4 Reasons You Self Sabotage [Overcome Procrastination, Anxiety & More]

sometimes the biggest obstacle keeping you from achieving your goals is yourself here to show you how to get out of your own way this triple board-certified neuropsychologist and med circle educator dr. Judy we all self-sabotage to some degree let me know in the comment section below what area in your life do you find yourself self sabotaging the most your family your career your friends your relationship dr. judy i feel like you have you don't self-sabotage though well we also sabotage sometimes so i definitely do sometimes yeah yeah and I think in the past I did a more like chronically with procrastination mmm that actually I have a great personal story about that and like why that like snapped me into shape because sometimes you finally realize the consequence is that it causes to your life and you say you know what I'm gonna stop doing that but my whole point is self-sabotage is universal to some degree and that's why we shouldn't have any shame about it and we should talk about it and also talk about the solutions yes and you I have said this once before but it is so bears repeating when I look at your life it is the life I think I'll be living once I get all my stuff figured out like you wake up early you go for a run you eat right you're successful you have this great marriage I met her husband he actually is great but you have all these great things and talents and I'm over here going man I didn't have a diet coke today until 1 p.m. like that's my goal no we all have goals like that too I mean but you know what I think it's really important to recognize that self-sabotage is a process that is tied into our biology and our evolutionary roots which is why none of us can escape it to some degree yeah and my whole theory about the fact that it is universal comes from the fact that there's only two primary drives of all human beings and it is to attain rewards and to avoid threat that's how we survive as individuals and as a species and so usually when those two things are sort of in complementary balance everything's good you're trying to go for your rewards and sometimes you have to avoid the threat make sure that you're doing okay but every once in a while the self-sabotage switch turns on if you start to avoid threat much more than thinking about attaining rewards and in our modern-day threat is not the Polar Bear it's not the saber-tooth Tiger threat is what if I don't get that job what if I get rejected when I ask this person out on a date what if I go up for this public speaking thing and everyone laughs at me those emotional things can hold us back very similarly to the types of things that would attack us physically and we have not developed to the point of distinguishing physical threat from emotional threat so the fight-or-flight response gets triggered even when it's an emotional or psychological threat and people so I start to avoid that more and more and then they stop thinking about attaining rewards and they fall off of their goal attainment when I think of self-sabotage though I think of the the not the conscious self-sabotage like I know this hamburger is bad for me but I'm gonna eat it anyway it's the things that we don't knowingly do that keep us from having the life that we want it's not going after like if you see someone attractive not going after it because you're afraid of the rejection you're sabotaging a potential future great relationship yeah so while the switch itself is biological and evolutionary nature for each of us a self-sabotage is often unconscious and it comes from a deeper place and I have this self-assessment that really tells us about how we self-sabotage individually and I believe that in my work and in my experience and the research that is out there for everybody to review that really there's four main factors that lead people to self-sabotage and they do operate sort of subconsciously until you call attention to them and I made up an acronym to remember this and the acronym is life life life L IFE so L stands for low or shaky self-concept i stands for internalized beliefs S stands for fear of the unknown and E stands for excessive need for control so some individuals are gonna have one of those for some people might have all four of those but either way I believe that those four things cover this victim of how people and why people self-sabotage eventually so can we go through each of those one-by-one so we're really understanding what they encompass the first one is L for low self-concept or shaky self-concept okay so self-concept is who we believe we are in the world and there's kind of a holistic self-concept how you feel about yourself in general but then there's also sort of these various segments to your self-concept and self-esteem so you may have very high academic self-esteem but maybe lower athletic self-esteem or you may have really high athletic self-esteem but lower social and romantic self-esteem and so whatever area in which you find that your self-concept is more shaky that tends to be the area in which self-sabotage is more likely to occur because you may believe that you don't deserve good things to happen to you or maybe you're not good enough and those types of things can turn into self-fulfilling prophecies that makes sense if this is resonating for you watching this hit that thumbs up button or leave a comment below because my hunch is is that this is resonating for everybody even for high high achievers like you know there are still areas of our lives where we go why are we not better why are we not happier more fulfilled here exactly and I think that that's what people really do when they start to assess and notice wow there's certain areas in my life that could be better and I want to sort of state this upfront that most of the times people will feel pretty good about 80 to 90% of their life but it's really about 10 to 20% where man why can't I get to my goal here like why do I keep tripping up yet I can do all of this stuff in this area of my life so maybe my work