Today, we dive deep into a topic that many of us struggle with—self-sabotage. Whether it's the fear of failure or success, battling low self-worth, or the relentless pursuit of perfection, these hurdles can block our path to a healthier lifestyle. But don't worry, we're here to tackle them together!
This episode explores why self-sabotage happens and, more importantly, how to overcome it. We'll look at the psychological and emotional roots of self-sabotage and offer practical strategies to break free from these self-imposed barriers.
This episode is packed with insights and actionable advice to help you break free from self-sabotage and embrace a healthier, more fulfilling life.
So grab your favorite beverage, find a cozy spot, and join me for this empowering discussion. Let's journey together towards a life where self-sabotage no longer stands in our way!
Remember, you are worthy of health and happiness, and together, we can make it happen. Tune in now!
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0:00
You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills and the insights and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life, that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started.
0:33
Hello, friends, welcome to episode 368 have better than before breast cancer with me, Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach, I am so excited to be here. I'm recording this actually, I'm recording several podcasts early. So they'll all come out when I am gone on vacation. And this podcast will be the last one to come out. Before I leave to Maldives for a healing retreat hosted by Dr. Nisha winners, and her amazing team at the metabolic Training Institute of Health. It's literally a dream come true. It is it's so huge. And I have put a tremendous amount of work behind manifesting this trip. I'm so excited not only to go to learn about all the things, even more things that I can do to support my ability to heal, but to be able to bring back this expertise as information in this experience and share it with you. And then I get to go and share the whole experience with my youngest sister and my husband. So it is I just I'm tingling all over just talking about it. I'm so incredibly excited for this trip. And for all the knowledge that I'm going to get being there for I'll be gone for 10 days, so excited. And that kind of ties in with what we're going to talk about on today's show. I would say that the last two weeks in my business have been kind of a 5050. I often share here on the show themes that I witnessed that I see people kind of going through similar challenges or processes at similar times. And I'd say over this past couple of weeks that what I've seen is kind of half and half. On the one hand, I have been celebrating incredible breakthroughs and successes with many of my clients. And I mean, just I've shared before on the show that I feel like doing the work that I do is part of my healing experience. Because when I get to support somebody, and I see them making healthy lifestyle changes, mental, emotional, physical, all the things that get them to these points where they have and they witness success for themselves, or they feel a shift for themselves. I mean, I can't even explain that experience for me, it is really an honor to get to be a part of that and to witness that for one of my clients. And when it's happening. I just feel it all over. Like when I'm talking about going to Mel D, I just feel this tingling all over like, Wow, I can't believe this is what I get to do for a living. This is amazing, right? It is incredible. And on the flip side of that is when I'm working with clients, and I see them self sabotaging over and over and over. Right? It's really, it's, it's it's challenging to watch because I so want to be able to be like, I don't know, what would you call it like some fantasy movie, like, I want to be able to say, hey, step back for a sec. Let me open door number two, and show you this from a different viewpoint, right? If I could just run a movie to show them what's being created in their life, because of whatever's behind what's driving the self sabotage, and help them get a breakthrough faster. I would love to be able to do that. But it is not how it works. But self sabotage is a big deal. And I definitely have gone through those times for myself and my plan, Why think? Why am I doing this to myself. And I see that I'm doing something that undermines maybe my nutrition plan, or I got to tell you lately, you know, with everything going on in the world, and I did a show a couple of weeks ago about taking a mental health break. And I'm married to a man who is very interested in keeping up to date on politics. And I don't have to say politics is just full of controversy and anger and all kinds of stuff right now. That's not lovely. And I noticed the other morning I was walking on the beach and I realized, oh my gosh, I'm out here in this beautiful space where I want to be where it's definitely part of my healing plan. I have my feet in the ocean of the sunshine on my face. I'm smelling this amazing ocean. And I'm thinking about politics. What the heck right I did catch myself and go look because I started feeling like I don't know a little anxious Just as if I was stressing about something, I'm thinking, Am I forgetting something? Is my timing Okay? Am I off schedule? Is there something else I need to be doing? And I realized it was because of where my head was at. And so even in that scenario, we can do things to sabotage our own happiness, our own peace of mind. And I really deliberately had to intentionally say to myself, Okay, we're gonna let this go. All right, no more, no more running these