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In this episode...

Why You and Others Self-Sabotage

https://faithfulontheclock.com/why-you-and-others-self-sabotage

Not applying for a good job. Staying silent when you should speak up. People self-sabotage like this all the time. Episode 78 of Faithful on the Clock dives into why people self-sabotage and gives advice on how both workers and leaders can dig out.

Timestamps:

[00:04] - Intro

[00:39] - The common message about work and happiness is that work is a route to happiness. We don’t consider that some people might not want to be happy, but those people exist.

[01:22] - Reasons why people self-sabotage #1: The concept of happiness is frightening because people aren’t taught how to handle it well.

[02:15] - Reasons why people self-sabotage #2: Previous experience makes happiness feel unfamiliar and, therefore, unsafe.

[02:41] - Reason why people self-sabotage #3: People fear that if they’re too happy, they’re not being empathetic enough to those who suffer and, therefore, are “bad” people.

[03:12] - It might be more accurate to say that people fear getting hurt more than they fear happiness, but they still try to self-protect before they allow themselves to be content.

[03:28] - Self-sabotage is also spiritual warfare. The devil uses it to steal our joy because he knows that if we don’t have joy, we won’t look to God as a provider of that joy. He wants to cut at God by making us miserable and severing our connection to Him. Keeping your joy is the biggest backhand you can give to the devil.

[05:05] - Embracing safety at the expense of your happiness can keep you away from work experience that can help you reach your potential, negatively influencing your finances and relationships.

[05:40] - Given how many people have experienced trauma, the odds are good that, as a leader, you’ll encounter those who self-sabotage. Your job is to lift them out of that habit or reflex.

[06:11] - From the worker's perspective, start taking your joy back by sitting in your stress. You have to train your brain that what creates stress for you (including situations where happiness is an option) isn’t a threat. The only way to do that is by facing the discomfort. You cannot avoid it.

[07:47] - Once you get used to sitting in your stress, ask yourself “why” a few times to dig down to the root causes of your anxiety.

[08:41] - The 5-whys method comes from Sakichi Toyoda. The fact it emphasizes countermeasures makes it good for dealing with immediate overwhelm or temptations.

[09:36] - Once you know where your beliefs come from, challenge them. Ideally, make the challenges actionable with a countermeasure.

[10:37] - When establishing countermeasures, it’s good to lean on your core values. But many people have contradictory values (cognitive dissonance). Finding trustworthy people is necessary to bring you into mental singularity so you don’t keep flip-flopping back and forth in your behaviors. But this can be difficult because people can associate relationship and connection with happiness, which can be triggering.

[12:37] - From the leader side, focus on strengthening your relationship with a struggling worker. Forcing them to take opportunities can increase their stress and make them resent you.

[13:12] - Be a champion for your workers who are struggling.

[13:28] - Affirmations and recommendations that are expectedly and randomly given can communicate to self-sabotaging workers what you think they deserve and are capable of doing.

[13:58] - Operational policies and programs can support self-sabotaging workers on a broad scale.

[14:42] - Prayer

[15:30] - Outro/What’s coming up next

Key takeaways:

• In the work environment, there’s a strong message that people should go through self-development and improve as a means to become successful and, subsequently, happy. But people often subconsciously or deliberately do things to sabotage their own success and joy.
• Being afraid to be happy is a real condition called cherophobia. It can happen because people don’t know how to handle happiness when they get it, expect bad things to happen because that’s been their norm, or because they don’t want to be perceived as unempathetic.
• Self-sabotage that keeps you away from joy can be seen as spiritual warfare. God wants us to be joyful and have a happy relationship with Him. But the devil is determined to rob us of that joy so that we don’t understand how much better things are with God and why pursuing Him could help. He wants to deliberately hurt God by keeping us miserable.
• Self-sabotage can prevent you from getting work experience that will help you reach your full potential, which can influence you financially and socially. As a leader, the odds are high that you’ll deal with workers who hold themselves back, too. Your job is to help those workers overcome their fear of joy so they can move forward.
• Getting comfortable sitting in your stress around happiness is one of the best ways to tackle self-sabotage. It helps your brain stop avoiding situations where happiness could result. You cannot deal with self-sabotage through avoidance.
• The five-whys method is a useful strategy for uncovering why happiness makes you uncomfortable.
• Once you know where your beliefs around happiness come from, you can actively challenge them. It’s best if you can do this in actionable ways that integrate countermeasures. Countermeasures should attach to your core values, but it’s not unusual for people to experience cognitive dissonance and believe contradictory things. So it’s beneficial to find people who can bring you into singularity about what you think.
• As an employer, if you see someone self-sabotage, don’t insist they take shots, as people need to keep their autonomy and sense of choice to avoid becoming resentful. Instead, work on your relationship and build trust. Make recommendations and give affirmations, and on a broad scale, support people through organizational policies.

• Trauma and PTSD Recovery
• Working on Your Own Happiness Isn’t Selfish | Live Happy
• The epidemiology of traumatic event exposure worldwide: results from the World Mental Health Survey Consortium
• Cherophobia: Symptoms, Causes and Treatments
• Why Am I Afraid to Be Happy? Kati Morton Unfiltered

CTAs:

• Watch both the videos mentioned in this episode. Journal about your reaction or discuss them with someone you trust.
• Identify one area where you’ve been withholding your own joy. Then identify one action step you can take to break your habits around that area.
• Put Psalm 18:19 in a prominent place where you can remind yourself that God wants you to be happy. Meditate on what He sacrificed to ensure you could have joy.

What’s coming up next:

People often stay away from God because they think He's angry. But what happens in your work and overall life if you stay away because you believe He's disappointed? Episode 80 of Faithful on the Clock offers encouragement.

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