life is awesome maybe my friendship life is awesome but like the dating life is just not coming together right right or my work life is awesome my dating life is awesome but man I just cannot get my health into better shape yeah why not yeah there's always like one or two areas where you see yourself getting stuck and that's what we're trying to figure out it's like how do we unstick you so you can move on and achieve those goals and live the life that you wanted to live yeah on get unstuck so your life doesn't suck okay what there's my little tidbit what's alright I I has internalized belief so these are the beliefs that you learned from childhood and those beliefs are really prominent because when we first come into the world it's the first time that we're learning about anything we're learning about who we are in the world how people respond to us whether we're loved what people think of us our personality traits all of these things happen early childhood and in early childhood because it's your first exposure to these things you remember them so much more our human Bri our human brains have this propensity to actually integrate new information into our existing schema so you know once we establish a certain belief system when new information comes in you're not gonna say hey maybe my existing beliefs them doesn't make sense anymore no you're gonna say yeah there's a way to twist that and make it make sense in my existing system and so something that can really apply is when you watch your parents or other important adults and see how they navigate problems and if they present as a little bit anxious oh my gosh you definitely can't go out there because you can't trust anyone well when you learn that lesson as a child as an adult you might actually adopt that for yourself and you start to tak take on those same beliefs and then that colors how you interact with your goals with other people in your life and how you go through life it make sense right what about F at the sphere of the unknown or change human beings in general are not great with change overall because change is tough change means that you are not the master of your universe for at least a brief moment and for all human beings to survive and feel good about themselves they need to feel like they're in control yeah and they want to know what's coming up and so there's certain personality traits though that leads you to be more uncomfortable with change and if you're uncomfortable with change or the unknown it's harder for you to reach to higher levels of goals because there's gonna be a period of time in which you're not exactly sure what's gonna happen and so these types of people tend to sort of confine themselves to the familiar and they kind of get stuck in sort of more like a ho-hum pattern rather than really push themselves to get past that discomfort that they can live a better and more fulfilling life got it all right and we round it out with E is excessive need for control so this is for my high achieving people all people who you know this type are you I totally good percent yeah I mean I I say this with the most love when I say type babe because I identify as a type a okay and my husband is a Type A also so you can imagine the two of us like we can butt heads over very small things but type-a people they love control and sometimes when you're on your way to goal attainment there's gonna be an aspect of it that you can't control and that makes them uncomfortable and that makes them not want to reach for their goals and it's very easy to see that that can happen in a variety of different things when your element is excessive need for control because the minute somebody says well you're not gonna be able to control this part of the process and you're gonna say I forget it I'm gonna maybe go another way yeah but maybe you should have like stuck the course and just dealt with that discomfort yes well it's all great advice but what do we do with all this information and how do you know where you fall on the LIF acronym well dr. Judy ho at dr. Judy ho comm has a quiz that you can take when we come back after this short break I'm gonna share my results and dr. Judy's gonna tell me how I can stop self sabotaging parts of my life but right now check out this med circle educational series with dr. Judy I think once that awareness is there it's the great time to implement any small steps that you can to curb the behavior that you think is a problem so if you notice hey I'm not feeling so good I reach for that drink or it's become a habit that the minute I'm off the clock the first thing I do is pour myself a drink once you recognize that pattern you break it by substituting a replacement behavior so this would be something to do instead of what you were doing before so instead of reaching for a drink what can you do instead usually it's helpful to do something that would prevent you from also having a drink at the same time so turning on the TV doesn't really count because then you can watch the TV while you're pour yourself a drink something that actually keeps you busy and hopefully provides some kind of positive stimulus positive experience and so some people have picked up some hobbies you know when when I want to pour that drink and send that I'm gonna go work on this project that I started you know maybe they started an arts and crafts maybe they started knitting maybe they're just gonna go organize some of their books but anything that could keep their hands busy they don't engage in the same exact behavior and anytime you have that urge just do the replacement behavior instead that 5:01 every day when he was drinking he started Frankie 501 serving yeah so when he was recovering one of his coping mechanisms was that at 5 o'clock he was in the gym absolutely and I think that works out really well because then you're teaching your brain to adopt a new pattern and before you know it it becomes so natural you don't even have to think that way you don't have to say oh I want to have a drink I'm going to the gym you just go to the gym drupal