Click here to download pdf version: NLP Podcast 35a
or read below:
John Cassidy-Rice: Hello. Welcome to this week’s podcast. My name is John Cassidy-Rice and I have the pleasure to be your host. What topic are we exploring this week? Well, it’s the topic of self-sabotage. I’ve been getting a few e-mails from various people that say everything seems to be going really well in my life and then I just do something stupid that upsets the card and I seem to be getting in my own way, i.e., self-sabotaging.
Now, this topic of self-sabotaging is not as easy to answer. Why? And what you can do about it? Well, the what you can do about it straight forward but why is it happening or why do people self-sabotage? And it can be in all sorts of different areas of life. So let’s explore of what possibly could be going on here and some various different reasons and then what we could do about that to make sure that when things are going well, we keep things moving forward.
Right, so we got to start somewhere. So let’s explore one of the presuppositions of NLP which is there’s a positive intent behind everything that we’re doing. Well, what could be the positive intent behind self-sabotaging? There could be many. As simple, almost Freudian example of that would be that our parents and guardians brought us up and I believe they brought us up the best they could but they became role models for us and as you start to go into an area of your life whether a success, relationship, money, business, et cetera then you are starting to grow and the danger is and, as silly as this may sound, you often feel like you’re outgrowing your parents or guardians and the child part of us, we’ve mentioned Freud we might also do some transactional analysis. The child part of us is thinking, you know, I can’t be better than my parents so we get in our own way. So that could be a reason why. I’m not saying it is and it’s quite a classical approach to it.
Let’s have a look at some possible other reasons. What about values? Your values are the things that motivates you. The reason you do what you do is because of your values. Now, values will create behavior. It’s where we tend to invest our energy. Now, you can do something against your values for a period of time but stress will build up and one or two things will then have to happen, either the value gets updated to include your new behavior or you quit that behavior in some way. Now, that’s not self-sabotage. That’s living within your values. Right, so what if a value is not being fulfilled in life? Will that then show up in some are of your life? Quite possibly. And one of the values I think we’ve lost within our community is this value of adventure and that value of adventure is important to us. It’s that little bit of risk taking, a little bit of doing something out of the extraordinary and I think that value of adventure is very important to us as humans and yet our lives have become quite safe. We know that the country is going to run. I know it’s going to have challenges but essentially we’re going to have water, electricity, roads are going to work, we have schools, we have the police so there’s a whole lot of things that create a safe environment. We know pretty much what we’re going to be doing tomorrow, next week and it’s all become very safe and predictable and you know what as humans, we love that. We crave that. But once we got it, we become a little bit bored and in becoming bored with what’s going on, we will look for this adventure and on the positive side we become a little bit restless so we then go out and search for that adventure and that adventure could be things like sports, taking a new course, meeting new people, just doing something that wouldn’t normally do and that can really satisfy us for a while. But it may be not quite enough. And when adventure shows up in people’s lives in a negative way, it can be devastating.
Have you ever heard of somebody who absolutely loves their partner, is devoted to their partner and goes out and has an affair? Often with somebody they don’t even particularly like and it can ruin many people’s lives. One explanation for that is the sense of adventure had not been fulfilled and it was a risk, it was something a little bit dangerous. It can also show up where people are living very successful life, everything is going well for them and they start taking drugs. One noticed the risk that goes around that it’s the shady side of life. Maybe having to deal with criminals just to put some typecast on to that and doing something that is a little bit naughty. Well, that’s probably a little bit more than just being naughty but you get the idea. You’re breaking the law in some way and then you can see that sense of adventure is showing off in a very negative aspect and here what we’re seeing is the self-sabotage happening because a value is not being fulfilled in somebody’s life and all the other values might be fine, the value of family might be going well, the value of work, the value of happiness is all going well but the sense of adventure is missing.
