When you’re growing a business (or going after any important goal), there is one thing that will routinely get in your way, slow you down, and make you question everything — YOU.
Self-sabotage is real, and if you’re not vigilant, it can take over your life.
Surprisingly, this isn’t because of deep self-loathing or not feeling good enough (although those problems will rear their ugly heads from time to time). The majority of self-sabotage actually comes from your attempt to stay alive.
Self-Sabotage Saves Your Life
That’s how it starts anyways. Somewhere along your life, you developed patterns and beliefs around certain behaviors that kept you safe. As you age, those behaviors morph into new expressions of the old belief playing out in your life (in ways you couldn’t have expected).
For example, a dude gets picked on as a kid. One day, he decides to stand up for himself. Yay kid, right? As he continues to grow up, he sees that if he’s aggressive, people don’t try to pick on him to begin with, so he learns to assert himself in his relationships. This works for him into his adulthood—until his boss sees him as a menace to his coworkers and his significant other leaves him because they’re tired of walking on eggshells to escape his wrath.
That is the power of self-sabotage. It starts as something that saves you, protects you, and keeps you safe. But it morphs into something that hinders you because that protection, that coping mechanism eventually overrides who you really are and what you really want as a means to protect you from yourself.
Your Inner Mighty Morphin’ Powers!
While your ability to take a concept or belief and apply it to many areas of your life without your conscious awareness is spectacular and awe-inspiring, it’s also terrifying. If you don’t know what’s floating around in your belief system, you can find yourself spinning your wheels for years wondering what the hell is wrong with you that you can’t seem to achieve this goal.
The truth is, you’re functioning as intended. You’re powerful as all get out, and because of that power, you’re momentarily getting in your own way. Frustrating, right?
The good news is there’s a way to make that mighty cosmic power work for you, without stuffing yourself into an itty bitty living space (Aladdin throwback—you’re welcome). In all seriousness though, there are ways for you to take the power of your subconscious mind and make it work for you instead of against you.
Some mindset practices take more work than others, and some practices aren’t a good idea to do alone. Mindset coaches, hypnotherapists, and other mindset professionals are excellent to help you through the deep stuff that you can struggle to reach on your own.
But there is a way to fast track your success with mindset so that you can fast track the success of your business.
Make It Life Or Death
The best way to circumvent the process of figuring out what your exact mindset constraint is, where it lives, what it stems from, how to resolve it, what belief to replace it with, and then consistently taking actions to reaffirm that new belief (whew!) is to make the goal life or death in your mind.
To be clear, this is not literal. Don’t put yourself in a true life or death situation.
This is a metaphorical life or death.
For example, when I get nervous to share my offers with people, I imagine that they’re in a burning building, and if I don’t go in there to help, they’re going to die either by fire or from the building collapsing. I love my people, I don’t want them to die. So I understand that my offer is the difference between someone building the life of their dreams or living a nightmare they can’t escape. I can’t live with my people stuck in a nightmare when I know I can help them.
That’s where you need to go in your mind. That place where the only choice is to take the action that moves you forward in your business—especially with sales.
It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to not know what you’re doing in every aspect of growing your business. It’s also okay to ask for help.
What’s not okay is sitting back and letting your solution, your special gift die inside of you because every moment you hide your brilliance, someone else is suffering. Someone else is metaphorically bleeding out and praying you’ll find them in time with your magic tourniquet.
If you realized how much suffering comes from playing small and letting self-sabotage run your business, you’d never allow the excuses of, it’s hard, I don’t know how, it’s uncomfortable, I don’t like that, or I’m not ready to ever pass your lips again. You’d burst into action, make your offers, and run toward success, because you’d understand that your comfort zone cannot contain the immense expansiveness of your impact.
Applying This To Yourself
How are you going to find what works for you? How do you make your actions feel like life or death without actually creating a life or death situation (again, highly inadvisable—keep the life or death thing metaphorical)?
The first thing you need to know is what motivates you.
Are you more concerned with other people, with status (how people look at you), with safety, or something else? Finding what makes you move is key to figuring out what metaphor will keep you running toward success.
For example, if safety is your main concern, imagine that every moment you’re not making a sale or moving your business forward, you’re standing in a cave where the floor is falling out beneath you. If you don’t run forward, you will die.
If your main concern is status, which is often rooted in how people see you, then you can imagine everyone you respect calling you a coward because you’re not willing to take the action you need to in order to go after what you want. In order to gain their praise, you must make bold moves that move the needle in your business. If you don’t, you’ll die of embarrassment (if your inner teenager game is strong, this is a real fear).
It may take you a couple tries to figure out what your burning building is—that special image or metaphorical situation that will keep you motivated and moving. Keep looking until you find something so powerful that self-sabotage can’t hold you back from moving forward.