board-certified neuropsychologist dr. Judy ho has authored this book stop self-sabotage at something all of us could use and something we all need to be more aware of so that we can take action and inside that book and at dr. Judy ho calm you can take a quiz to determine where in your life or what component of yourself could use a little work so I took your quiz yes okay and I have we're broken up into four sections low shaky self-concept internalized traditions fear of change or the unknown excessive need for control what do you think I scored the highest on and in theory you want to score low I scored high on one just one okay well - I scored high on okay I'm gonna guess lower shaky self-concept and then internalized beliefs I scored a 4 out of 5 for low shaky self-concept so really high on that one I I scored zero for internalized traditions yeah and then I scored three on excessive need for control which I thought I'd be more around a 5 for control but look I'm not as needy as like that okay so this low shaky self-concept I was very surprised at those because I thought if you would have asked me outside of the quiz do you know who you are I would say I think at this point in my life I'm the closest to knowing my trousseau my scores indicate otherwise yeah and I think that sometimes if you think about compartmentalizing your self-concept which a lot of people really have these different roles and domains of life but they consider their self in maybe it's just a couple of areas where you feel like maybe I'm still not quite figured out just yet mm-hmm I tend to second-guess myself a little bit more in this arena and it doesn't mean that oh I just have horrible self-esteem all the time it just means that in a certain area of life you might question yourself a little bit more it might just be a little shaky meaning like you think you have a pretty good idea but then if you get like an outside reaction from somebody it makes you second-guess like wait maybe I'm not quite as well-developed here or wow what do they think of me if that happened you know it just makes you question it more as opposed to it coming from a more internalizing stable place where you're like ah even though they're giving me this reaction I still feel very very good about exactly where I am in this particular area of my life yeah that one of the first questions was it was true or false question you said the way you feel about yourself on a given day depends largely on situational factors examples what others say to you how others respond to you or what your weight is on the scale and and I said true for that yeah yeah I think if if you left here today and said Kyle it's so good seeing you I'm gonna feel better if you left here and said this is the last time I ever want to see ya I would feel really bad I'm very much affected yet by people's I guess perception and opinions of me which I didn't think I was really but I I think I am now that I really analyzed it well and I think that that also contributes to somebody who is really good at being attuned to other people and like looking for observations of social interactions like there's really good things that are associated with that but when done a little bit too much it can lead you to question yourself more than you really need to because when somebody responds in a certain way you take responsibility automatically sort of like wait did I do something wrong to cause them to feel this way or to cause them to act this way instead of for example maybe they're just in a bad mood and has nothing to do with me that you're more likely to maybe think well what did I do in the situation so certainly that's I to me that's a better way to live life than somebody who always thinks that they have no responsibility what so and they don't think that they are ever at fault but as you can see if it's taken more to the extreme then your mood and the way that you feel about yourself can be more variable throughout the day and that can be kind of distressing because when you don't feel great about yourself you're more likely to be impulsive you're more likely to maybe do something to escape a distressful feeling things that might not be the healthiest for you maybe eat junk food I mean everybody's a presentation is different once they recognize that link but in general if you're not feeling amazing about yourself you're more likely to do things that are also maybe not honoring sort of this idea of like if I'm care about myself love myself I'm gonna take more energy into my self-care for example but if I'm not feeling great then ass screw self-care today I'm not gonna take care of myself so that can sometimes sometimes happen if it goes to the extreme do you find that most people are weighted heavier on either LIF or II so I really find that there's a spread and I find that for some people certain combinations are more likely to occur together often times L and I do occur together sometimes a lower shakey self concept comes from messages from childhood yes I find that the fear of the unknown and excessive need for control sometimes go together too because again if you have an excessive need for control part of that is possibly that you don't like the unknown you want to be able to control every element of your life yeah but I also someone is fine just a spattering some people will say that they're all 4 and some people will say well I'm I and then I'm easy so like there's no like full-on pattern although I do find that L and I tend to co-occur for a lot of people and F&E turn to co-occur flow so I'm sure everyone's gonna watch this go to dr. Judy Hakam so they can see where they can improve but how do people really interpret these results so they they let's say they scored 5 out of 5 for any one of the pillars and so now they know that this is an area of their life that they could improve on pond but then how do they go about actually improving yeah so once you find out what underlying driver is responsible for yourself sabotage so is that LIF years and all of the above then we start with the actual prescription