The real reason why we self-sabotage

Does this sound familiar?

You get up in the morning with the best intentions to get your work done and then boom, out of the blue there’s a phone call and the outcome of that conversation totally derails you and it takes you hours to get back into your groove.

Your mind stays focused on what was said and your thoughts run in circles.

There goes the day and before you know it nothing got done.

If you’ve ever wondered why we stop ourselves from doing the things that would move us forward,

there’s a reason we self-sabotage.

Our mind is wired for safety.

Anything that is perceived as a threat gets shut down.

We experience this as resistance the minute we start moving out of the realm of the familiar.

This can take many forms and it’s different for each and every one of us because your mind knows exactly what to serve up to get YOU to stop.

So it can be the aforementioned call, a meeting gone bad that throws you in a tizzy, an outcome you didn’t expect, a personal situation that escalates, a fight with a loved one, giving into distraction, procrastination or lack of motivation…

All intended to get us to stop from walking into what our mind considers unsafe, unfamiliar territory and that’s the reason why we stay stuck exactly where we are despite our best intentions.

It’s frustrating to say the least but what we’re dealing with is a phenomenon called cognitive dissonance.

In essence it means that our belief system is challenged by new information that is coming in like our desire to be, do or have more and the actions that would need to be taken to get there. We are experiencing a value conflict between our conscious desire and what we subconsciously believe to be true.

Neuroscientists explain it like this:

When this happens, areas of the brain that involve personal identity and emotional response to threats get activated. The brain’s alarm bells go off when a person feels threatened on a deeply personal and emotional level causing them to shut down and disregard any rational evidence that contradicts what they previously regarded as ‘Truth’.

To change this dynamic we must resolve the value conflict in our mind, separating truth from falsity and eliminating the stress factors that cause our subconscious to step on the breaks.

This gets rid of the resistance and we can then take the action required that will give us a different result.

I’m going to share more about how to do this in an upcoming class next week.

If you have a pattern of stop and go, this might just be what you need to hear to break it, so that you can move forward and reach your goals.

All intended to get us to stop from walking into what our mind considers unsafe, unfamiliar territory and that’s the reason why we stay stuck exactly where we are despite our best intentions.

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