Netflix movies on political commentaries in my head, right? I don't want that in my head. And especially not in this moment. That's my time out here on the beach, on my walk. This is not what I want. And so it's really important that when things like that happen, we do have to become aware of when we are sabotaging ourselves, even subconsciously sometimes right and wasn't intentionally doing that. But I caught my mind caught up in it right and said, No, we're pulling back here, this is not working. This is not helping me at all. So when it comes to other things, and there's lots of reasons I think, a really big point I want to make about self sabotage is that most people that I talked to us, we're working through something, they may be doing that sabotaging their plan to support themselves. And sometimes it's supporting themselves through making changes in their nutrition program. Sometimes it's through improving their sleep hygiene. Sometimes it's through supporting themselves financially and making financial choices for themselves, and seeing kind of a light at the end of the tunnel, and then sabotaging themselves. And so often, I hear, I need to have more willpower, right, I need to be better at stopping myself. And I would venture to say that I don't think it's willpower. I really, really don't. Do we have to get better at catching ourselves? Yes. As the story I just shared with you like it's important to catch yourself, it's important to see and understand when you're sabotaging yourself. So I was working with someone last week, and she was telling me certain actions that she was taking. And she was working towards a goal and she was taking different actions. And I asked her, Why are you choosing to sabotage yourself that way? And she says, You know, I don't know. And I said, Okay, so we're gonna, let's pretend right? So we just kind of play with if you didn't know, what would you tell me? What do you think? What are some guesses? So one of the things that's really important is one being aware of the choices you're making and that you are participating in self sabotage. But the second thing is to get really curious about it and really question yourself. So I started thinking about this. And I started thinking, I know that it is not about willpower, right? I mean, there's some discipline, like we have to regulate ourselves. But I think that the really powerful things that drive self sabotage, that there's a lot more, so I went to chat GPT. And I asked Chad GBT, if you're not familiar with, and it's an AI program, and I asked him, What are the reasons that people might engage in self sabotage. And you know what, I got a really big list and not a single one was willpower. Let me tell you some of the things on that list. Fear of failure, or success, that is a big one. And I'm going to come back and talk about that one. comfort zones, also a big one. And I think that ties into the fear, we're comfortable with habits and routines we have now. And it's scary to think about change, lack of self worth, this is a big one, which I'm also going to touch on. Because honestly, I think that lack of self worth and fear of failure or success are two of the most common ones that I see driving self sabotage. Immediate gratification was another one emotional coping mechanism, definitely one social influence. So pressure from your peers, your family, cultural norms, whatever people say, I do it this way, instead of that way, lack of knowledge or resources, right? Sometimes we don't realize that we have those resources or support available to us to make better choices. And I talk about this a lot. This is why it's so important that if you want to create change in life, in my opinion, it's so important if you want to create change in any aspect of your life, that you reach out and get help with that. Whether it is a trusted friend, a coach, a therapist, a count any of these things, because we want to make change. But we only have the tools that we brought along with us so far in life that we've so far that we've accumulated, and if the tools we've accumulated so far aren't facilitating change, or at least in the way that we want to, we've got to get some new tools. And it's so helpful and so important to reach out and get outside input on what those tools could be some new ideas and more knowledge. and direction and references to resources can be so important. Perfectionism was another one I've been I've said this on the show before, if I could just delete the word perfection from our vocabulary, love would be awesome. Like, because it doesn't exist. And it is something that I often hear well, I'm a perfectionist, I'm a perfectionist says to me, I tell myself, everything I do has to be perfect. But perfect doesn't exist. And therefore, I set an unrealistic expectation and goal that I can never achieve, and constantly let myself down. That is perfectionism. In my brain. When I hear that, right, we're setting ourselves up for failure, because we will never achieve perfectionism. This reminds me, I have a son who is an artist, very talented painter, a very talented tattoo artist. And when he was going through his degree program, he did a fine arts degree program. And his focus was painting. And it was never good enough. I'm trying to remember when he graduated, I want to say it was 2018 or 19, something like that. And to this day, he is still working on some of the paintings he did when he was in college working on his degree, they're just never perfect. And, you know, I think artists are really hard on themselves to begin with, at least that's been my experience. And most artists that I've met really hard on themselves, but it's just they get to the point where