how do we actually fix the problem and it all starts with your thoughts because thoughts proceed every emotion in every shouldn't even if you're not aware of them most of times we're not aware of our thoughts we were just aware of the negative emotion that's occurring like we don't like the emotion or we do something that we later regret were they good why don't we do that but we don't think about the fact that there was a thought that preceded all of that and it's that interpretation of whatever event or whatever stressor or whatever was going on your life that led you to feel those feelings and to act in those ways so one example that I give is you know two people can have the same thing happen to them and have very different responses to it so two people can be laid off on the same day and person one is panicking they have a thought oh my gosh what am I gonna do for money how will I deal with my family and immediately their emotional responses are distress anger sadness and then that may lead them to isolate seclude themselves maybe do something unhealthy to try to escape those negative emotions person 2 has a thought oh well that's disappointing but I actually didn't like this job very much anyway and maybe this is my time to kind of explore what else is out there immediately that emotional response is totally different maybe a small sense of relief maybe a little sadness but also maybe a feeling of excitement yeah and then maybe that person will actually start planning a little vacation maybe look into different job opportunities so you can see that they can totally diverge in terms of their emotional and behavioral responses even though it's the same event so what's different it's their thought process so we need to tune in to our thoughts we have over 50,000 thoughts in a day well that's the average for an average person so if you're an over-thinker it might be more than that but our brains can't process all of it it would be crazy to process all that so your brain starts to ignore things that have happened over and over again so any kind of like negative thoughts about yourself internalized beliefs fears about the unknown maybe your tendencies for control those things have occurred so many times that your brain is just like oh it's not new information so it's not paying attention to it but yet it still attacks your emotions and your behaviors and so the first thing is to like really look at those thoughts identified the ones that are contributing to yourself sabotage and then come up with a plan to change those behaviors and tolerate the distressing emotions that come with it and all of that is in your book stops off so it's a six step plan that's based on evidence supports that is what I need you got to give me plans you got to give me steps daddy hold my hand and tell me everything's gonna be okay I leave that actionable list of things to do and so I cannot wait to dive into this book I have the benefit of knowing you we've worked together plenty on med-surg cool and I have learned so much from you so I know that this is just more of what's in here and what's in here is already so good for you not mine I need more of what you have and so I think this is going to really give people that roadmap they need to get rid of those blocks they may or may not know they even have yes that's exactly right for me it's all about concrete solutions because this idea of self sabotage people even use that terminology they'll say I self-sabotage my diet and then it's like they don't do anything about it so my goal was to destigmatize it it's universal it's biologically and evolutionary rooted so let's all get over it yeah we all do it sometimes but if it becomes a chronic pattern for you how can we fix it well it's all about taking a deeper dive into what your thoughts are consisting of and then making a concrete plan to re-engage the part of you that feels excited to achieve that goal and really hone your motivation and really change your thinking and your action so that you can finally live the life that you wanted to live you hear that live the life you wanted to live all good stuff dr. Judy and I did my all-time favorite series at med circle on acceptance and commitment therapy you talk about actionable advice and insight into your life that you didn't even know you wanted it's in that series we're gonna give you a sneak peak of that right now [Music] there's also a self as context and what that means is there's sort of like a continual you it decreases your need to attach to a certain moment in time a certain thought a certain feeling a certain experience a certain hardship it's not you mmm it's not actually you but most of us get really inundated with the selfish content that moment of suffering oh my gosh this will never end this is horrible but you know what it's at some point in time you weren't suffering with us and at some point in the future you will not be suffering with us either and this is actually just a discrete moment in time where as the u.s. context is always there it's always safe and actually that that's the you that can engage in this willingness work without being so afraid because you realize that there's an intact version of your spouse yeah that I've seen you through all your ups and downs all your happy in terrible moments and is still there okay I truly feel my brain changing when you're saying that it's so funny I know I'm becoming an observer of my life in such a new way it makes it a little easier for you to do some of the work that we've discussed like wiliness yes because willingness is hard when you're focused on the pain of the moment I should be willing I should accept this but I don't want to it's so painful why don't I just go and pick up a bottle of alcohol and drink a little bit and go to sleep and not remember that it's there right that's just more tempting right now but if you have selfish can you remember that this painful emotion or this painful experience it's just a discrete self as content moment mm-hmm and that it'll pass like every other painful moment your life has