. Their friends are probably going to change their options, can change their ego. Does not know how to accommodate, like, oh, now I have money. I'm not used to having money. We would all make that deal. We all want more money. But I'll give you another example. I had a client who came into a larger amount of money and then suddenly felt guilty because she felt like, well, I could help people. I could send my son's friend to college if I wanted to. Should I do, like, wow, now, should I always pay for dinner? I mean, it sounds like, jeez, that's a good problem to have, but it really was confusing. And she turned a wonderful thing into a complicated thing, a thing to suffer about.

Right, right. So was she sabotaging her happiness?

In that case, she was sabotaging who she would become. Who she could become. So one of the things we're really attracted to with money is its empowerment. It's opportunity. I can do more things. We see people with money differently. So while we all think we want to be that person, we don't necessarily know how to be that person. And we're in unfamiliar territory. So I was talking about the ego before. And one of the important things to know about the ego is that when things radically change, our ego, in a sense, dies. We stop becoming who we were, because again, the ego is who I think I am right now. So if I suddenly lived in a completely different place and we got divorced and I had a ton of money and blah, blah, blah, well, who am I now? An example I usually use is think of somebody like Mike Tyson. So Mike Tyson, at a certain point in his life, is the baddest man on the planet. He is the heavyweight champion of the world. He cannot lose. He's undefeated. And then he loses to, I think, the biggest underdog ever. Well, who is he now? Right? What happened to his life? He radically changed. He goes to jail, he gets religion, he gets addicted to drugs, he eventually becomes spiritual. We find out he was bipolar. All these different. Well, that's a huge change, right? That's an ego death. Mike Tyson, former, he is now is so different from the other one, and the ego doesn't want to die. So when the ego feels, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're taking me into this other thing, even if it's technically good news, it says, I don't want to go, I don't want to die, let's put.

The brakes on so I can be a $100,000 a year entrepreneur and then to be a 1 million. It's going to be, that's going to be a different version of me. I'm going to have a different self. Who does that or me, unsuccessful and struggling and addicted to struggle versus me succeeding and doing well. I see this a lot of times also in peer groups where you're like, I have this mastermind and we all kind of get together and complain and moan and talk about how hard everything is. And if they get into a different environment, suddenly that's why people talk about environment and masterminds is like, you get around somebody, another one, and like, these people are succeeding and that person just sold a 500k offer and this and what is doing that? I think it's interesting for us to be more intentional with how we're treating that ego. And ego is just our identity. And when I work with brand, you've heard me say, brand is your business identity. And so what do I want my business to be known for? And are you ready to embody that? And I think being intentional about who I want to be and how I want to be is part of this, because that begins to kind of have a marketing campaign on your inner voices and say, hey, let's all get on the same page about this because this is what I want. I think having a vision statement that you're reading on a daily basis, talking to people, having people around you who are affirming that you are who you are and that you're evolving and becoming. I'm constantly affirming. When my clients do a hard thing, I'm constantly affirming, wow, you're really different than you were the you of two months ago wouldn't have done something like that. Like, that's a really courageous thing to do. And I think that kind of movement forward is really important. So I love that you've talked about like this on a daily basis, how to stay conscious of this, set the timer and check in with how you're doing. It's like, did you do the dishes this hour or did you get your blog written? That's just a personal example. Are you getting the things done? And you, you also use this thing. What I love is that it's almost the simplest techniques possible to thwart this because it's just about bringing yourself into awareness. It's not like this deep, difficult thing that you're doing. You're basically just saying, like, here's my day, and here's what I want to have happen. Because getting to a million dollars happens one day at a time. It happens with one day of effective habits, and then tomorrow is another day of that. So the number one thing for the day is probably one of the most transformational things that I've ever gone through.

And the priority. Yeah.

So just talk about that, because I feel like somebody said, what's really the secret to you? Your productivity and focus? And I would say, oh, it's the number one thing. And people would be like, really? Yeah.

Yeah. One thing I was interested to learn is that originally the word priority was a single thing.

Yeah.

And we turned it into priorities.

Right.

Which is an interesting sabotage strategy right there.

Sure.

