Latest / The Everyday Awesome Project / 109: Self-Sabotage: Why You Resist What You Want and How to Move Forward

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109: Self-Sabotage: Why You Resist What You Want and How to Move Forward · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:27
  Polly Mertens: Hey superstars, welcome back.
• 0:28
  Polly Mertens: Polly here and no Samantha Pruitt.
• 0:31
  Polly Mertens: She will be back with us next week.
• 0:32
  Polly Mertens: I'm excited to share with you in the meantime this topic that very timely, something occurred yesterday that was like, I gotta share about this, right?
• 0:41
  Polly Mertens: So calling this stop self-sabotaging, right?
• 0:44
  Polly Mertens: Why your brain is wired to keep you average.
• 0:47
  Polly Mertens: Not necessarily a topic that we all want to hear, but we all do want to stop sabotaging ourselves and like what gets in the way of us having the things that we want, doing the things that we want, having the life that we want, right?
• 0:59
  Polly Mertens: And it's this damn mind of ours.
• 1:02
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, as a habit and success coach, you know, I really think that this is a timely topic, especially as this is coming out, you know, late January.
• 1:12
  Polly Mertens: And, you know, I had the honor of seeing, you know, lots of new faces in the gym in the beginning of the month.
• 1:17
  Polly Mertens: But sometimes that kind of tapers off as we know there's that slump, you know, New Year's resolutions and things.
• 1:24
  Polly Mertens: It's like, why can't we get ourselves to do the things that we say that we want, right?
• 1:27
  Polly Mertens: So your brain is running a 53 50,000-year-old program.
• 1:34
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 1:34
  Polly Mertens: The way that we're wired is not necessarily what's going to keep us successful and happy and thriving.
• 1:40
  Polly Mertens: It's going to keep us in a cave, you know, it's going to keep us safe, it's going to keep us the same, right?
• 1:46
  Polly Mertens: Comfortable, survival.
• 1:48
  Polly Mertens: So we got to overcome some of this wiring, baby.
• 1:51
  Polly Mertens: We gotta, we gotta do it.
• 1:52
  Polly Mertens: So your brain is a two-pound energy miser.
• 1:56
  Polly Mertens: It's like conserve, conserve, conserve.
• 1:59
  Polly Mertens: So I don't know if you know this, but it consumes 20.
• 2:02
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, when people talk about like, oh, you know, fitness and stuff, I gotta eat to fuel and stuff.
• 2:07
  Polly Mertens: It's often like your brain that's consuming the most.
• 2:10
  Polly Mertens: So it consumes 20% of your metabolic calories, despite it's only two pound weight, right?
• 2:17
  Polly Mertens: So it's hardwired for what we call metabolic parasimony.
• 2:24
  Polly Mertens: I think that's how you say that, which is a fancy scientific term of avoiding any effort that doesn't immediately guarantee food, safety, or sex.
• 2:33
  Polly Mertens: Like this little nugget up here is quite the quite the gem, right?
• 2:40
  Polly Mertens: If it feels if growth feels hard for you, like if change and growth feel hard, it's because your brain thinks that growth and change is a threat to its survival.
• 2:49
  Polly Mertens: So that's where we gotta we gotta work on this.
• 2:52
  Polly Mertens: So I'm gonna teach you, I'm gonna share with you like some examples of stories and where I've been either self-sabotaging myself, I see, and by all means, this is not a, oh, I'm perfect at this, I've got it all figured out, life is running perfectly smooth, I'm doing everything that I want and avoiding everything that I don't want.
• 3:09
  Polly Mertens: No, but I can tell you from a lot of years of experience of what has worked or hasn't worked, and things that I have dropped from a 20-year eating disorder, and you know, things that I have gotten up to, like really hard physical challenges that I was like, oh my God, how am I gonna get there?
• 3:23
  Polly Mertens: Right.
• 3:24
  Polly Mertens: So I want to share with you what I know, what the science says, and give you some ways of stopping your self-sabotage if that's how your year is going, or whenever you're hearing this, you know, hopefully this is something that will serve you as well.
• 3:38
  Polly Mertens: So, um, you know, where this is going, and this uh ties in with the neuroscience.
• 3:44
  Polly Mertens: And what sparked this for me is I was rereading a wonderful book that I read many years ago by my one of my favorite people, Tony Robbins, in his book Awaken the Giant Within.
• 3:54
  Polly Mertens: And I was rereading this just recently, uh like two conversations with coaching clients.
• 3:59
  Polly Mertens: It was like, how does this happen when I start, you know, revisiting something or a topic, it shows up in my coaching.
• 4:05
  Polly Mertens: It's like never fails.
• 4:06
  Polly Mertens: So the general topic I will call it is pain and pleasure, right?
• 4:11
  Polly Mertens: So in general, and I love this work from Tony says that we do things to avoid pain and move towards pleasure.
• 4:19
  Polly Mertens: And the bad news is we do a lot more to avoid pain than to move towards pleasure.
• 4:24
  Polly Mertens: So we're highly motivated by pain, somewhat motivated by pleasure, right?
• 4:28
  Polly Mertens: That's like we're, you know, like the stick is more powerful than the carrot, you might say.
• 4:33
  Polly Mertens: So um, everything we do is either to avoid those two, avoid or move towards, right?
• 4:39
  Polly Mertens: The brain will always work hard to avoid pain or to gain pleasure.
• 4:42
  Polly Mertens: So we don't move towards our dreams, we move away from our fears.