like, good enough, or I like it like that. But when I talk to my son, and I hear him critique the work that he does, or other times when I work with people who are artists, and it's just it's never enough, and then they'll call themselves perfectionist. And then I understand why there's so much stress and mental pressure in that field. Right? Because perfection, it just doesn't exist, right? Another reason Chad GPT gave me and people self sabotage is unresolved trauma. And I think that's a really big one that we don't realize, that are conditioned thinking that unresolved, even if it's little T traumas, and emotional issues, really do manifest themselves in self sabotaging behaviors. And so again, getting external help for that. And I know that's a big deal, because I have clients say that to me, I have clients say to me, I get triggered by that. Or I remember this being said, or this being done. And then that triggers me, these are past emotional traumas that are unresolved. So when we come up against something like that, it isn't the Yes, I had. And I'm just going to use nutrition because it's an easy example. Yes, I had this meal plan for the day. And yet, I ended up going to McDonald's and following it up with a trip to the ice cream store. And I just don't have the willpower, right? Or because something was said to me, that triggered me emotionally. And so I went and I did this. And it again, it's a good place to start, because now you have awareness. But once you have awareness, that's just your key that the next step is to get help and understanding how to process and resolve that. Because until we work through it, if we recognize it, that doesn't help us heal all the time. Right, recognizing it and processing it and understanding it from a different way. So that it if it happens again in the future, doesn't send you straight to the Ben and Jerry's calendar is very important. And I know in my family, I know with a lot of people that I work with a lot of friends that I have that this is a very big driver in change unresolved emotional issues. And as I talked about in the show at the time, you've got to love yourself and value yourself. If you want to make positive change in your life, because it takes a lot of work to make positive change. And if you don't love yourself, you won't put that amount of effort into the work. And then a 10th one that Chet Chibita gave me was lack of motivation, right? That it's work. And I hear this all the time. It's work it's effort, and you're right, it is. And we sometimes lose sight of why we want to get to the goal, why we want to be healthy, and how easy it is and our thoughts about falling backwards on old conditioned habits and beliefs. But I want to go back and touch on two of these 10 reasons. Again, none of which are willpower to remind us that maybe when you catch yourself wanting to make change, and you notice that you are self sabotaging that you don't allow yourself to take that easy way out of the willpower excuse of the discipline. Right or you didn't hear me say discipline in any of this right mode. Vacation is very different from discipline. So I think that this is important to realize that if you get your brain off and this, you just don't have the willpower, you just don't have the discipline to dig a little deeper, right, let's, let's release that excuse. And I want to touch on two that I said, were really important, because I would say these are the most common ones that I see, I see all of these Absolutely. But fear of failure and fear of success are huge. And I think that they tie a lot into this perfectionism. I hear a lot, I don't want to do it, because it might not work. And I don't want to let myself down. I'm afraid to fail. Right. And I think it's a little easier for people to admit they're afraid to fail than it is that they're afraid to succeed. And I remember the first time when I started understanding the real fear of success, because I thought about that, and I can remember I was in a mastermind, I was learning how to do an online business. And it came up, and I thought, who's afraid of succeeding. And I still hear talk like this a lot from other people, you know, who are coaches who are entrepreneurs. But people often are afraid to succeed. Because if we succeed, then we change. And we know this, right? So let's say that I go from having again, I'm going to use nutrition, because it is the easiest example, let's say that I go from having a lifestyle of eating processed food of going out all the time. And I decided to change and have a whole food diet, to cook more at home, and to really take care of myself. And let's say I take that even to the next level and say I want to be in nutritional ketosis, I'm going to carb restrict, maybe even give up alcohol or make it very, very random to have a drink. But your partner in life, that's just not the way you two have had this routine. So people become very afraid if I change too much, will this person still love me? Will they still think I'm fun? Will they want to be with me hang out. And this extends to friends and family members as well. So that kind of ties in the social pressure aspect of it, right. But we definitely oftentimes have this fear, even when it comes to money. So there are many occasions where I'm coaching a client. And we're coaching on a money mindset. Because this person wants to adopt a more abundant money mindset to move forward and aspect of their life or be able to just live a different lifestyle. And they get motivated. And they'll start to take steps. And they'll start to see change, and then immediately pull back into something that sabotages themselves. And as we work through it, realize that, that that fear