Latest / Alignment With Jenn / 3 STEPS TO STOP SELF-SABOTAGE FOR GOOD✨Goodbye Fear of Failure

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3 STEPS TO STOP SELF-SABOTAGE FOR GOOD✨Goodbye Fear of Failure · Alignment With Jenn

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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Alignment with
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Jen podcast. I am your host Jenn Ditzhazy and
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today we are talking all about self sabotage.
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I have done like, I don't know, hundreds of client calls and I
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took them all and I had AI analyze the data to tell me like
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what is the most common things that people ask about?
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Guess what it was? It is self sabotage.
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It is so extremely common and it is something that so many
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success stressful women like you in my audience are struggling
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with. And so I want to do an episode
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where I want to help you identify where you might be
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struggling with self sabotage. And then I want to give you a
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three-step framework to help you start overcoming it today.
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So that way you can really start going after your visions and
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your goals without taking 2 steps forward or one step back.
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I had a client who said she's like, self sabotage, feels like
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I have a rubber band around my waist.
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And it's like, I'll walk forward and then I'll get pulled back,
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walk forward, and then I'll get pulled back.
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And I'm like, goodness, yeah, I totally get that.
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And I look at my clients, my friends, myself, like this is
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such a massive pattern for people.
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And so how do we get ourselves to actually really show up for
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the life that we want to create, right?
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How do we go full force towards that life without sabotaging it
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unconsciously? So let's talk about that today.
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And I wanted to share this quote from Alice Cornyn Shelby.
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And it's that self sabotage is when we want something and then
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go about making sure it doesn't happen.
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It's so true, right? It's so, so, so, so, so true.
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So I think of self sabotage as this idea that part of you wants
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it and then part of you fears it.
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And so it creates this dance, right?
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And it creates this like that 2 steps forward, one steps back.
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And often times it can happen in our career, it can happen in our
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love life, it can happen in our health, in our fitness goals.
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And there's a variety of different reasons why we self
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sabotage. So I'm going to kind of start
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with the deepest level of programming of why we self
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sabotage. So as you, if you've listened to
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my podcast before, you know I'm super big on our subconscious
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beliefs, right? We have this whole operating
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system that's happening below the surface of what we're aware
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of, right. If you think of an iceberg, 80
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to 90% of that iceberg is underwater.
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We don't see it. That's the same that's true for
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our programming, 80 to 90%. Really I think it's like 99% of
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our programming is below the surface.
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It's things that we are not aware of that we are just acting
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on and we are just so automatically ingrained to do
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those things. It's our triggers.
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It's our automatic responses, our judgments, our fears, our
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doubts, the limitations we unknowingly place on ourselves.
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And self sabotage happens because for multiple levels of
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this programming that exists. But one of the deepest levels of
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our programming is something called our values.
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So our values are the things that what we value, right?
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The things that we unconsciously deem important, and these are
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very deep within our programming because they're typically
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programmed at an extremely young age.
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They can even be programmed before we have words to express
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what we're actually thinking and feeling.
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So they can be very, very deep programming.
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And most people are completely unaware of their values.
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So I'll give you an example of how values might cause self
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sabotage. So let's say that Anna Maria, I
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don't know, just somebody I made-up.
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I don't think I know anybody named Anna Maria.
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Anna Maria has a top value for freedom, right?
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That's her top value. Remember, these are unconscious,
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so she may not know that, but then beneath that she has a
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value for fun, and then beneath that she has a value for love,
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right? And our values are unconsciously
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ranked. So if her top value is freedom,
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but then a couple values down is love, there's probably going to
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be a conflict, right? So Anna Maria might really
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struggle to commit. She might really struggle to
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actually pursue a relationship. She probably is great at
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traveling. She's probably great at probably
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even running a business because it gives her more freedom.
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But she might struggle to create that loving connection.
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And I'll tell you, Anna Maria is actually me.
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That was this was three or four years ago when I first did my
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own values on relationship. That was my values.
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My top value was freedom and a couple values down was like a
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love in a relationship. Pretty interesting.
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I've since changed that and my life has changed, right?
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I've been able to be in a successful relationship.
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So think about some of these areas in your life where you
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might have conflicts and it's a pretty easy, you can do kind of
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like a bootleg values assessment of yourself where you just look
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at a certain area of your life. Let's say you pick career if
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you're struggling in career. And you can just ask yourself,
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OK, what's important to me and career, what's important to me
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and career. And then you can go back through
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the list and you will get probably 10 to 15 of these.
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You can go back through and you can rank them.
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So you'll say, OK, is this more important?
