Self-sabotage is the problem that always seems to stand between where you currently are and where you want to be. Whenever you have the courage to set a goal, it seems that self-sabotage is close behind. Why is this such a common problem? How can you gain authority over self-sabotage. Tune in today as we understand and overcome self-sabotage.

Welcome to Your Living Health, the podcast where we talk about real life strategies to reduce chronic inflammation. Each episode will uncover tools for you to lose weight and achieve optimal health. I’m your host, Carly Lucchesi, I’m a UC Davis trained registered dietitian and I’m also a life coach. Together let’s coach through the science of inflammation, but in a way that is simple, purposeful and fun.

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Today we are going to dive into self-sabotage. This is a mysterious and complex topic, and hopefully I can do it justice. I think I can make simple something that is often viewed with much confusion. So first, let’s define what self-sabotage is. It is the conscious or subconscious performing of actions that halt forward momentum towards a desired result. I also like to think of self sabotage as an impassable void between your current state and where you desire to be. It looks like you can jump right over the void, but when you jump that void just gets wider and wider making impossible reaching the other side. I think an important thing to notice about self-sabotage is that it is an action. If you were passively observing your life, you could tangibly watch self-sabotage happen with either action or lack of action. Notice that self-sabotage is not a thought or an emotion, self sabotage is instead FUELED BY thoughts and emotions that drive the action of self-sabotage. This is a very important thing to notice.

So what causes self-sabotage? In simple terms, self-sabotage is caused by believing a thought. When we believe thoughts, we create emotion which drives action. This is the basics of how our brain functions. So if we want to better understand and gain authority over self-sabotage, we need to focus our attention on what thoughts we are choosing to believe. These thoughts can be grouped into three different categories, all of which result in the action of self sabotage. Let’s dig into what these three groups of thought are.

The first is believing the sales pitch of desire. You operate from two different brains, your primal brain and your adult brain. When you set a goal, you are operating from your adult brain. That is where you make decisions with intention and future focused thinking. BUT, your primal brain’s mission is to keep you safe and comfortable. That is where thoughts are generated from your past experiences, and operating with the consistent goal of chasing pleasure, seeking efficiency, and avoiding pain. Because you have thoughts being generated from different areas of your brain, this can lead to an internal dialogue that appears in conflict to itself. This is where you can desire the goal of losing 20lbs, but strangely the next desire you have may be to indulge in a cupcake. How can these two desires be coming from the same brain?! This must be because you hate yourself and never want to see yourself succeed, right? Wrong. There is nothing wrong with your brain generating a thought like “that cupcake sounds so good right now”. Of course your brain is going to generate thoughts like that, it has a primal goal of seeking pleasure, and a cupcake is filled with pleasure! But the problem only arises when you believe the sales pitch of desire. When you hear the thought “that cupcake sounds so good right now” and you adopt it subconsciously as fact, suddenly you find yourself engaging in the action of eating the cupcake, almost against your own will. This can appear like self-sabotage because you are ALSO holding belief in the thought “It’s time to lose 20lbs”. This is the first thought pattern of self-sabotage, passively adopting the sales pitch from the primal brain as fact.

The second thought pattern that can result in self-sabotage is to subconsciously believe a set of rules that you’ve adopted in the past. This set of rules is otherwise known as a belief system. As a child growing up, it is your brain’s job to understand and make sense of the world around you. Through experience, it comes up with thoughts and perception, and these perceptions help you to make future projections. Maybe you grew up watching your mom’s weight fluctuate all the time. She would lose weight, then gain it right back. It was just a cycle of diet, weight loss, weight gain. As you watched this, your brain may have offered the thought “keeping weight off is hard” to better understand what was happening. Your brain wants to create rules, that way it conserves energy and expends less energy having to understand future things. As you become an adult, that thought you believed as a kid remains in the background like a rule of life… keeping weight off is hard. And because your brain loves to be right, it has been finding evidence to prove itself correct since you’ve adopted that thought as a young kid. How can this thought pattern result in the action of self-sabotage?  Because our thoughts create our actions. If you have a rule in place from your childhood that keeping weight off is hard, and you’ve never inspected this rule to determine if you want to keep it, your actions will always be to prove your thoughts true. That keeping weight off is indeed… hard. This can result in actions like eating a cupcake, because when you believe the thought “keeping weight off is hard” it generates an energy of defeat ahead of time resulting in the action of eating a cupcake to make you feel better, thus proving the fact “keeping weight off is hard”.  This is the second thought pattern of self-sabotage, subconsciously believing a set of rules that you’ve adopted in your past.

The third thought pattern of self-sabotage is to subconsciously avoid discomfort. Your brain will offer up thoughts like “this sucks” or “this isn’t worth it” or “this is hard”. Again, notice that all action is taken from believing a thought. Your primal brain has the goals to seek pleasure, avoid pain and conserving energy. So when you are in an experience of discomfort, your brain will automatically offer up thoughts to get you out of discomfort. “This sucks” is a thought I often fall for, because it’s so easy to find evidence for it’s truth. Because often, life does suck. And when you subconsciously or passively believe the thought “this sucks”, what are the actions you’re going to take? Chances are, you’re going to prove yourself true and make sure this sucks! In this example, eating a cupcake could be the way to prove two truths correct. The first, that it sucks not being able to lose weight. And the sneaky second truth you are proving yourself correct is that “keeping weight off is hard”. And your brain is winning bigtime here because not only is it proving itself true in two ways, it’s also getting the reward of indulging in the pleasure of a cupcake. Win-Win.

So in summary, the three thought groups of self sabotage include: Believing the sales pitch of desire, subconsciously believing a set of rules you’ve adopted in the past, and subconsciously avoiding discomfort. And the unifying characteristic of self sabotage is that your brain loves to keep these thought and action patterns in the subconscious space. If your thoughts remain subconscious, then making behavior change from action always taps into willpower, and willpower is limited. Your brain loves to keep these thoughts subconscious because It’s easy to stew in confusion and frustration if you seem to be acting against your own will.

So how can you change your behavior in a way that you gain authority over self-sabotage? Easy. Well… not easy… but easier than you might think. The only thing you need to do is bring to the conscious many of these thoughts you are believing subconsciously. When your brain offers up a thought like “that cupcake sounds freaking amazing” I want you to hear this thought instead of just passively adopting this thought as your own. Then (and only then!) you can simply answer your brain “I know YOU want that cupcake brain, but I don’t, not right now” When your brain offers up “this sucks”, answer your brain “I know YOU think this sucks, but this is exactly what I signed up for. We can do hard things” There is magic when you hold space for your brain to be a toddler, but answer with love as an adult would a child. And finally, there is even more magic when you parent your toddler brain by asking questions, thereby uncovering what your toddler brain may have YOU believing that YOU no longer want to believe. Incorporate simple questions like… is this true? Do I want to keep believing this? What’s the upside to keeping this thought? Knowing this thought is 100% optional, is it bringing me closer or further from who I want to be?

Increasing awareness of these three thought groups will gain you authority over self-sabotage. Remember, self-sabotage is not a real thing, it is just evidence of a brain that needs a little parenting. Focus on these tools I’ve given you, and you’re going to blow your mind with what you can do. And if you need to, listen to this episode again! Some of these concepts may be new and need to sink in a little.  Alright everyone, that’s all I have for you today. Do this work, and if you want additional guidance don’t forget to book your free consult. I’ll talk to you next week, bye!