In this episode, we answer a question that was asked by Laurence Marie David. The question is about why people unconsciously sabotage themselves and how it can be transformed.

If we don’t conquer this thing called self-sabotage, we find ourselves in a situation where we create strategies that break down, we relive the experience over and over again, and we also feel helpless. But if we are able to conquer it, our confidence builds, we have micro successes that needs to be celebrated and we get a bigger vision.

In order to defeat self-sabotage, we need to:

• Have Behavior Baselines: Recognize those behaviors that contribute to self-sabotage.
• Get to Higher Ground: Move upstream to identify the trigger.
• Keep Your Eye on the Prize: Understand why we are in the game.

The Sabotage Eliminator

There are 4 stages involved in removing self-sabotage from your life:

1. Observe Behavior: Revisit and reflect those times when you felt self-sabotage and discern those behaviors. You need to become aware of it and recognize what it is. Find the pattern of such behavior and then list them out. It could be any habits or patterns that distract you—things like internet, food and drinks.
2. Define Trigger: Find that moment in time that triggers the behavior or thought which redirects you from success to unproductivity. Identify the thought process or mindset and do it specifically so that you get an understanding of what is going on.
3. Replace Behavior: Now, it is time to replace the behavior with something that is more appropriate, positive and productive. Do this by connecting the old triggers with a positive behavior. Journaling or writing down the commitment statements definitely help you stick to it.
4. Get Champions: Find mentors, accountability partners and a community who are willing to help and support you. Give them your triggers, old and new behaviors that they can identify. Also, give them the permission to hold you accountable for your actions. Finally, tie the outcomes to a consequence or reward and you are on your way to eliminate self-sabotage.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham, the author of the #1 best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy where we teach you how to capture, package and monetize the ideas in your head, the things you know, the expertise and wisdom you have so you can have greater impact, much more time and freedom and more income.

And welcome to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show and this one, it’s going to be a special episode because I get a chance to answer a question from one of our community and I love doing this. So many of you leave me questions and I make them part of the episodes. Well, this question is coming from all the way from London and it’s a great question about self-sabotage. I call this one “Dealing with the Enemy Within”. It’s about my 4 steps of eliminating self-sabotage.

Think about this for a moment. I know that for me, at times, I have been my worst enemy. I have sabotaged my own success. I have gotten in my own way. I recall where I would get caught in distraction or procrastination by getting on the internet, playing with Facebook, going and watching TV (which I don’t do a lot of) but it does happen.

So, have you done that? Where in your life do you think that maybe you are distracting your focus from your success?

And even, if you’ve had some success which we are going to hear in her question—she actually had some success but then sabotaged it later on. And so,

• How do we navigate that?
• How do we transcend that?
• How do we build over that and keep going?

And so, I’m going to introduce you to what I call The Sabotage Eliminator. In this episode, we will help you navigate past self-sabotage. And if you want to download the tool, download the worksheet and workbook to deal with that, just go to MelAbraham.com/session059. So, MelAbraham.com/session059.

And if you are not by your computer, do me a favor? Just text me. Text me MYLEGACY one-word no-spaces MYLEGACY to 38470. I will make sure that I get you that download link. And so, let’s just jump into this and look at this concept of self-sabotage. Let’s actually first listen to this question from Lawrence across the pond in London.

Mel Hi, good afternoon. My name is Laurence … and I live in London. I have been following you for a while now. I brought your book and I really love your approach which I find it very wise about business. Here is my question:

Since 18 years old, I have set up few unique company that was, I believe, very successful at the beginning but when actually, it was going further towards success, I always sabotaged it. So, I wanted to ask if you have any guidance about, why people unconsciously sabotage themselves. Can it be transformed 100% and how it can be transformed?

Thank you very much.

That’s an awesome question Lawrence and it’s a question that actually comes up often and if it doesn’t come up often, it should because I think you don’t, you are not dealing with something that all of us don’t get a chance to deal with on a regular basis. I think, it is in our lives at some level or another, no matter who we are and so, don’t feel alone out there.

First things first, starting at the age of 18, successful businesses, serial entrepreneur, congrats. Kudos. And I hope you are celebrating the successes and the impact that you are having because that is one of the things that we fail to do as entrepreneurs is to simply celebrate our successes no matter how small and no matter how grand to make sure that we celebrate the successes that we have.