Priority really means there's, there's one. So what I suggest is don't do it in the moment. Don't wake up and get to your desk and go, what's my highest priority? Because you're in the moment, and it's very easy to sabotage at that point because you'll go, yeah, I can't think of anything or, well, I have five things. Right. And both of those extremes and opposites are tricks. It uses a lot. So what I suggest is do it the night before. Like, I'm really willing to try stuff next week. I'm very comfortable. Yeah. The closer I get, the more I feel like, I don't know, it just doesn't feel right.

So that was the voice in saboteur, by the way.

Exactly, exactly. And so let's follow that out. Cause it's kind of vague. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

It's like, I would want to go into that. You don't want to feel. You don't really feel like it, because. And get it to talk. Get it to talk. Get it to say, like, I don't think you're prepared, or, I don't think that guy's gonna like you. You know, you get those patterns that, like, you're too much or you're not enough, or any of you keep digging and you get to those voices, all.

Your limiting beliefs come up through it. I'm not prepared. I'm not ready. Things don't work for me. All of these. I'm going to call them stupid, but, you know, stupid limiting beliefs, because that's. They're not true. They don't have to be true.

Some of them are true. Yeah. But again, becoming aware of them so I can address them is different. The saboteur wants to leverage it against you, and it wants to make it seem like it can't be changed. Like, well, you're not a morning person, so this is not a good time to call. Make that big call. Well, okay. You're going to wait till the afternoon and then use your afternoon strategy, which.

Is, I really don't have that kind of energy in the afternoon.

Now, most of the time, it's very hard to know these things about yourself. So it's helpful to have somebody else to mirror it or observe it or point it out for you. Another strategy you can use is force the issue. If I said on the other side of that door is all the money you ever wanted, and then the saboteur comes in and says, I don't think that's a good idea. They won't say, why? I don't trust this. I think that door might be locked. What you do is you get up and say, I'm opening the door. If it overwhelms you with anxiety, you say, oh, anxiety, can I open the door? Even though I have anxiety?

So open the door. Tell me specifically what I would do in my business that would be doing.

That, calling that client that you really want to work with. You know, you can come up with tons of stories about why that's not a good idea. But if you're feeling that vague, like, I just don't want to or I shouldn't or something like that. Tell your saboteur I'm making the call. Here I go. I'm getting up. I'm getting up. I'm reaching for the phone, and you will scare it into saying you're afraid that you're too much. You know, you're going to overwhelm them, and people don't really like your personality, and you're too big, and you've been told all the time, hold back, you know, come on, and let them come to you. And then you go, hey, nice to meet you. Okay, so then I can anticipate. Oh, that's a thing I use against myself. My mother told me, hey, you should hold back. And you're too big. Don't be such a bull in a china shop. I can say, okay, what's the reverse? I have a really big personality. Like, that could be very attractive. But in the meantime, what you can also do is say, when that thing comes up, when that belief comes up, it's really a kind of a worldview. Then I can say, ooh, the saboteur is here. And then I can say, and the saboteur doesn't show up for no reason. I must be in the presence of powerful possibility. So now I've turned the focus of, like, she shouldn't make that call because it'll probably go wrong for reasons I'm not even clear on to. This is a big deal. This is really important. This is a time to be courageous and aware that the saboteur would not have intervened if this wasn't a. A possibility.

Yeah. So I'm sensing. I'm intuiting that this is a big possibility.

The saboteur is telling you that that's its job, is to say you're in the presence of possibility right now. If you don't do this consciously, you will self sabotage. Or in a sense, he shows up and says, you're about to become me. Is that what you want? You can't. It's not judging you. It's just saying you're going over a cliff. Do you want to turn right?

Do with this information what you will.

It's bringing you to consciousness. That's why we go unconscious, to let the habit turn it into an adversary.