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Or is this more important? And you'll rank them all from
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1:00 to 10:00 and look at them and see are there conflicts in
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there? Is something more important to
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me than something else? Another one that's kind of
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interesting that I saw with one of my clients is that this
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client in particular really, really wanted to be healthy and
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eat healthy. His mom had just passed away and
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he really wanted to start taking care of his health after seeing
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what happened with his mom. So anyway, we look at his
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values. What we see is that he has a
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very, very high value for fun and enjoyment and that is part
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of his health values. But later down the list we look
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and look, do we see a value for nutrition?
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No, he was eating really horribly, but it was because
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there was no value for nutrition.
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So oftentimes the things that we find easy are things that we
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value unconsciously, and things that we find hard are things
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that we don't value unconsciously.
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So that's what I want to share. So one of the things that causes
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us to self sabotage is if those values are out of alignment and
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they're not directed at what we want.
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So let me share a little bit about what happens and kind of
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the symptoms of self sabotage. So some of the symptoms of self
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sabotage could be things like procrastination.
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Perfectionism is even a symptom of self sabotage.
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I've heard this from a lot of clients.
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Like one client had a software product and she was like, yeah,
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I just like can't release it until it's perfect.
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That was literally what she always said, because perfection
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doesn't exist. And so it's a form of self
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sabotage when we set a standard that we can never reach, losing
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motivation and gaining motivation, losing motivation,
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gaining motivation, really struggling to stay consistent on
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what it is that you want. That's a form of self sabotage.
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In relationships, it might look like picking fights out of
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nowhere. Or I had this roommate years ago
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who kept a notebook, a notebook of a list of all the things that
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she didn't like about her significant other.
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And I was like, why are you with him if you don't like all these
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things? And she's like, oh, no, I just
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keep the list so that we like, I'm never surprised.
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That way I can like, you know, really be aware of it.
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I was like, that's interesting. I don't fully understand it,
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but, you know, if it works for you.
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And I think they're still together, and that was like a
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long time ago. That was sort of a tangent, but
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self sabotage can look like picking fights.
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It can look like always seeing the negative in your partner,
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Those sorts of things. We very unconsciously sabotage
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ourselves. And you might see it in
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yourself, right? Think of the areas in your life
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where you really struggle to be consistent or you really
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struggle to actually go after what you want.
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I was talking to a client yesterday, and she left her job
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and she's going full time to pursue her career in the arts.
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And she's like, OK, I wanna, you know, spend this much time
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everyday creating content. I wanna spend this much time
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everyday building my personal brand.
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And she's like, but I'm not doing it.
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And she's like, I have all day and I'm not doing it.
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And that is a form of self sabotage, right?
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One of the ways I was going to get into this later, but I'll
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share it now. To really help yourself, not
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self sabotage is to shrink your goal.
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So oftentimes if our mind can't really conceptualize something
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like a very big goal, right, going from, you know, 0
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followers to 1,000,000 followers, that's really hard to
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conceptualize, right? But you can break it down to a
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very micro, micro, micro step. So what I told her is I was
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like, OK, rather than saying you're going to spend 2 hours a
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day on this and two hours a day on this, why don't you just
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spend 15 minutes a day? Because what happens 15 minutes
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is a magic number. What happens is we get dopamine
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after about 15 minutes of doing something.
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So if we can get past that, we're going to start to get more
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momentum. Motivation is going to be
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easier. So that's a pretty cool thing to
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know. So rather than telling yourself
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you're going to spend, you know, 2 hours a day on something,
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maybe you say, OK, if it's something that's really
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challenging for you, I'll start with 15 minutes and I'll kind of
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ride that dopamine roller coaster.
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But the only goal is the 15 minutes, right?
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And just staying consistent with the 15 minutes.
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You can be consistent with anything for 15 minutes three
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days a week or five days a week. That's literally how I started
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my supplement business. I didn't know how to do that.
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So 15 minutes a day was my goal. You make the goal so tangible,
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so accessible, so realistic that you begin to build this snowball
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that gets bigger and bigger and bigger, right?
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So how can you break it down? Maybe in dating, instead of
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being like, OK, I'm going to go on two dates a week until I meet
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my husband. That's kind of a lot.
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You say, OK, I'm going to spend, you know, 5 minutes a day on the
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dating apps, engaging with people, connecting with people
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authentically. That's a much more manageable
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first step if you're having a lot of resistance starting to
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date. So what are some more examples
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of self sabotage? So one is pulling back when
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things start to work. So if you find that you are
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pursuing something like a relationship or a business or
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something, and then you find that when it starts to go well,
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you pull back, you hide, you shrink, that's a form of self
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sabotage because we're trying to protect ourselves from
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something. So self sabotage is a protective
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behavior. It's really designed to just
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keep us safe, to keep us protected.
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And I heard recently on the Mel Robbins podcast about that.
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She was interviewing a Harvard researcher and I don't know the
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name of this woman, but she was saying how the reason that we
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don't change is for two reasons. One of them is energy and one of
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them is ego, right? We want to preserve energy and
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we want to protect our ego. And I thought that was such a
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brilliant like distillation of that information.