• 4:47
  Polly Mertens: Move away from our fears or what's uncomfortable or what our brain thinks could be painful or hard or stressful or cause it to use a lot of energy, right?
• 4:57
  Polly Mertens: It's like, nope, don't need to do that.
• 4:59
  Polly Mertens: So if you aren't moving, if you're not motivated, it's because you're associating more pain to the work than to saying the same.
• 5:07
  Polly Mertens: I'll give you some examples of this, but that's just the general idea.
• 5:10
  Polly Mertens: So, um, you know, in a recent example, I had I was talking to a client who was like, Yeah, can you tell me how to motivate my husband?
• 5:18
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, first off, that ain't ever gonna work.
• 5:21
  Polly Mertens: Like, you can't motivate other people, right?
• 5:25
  Polly Mertens: If he wants to do the work, if he's in enough pain, right, that's when things will shift, right?
• 5:31
  Polly Mertens: And you see this all the time, all I mean, in really disastrous lives where people are doing intensely painful things to themselves and the people around them, like drug addiction, alcohol addiction, you know, any kind of addictive behavior that has a grip on somebody, and the pain of it, whether it's being caused around them or the pain in their own life, unfortunately, it's not severe enough to get them out of it, right?
• 5:56
  Polly Mertens: Like it's giving them more pleasure or more certainty, or the brain is just like, you know what, this is all I know.
• 6:01
  Polly Mertens: Let's just keep doing this, right?
• 6:03
  Polly Mertens: So it hasn't associated enough pain with getting out of it.
• 6:07
  Polly Mertens: So we don't move towards our dreams, we move away from our fears or pain, right?
• 6:13
  Polly Mertens: So in this case, I said, well, there's probably two things.
• 6:16
  Polly Mertens: Well, there's three, there's multiple things going on when you have uh a friend or a loved one.
• 6:20
  Polly Mertens: And what's ironic about this, and I'll tell you in a moment, is um her own story, but you know, is he either doesn't have a compelling vision that he doesn't really care about, he's probably got a limiting belief that's holding him back like back, like I'm not worthy, uh, I don't think good things don't work out for me, or I'm not good enough, or something like why bother, right?
• 6:37
  Polly Mertens: So there's a limiting belief that keeps him from having a compelling vision of his potential or something that he wants in life.
• 6:43
  Polly Mertens: He's like, whatever, I'll just stay, let's say, average or comfortable, and not even that comfortable, right?
• 6:49
  Polly Mertens: Everybody's got a different definition of what comfort is, but his comfort zone is what he's he's trapped in, right?
• 6:55
  Polly Mertens: And so, unless you remove the limiting belief that allows him to see a compelling vision and you clear up, you know, whatever's in the way painfully and move him towards something that he wants, or you know, get the pain behind him so uncomfortable, right?
• 7:11
  Polly Mertens: Like he's comfortable, like, yeah, doing okay, you know, semi-retired, this person, you know, it's not painful enough, right?
• 7:21
  Polly Mertens: So here's the uh the the switch flip in that.
• 7:24
  Polly Mertens: So here's this client talking to me um about can you help me motivate my husband?
• 7:28
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, oh, okay, A, you can't do that, or whatever.
• 7:31
  Polly Mertens: And she's trying to like fix all the people around her.
• 7:33
  Polly Mertens: And then we got talking about, I was like, okay, so where are you on your, you know, I we did this process in return to the light.
• 7:39
  Polly Mertens: And it was like, look at your wheel of life and what areas of your life.
• 7:42
  Polly Mertens: And she says, Yeah.
• 7:44
  Polly Mertens: And I said, So which one or two are calling you?
• 7:46
  Polly Mertens: Like, what work do you really want to get up to this year?
• 7:48
  Polly Mertens: Or, you know, you want to put your focus and your energy towards.
• 7:52
  Polly Mertens: And it was like, oh, my spiritual devotion.
• 7:54
  Polly Mertens: So I'm not sure the religion, but there was something about prayers and practices and rituals and readings that she wanted to be doing, but wasn't.
• 8:02
  Polly Mertens: And she said about five minutes a day is all she does.
• 8:04
  Polly Mertens: I have a feeling that's suspect.
• 8:05
  Polly Mertens: I don't think that's even happening.
• 8:07
  Polly Mertens: Um, I think it's less than that.
• 8:08
  Polly Mertens: I think it's five minutes here and there.
• 8:10
  Polly Mertens: And then the other area was organizing her house, like her closets and her office, and um, you know, things were just like scattered and just disorganized, right?
• 8:21
  Polly Mertens: Um, and where she says that arose from is she had been a teacher and she was running, you know, businesses and you know, all this stuff.
• 8:29
  Polly Mertens: So there was no time for it.
• 8:31
  Polly Mertens: Well, come to find out, she retired two years ago and has no activities, like very little, you know, it's amazing what I can get, you know, find my find myself to get up to.
• 8:41
  Polly Mertens: And I was like, hmm.
• 8:43
  Polly Mertens: So not organizing her house instead.
• 8:47
  Polly Mertens: I was like, oh, so what else are you doing?
• 8:48
  Polly Mertens: Like, what are you, you know, what how do you occupy yourself now that you're retired and you don't have this, you know, job that she was driving.
• 8:55
  Polly Mertens: I forget it was quite a way, I want to say like 45 minutes away to work all day, come back 45 minutes, tired, la la la.
• 9:01
  Polly Mertens: Well, that, you know, left.
• 9:04
  Polly Mertens: They sold off a bunch of their property, so there's no more of that nonsense.