And so, let’s look at this for a moment but before we do that let’s figure out: Why is it important to conquer this thing, this thing called self-sabotage or sabotage?

Well, the way I see it, there’s a couple of things that happen. If we don’t do it, we find ourselves in a situation where we create strategies that actually break down. We think we’ve got ourselves on a trajectory or on a path or on a direction and they break down.

How many times have you seen, maybe in your life where you had this great plan, you start on the plan and it seems to just fall apart and one of the easiest places that we see this and these things of self-sabotage—I’m talking about it in the context of business. But it doesn’t matter.

• It could be in the context of your health.
• It could be in the context of you relationships.
• It could be in the context of your wellness, your fitness.

And I think, that we see this playing at times. You come into New Year’s resolutions, this is when everyone says, “Oh, I’m going to lose 10 pounds.” And you create this great strategy, “I’m going to go to the gym every morning and I’m going to eat differently.” And here you are, you start that and January 5^th, you’re eating a donut or January 5^th, you’re sleeping in.

I know and I don’t eat a lot of donuts but I have slept in. But I know that there has been times in my life where I put a plan in place; had the strategy and it was a great strategy; the execution behind it failed. And whether that was self-sabotage or not, one of the things that we look at is that, that as you said Laurence in your question, if there is a pattern then there is a habit, there is something there that we need to deal with to figure that out and start to understand how that plays out. So, one of the first challenges that when we don’t get this right, when we are kind of submitting to this self-sabotage, our strategies break down.

The second is that, it’s like Groundhog Day.

We are reliving this experience over and over and over again. You said it yourself. You had number of businesses and each and every one at some level, you sabotaged it later on.

And there’s plenty of folks. I see it a lot in relationships and in fact, even in my past, I have repeatedly made choices, relationship choices, years ago when I was a lot younger, a lot riper, a lot more naïve; made choice that put me in the wrong relationships and until I took responsibility for those choices and said, “If I am making the wrong choices, what happens when I make different choices.” I was going to replay the result over and over and over again.

And we can do that in business.

• If we are consistently losing team members.
• If we are consistently losing sales.
• If we are consistently losing customers.

At some point, we cannot point the finger outside of ourselves. I use this kind of analogy. I said, “If every single time something bad happens, you blame someone else.” You blame someone else. You blame someone else. We don’t take responsibility. If we don’t take responsibility, we don’t have the ability to change it but here’s the thing, when you look back at just the trail of dead bodies behind you, if the one common denominator is you, at some point, you got to look at yourself and start asking yourself, “What am I doing to contribute to this?”

And so, if we don’t get this right, if we don’t recognize it and figure this out and kind of, eliminate the sabotage using the eliminator, we’re going to replay Groundhog Day, each and every day, over and over again.

And then, the third thing I think that happens is that ultimately we feel helpless.

And it’s probably one of the worst feelings that you can have is to feel completely helpless and you feel like, “I can never do anything right. I’m just not good enough. That’s for someone else. Someone else will have that success. Well, that’s just them” and you come up and if you hear yourself saying these things, you’re at that point where you are starting to self-defeat yourself because you are saying things like, “Well, that’s them. It’s not for me. I can’t do it. I’m not good enough. Well, I guess I’m just not going to be that successful. I’m just going to let myself and settle for things.”

And that’s, probably the worst place to be is to feel that helpless. To give up and just kind of give in and say, “Here’s where I’m at.”

• Whether it’s health.
• Whether it’s work.
• Whether it’s relationships.
• Whether it’s any of that.

But rather to look at it and say, “I’m here because of choices I made. I can move from here because of new choices I can make.”

• It doesn’t mean, it’s going to be easy.
• It’s doesn’t mean, it’s going to be without a challenge.

And it certainly doesn’t mean that we will achieve everything want but the one thing’s for certain, if we make the choices and we make the choices differently than we did in the past, things will be different in the future than they are right now.

So, that’s what happens. That’s one of the things that happens. These are 3 things that that I think happen. There’s plenty of more but these are the 3 major things that happen if we don’t conquer this thing called self-sabotage.

But if we do, one of the things to consider is that, we start to build confidence.