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And that's very, very true. And those are prime directives
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of the unconscious mind is to preserve energy, to protect the
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self, to make sure that the self is safe.
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And so we will do those things. So asking yourself if you're
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struggling with self sabotage, right?
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First, how is it showing up? Right?
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What's the pattern for you? And really like analyzing
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yourself like a scientist. But then second, what are you
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afraid of? Ask yourself this question, what
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bad thing happens if I succeed? What bad thing happens?
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And that's going to be extremely illuminating for you.
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So I want to share kind of this other framework about self
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sabotage. And it's this idea that avoiding
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something is helping you to regulate an emotion that you
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don't want to feel. So for example, let's say
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posting online makes you feel anxious.
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You don't do it to avoid that anxiety, right?
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It's this idea that there's like a trigger, which is posting
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online. And so you do something to
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escape it. So maybe, and this all happens
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unconsciously, maybe you think about posting online and you
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start to feel the anxiety of posting it.
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And you're like, no, no, no, no, no.
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I want to avoid that uncomfortable emotion.
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So I'm going to find temporary relief by going over here and
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doing my laundry, right? Researching content?
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That's a sneaky 1. Researching other creators?
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Maybe I'll do a little scrolling and call it research, right?
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So what you're doing is you are finding something else that
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feels productive in order to avoid that uncomfortable feeling
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that you're associating with that bigger goal that you have.
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So you want to identify what's that uncomfortable feeling that
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I'm trying to avoid and find a way to get yourself to feel
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comfortable with it. This kind of goes into that
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process of how you overcome this because part of the way, and
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I'll get into this more later, part of the way you overcome it
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is by getting yourself to be comfortable and OK with
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uncomfortable emotions. The more that you can get
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yourself to just exist in an uncomfortable emotion, the more
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rapidly your entire life is going to change.
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Something that I have noticed with myself is when I started my
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first business, I quit my job. I joined a very expensive
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mastermind and I just felt like I was bleeding money.
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And that period was super stressful for me because I
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wasn't making very much money. And then I was spending a ton.
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So I just saw my money like going down every month and I had
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to do so much nervous system regulation.
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I did literally everything. I did energy healing, nervous
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system regulation. I did all of my subconscious
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tools in order to help myself get through that period and be
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OK with that dynamic at the time.
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Now Fast forward multiple years later, I'm really comfortable
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when things don't look how I want them to look, right?
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If my business has a lower month or like I have a week where I'm
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like, oh, like, you know, I didn't make that much money this
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week or whatever it is. I'm really uncomfortable with
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the volatility now. Not really volatility, but the
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ebbs and flows that naturally happen in a business.
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And I'm so grateful for that time period because I, I taught
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myself how to be comfortable with those uncomfortable
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emotions. So it's actually a gift that you
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have those uncomfortable emotions because I see it as
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they're preparing you for a bigger level.
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They're preparing you for that next level when you might have
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more discomfort come up, but you're going to have the tools,
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you're going to have the resources to be able to handle
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it. You're going to know, have the
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confidence to know you can handle it, but you also resolve
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those beliefs that were causing that in the 1st place, right?
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Because for me, in that example, there were beliefs that were
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causing me to feel that way. Beliefs about money, beliefs
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about the universe, beliefs about what was possible for me.
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And I did so much to change that, that now I feel really
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calm about money. I know money is always showing
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up for me. Money loves me, money is just
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everywhere. I but I didn't know that at the
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time and I needed that experience to get there, right.
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So these areas of self sabotage, they're actually, they're like a
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little, if you turn them around, they look really good on the
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other side because there's something so good in there that
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you need to learn so you can hold a bigger level, so you can
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play a bigger game. That's what I'm saying.
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Another thing that creates self sabotage is what I called old
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identity gravity. Think about like the gravity of
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a planet, right? It's pulling stuff into its
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orbit. It's keeping us the planet
15:17
Earth, keeping us all on Earth because of that pull and keeps
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us from floating away. The same thing happens with your
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old identity. The old version of you, the old
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person that you were has this gravity to it, right?
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And people will come into my program and they'll be like,
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I've been in the program one week and like, nothing's
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changed. And I'm like, OK, like, you
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expect 45 years to be undone in one week.
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Like, sign me up for whatever that is, because I've never seen
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that in my life. That's called the Pharmaceutical
15:47
industry. That's like a pill that's not
15:48
realistic. There's that old gravity that
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has to reverse. You've got to get out of that
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old momentum of your old identity.
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And so there's a variety of different ways that you can do
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this. If you're finding that you keep
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reverting back to your old self, right?
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Maybe you are consistent with working out for a week and then
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you stop or you're consistent with, you know, writing your sub
16:09
stack for a week and then you stop.
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There's a variety of different ways to overcome that.