comes in of well, who will I be, you know, if I do do that, and it looks like it's going well, and when I started going down that path, stuff started coming to me. And then I got scared, because it was going to change my life. And maybe even, it would demand more energy and time from me. Right. And so it gets scary. So the fear of failure and the fear of success, I think are equally powerful. And it's important for you to consider whether or not that is something that prevents you or prevents you from living the life you want to be living from achieving what you want to achieve. Or if it's something that keeps you in the loop of self sabotage. And then the second one I want to touch on is the sense of self worth. Because when I dig deeper with clients in this area of self sabotage, in this happens when we see that success on the horizon, no pull back, or come up with some reason they will self sabotage. And as we start to explore that will often get down to the core, and the core. And the root of the problem is I don't think I deserve it. I don't really believe in myself enough. I don't believe I'm worthy of that. I don't believe I did enough to deserve it to deserve really good health, to deserve access to really good food, definitely to deserve more money in their life to deserve a happier relationship all around. And this comes back to the unresolved trauma. Right? The I don't feel worthy. Every time I see it is linked to some unresolved trauma, something that an authority figure told you in your childhood, something that happened in a past relationship, or someone maybe was demeaning or belittling. And so that's why I wanted to touch on these particular points out of all the points chat GPT offered. I see very predominantly and I see that it's got to really strong poll, these three areas, the fear of success or failure, the not processing emotional trauma, and the feeling of worthiness? Do you really believe that you're worthy? And I know you are. I know every single one of my clients is, and again, I wish I could pull back the curtain would it be nice if I could let them see themselves through my eyes and my thoughts without them? That would be amazing. That's like a black mirror episode. But it would be amazing, it wouldn't be a very happy ending. So I know that this is a common thing. You know, when it comes to anything we're doing in our lives, and anything, we're focusing on any kind of change that we're trying to create, because it gets tough out there. Right. And that links us back to the comfort zone piece of it. Even though we are familiar with things, and those things don't keep us happy, it can be difficult to change, difficult to change your habits. And again, I mean, that's kind of why you listen to a podcast, isn't it? I know, it is, for me, the story I shared with you about noticing where my brain was going, and that my brain was getting absorbed and running all of these politically themed movies that were just frustrating me in my head, you know, what I did, I turned on an inspirational podcast is oh my god, enough of this, I have got to give my brain something else to focus on. I don't want to go in there. This is not how I want to feel, I don't even want to be involved in this at all. I want to feel happy, joyful, healthy, inspired and motivated to do all the things that are on my calendar. And so I did pull out my phone and went, what podcast, what can I start listening to, and it completely helped me shift. So I think in all three of these areas, when we come to fear of failure or fear of success, when it comes to obviously processing trauma, and and to really believing in your own worthiness, that reaching out. And getting support is really important. You need someone else's perspective, someone else's insights lots of times. So whether this is from finding a podcast, hopefully like this one, that inspires you to do something that you when you recognize what you're doing to yourself to change that behavior, or something that just motivates you or inspires you, it can be a podcast, it can be a book, it can be a person, but know that if you want to change the negative energy, you can't keep jumping into the negative energy, we've got to notice it, and then make a decision to do something to change it. Very, very important. But if you find yourself out there, sabotaging yourself again and again, and you feel stuck with it, you're not alone. It happens happens a lot. It happens to everybody. The important part is that you make the decision to make the change. And then you focus a really put intention into that decision. So that you take tiny, small steps on a daily basis toward the change you want to create. And the more support you have with that, trust me, it's still not going to be easy, but it will be easier to stay consistent. And honestly, I believe that consistency is the key. It is the key to all change, do little things, do them on a regular basis. Do them for a long time. That's what leads to change. All right. So if you're out there my friend, sabotaging yourself, I hope this helps and gives you a little bit of insight or maybe resonates with you in some way so that you can now take the steps to get the support you need. And if you want support from me come to my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com and choose a program that works for you like my better than before breast cancer life coaching membership, one of my metabolic health coaching programs or even personal one on one private sessions. There are so many ways to support yourself and you deserve it. All right, friends, I will talk to you again very soon. Until then, be good to yourself.
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