Those micro successes and why I say, we need to celebrate micro successes is that it’s kind of like that relay race and you get the baton and you move a little further and you get the baton and you move a little further, you get the baton and move a little further, that I got to celebrate those little successes that really kind of spur us along the road to success.

And that, each success needs to be celebrated instead of suppressed, instead of just kind of sluffed aside and said, “Yeah okay. Well that wasn’t that big of a deal.” It was a big deal because it was something that you didn’t have previously. Every little success is a big deal and I think that we need to celebrate and embrace progress in the journey towards results. If all we do is wait to get results to celebrate, that progress becomes a problem.

I’ll give you an analogy on this is that, I have been in the martial arts for over 4 decades now or 4 decades or so. Now, one of the things they have in the martial arts is this belt system and the belt system, historically, didn’t exists in the far-east, in Japan and all of that. It was simply white belt, black belt and the reason it was black was because you trained so long, so hard that the white belt got so dirty it turned black. There wasn’t a color belt system.

But when the military, when our military was over there during the wars and started training in the martial arts. One of the things that they realized is that our US military was used to rankings and reward systems and an acknowledgement of where they’ve been. So, they created this belt system.

So, it’s really a western phenomenon but what it allows you to do is to look at where you were before and how far you’ve come. So, celebrating those micro successes builds confidence and starts to move you forward. We will talk more about the process of that as we get into it further.

The second thing that happens is that, just what I was talking about, The Micro Successes is that we’re going to celebrate every little step of the way.

And then, the last is this. We get a bigger vision because as our confidence grows, our vision grows. We get a chance to look out and say, “If I can do that, what else can I do?”

And so, I ask you. If you look back on your life and you list out the micro successes that you’ve had, how does that, when you stack them up and look at it come about? If you look at it and say, “I didn’t have a business a year ago and now I have a business. Yeah, it’s maybe not cash flowing the way I wanted to but I have jumped a bunch of hurdles to get here.” Celebrate it and let’s find the next process, the next step through.

So, if that’s why we need to have it, let’s understand what I think we need to embrace. What do you need to know, in order to beat down this concept of self-sabotage, this poison, this parasite that lives in every single one of us and so, how do we defeat it and at least keep it at bay or control it.

So, I think there’s 3 things; a few things we need to know. First, we need to have a behavior baseline.

In other words, I need to recognize the behaviors that contribute to the sabotage. Awareness, we can call it awareness if you want. Awareness is one of the biggest keys. If I am completely (for lack of a better term) naïve, ignorant, blind to my behaviors that

• Contribute to this sabotage
• Contribute to unproductive results

Then I can’t change them. So, first thing is to baseline my behavior to understand what my behavior is that’s contributing to it so I can recognize it because without recognizing it, I can’t change it.

The second principle that I understand is that I need to get to higher ground.

What I mean by that is that, there is something that happens before the behavior starts. You might call it a trigger. And I need to move myself upstream to the higher ground so I can get as far up the chain to that recognition where I am moving down that path because if I can then detour earlier in the game that will help me out.

So, when I’m able to recognize

• The choice point,
• The thought process,
• The mindset,
• The behavior,
• The feeling

That I have each and every time I start to make that journey down the self-sabotage path. I now have the ability to know where that point of change is. If I can change that inflection point, if I can change that trigger point, now instead of using that trigger to move me down the negative path, I use that trigger to move me down a positive productive path.

But we need to get to higher ground. We need to elevate ourselves beyond when we are in it and step backwards until we can figure out where we need to manage that process.

And then, the last is this. Keep your eye on the prize. In other words, why are we in the game?

Many of you have heard me speak about the whole concept of building a business under the umbrella of meaning and that everything we do in business is informed by the legacy and the lifestyle we try to create not just for ourselves but for all of those that we touch in our business. And so,

• What is your why?
• What is the meaning behind it?
• What is the prize?

And it can’t be profit alone. Profit may be one of them. It’s got to be something that is visceral, that is emotional, that is compelling to you that allows you to really navigate through the obstacles and the challenges.

It’s got to be passionate in a way that you are, it moves you forward, it drives you forward like a magnet versus you having to push yourself for it. So, keep your eye on the prize.

So, with that; so, what’s the process? What’s the process?