• 9:08
  Polly Mertens: And I'm just kind of trying to, you know, understand what what do you and and no like big hobbies, like going to the gym maybe three days a week, you know, this and that.
• 9:18
  Polly Mertens: And then you start to hear like all the amount of television watching and stuff.
• 9:21
  Polly Mertens: And I was not that, hey, that's up to you, right?
• 9:24
  Polly Mertens: I think television the boob tube um got its name for a reason, but just hearing there's lots of things, and it was all starting to come down to the phone, like, oh, I checked the weather and I, you know, these things on my phone, and I get into, and it was like started, I was like, oh, okay, this is this is where the dopamine is starting to bring pleasure of like, oh, I'll I'll distract, right?
• 9:45
  Polly Mertens: I'll distract and do this thing, instead of this, you know, the organizing and things like that.
• 9:51
  Polly Mertens: It's like sometimes it can look like a mountain depending on how big it is.
• 9:54
  Polly Mertens: And I had a client recently who, you know, hired a bunch of um organizers to come in and like take that burden off, right?
• 10:01
  Polly Mertens: Because it it can be if you if you aren't used to it, or if you don't have any help, it can be, you know, to your mind, this ginormous mountain, right?
• 10:09
  Polly Mertens: So we see the the bigness of it.
• 10:12
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, she checks the weather, looks at random stuff on her phone instead of having a house that feels good, living in a house that feels good to her, right?
• 10:23
  Polly Mertens: And why?
• 10:25
  Polly Mertens: It's because the immediate low-cost pleasure of picking up the phone and distracting with, you know, in this case, you know, social media or this or the weather, I was like, that's that's what you're doing instead of like having a home that feels good to you and for years, not just like, oh, you know, retired and now you know it's been 30 days or six months or a year, you know, you kind of decompress from that life.
• 10:49
  Polly Mertens: But now it's just like still not happening, right?
• 10:52
  Polly Mertens: And so that was interesting that looking externally at the motivations or the people in her life that weren't motivated, and yet right beneath her wings or right in front of her was an opportunity for her own lack of self-motivation or self-sabotaging, what she said she wanted to get up to.
• 11:08
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, um, you know, her brain, yeah, it's not to distract it, it's it's self-medicating, right?
• 11:16
  Polly Mertens: It's choosing the certain, those little tiny pleasures of screen time over the uncertain, like effort, right?
• 11:24
  Polly Mertens: The pleasure of a clean home, but ah, the road to get there, right?
• 11:28
  Polly Mertens: Or the pleasure of a connected soul from her devotions and the things that she says she wants, or the pain of like sitting down and actually doing it, right?
• 11:37
  Polly Mertens: Like to be in silence.
• 11:39
  Polly Mertens: And I think it's because we don't associate enough pleasure to what you can have, right?
• 11:44
  Polly Mertens: Like people who go to the gym for short term, they don't learn to associate enough pleasure with it.
• 11:50
  Polly Mertens: So I'll give you a couple examples.
• 11:52
  Polly Mertens: So, number one, I, you know, get up quite early in the morning and I do a morning ritual, and it includes meditation and um, you know, cards and and anyway, all this this little routine that I have that really feeds my soul, feeds my energy, gives me, you know, the the state, the energetic state, the emotional state that I want to go into my day.
• 12:14
  Polly Mertens: And yeah, there's a little sacrifices to that.
• 12:16
  Polly Mertens: I get up quite early, um, so I go to bed earlier, right?
• 12:19
  Polly Mertens: So I have been doing it long enough that I would not miss it, right?
• 12:24
  Polly Mertens: I I would miss it if I didn't do it.
• 12:26
  Polly Mertens: I would not miss it.
• 12:27
  Polly Mertens: I would not sacrifice, you know, going to bed late and miss that, right?
• 12:33
  Polly Mertens: Because I have felt and experienced over time.
• 12:35
  Polly Mertens: It's been years, probably like 10 years now or more, that I've been doing this, the beneficial effects of it, right?
• 12:42
  Polly Mertens: And it didn't happen like the first day or the second day, or even maybe the 30th, but you will get glimpses into why you're doing that thing, right?
• 12:50
  Polly Mertens: So if she wants that spiritual devotional, or for me, my morning rituals, you put aside the time, you you you sit in that space, you give yourself that time, you you know, have a date with yourself because it's feeding you.
• 13:02
  Polly Mertens: And over time it will grow and really serve you.
• 13:06
  Polly Mertens: In the beginning, it feels like effort because you have to carve out from other things, you're not doing the distractions, all these things that your brain is doing.
• 13:12
  Polly Mertens: And the other one is exercise, right?
• 13:14
  Polly Mertens: So, or movement in whatever form that looks like for you.
• 13:17
  Polly Mertens: Like Samantha and I talk about how like we can't not move.
• 13:21
  Polly Mertens: Like it's so I've been doing it for so many decades that too many days of not moving, it feels like, well, who is this, right?
• 13:30
  Polly Mertens: So there's an and there's all kinds of amazing days and highs and like great workouts and high fives, and like, ah, the the how proud you feel of taking good care of yourself, right?
• 13:42
  Polly Mertens: And nothing I would trade for that now.
• 13:44
  Polly Mertens: But it is like an arc of like getting into that space where instead of it feeling like a cost or a pain or an expense or a challenge, I move it into it's it's pleasure.
• 13:56
  Polly Mertens: It gives me energy, it makes me feel good about myself.
• 13:58
  Polly Mertens: I feel strong, I feel capable, I can do the things that I want to do in life.
