November 28, 2023

Self-Sabotage

24 minutes

I would like to dive into the concept of mindset shifting in the next 2 episodes of the Mama Shrink Podcast because I feel that this is such a big thing. It’s one thing to think about something in a certain way and it’s a whole different level when you really believe what you’re talking about. This comes down to the whole concept of the biology of belief.

So today, I’m going to talk about self-sabotage. What is it, how do we do it, and why we do it. I have personally engaged in self-sabotaged throughout my life and have seen this cycle in many women that I have worked with over the years. I share about this in order to help you move out of this vicious cycle and become a happier mom and woman.

So, let’s discuss Self-Sabotage

Self-sabotage is a purposeful choice that interferes with your short-term or long- term goals.

Self-sabotage is setting goals but not following through, procrastinating or quitting. We go into self-sabotage because our brains become habituated to being in a state of homeostasis and we want to remain in our comfort zone.

Sometimes our comfort zone isn’t what’s best for us but what we’re used to. We feel that it’s too good to be true so we ruin it.

Self-sabotage affects our self-esteem and pulls you down. It becomes a vicious cycle that makes us feel bad and makes us go back to our state of not achieving, growing and allowing good things to come in.

If you keep proving to yourself that you can’t succeed or you don’t deserve good things, your brain will start to believe that.

Signs for recognizing self-sabotage: procrastinating, feeling uncomfortable about feeling good, doing negative self-talk, feeling like you’re not good enough, picking fights, being self-critical, feeling like a fraud. Do you see yourself doing or feeling any of these things? Why are you doing it? And is this your way of self-sabotaging?

How do we change this? It can’t change overnight. Changing self-sabotage is a gradual change and involves shifting your mindset. Here are the steps you need to take: recognize your self-sabotaging behaviors; recognize the emotions that are causing the behavior; recognize the thoughts causing the emotions; work on changing your behavior, recognize the thoughts and emotions associated with whatever you keep self-sabotaging with; and practice being okay with feeling good.

Give yourself permission to feel good. Over time you’ll re-wire your brain and slowly start to change your mindset and belief system so that your internal state of being becomes feeling good and happy. It takes practice. Be patient with yourself because it takes time to stop self-sabotaging.

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