Do you want to know why your subconscious mind is in a vicious cycle of self-sabotage that holds you back?
Self-sabotaging behavior is not always apparent; you may not realize that you are even doing it. Brought up on a diet of positive thinking and affirmations, led to believe that if only we think a certain way, we will be content, fulfilled, and our behavior will transform? No wonder so many people — especially successful people — continue to self-sabotage their success and stay stuck in business. You start to think, maybe I am selfish, greedy, ungrateful for having so much and still feeling like it’s not enough. Sound familiar? No matter how many times you write down how successful, capable, and determined you are, they will only ever stay words on paper if you continue to foster limiting beliefs. So how do you end limiting beliefs and stop self-sabotaging?
There is so much information bombarding our brains about being happier, more optimistic, achieving, and doing more. Sometimes it can feel like all you do is consume information and acquire knowledge without it actually making any positive changes for you personally. Is this because you don’t follow it or because you are incapable? No. You have applied techniques, and maybe they have made a difference for a short period, but then all those emotions start flooding back, triggering self-limiting beliefs again. The truth is you can’t fix yourself from the outside; you need to discover what’s creating the emotions that make you feel unworthy.
Let me explain…..
When you feel guilty about your aspiration to feel as if you are meant for more, you are actually internalizing feeling unworthy. Until you heal the root of this “unworthiness,” you will continue to self-sabotage. Typically self-sabotage is viewed as serious behavior that brings misfortune. While this is true for some behaviors, such as drug use, many self-sabotaging behaviors are often disregarded. Yet it is more likely that these are the behaviors preventing you from making fast and effective business decisions. Here are just a few examples:
- Delaying responding to emails or incoming queries
- Overthinking everything
- Avoiding asking for help
- Trying to please everyone
- Changing direction halfway through a task.
Your Ego-Self vs Your Authentic-Self
Have you heard about your ego-self and your authentic self? Your ego-self is the part of your brain that works hard to keep you safe. This means your ego-self reacts when your brain signals danger, which happens every time you feel afraid. Afraid of being greedy, selfish, uncaring, irresponsible — all of the emotions you have internalized. These emotions feed your limiting beliefs and keep you in a cycle of self-sabotaging behavior.
Your authentic self or inner self is the part of you that feels worthy, worthy of whatever you believe you are meant to be, the life you know you are meant for. When an event happens that makes you feel unworthy — I call this a “core trauma” — your authentic self splits, and your ego-self is born. From that moment on, whenever you are at risk of feeling unworthy, you start to subconsciously adopt self-sabotaging behaviors. In business, this will delay decisions and any business decisions that will speed up growth and make your business more successful. Because you shouldn’t want anything more, you’re not worthy! Is it starting to make sense now?
Concentrate on What’s Working
To connect to your inner self, start by focusing on what’s working for you. To get you started, here are a few questions:
- Are there any decisions you made fast that have been beneficial for your business? When have you not cared what other people think and just gone ahead and made the decision that felt right at the time?
- Have you ever done less but achieved more? Like when you spent less time on a business proposal or finished work early but still got as much done as when you work longer hours.
- Can you think of a time you asked for help? Maybe it was for business, or it could be for something personal; it doesn’t matter as long as it made a difference.
Today decide to stop doing what’s not working; in itself, this is one way to stop self-sabotaging. The next step to making fast decisions for business success is to explore your emotions and reconnect to your inner self. To get you started, here are a few things that worked for me:
- Picture your end goal, hold it in your mind. If you want more time with family, what does it look like — are you together at a restaurant, on a beach? If you want to make more money, what does this look like — flying first class, buying that luxury bag? Let your emotions surface as you hold these thoughts until you feel connected with what you really want.
- Start by making one decision that will accelerate a part of your daily process and cut out everything unnecessary, distracting, and preventing you from optimizing one thing that will lead to the next decision.
- Anything that comes up for you in the way of your next step IS where you want to learn how to process your emotions, gain new understanding, apply the new understanding such that you then take the Aligned Actions to achieve your results.
“…whenever you are self-sabotaging, you are hitting up against an internal wall, a glass ceiling, or a rule you’ve built that is most often unconscious to you.” Mia Hewett
So many techniques focus on logical steps yet forget the human emotions that cause the behaviors involved.
What really transforms our lives permanently, consistently, and in every aspect is when we learn to process our emotions and change our subconscious minds.
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