• 14:02
  Polly Mertens: I have great immunity, you know, all sorts of things, right?
• 14:07
  Polly Mertens: So in the neuroscience world, they would call it neuroassociation, we wire pain to the very things that could save us, that would save us, right?
• 14:18
  Polly Mertens: So if you think organizing your office is painful, your amygdala will literally trigger a stress response to keep you away from it.
• 14:25
  Polly Mertens: All right.
• 14:26
  Polly Mertens: So you aren't procrastinating, you're experiencing like a biological bypass of your goals.
• 14:32
  Polly Mertens: It's like the brain's like, nope, nope.
• 14:35
  Polly Mertens: So it's like this, you know, thing you've gotta, you've gotta be aware of.
• 14:39
  Polly Mertens: And I'll give you some advice here and some ideas um on how to rewire that brain.
• 14:45
  Polly Mertens: Like, what are we basically what you've linked up in your brain, if you think of neuroassociation as like these um, they're like receptors in the brain that tie things together.
• 14:58
  Polly Mertens: They I say they sort of like find our memories, if you will.
• 15:01
  Polly Mertens: So if I have 10 memories of going to the gym and feeling fantastic and and like it really, like there's community there, there's like a good sweat I get on, there's you know, I feel good afterward.
• 15:14
  Polly Mertens: Like so many memories in my brain have these little uh dials turned, tuned into and turned on for exercise.
• 15:21
  Polly Mertens: If I think about going exercise, bing, I like hit all of those neuroassociations.
• 15:26
  Polly Mertens: Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, good, good, good.
• 15:28
  Polly Mertens: Pain sometimes, yeah, but more pleasure than pain.
• 15:32
  Polly Mertens: So what I've associated with working out by this time is is pleasure.
• 15:37
  Polly Mertens: And so what we associate in our mind, what we link up in our mind to pain or pleasure drives us emotionally, right?
• 15:45
  Polly Mertens: And we're very motivated.
• 15:49
  Polly Mertens: We're very um like the force within us of our emotions gets us to do things.
• 15:55
  Polly Mertens: The force of avoiding that pain will motivate us to self-sabotage if you know it's painful to, you know, you know, pick up all the stuff and organize it or go to the gym if we haven't done it before.
• 16:08
  Polly Mertens: It's like, why bother?
• 16:10
  Polly Mertens: It's cold out.
• 16:11
  Polly Mertens: It's now I gotta get out of bed and you know, all these things, right?
• 16:15
  Polly Mertens: So, what we're gonna talk about next is dopamine, the dopamine arena and what I'm calling a dopamine fast, right?
• 16:23
  Polly Mertens: So let's do a little dive into if you know what dopamine is or what you think it is.
• 16:27
  Polly Mertens: A lot of people think it's like this reward, like Pavlotus dog is like, Bing, I got the reward for, you know, um uh in Pavlotus Dog, it was like ringing the bell, right?
• 16:37
  Polly Mertens: And you get a treat, you get a treat.
• 16:39
  Polly Mertens: Well, it's it's actually the it's people think it's the molecule of pleasure, right?
• 16:44
  Polly Mertens: So like this hormone or this molecule of pleasure, but it's not.
• 16:47
  Polly Mertens: It's a molecule of anticipation and reward prediction, which is a little bit complicated, but it's the I want it molecule.
• 16:56
  Polly Mertens: It's like I want that, oh, uh, oh, right.
• 16:58
  Polly Mertens: Like it's anticipation.
• 16:59
  Polly Mertens: It's not the I like it or I like I feel good about it.
• 17:02
  Polly Mertens: It's like I it's the itch, it's not the scratch.
• 17:05
  Polly Mertens: So it's what gets us to do those things.
• 17:06
  Polly Mertens: It's like, mmm.
• 17:08
  Polly Mertens: Now, here's where this goes like insanely not good.
• 17:13
  Polly Mertens: The not good news is uh, you know, in you probably know in casinos, you know, slot machines are those little diabolical motherfuckers, man.
• 17:21
  Polly Mertens: Tech companies, um, in, you know, whether it's a slot machine or it's in your phone or these algorithms and stuff, they use something called variable ratio reinforcement.
• 17:32
  Polly Mertens: Fat fancy word to say it's the same logic logic in um, you know, the algorithms that they're doing these days as a Vegas slot machine, right?
• 17:41
  Polly Mertens: And your brain releases more dopamine when the reward is uncertain.
• 17:47
  Polly Mertens: Like scrolling for a good post, like pink, pink, pink, you know, like TikTok, great example, slot machine, basically a slot machine.
• 17:53
  Polly Mertens: So if you are in that rut, just know um that's what's what's going on here.
• 17:58
  Polly Mertens: You aren't checking your phone for information, right?
• 18:00
  Polly Mertens: You're not like, oh, I'm here to see what's going on in the world.
• 18:04
  Polly Mertens: You're pulling the liver on a neurotical, neurochemical slot machine.
• 18:10
  Polly Mertens: Mic drop.
• 18:11
  Polly Mertens: Like, oh my goodness.
• 18:12
  Polly Mertens: If more people realize that's what's going on, right?
• 18:16
  Polly Mertens: The days of Instagram and Facebook, originally like connecting with friends and community and stuff like that, you're now trapped in, you know, reward dopamine um slot machine.
• 18:27
  Polly Mertens: And it's and it sucks because here's why.
• 18:30
  Polly Mertens: So for every high of cheap dopamine, scrolling or you know, whatever you're doing, most likely people these days, scrolling is like the number one, your brain creates a proportional dopamine trough.