So I just had a quick look at the dictionary and looked up what “adventure” means and it means many different things. One is to take a superior position. I’m not sure about that one but I think the one that applies to us is that to take advantage of the opportunities that surround us and if I go back on good 30 or three years ago now, how time flies, is that when I was looking for someone else and that’s probably the last time I had a job working for somebody else was that I felt trapped and I couldn’t see any options around me but as soon as I start my own business, and my first business really that working for myself was teaching guitar was suddenly opportunity seem to be everywhere and for me what I noticed was that I wasn’t paying attention to these opportunities because if I did and I was working, I couldn’t pursue them, I felt trapped. But as soon as I started working for myself, the opportunities around us in so many places and my adventure started and I’m not sure it has ever stopped since.
Now, just to be clear, I am not advocating that you walk out of your work and there’ll be opportunities around for you. Actually, they are there. Stay in work. It’s a good place to be unless you have a good plan in place to leave. Just want to be clear about that because you can find adventure within the workplace as well, within the relationship that you’re in and that adventure will cause a passion or is it the passion that causes the adventure? It could be the chicken and egg but there’s passion in everything.
So what else could be a cause of self-sabotage? Now, beliefs. Beliefs are rules that we have set up to know our values have been fulfilled and our belief shape our worldview and beliefs are constantly changing and we can outgrow our beliefs and when we outgrow our belief, we call it a limiting belief. So I think it’s quite healthy to have limiting beliefs because it shows you’re growing and expanding. The danger is sometimes are all beliefs are comfortable. We feel secure and we try to act within our all belief but when a belief is limiting you, it’s time for something new and something new can be a little bit uncomfortable.
So my example of when I started to teach guitar 38 years ago I just don’t get time to play anymore, after I grabbed my guitar out and dust it off and play, anyway, I think some of you know that I’ve come from a place where I was the shyest person you’d ever meet, low self-esteem, learning issues just like you wouldn’t believe and my parents are hippies as well so working for the man and all the financial stuff and making money, I had a lot of beliefs I picked up from my parents over a period of time and around that time, I had only been on a minimum wage which I think it was something like 3.95 pounds or something. We are going back quite away here.
So when I had my first client and I thought to myself, “I’m going to charge 11 pound an hour.” This is going to be outrageous. I’m going to be so wealthy. That when they said to me how much you charge, I went, “7 pounds” because my beliefs only allowed me to ask for that amount and at that time it felt outrageous.
Anyway, I’ve used a lot of NLP around my beliefs, around money, success, life, living so we can see that I had limiting beliefs around money at that point and obviously outgrown that now, as I run my own company and work internationally.
Let’s cover just one more potential way that we are programmed to self-sabotage and it’s often for positive reasons. You understand why I say that in a moment before we start to look at solutions. In NLP, we have something that we call parts and if you’ve ever heard somebody say to you, “Part of me wants but part of me doesn’t,” then that’s what I’m referring to. So what do we mean by a part? A part is an efficient system the unconscious mind is set up to run in any scenario. So let’s put that into example and we can see where it could self-sabotage us. Let’s take public speaking. A lot of people do not like to speak in public and yet the only fears we were born with or potentially have is the fear of loud noises, the fear of falling and the fear of creepy crawlies. It’s not necessarily true but we have that kind of built in as potential fears. All our other fears have been learned. So where could the fear of public speaking come from? Well let’s say at the age of seven you get your first public speaking gig and that means you get to stand up in front of the classroom and reach from a book. In the age of seven you may not have mastered the art of reading and young conscious mind goes, what’s the fastest way to get us out? Because we don’t want to look foolish because we can’t read in front of our friends and I wish I can start and see if that works. So we go the [stuttering] and the teacher goes, “That’s okay, sit down.”
We will move on and your unconscious mind goes, “Wow, did you see how well that worked? That’s excellent. I know, every time we stand up and people look at us, we’re going to talk we will just automatically do that because it works for us.” Notice a couple of things. That part is now being set up and it was set up for a positive reason, i.e., to protect you so you don’t look foolish in front of your friends, also set up when you were seven, now that part runs automatically now. And as we grow up, you might get to a point in your life where you think, you know what, I got a lot to share the world or I’d like to advance my career. Pretty much the fastest way to advance any career is to speak in public and there’s now a part of you that wants to speak in public. It gets you on to the courses, it gets you to the side of the stage. It even gets you to walk out onto the stage and as you turn and look at these people and they look back at you, the part that protects you from people looking at you as you speak kicks in and you go, oh, and you walk off stage rather sharply and that part goes, “Didn’t I do a good job?”