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One of the fastest ways to change your identity is to
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change your environment, and I mean your physical environment.
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So you can move to a new place, you can go right in a new place.
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Maybe you normally go right at your desk, maybe you go right at
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a cafe and you get yourself a cute latte.
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Because our environment, they say with addicts, it's so
16:32
valuable for addicts to overcome addiction by getting out of
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their environment. Because our unconscious mind
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creates so many triggers based off of our environment that we
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are very unconsciously aware of, right?
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This is why if you want to lose weight, they say like get rid of
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all of the food that you don't want to be eating and don't have
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it in your environment. Our environment is extremely
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powerful. That's one really big way to get
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out of this old identity gravity.
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But also just recognizing like, because that gravity exists,
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it's going to take some time to reverse it.
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And so there might be hiccups along the way, but you keep
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going, right? I saw this graph online and it
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was like that growth we think is this linear line upward.
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And it's not. It's actually like this wiggly
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line. It's still going upward, but
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it's got peaks and valleys. And that's the truth.
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And so you don't have to be perfect, right?
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And you, you don't want to get into this pattern of saying, OK,
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well, I didn't. I did it for two weeks and then
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I messed up. So now I'm just never going to
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do it again. What you want to do is OK, you
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know, I messed up. I'm gonna restart today.
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I'm gonna restart right away so that way I can keep moving
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toward my goals. And what you'll find is that
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self sabotage shrinks. So let's talk about the
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three-step method for getting rid of this.
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I've already kind of given you some tools to use for this, but
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let's talk about how you can really get over this.
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So the first one is just identify, right?
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How is this actually showing up for you?
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What happens when you start to pursue that goal, right?
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What do you, what do you find? Where are you procrastinating?
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Where are you perfecting? Where are you avoiding?
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Avoidance is a really big one. The second then is to create
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safety around that new level so you can normalize it.
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That can be an environmental change, but it is also
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neutralizing those past beliefs and fears.
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So I mentioned in the beginning of the episode, there's those
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core values, right? So in some cases, if self
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sabotage is really strong for you, you're going to want to
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rewire those values. That is something that takes
18:36
some support. That takes some help to do
18:40
because those are very deeply programmed.
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If that's something that you want to look at, you can send me
18:44
the message podcast on Instagram.
18:46
My Instagram's at alignment with Jen, and I can give you some
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information about my program where we work on those values
18:52
and those beliefs. Alignment, helping you overcome
18:55
those beliefs that 'cause that self sabotage.
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It's also getting yourself to feel safe in that new expanded
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level. So let's say that your goal is
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right now you're at $10,000 months and your goal is to reach
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$50,000 months in your business. And you find that every time you
19:13
go toward that, you get super anxious or nervous or you stop
19:16
showing up. There's these patterns of self
19:18
sabotage. You want to identify those
19:20
patterns, but then you want to create safety at that next
19:22
level. So part of that is through the
19:24
subconscious rewiring work, which I talked about already.
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That's what I do in my communities.
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And then part of that is also just allowing yourself to sit in
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that discomfort, right? And use tools and strategies to
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allow that discomfort to exist and allow yourself to move
19:42
through it without making it bad, right?
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And it's allowing yourself to not be perfect in that process.
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Something that I really like to do is if I'm starting to feel
19:55
unsafe about something, right, anxiety or fear comes up, I
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place my hands on my heart and I just tell myself I'm safe,
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right? I close my eyes and do some
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breathing to kind of calm my system.
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That's a really simple way. But I will say self sabotage is
20:09
a really interesting one because it shows up differently for each
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person. And I really do believe the best
20:14
way to improve it is rewiring those subconscious beliefs.
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So again, you can message me if you want to learn about that.
20:20
Because those beliefs, so much of self sabotage is unconscious,
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we're not even aware that we're doing it and we're most of the
20:27
time not aware why we're doing it, right.
20:30
And so when we want to stop doing it, that can be difficult
20:33
because it's like this hidden thing, right?
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The mind that's creating the self sabotage doesn't see the
20:39
self sabotage as a problem. Your subconscious does
20:42
everything because it thinks that it's helping you.
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That's important to recognize. So some of the things you can do
20:47
again are creating that safety around that.
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And then the last thing that you want to do is imprint that new
20:54
vision for yourself. So this could be through
20:57
visualization. That's a really powerful way.
20:59
It can be through hypnosis as well, but it's allowing your
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unconscious to basically accept that new vision because right
21:06
now you have your current reality and the new reality that
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you want. And the self sabotage is the
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game that gets played in the middle.
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And so if we can get your unconscious to accept that newer
21:16
vision, it can help to close that gap.
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I'm going to be releasing actually a new program in the
21:22
coming months about this specific part of it.
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I'm really excited about it. So stay tuned for that.
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And yes, I hope that you enjoyed this episode and I will see you
21:33
in the next episode. Bye.