• 18:44
  Polly Mertens: Okay, so the dip below your baseline where you feel restless, anxious, and bored, like this is why you feel worse after an hour of Instagram than before you started or TikTok, whatever.
• 18:55
  Polly Mertens: Choose your poison, right?
• 18:56
  Polly Mertens: So this dopamine trough is like, man, you know, like you do it for an hour and then you you need more, right?
• 19:03
  Polly Mertens: It's kind of like an addictive um heroin, right?
• 19:06
  Polly Mertens: Like you need more just to get to the baseline of what it brought you as a high, right?
• 19:11
  Polly Mertens: So you now spend more time or you just feel worse and worse, right?
• 19:15
  Polly Mertens: So one way, if that's something that's invaded your life and and and is you know running and how you're self-sabotaging, and this could apply in other areas, but it's a really big one right now in our culture.
• 19:27
  Polly Mertens: So I wanted to touch upon it.
• 19:29
  Polly Mertens: So a dopamine fast, and I know some people may have not a great association with the word fast or fasting, but it's like a cleansing, right?
• 19:39
  Polly Mertens: So you need to cleanse the body's, you know, it's like cleansing or detoxing after heroin or, you know, this addiction, right?
• 19:47
  Polly Mertens: This dopamine addiction.
• 19:49
  Polly Mertens: So it's to reset that threshold.
• 19:52
  Polly Mertens: So you do a dopamine fast, trying to reset the threshold of what your body needs to feel good and be, you know, excited or motivated, if you will.
• 20:04
  Polly Mertens: And when you flood your system with high intensity cheap dopamine, the deep dopamine uh, you know, of a of a sunset or a prayer or a focused hour of work or connecting with loved ones, it's like boring in comparison.
• 20:19
  Polly Mertens: Like why life starts to look a little dull, a little gray.
• 20:22
  Polly Mertens: You're like, I'll go back to my phone, right?
• 20:24
  Polly Mertens: Cheap, instant high.
• 20:25
  Polly Mertens: You think so, but it's actually doing the opposite.
• 20:29
  Polly Mertens: It's like fast food instead of, you know, no nourishment there.
• 20:32
  Polly Mertens: No nourishment there.
• 20:33
  Polly Mertens: Out in the real world, yes, with people and beauty and nature and connecting with your loved ones.
• 20:38
  Polly Mertens: That's where, you know, mineral-rich, you know, nutrient-rich, consciousness-rich, emotionally rich value is going to come from.
• 20:47
  Polly Mertens: So honestly, you know, a dopamine fast, it's not about avoiding pleasure.
• 20:52
  Polly Mertens: Like, I don't want to give you the idea of like, you know, that's not it.
• 20:56
  Polly Mertens: Like, it's just to reset it.
• 20:59
  Polly Mertens: It's like to bring you back out of this trough where your levels of what you need to feel good reset.
• 21:06
  Polly Mertens: It's about starving that craving, yes, right?
• 21:09
  Polly Mertens: So that your brain can actually feel the subtle joys of life again, right?
• 21:14
  Polly Mertens: It takes about 30 days, right?
• 21:16
  Polly Mertens: So depending on how long you've been doing it, right?
• 21:18
  Polly Mertens: So I remember when TikTok came out and I was like, oh, this looks fun, you know.
• 21:21
  Polly Mertens: So I went on it, and in two weeks, I could already see, like I was thinking about TikTok.
• 21:26
  Polly Mertens: I was like, oh, hold up, this thing needs to come off my phone.
• 21:30
  Polly Mertens: This is not, no, you don't control me.
• 21:32
  Polly Mertens: You don't, you know, I'm not gonna be like this Pavlov dog to this phone or this app.
• 21:38
  Polly Mertens: Heck no.
• 21:40
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, it was easy for me because I you know two weeks and I hadn't seen, I haven't looked at it very much.
• 21:45
  Polly Mertens: But depending on how consistent you are about it, if you have a little routine, whether it's before bed or you wake up in the morning or anywhere you're waiting in line and that's what you do, you're you're falling into that trap, right?
• 21:56
  Polly Mertens: You're falling into that trough of dopamine.
• 21:59
  Polly Mertens: So really just like I know some people like deleting that from your phone, you would never do it.
• 22:06
  Polly Mertens: Okay, well, just like make it off limits, right?
• 22:09
  Polly Mertens: Or set a you know, three-minute limit.
• 22:12
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, I would just say it's easier to not do it than to try and limit.
• 22:16
  Polly Mertens: Oh, I'll just do it for three minutes, right?
• 22:18
  Polly Mertens: Um, and I have set mine so like five minutes, like I'll be posting something, and then it comes on, it's like, oh, you've reached your five-minute daily limit.
• 22:24
  Polly Mertens: And then I'm like, oh shoot, I gotta get this post up.
• 22:26
  Polly Mertens: Um, but you can do that also, right?
• 22:28
  Polly Mertens: And just be like, oh shoot, there I go, down the roller coaster, the slot machine of social media.
• 22:34
  Polly Mertens: So just wanted to share that with you.
• 22:36
  Polly Mertens: So let's talk about like how to, how to move out of this like low-value pleasure into high vibe fulfillment, my friends.
• 22:45
  Polly Mertens: Like like doing something that actually is fulfilling, like good, like you working with your body, working with your mind, working with your soul to feed it what it needs, not this cheap ass, you know, fast food of you know, pleasure out there.