Yeah. Awesome. So that was two things. It was the number one priority, of which there is one and not many. As far as a habit, I have software I use with a prompt that on Sundays says, what? Three things are priority for the week. I know there shouldn't be three but what are the three things I'm going to focus on this week? And then on a daily basis, this is what's number one for today. And at 05:00 p.m. it says, what did you get done today? So it checks in and follows up with me on that. And I really like that because it keeps me focused, as Christopher said, saying what your number one thing is on the day is harder by preparing that in advance. On Sunday evenings or Sunday afternoons, I think about my week and I have just a different perspective on it. And I'm kind of surprised sometimes by what I choose because it, it won't always be the things that I'm like. It's an urgent thing. Sometimes it's the thing where I'm like, I really want to make some progress on that. So a different part of me makes that decision on Sunday afternoons. And then we talked about when you're wondering why something won't get done, kind of force it, and then you hear and can unpack what's going on with why you've been avoiding something.

And they're similar. I mean, they're kind of the same thing. So if I set the priority the night before, then I also set when I'm going to do it. I would say, if you don't have a good reason, the default is always first. Because if it's your priority, why not do it first? When you do that, either you will do it and your day will move forward and that's great. Or again, you will confront the saboteur. When you wake up and say first thing, look at what happens. Look at what you tell yourself. Now, it's not always the voices. It's not always the beliefs. Sometimes it's feeling. Sometimes it's energy. You know, sometimes when, when I'm the presence of priority, I'm going to make that big call. And it's important. I start to, my energy starts to rev. It's like the way that people are afraid of public speaking. I believe that most people aren't afraid of public speaking. Certainly some people are. But what I really think is that we're not used to broadcasting our personality big. So we're used to this kind of energy. So, you know, it's like I used to be an actor. So when you're getting ready to perform, you can feel that energy surging because you're going to have to put it out to the audience. If I label that nerves or I label that fear, now I have the negative relationship to the saboteur. If I just say like, this is energy. I need big energy. This is great.

I have to fill this room.

Absolutely. This is my friend. I have to get used to the feeling. But now I understand. Oh, when I go to make that call or when I go to speak in public, my energy is going to start to rev. That's normal. It's not a bad thing. And it's telling me you're getting ready to enter possibility and you get used to that and you can change your relationship to, you know, where actors, if they don't start to feel that feeling, they get worried because they feel like, that's my friend.

Yeah. Yeah. That's very interesting. So the idea that I would begin to get more comfortable with this is the. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. There is discomfort in sitting down and doing the number one priority first thing in the morning. I mean, I can tell you, I. I will fight against that a lot of times of like, well, I just need to do these 13 things first. And let me just, you know, whatever. And I think this. I have made an appointment with myself, and I am then doing the thing and following through with it. That feeling that we have in our bodies when we're doing that. And I'm sure you were coming up with a similar feeling that you have when you do something like that. If we can get comfortable with that feeling, then we don't sabotage it anymore. So I really love the kind of. The way in which this is kind of progress that we. That we make comfortable with it. So I want to go back to the couple of things that we talked about in the beginning. One was exhausting ourselves. The sabotage strategy really feels like I just have a lot of clients and I get really tired and I do too much, so how could I?

Yeah, but you'll find your results start to diminish.

Yes.

Right. It's not like I'm doing all this stuff and it's working great. When you're really noticing it is when you're saying, like, I'm exhausting myself and it's working less well. So most of us are a combination of things. But I'm going to talk about two poles, just for clarity. And I think the best way to talk about them is, like, our fight and flight response. So mostly when we think of self sabotage, we think of the flight one, which is the I'm not good enough, or I don't have enough time, or I don't know what I'm doing, that kind of thing. And it's easy to see how that deflates you. The other kind is the fight one, that's the people who, they feel very capable. They think they should be successful. So in a way, that possibility that scares out the saboteur, they live there. They are a possibility. So your saboteur, in that case, is going to play more of a long game. It's not going to be able to get in your face and say, who do you think you are? Because you're going to say, I think I'm a very successful person and I'm going to go out there and be powerful. So what your saboteur is going to do is use that against you. People who are power, people who are fight people, they're usually blind to the damaged parts of themselves. So, for instance, one of the things that will come up a lot for them is I have shame about failure, and I have shame about ever being seen to not be working hard enough or trying hard or anything like that. So if I'm your saboteur, you'll finish up that last thing at the end of the day and I'll say, oh, you're, you're gonna quit? Why don't you just, just clean up this one last thing here? Just, just one more. And, you know, maybe two even. Or somebody calls and says, hey, I need this thing really quick. Can you do that for me? And their ego says, I am powerful. I can do lots of stuff. So I will set aside the thing I'm doing right now and I will do your work now, I'll be resentful, but, and I'll get to blame you, but I'm piling on. And now this is backing up. And now I have to live with this sense of like, ugh, there's more and I'm falling behind. And it's a war of attrition. So over time, it will start to make you vulnerable to your doubts. So I'll go with another boxing analogy. In the rumble in the jungle, when Muhammad Ali did the rope a dope against George Foreman, people were scared that Muhammad Ali was going to be killed. This guy was so overwhelming. And his strategy was to cover up and let George punch himself out. And he's banging away and banging away. He's the baddest man on the planet at that point. He's the heavyweight champion. He's never lost, so he's going to win. He's knocked out everybody and he's banging away. And Muhammad Ali is just taking and taking. He's doing the war of attrition. And in the documentary, George Foreman is telling the story and he says, I'm you know, I'm wailing away at him, and he leans in and he says to me, george, is that all you got? And I thought, yep, that's the moment. He's worn down to the point where he's vulnerable to the, oh, I don't have enough. Now he's beatable.