It’s what I call The Sabotage Eliminator and it’s 4 steps that I think when you take these it takes you along ways to move beyond self-sabotage. So, let’s just look at this and let’s break this down and again, you can download the action guide for this, for the sabotage eliminator, the tool in there by going to MelAbraham.com/session059 so you can really start to put this in play in your life.

So, the first part of this is this. Is that, I need to observe my behavior. In other words,

• I need to become aware,
• I need to recognize what it is,
• I need to reflect, and
• Maybe, revisit those times.

More and so, as you go through this to revisit those times that maybe you’ve felt that was self-sabotage and discern what those behaviors were. To extract those moments of choice, those moments of decision to see that there’s a pattern there and see if you can find the patterns in your behavior during those times because it’s those patterns that we need to recognize and break.

• We all have patterns.
• We all have habits.

And list out the types of behaviors that you use to sabotage yourself and many people, it could be different things.

• It could be distractions.
• Things like the internet.
• It could be food.
• It could be drinking.
• It could even be drugs.

These are horrendous ways to sabotage yourself in some instances but just call a spade a spade.

• It could be anger.
• It could be stress.

What behavior types come about, list them out, document them and start to listen. And if you can’t recall them, use a journal. I’m a real big proponent of journaling. Journal not only what happened in the day but how you felt.

And you then memorialize what’s going on in your life and as you start to see that you will start to recognize patterns because right now, what we are dealing with in this concept of sabotage itself, sabotage is we need to have pattern recognition of

• What actions you are taking
• What thought process you are using

> That moves you down that unproductive path.

And when we have that pattern recognition, we can then do an interrupt. We can redirect yourselves by virtue of the awareness in giving your more productive choices to move forward to really start to drive that forward as we do that.

The second step, once you’ve observed your behavior is to define the trigger. Remember, go to the higher ground. Start stepping backwards and saying, “What might have been the triggering event.” This is probably one of the most important steps because it gets you to recognize at the earliest stage when you might start to move down the path of sabotage.

And so, you want to understand and find that moment in time that triggers the behavior or the thought that redirects you from success to unproductivity or lack of success or a lack of attitude and be very specific in doing that.

Now, you want to be able to define it specifically and get an understanding of what’s going on because everything starts with thought first so, what’s the thought process and the mindset that directs you there.

• Is it fear?
• Is it like, “Oh my god, I’m really successful and I’m not deserving of this.”?
• Is it an esteem issue?
• What is causing it?

Because when once we define that trigger we can recognize it more readily and once we recognize that and we see that pattern, we now have the ability to replace the behavior. So, we now have a choice.

When you come home and you say, “Maybe we’re dealing with fitness.” I know that the question was about business but maybe I’m dealing with fitness and wellness.

When I come home and I come through that door, I have this trigger for some reason, I want to eat something sweet. If that’s truly the case, what I need to do is recognize the trigger and substitute the behavior. Finding more appropriate, positive behavior to fill the void of that not eating something sweet. Create a new connection, an anchor with this new behavior and the trigger in that process.

You could be in a situation where in business, one of your team members, when someone makes a mistake, you go into a rage. So, now all of a sudden you know, you figure out what the trigger is and instead of going in a rage in every situation where something happens that you automatically shut the door and do breathing exercises because that’s one of the ways to calm yourself. Maybe, you do breathing exercises for the next minute and half before you have a dialogue around that.

But you need it recognize it, recognize what the trigger point is, find a productive behavior and then, do me a favor? In your journal or somewhere that is visible and available and in front of you, I want you to write your commitment statement to the new behavior from that trigger.

There’s something that happens in your mind. There’s something that happens in the human spirit when you write it out and say, “I will do this. I will, when this happens, when I walk through the door instead of eating sweets, I’m going to eat a salad or I’m going to drink some water or I’m going to go for a run. I’m going to find some productive behavior.”

And using that with this next step, doesn’t allow you to get yourself off the hook so easily. And this next step and I think this is hugely important for us to do that and that is to get champions.

Now, champions could be mentors, it could be accountability partners, it could be a community of people. Maybe, you go and I see this in some of our communities that ladies that just had babies, and they are out there and it’s so cool to see. They’re out there with their babies and their strollers and they’re walking and they’re jogging and they’re doing exercises and stretching but they created a community, they created champions amongst themselves

• To hold them accountable
• To show up at a certain time
• To shift and change and get themselves back into their pre-pregnancy shape.