• 23:00
  Polly Mertens: So let's call it a pain-pleasure audit, right?
• 23:04
  Polly Mertens: So depending on where you are.
• 23:05
  Polly Mertens: So this was, you know, in conversation, you know, I'm a coach, and so in conversation with a client, just pokey around and seeing what she's doing, not doing, wants to be doing, isn't doing, or is doing, wants to cut back on, right?
• 23:16
  Polly Mertens: Like you want to do this with yourself, basically.
• 23:19
  Polly Mertens: So, like, what what is not, what are you not getting up to?
• 23:22
  Polly Mertens: Where are you already self-sabotaging in your life?
• 23:25
  Polly Mertens: Where are you already um avoiding something or not changing something that's becoming more painful, but maybe isn't painful enough?
• 23:33
  Polly Mertens: But you know, you're just like, hmm.
• 23:35
  Polly Mertens: So the question is, is what pain have I associated with my goals, the things that I say that I want?
• 23:40
  Polly Mertens: Studying, you know, devotionals or um uh getting up to something in life, starting your business, creating something newly, going out and looking for a new relationship, new friends, um, or in her case, organizing your house, right?
• 23:53
  Polly Mertens: Like, I want to have an organized house.
• 23:55
  Polly Mertens: Okay, so what pain have you associated with that, right?
• 23:58
  Polly Mertens: And what pleasure am I getting from distractions?
• 24:01
  Polly Mertens: Or what else, what else am I prioritizing?
• 24:04
  Polly Mertens: Where, where, where, what am I making more important?
• 24:07
  Polly Mertens: I'm getting pleasure from somewhere else that's pulling me away from having this thing that I say that I want, right?
• 24:13
  Polly Mertens: So there's an imbalance there.
• 24:14
  Polly Mertens: There's pain associated with what you want, your goal, or the thing that you say that you want, or your intent.
• 24:19
  Polly Mertens: So first, you might even just evaluate do you really want that thing?
• 24:23
  Polly Mertens: And second, if if there is, you know, not everything comes to us for free.
• 24:28
  Polly Mertens: So there's a little bit of cost or energy, you know, for it, right?
• 24:33
  Polly Mertens: So to have that clean house, you do some things, right?
• 24:36
  Polly Mertens: For for example, maybe more in the beginning because you've been avoiding it, but then you can maintain it.
• 24:41
  Polly Mertens: And the same with lifestyle, right?
• 24:42
  Polly Mertens: Like if you have uh an unhealthy body, it's harder to get it back to health than to maintain it, you know, at health.
• 24:50
  Polly Mertens: So what pain are you associating with your goals?
• 24:52
  Polly Mertens: That's the first question.
• 24:53
  Polly Mertens: And what pleasure are you associating to something else, the distractions?
• 24:57
  Polly Mertens: And so, likely, um, yeah, if you're you know, if you're associating pain with having an organized house, like what is it you really want for that?
• 25:06
  Polly Mertens: Like, do you like do you just say that you want this or do you really want this?
• 25:10
  Polly Mertens: Like sometimes not having a clear enough vision or why of why you want this.
• 25:16
  Polly Mertens: Like for me, like having an organized house is like a must.
• 25:19
  Polly Mertens: Like my brain in a disorganized house is like not a happy place for Polly to live in.
• 25:24
  Polly Mertens: So, yes, we have an organized house and all those things.
• 25:27
  Polly Mertens: Good old Virgo.
• 25:29
  Polly Mertens: Um, my brain likes it when things are put away and and I like, you know, organization.
• 25:34
  Polly Mertens: So I I somewhat naturally, but also I've trained myself to see the pleasure in or you know, the pain of my mind seeing all the distraction and all that.
• 25:45
  Polly Mertens: It's like, oh, nope.
• 25:47
  Polly Mertens: You know, my threshold for that is is at a different level, right?
• 25:50
  Polly Mertens: Our tolerances for what where that pain is, right?
• 25:53
  Polly Mertens: And I spoke about in the beginning.
• 25:56
  Polly Mertens: Well, I'll say one thing.
• 25:57
  Polly Mertens: So I, you know, had to share with this client, like, put it in her face.
• 26:01
  Polly Mertens: I was like, your husband's not in enough pain to like have things change, very comfortable, and you're not in enough pain to do anything about this, right?
• 26:11
  Polly Mertens: So you've either got to create pain, you've got to associate higher levels of pain with not doing it to get yourself to do it.
• 26:18
  Polly Mertens: So um with the next thing I want to share with you is neuroassociative conditioning.
• 26:24
  Polly Mertens: Um, I don't know if you've heard this before.
• 26:26
  Polly Mertens: We talked about those little um receptors in our brain, like these memories, the things that you've linked pain and pleasure to.
• 26:33
  Polly Mertens: You you you've gotta, you must make staying the same unbearable, like massive pain or enough pain to overcome the brain's resistance to the hurdle to getting to doing something about it, right?
• 26:46
  Polly Mertens: So make the inaction hurt more than the action.
• 26:50
  Polly Mertens: Like, oh man, you know, and you can do this in different ways.
• 26:54
  Polly Mertens: You can talk about it, journal about it.
• 26:56
  Polly Mertens: Just like you can um, you know, like get leverage on yourself.
• 27:02
  Polly Mertens: That's one of these that I've done before, you know, it's like ah, get myself like the the the impetus, right?
• 27:06
  Polly Mertens: So like it wasn't painful enough.
• 27:08
  Polly Mertens: So I like, for example, I had this one time I was this phone call I uh was intending to make, but it was it felt painful.