Yeah.

Now he can lose. So the fight, people are going to take on too much habitually, and they're going to abuse themselves, and that's going to lower their stamina. It's going to drain them of power, and it's going to start to make them vulnerable to their doubts. You mentioned another one, too, which is a lot of time. People will surround themselves with people who will fail them. That's a great strategy.

My bad. Hiring question.

Exactly. A good example would be I might carry the belief that I am the most capable person and that if you need something done right, you have to do it yourself.

Family belief. Yes.

What I will then do is I will hire people who won't do a good job. Now, I won't admit that I'm doing that. I won't see it as that. It's something you have to look at in retrospect and kind of unwind and say, oh, I was attracted to the part of him or her who would cause me to have to go, let me do that. Activate the parts of me that say, I don't want to waste the time teaching you, so I'll just do it.

Right. We also set them up for failure. So unconsciously, we select the person who's going to let us down.

Yes. And then we activates that belief.

We sabotage them.

That others cannot be trusted.

Yeah, others can't be trusted. Others will fail me. We kind of get to be superior in that. Like, listen, it's true that only I can do it.

It's another. No responsibility. Oh, I didn't create this failure. Everybody else stinks.

Everybody. It's like seven in a row. These higher, like, nobody can do it. It's a mystery.

It can't be done. It can't be done. So I found a way to limit myself and still maintain the ego position that I'm awesome. It's not my fault.

Yeah. So I love that you said limit myself. And this is the thing that I see happening. And again, know certain things I had to go through myself before I could help others with it. And I can say, why you go through them. It is why? Well, I say, so that we can learn empathy, that you would consistently prevent yourself from hitting the thing that you want and from going to the next level. So that is, to me, super brilliant. I really love being shown, because as a power person, I think, well, listen, I know myself, and I know how to get things done and all these things like that, and I would never do that to myself is one of my favorite things to think. And having all of these things revealed to me has been really helpful that, you know, there's something in there that's actually doing that. So I hope hearing this today has also been helpful for you. We covered a lot of territory, and there's a lot of kind of, like, vocabulary in this because we. We kind of speak the language of saboteur and things like that. So I hope that this is enough to help you identify maybe some patterns that you've had and kind of get some light bulb moments around things. And if you would like to learn more about Christopher and how he can help you with self sabotage, where can we find you online?

My website is christopher.com, and I'm also on Facebook.

Yep. So I will put links to Christopher's sites and places you can connect with him on in the show notes. And of course, you can always find him through me because we're in the same house.

She goes where to find me.

I know where to find it. All right, well, thank you, everybody. And for today, I am hoping that you have greatly expanded your awareness of self sabotage and any negative behaviors. And that with this information, you can now build a more profitable and joyful consulting business. Thanks for listening. As a thank you for being part of my community, I'm sharing free, exclusive resources to help expand your consulting business. Head to samanthahartley.com. super to access bonus content and tools from the show. For a complete transcript of this episode and all profitable joyful consulting episodes, visit samanthahartley.com.