Then there are just a couple of things. The reason you get parts conflict, part of me wants it but part of me doesn’t, one in our example, one was at the age seven and the other might have been up at the age of 25. So different points in my life and they both automatically run.
Now, notice on the surface that seems like a self-sabotage but really what’s going on there’s a system, a part that is running for a particular purpose. Now, we have a set of techniques in NLP that we can work with parts and I would recommend attending a live NLP training to truly learn how to work the parts. We can say to the part, “Okay then, can we keep positive intent, i.e., protect me but the way that you protect me now in front of a group is you make me relax, you make me be able to speak and to connect with other people and maybe even enjoy the experience,” and that’s a different part of protection but we can see how that would be perceived as a self-sabotage. Right so there’s various different reasons why, one is that we may have picked up from our parents and our guardians and there is part of us that looks up to our parents and guardians and don’t want to outgrow them and in so doing, and our parents and guardians who love us dearly would normally want us to grow and expand so we can acknowledge that and move on and sometimes the acknowledgement is just fine.
The other time is we also talked about values and this particular value that I mentioned was adventure and when we don’t fulfill this value of adventure, it can manifest itself, yes, in a positive ways but also in negative ways. We then explore things like beliefs which are the rules that we live by and we talked about limiting beliefs and how as we start to grow beyond those limiting beliefs it can be uncomfortable and be seen to be self-sabotaging. And then we touched on parts. Now, we can work on any of those.
So first off is if there’s an area of your life where you keep self-sabotaging, whether it’s relationships, whether it’s work, promotions, running your own business, money, one of the first things that I suggest that you start to do is to sit down and understand yourself in those areas. So what I mean by that, write down all your values around work, around relationships and how you do that is to answer the question, what do I value about this relationship? What do I value about work? And another question you can use is what’s important to you about this relationship? What’s important to you about work? What’s important about being an entrepreneur and then list down as many words that come to mind. Now, you’re going to pick up beliefs as well but don’t stop, just brainstorm and get them all out. Now, you can always tell the true value. A true value is an abstract word like happiness, fulfillment, purpose, legacy, those are just abstract terms. Beliefs are rules. They’re structures. So, for example, if you have a value of work and work is a value. It’s not normally a top value. Some people act as though it is but it’s an abstract word. Work means different things to different people. How you spot a belief, it is a rule you’ve set up to fulfill that value and one of those could be time-based. So you might say, “I know this value work has been fulfilled because I put a 12-hour day in.” That’s a rule that you have. Nothing to do with quality, quantity. It’s time-based. Somebody else might say, three hours. Now, who’s right?
Well, they’re both right within themselves. That’s the rule they set up. So once you got the values out, you’ll notice that you pick out some beliefs as well and you start to write out your beliefs around those areas. So write out all your beliefs around that relationship, around work, around entrepreneurship, whatever you’re working on. Then once you’ve got those out, decide on a goal for that area of your life and start to write out the values that you would like to be fulfilled in that area, within that relationship so you might say adventure. I’d hardly recommend putting adventure down and that can manifest in your relationship as a surprise weekend to Paris unless you live in Paris then it might be Vienna, it might be London. In work, it might be a new project. So we can start to see that from understanding some of the reasons why people self-sabotage and a lot of them not necessarily negative although they could be, gives us clues of how to put ourselves into an unsabotaging way or probably a better way to say that, back on the path of success. I would love to hear your insights and your thoughts around this topic. So do drop me an e-mail. Leave a comment below and I look forward to catching up with you soon. Until next time. All the best. See you soon.
Take your NLP training to the next level
Click here for the NLP Practitioner
Click here for the NLP Master Practitioner
Click here for the NLP Train the Trainer