• 27:16
  Polly Mertens: It was like, oh, it's gonna be awkward, uncomfortable.
• 27:18
  Polly Mertens: I was putting it off.
• 27:20
  Polly Mertens: And then the leverage I got on myself is I said, okay, told my friends, my mastermind group, if I if I don't make this phone call, I'm gonna write a hundred dollar check to an opposing political party.
• 27:29
  Polly Mertens: And I hate, like, that was that was painful.
• 27:33
  Polly Mertens: That was some pain, you know.
• 27:35
  Polly Mertens: Like, how else was I gonna get to it?
• 27:36
  Polly Mertens: Like, oh, I'll just keep not doing it, right?
• 27:39
  Polly Mertens: But I got leverage on myself to fix like the inaction of not doing that thing was more painful.
• 27:45
  Polly Mertens: Like having to write that check was like, wow, this is so against my values.
• 27:50
  Polly Mertens: That's what worked for me, right?
• 27:51
  Polly Mertens: But what works for you could be different.
• 27:53
  Polly Mertens: But you've got to get that leverage, gotta get that.
• 27:55
  Polly Mertens: Um, staying the same is unbearable to you, or you know, or at least motivating enough to get it started.
• 28:03
  Polly Mertens: And then you've got to, you know, keep the rewards depending on how big of a mountain you're up to.
• 28:08
  Polly Mertens: So I just want to say one more thing uh about the dopamine.
• 28:12
  Polly Mertens: So there's this thing in theory with, you know, the the I think you should do like a full detox, full fast of social media, you know, for 30 days to reset the dopamine, but at least, you know, to help you with your baseline is like no high intensity dopamine, you know, after a certain hour at night.
• 28:31
  Polly Mertens: I would say like by sunset, right?
• 28:33
  Polly Mertens: So like, and I don't mean that sunset in summer, I mean like 7 p.m., let's say, right?
• 28:38
  Polly Mertens: 6 p.m., 7 p.m.
• 28:39
  Polly Mertens: So that your body has an opportunity to not be wired by that.
• 28:45
  Polly Mertens: I'm I'm a big fan though on the full detox.
• 28:47
  Polly Mertens: So just so just saying, like I love like cut it off.
• 28:50
  Polly Mertens: There's no questioning it.
• 28:52
  Polly Mertens: There's no like, oh, can I do five more minutes?
• 28:54
  Polly Mertens: You know, it's like, nope, just don't do that thing, right?
• 28:57
  Polly Mertens: All right, so let's talk about some you know concrete actionable steps that you can get up to.
• 29:03
  Polly Mertens: So these are some like being a leader in your life, self-leadership for the next seven days.
• 29:09
  Polly Mertens: So one, you know, this client was like checking the weather, you know, the loophole.
• 29:14
  Polly Mertens: So, like, what is your specific random ass distraction?
• 29:18
  Polly Mertens: Like, identify it.
• 29:20
  Polly Mertens: Like, what are you doing instead of that thing that you say that you want?
• 29:23
  Polly Mertens: And you got you might have to like put it all out there in front of yourself.
• 29:26
  Polly Mertens: You might be hiding it, hiding it from yourself.
• 29:29
  Polly Mertens: You know, like I had to make it clear to her.
• 29:31
  Polly Mertens: I go, oh, so you're you don't have an organized house because you're checking the weather.
• 29:38
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 29:39
  Polly Mertens: Like, you know, like having someone reflect it back to her was like, yeah, wow.
• 29:45
  Polly Mertens: You know, like shit, I say I want this thing.
• 29:48
  Polly Mertens: Like, sounds kind of dumb, you know, at at the time, right?
• 29:52
  Polly Mertens: It's like, hmm, okay.
• 29:54
  Polly Mertens: So you're aware of it, right?
• 29:55
  Polly Mertens: So that's 50% of it.
• 29:56
  Polly Mertens: It's just being aware of like what else are you giving your attention to, giving your energy to, prioritizing over that thing that you say that you want.
• 30:04
  Polly Mertens: And then, you know, lowering your pain threshold, right?
• 30:08
  Polly Mertens: So a five-minute rule.
• 30:10
  Polly Mertens: Tell your brain we are only cleaning for five minutes, you know, like if or doing your devotional for five minutes, like get it started, right?
• 30:16
  Polly Mertens: So in habits, don't go for the one hour meditating or I'm gonna tackle this whole cleaning project today, you know, eight hours of cleaning.
• 30:25
  Polly Mertens: Your amygdala will be like, uh, that's danger.
• 30:28
  Polly Mertens: Uh no, prefrontal cortex.
• 30:31
  Polly Mertens: You know, like they will be at odds.
• 30:33
  Polly Mertens: So your prefrontal cortex needs to take the lead.
• 30:35
  Polly Mertens: The captain needs to be, you know, self-leadership here is like just start with, okay, you know what?
• 30:41
  Polly Mertens: We're gonna do it for five minutes a day, just so that you start feeding that.
• 30:44
  Polly Mertens: And then those little small wins will stack and build up.
• 30:47
  Polly Mertens: Next, future self-visualization.
• 30:50
  Polly Mertens: So, like, and I'm a big fan of adding not only visualizing it, but emotionalizing it, right?
• 30:55
  Polly Mertens: So, like getting pleasure from that thing happening in your life, or you having that outcome.
• 31:00
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, every morning, maybe morning and night, if you want to like speed this up, two minutes of feeling the pleasure of the completed task.
