THE MOUNTAIN IS YOU

SELF-SABOTAGE COMES FROM UNCONSCIOUS, NEGATIVE ASSOCIATIONS

Self-sabotage is also one of the first signs that your inner narrative is outdated, limiting, or simply incorrect.

Your life is defined not only by what you think about it, but also what you think of yourself. Your self-concept is an idea that you have spent your whole life building. It was created by piecing together inputs and influences from those around you: what your parents believed, what your peers thought, what became self-evident through personal experience, and so on. Your self-image is difficult to adjust, because your brain’s confirmation bias works to affirm your preexisting beliefs about yourself.

When we self-sabotage, it is often because we have a negative association between achieving the goal we aspire to and being the kind of person who has or does that thing. If your issue is that you want to be financially stable, and yet you keep ruining every effort you make to get there, you have to go back to your first concept of money. How did your parents manage their finances? More importantly, what did they tell you about people who had it and people who didn’t? Many people who struggle financially will justify their place in life by disavowing money as a whole. They will say that all rich people are terrible. If you grew up with people who told you your entire life that people who have money are this way, guess what you’re going to resist having?

Your anxiety around the issue that you’re self-sabotaging is usually a reflection of your limiting belief.

Maybe you associate being healthy with being vulnerable, because you had a parent who was perfectly healthy when they suddenly fell ill. Maybe you aren’t writing your magnum opus because you don’t really want to write; you just want to be seen as “successful” because that will get you praise, which is typically what people revert to when they want acceptance but haven’t gotten it. Maybe you keep eating the wrong foods because they soothe you, but you haven’t stopped to ask what they have to keep soothing you from. Maybe you aren’t really a pessimist but don’t know how to connect with the people in your life other than by complaining to them.

In order to reconcile this, you have to begin to challenge these preexisting ideas and then adopt new ones.

You have to be able to recognize that not everybody with money is corrupt, not by a long shot. Even more importantly, given that there are people who use their money in selfish ways, it is even more important that good people with great intentions are fearless in pursuit of acquiring this essential tool to create more time, opportunity, and wellness for themselves and others. You have to recognize that being healthy makes you less vulnerable, not more, and that criticism comes with creating anything for the public and isn’t a reason to not do it. You have to show yourself that there are many different ways to self-soothe that are more effective than unhealthy food choices and that there are far better ways to connect with others that through negativity.

Once you begin to really question and observe these preexisting beliefs, you begin to see how warped and illogical they were all along—not to mention distinctly holding you back from your ultimate potential.