passed mhm and the next time you remember yourself as context you could be in a completely different mode yeah and that that is a permanent thing that's always there for you yeah it makes the willingness work slightly easier yeah just knowing that the part of you as self as context has survived everything you could watch that series and more when you go to med circle dot-com now dr. Judy you have a laundry list of accomplishments and you also find time to give back and do a bazillion media appearances and write a book and all these things what is working for dr. Judy well I think a lot of it is really about orienting myself to my values every day that's really important to me because we are such a goal driven Society and goals are important but only if they are rooted in your values they are connected to the things that are the most important to you so values are not things you can check off of a list you can do that for goals but for values there are things that are basically your direction in life it's the things that you want your life to stand for like when you go what do you want to be remembered for and it's really about digging deep to find out what is most important to you like what what do you really want to do on a daily basis that makes you feel good about yourself on the inside so people have all kinds of different values they can be things like honesty adventure attaining wisdom having community spirituality just to name a few there's thousands of different values but in my book I list 33 of the most common values and if you're not sure what your values are you can do an exercise which is also available on my website free of charge called the values card sort so you can sort of play a little game of solitaire with yourself but with these values cards and you order them in the order of importance from most important value to least important and then I would take the top five cards your top five values and ask yourself when was the last time I nurtured each of these values and when you really think about your life that way it really changes your approach to life and I start with a reflection every single morning even if it's just two okay now do you really I do cuz you know how people come on TV and they're like yeah you know just about balance and blah blah and we know I know girl you're just saying that cuz you're on TV yeah you lit you morning yeah and I don't remember when that started but it's been at least two years where and you want to anchor that reflection period with something that always happens every morning so it could be with your morning coffee or like the minute you wake up you like just turn from your bed and you grab your journal whatever your reflection activity is and people so I think a reflection you but with your personality you can think about the one that works best for you for some people it is generally for some people it's reading like a page or two and a self-improvement book for some people it's reading an inspirational quote or two and thinking about that for other people it's reflecting on their values and thinking okay what are my top three values that I want to do something about today today it's community okay well what can I do for a community and it doesn't have to be something huge if you're if your value is community it's not like organize a fundraising event but it could just be call my mom you know Kesava community right so we took that be at a place where we can start to do that on a daily basis because then the rest of your day will just flow yep and then whenever you run into a challenge you just remember what did I want to stand for yeah and then it will reorient you on the right path and help your decision-making be an easier project and if something doesn't end up in your favor you were still committed to your values exactly that's got to make you feel good well what's so huge because when you think about values if you really want to cherish your value it's not always an easy road like if your value is honesty oh somebody you're gonna feel pretty bad about approaching that one yeah but if you know that it's important to you then you do it anyway despite the distress and that's what's really important about the values base work top two values top two values spirituality and community for me at least today all right a couple days ago it was spirituality and health you know I mean I really just depends sometimes you have a rotating list of values you kind of there's some that make an appearance in the top five all the time but then they might be differently ordered depending on what's going on in your life which is why it's always good to take a daily assessment or at least a weekly assessment of what they are yeah honesty and transparency for me I know those are kind of similar but I need to do the value cards sort on your website I want to hear from you guys what is your value your number one and of course it can change but right now as you're watching this what is number one for you I'd be fascinated to know thank you doctor Judy for being here so much wisdom I just got to keep sitting down to soak it all up because you have so much super fun and tally seems like her values are rest play food friends you know Callie's got to figure it out we got to be more like her that's right thanks for watching I'm Kyle Kittleson and remember whatever you're going through you got this [Music] [Music] you

Channel: What's Working!

Views: 166,601

Keywords: Procrastination, anxiety, sabotage, self, self sabotage, reasons, overcome, overcome fear, behavior, relationships, stress, anger, sadness, values, goals, how to, self help, how to stop self sabotaging, personal growth, self improvement, self-sabotage, self doubt, self sabotaging, personal development, self sabotaging behavior, psychology, psychologist, change, control, interview, discussion, medcircle, kyle kittleson, chat, conversation, whats working, show, documentary, episode, youtube, video, educational

Id: WCLZbIfph7Q

Length: 28min 50sec (1730 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 05 2019