And so, I think that this is the other place to be is “Who do you have championing the cause?”

Now, take that commitment, the commitment that you make and give it to those champions. Those that you respect, those that would, it would hurt you if you disappointed in that. You would feel really bad because they’re people that you respect so much and admire so much. You don’t ever want to disappoint them.

Find someone that can be your champion and give them the triggers, give them the behaviors and your new behaviors and give them this—permission to hold you accountable.

Now, I know that with some of:

• My high-level clients,
• My mentoring clients, and
• The people that I work with

I can be very direct and I get permission upfront because I tell them, “Sometimes I’m not gentle but it’s for your own good.”

• Always comes from a place of caring.
• Always comes from a place of love.
• Always comes from a place of compassion and the best for you.

But sometimes, I got to be direct and say, “You’re screwing up. I had a conversation just the other day with some people that said, “You’re messing up” and you could blow a great opportunity and being really direct about it. Not soft-peddling it but not being mean about it but coming from a place of going, “Hey, I care for you and because I care for you, I want to tell you what I’m observing”.

And then, the last piece of this process is tie the outcomes to consequences or rewards. Now, I would tell you to tie it to consequences. So, here’s a for instance.

Maybe, there’s an organization that or a cause that you just can’t get behind and you actually, many of these might be political in nature. I don’t like to get involved in politics and I think Brian Tracy had it right. He said, “Ticks are parasites and poly means there is many parasites and politics is many parasites.”

That’s just me. I just, not to get on it. But maybe, you have a political affiliation or some cause that you cannot get behind. Well, if you mess up, we’re going to have you write a check to the cause you can get behind.

• Maybe, it’s a competitor.
• Maybe, it’s someone else that is in your space; that may be you’d do that.

So, here’s what I mean by this. Is I want to create a reward or a consequence that allows you to either celebrate or repels you from not letting someone down because

• You don’t want to write that check, or
• You don’t want to do that thing, or
• You don’t want to …

So, there is a consequence and a reward tied to everything you do. So, that’s the 4 steps and if you put this in place, and follow it religiously, you’re going to find it; it doesn’t mean that self-sabotage isn’t going to creep in. It’s going to give you:

• A mechanism to control it,
• A mechanism to keep it at bay,
• A mechanism to allow to it to get you back on track when you feel yourself going off-track.

Because we all do. I do too. There’s plenty of times that I have some of my mentors, my clients, my own beautiful bride; they will look at me and go, “Really? Are you sure about that?” Adjust the questioning like that gets me to put myself back on track.

So remember,

• Observe your behavior,
• Define your triggers,
• Replace the behavior with a more positive, appropriate and productive one,
• Find your champions and create rewards and consequences attached to that.

That will help you out tremendously with at least managing self-sabotage. Eliminating completely may not be possible because it does creep it from time to time. We get tired. We get stressed. Things happen but let’s control it.

The question is, do we live in a sabotaged state or a success state?

Let’s live in a success state and spend most of our time there and in that process, you will find success.

Recognize who you need in your life to support this journey. Recognize who you need as a mentor, as a champion to allow you to navigate through that, to be able to call you on it, to be able to support you to get through it as we move through it.

So, I hope that you found this helpful for you. I hope that you found this meaningful and that there was a value in taking this 4 step process into your life and saying, “Where can I use this to eliminate or manage self-sabotage?”

And again, if you want to download The Sabotage Eliminator just go to MelAbraham.com/session059 or just text me, MYLEGACY one-word to 38470. We will make sure that we get you the action guide so you can do that.

Now, I hope that you found this valuable enough to do 2 things.

1. Share it with a friend. I’d love to have more people in this journey with us. More in the community, so we can support each other and continue to grow.
2. And make sure that you’ve subscribed. Hit the subscribe button. It’s on here. Subscribe, stay with us, let’s have a dialogue, let’s create this community, let’s keep it growing; it’s growing tremendously and let’s do that.

If you have a question for me just like Laurence did, ask me. Go to AskMelNow.com, leave me your question, we will make it part of an upcoming episode so I can make sure that I support you on your journey to success and impact as we go for it.

Thank you again for being here. I’ll see you in the next episode. Until we get a chance to see each other again,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon. Cheers. Bye!!

— End Transcript —

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Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again. Cheers, Mel

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