• 31:07
  Polly Mertens: Like, how does it feel when you walk in your office and like things are nice and organized?
• 31:11
  Polly Mertens: Like I can tell you from having a client who did this with, you know, organizing her housing cleanup.
• 31:16
  Polly Mertens: Like I said, so how does it feel to be in your house?
• 31:18
  Polly Mertens: And it was like, oh my God.
• 31:20
  Polly Mertens: It was like she wanted to move out of her house.
• 31:22
  Polly Mertens: She was so, you know, just overwhelmed by it.
• 31:25
  Polly Mertens: And it was like, you know, taking her, taking over her house.
• 31:29
  Polly Mertens: And now she's like, oh my God, it's like a thing.
• 31:31
  Polly Mertens: She's like, oh, I feel so good sitting, and then I have a new space, and then this and this.
• 31:35
  Polly Mertens: And it was like, like all those real experiences of fulfillment in her body instead of the, you know, the pain of looking at all that stuff.
• 31:43
  Polly Mertens: So visualizing your future self, your outcome that you want, and raise the level of the pleasure, right?
• 31:51
  Polly Mertens: So we're trying to make it more painful to not take or more painful to stay in action and more pleasurable to take action.
• 32:00
  Polly Mertens: And fourth, create an environment of inevitability, right?
• 32:04
  Polly Mertens: So habits, love, low traction, right?
• 32:07
  Polly Mertens: Like low resistance.
• 32:08
  Polly Mertens: So if you want to, you know, have a devotion every day, put the book on your pillow, right?
• 32:14
  Polly Mertens: Put the phone in another room.
• 32:16
  Polly Mertens: Stop testing your willpower and start designing your success.
• 32:19
  Polly Mertens: Start winning in your life, start setting yourself up for success against this little noggin in your head that's gonna, you know, want to take you out.
• 32:27
  Polly Mertens: That self-sabotaging, it's avoiding, it's avoiding pain and going towards pleasure.
• 32:32
  Polly Mertens: So you've got to rewire that.
• 32:34
  Polly Mertens: So just know that you aren't a victim of your biology, like all this stuff, like you don't have to be at a fact of your brain, right?
• 32:44
  Polly Mertens: You are the architect of your neurochemistry.
• 32:46
  Polly Mertens: Some people don't quite realize, like you can get in there and rewire it.
• 32:50
  Polly Mertens: Like your beliefs are not fixed, they're only as strong as you allow them to be and allow them to have you know continued um say dominion over you, right?
• 33:02
  Polly Mertens: Take back dominion of your bul what's going on in your mind, reprogram the stuff that's up there, clean house, get it pristine, you know, you know, put pleasure in the pleasure towards the things that you want and increase the pain of the things, the inaction or the things that you don't want.
• 33:19
  Polly Mertens: That pain pleasure, it's so damn motivating.
• 33:23
  Polly Mertens: Like if you increase the pleasure of something that you want and and and simultaneously like increase the pleasure of avoiding, you know, like moving away from, you will get yourself in freaking act, you will be unstoppable, right?
• 33:37
  Polly Mertens: So, as I said in the beginning, pain, avoiding pain is way more motivating than going towards pleasure, surprise.
• 33:44
  Polly Mertens: Um, yeah, I know that one surprised me too.
• 33:47
  Polly Mertens: But look at it in your own life.
• 33:49
  Polly Mertens: Tell me if these things, you know, really resonate for you.
• 33:51
  Polly Mertens: Is that is that true for you?
• 33:53
  Polly Mertens: So, and I would say the one thing takeaway from this is you are not, you do not have to be the mercy of your mind.
• 34:01
  Polly Mertens: You are choosing things.
• 34:02
  Polly Mertens: First step is that awareness, like what in your life are like how this might be running you behind the scenes and what you can do about it.
• 34:09
  Polly Mertens: So take back dominion, self-leadership, self-coaching, like adjust things, like get after this.
• 34:16
  Polly Mertens: If you matter, those things that you want, those things like self-sabotage does not have to be, you do not have to continue self-sabotaging yourself.
• 34:24
  Polly Mertens: You know enough now from hearing this to do something about it.
• 34:28
  Polly Mertens: So, not that it won't ever happen again, but at least you know what it takes to get yourself out of it.
• 34:33
  Polly Mertens: So if you are self-sabotaging yourself, that ratio of pain and pleasure is out of whack.
• 34:38
  Polly Mertens: So get awareness on how it's running your life and do something about it.
• 34:43
  Polly Mertens: You may need some external support, a coaching accountability.
• 34:45
  Polly Mertens: That's one of the things I gave to this client is I was like, Well, can you have an accountability buddy to, you know, that's in your prayer group to like tell them that you're gonna do this thing so that you can hold hold you to account while you're putting the training wheels on your new habit, your new direction that you say you're going into.
• 35:02
  Polly Mertens: Because that brain, it likes the you know, it's going for energy efficiency, it will go back.
• 35:07
  Polly Mertens: So I hope this has been helpful to you.
• 35:10
  Polly Mertens: Please uh share with us, you know, on social media or like, subscribe, tell us what you thought of this.
• 35:16
  Polly Mertens: I really appreciate you guys tuning in.
• 35:18
  Polly Mertens: Hope this uh episode on self-tappage self sabotage.
• 35:21
  Polly Mertens: And we are not here to be average, we are here to be awesome.
• 35:24
  Polly Mertens: So I want to remind you how your life feels is more important than how it looks.
• 35:29
  Polly Mertens: And every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.