Most of us have experienced self sabotage in our lives and most of us are aware on some level we do it. It may be with relationships, money or health. Whatever it is, it can be a viscous cycle of getting so close to a goal or stage in our lives we want and then watching it all crash down around us. Why do we do it though? It never feels good when we see it happen and it never leaves us any better off then we were before.
In fact, the longer we continue this ugly process of giving ourselves a little of what we truly want and then pushing it away, everything gets worse and worse and worse.
From there we have two choices: either get to the root of why this is happening and do something about or spend the rest of our lives never having what we really desire.
Yes that sounds extreme, but we’ve all come across someone we’ve seen living just a miserable existence and wondering what the fuck went wrong. Most likely it was a lot of things that just built up to create a mountain of failures, disappointments, set backs and hurts, and they got so weighed down they never tried to get back up. Sounds sad as hell right? It is and it happens to too many people.
But why does it happen? What starts it all?
It’s usually one hurt stemming from either a single event or person in our lives, and most likely at a younger age. Many of us aren’t quite aware of what that incident was or if we are, we aren’t cognizant enough to understand all the ways that person or event is effecting our lives.
For me, money has always been an issue. I have struggled to get myself to a financial place I have dreamed of or wanted. I’ve gone through consistent cycles where I’ve attracted money, maybe not quite the amount I wanted but definitely more than what I had been making, and then the next month watched myself make even less than I normally do till the point that it evens out.
It’s defeating and add stresses like not bringing in enough to cover bills, cover rent, worrying about whether or not I’ll be able to get my daughter anything for Christmas, feeling like a failure for not being where I wanted at any stage in my life. It’s overwhelming.
I didn’t quite always understand why this was happening though. Not until I dove deeper into self discovery and really started working on myself.
I have done several coaching programs, read countless books, followed dozens of podcasts and YouTube videos of different speakers and coaches. My three personal favorites out of all of them are Lisa Nichols, Layla Martin and Regena Thomashauer aka Mama Gena.
Male coaches I can enjoy, but their energy never quite spoke to me the way these incredible women have. And each have taught me similar things in different ways or very different things, but all related to similar areas of my life. All three have promoted living your truth and living in joy.
As I’ve learned from them, I started understanding how deeply my lack of self love and self belief went and knew it effected why I wasn’t having the success in my business that I wanted to have, why my romantic relationships always ended up being catastrophes, why I didn’t feel like I had the kind of friendships I always wanted and the list goes on and on.
I knew those feelings were there, but I couldn’t quite get to the root of them to overcome them and “fix them” (there’s a reason I’m putting that in quotes by the way). I just felt stuck and like something was in me that I desperately wanted and needed to clear out. It felt as if physical muck was just sitting inside my chest and throat, and I wanted to reach in and pull it out.
But I had no idea how or what this all really was until I learned an exercise doing Lisa’s Abundance Now course and a similar exercise in Layla Martin’s VITA Coach Certification (I highly recommend both).
The exercises have the same goal, but different techniques. Both exercises are all about discovering with clarity why you have the blocks you have. Blocks are those lovely little things holding you back and most of us again have an understanding that we have them, but we don’t always understand the root of them.
Many coaches or personal development courses talk about moving past blocks and getting into an abundant mindset. The problem I have found with a lot of others is while their promoting a mindset change, they aren’t dealing with your current mindset and what created it. So all those self sabotage issues aren’t actually being faced.
But with Lisa, Layla and Mama Gena I started facing the things that held me back and discovered something just fucking mind blowing! I discovered that this all came from a place of self protection.
I spent so much time trying to fight past my demons and fix them, which wasn’t working and I was never moving past them. But when I did some work to sit with and meet my shadow self,I realized she was the little girl still inside me that was hurt because her mother never really loved her, saw her or cared about her.
That little girl so desperately wanted her mother to value her and hear her and never felt cared about. I have a wonderful father who encouraged me to shine, but the woman in my life who was supposed to be the most influential and most important didn’t care. So I grew up feeling unseen and unimportant and being someone that serves women in my daily profession.
It now makes so much sense why things just weren’t working. How could I surround myself with women to help them heal, grow, thrive and become empowered when deep down I felt none of that because I was still waiting for someone to make me feel and experience all those things about myself? I couldn’t!
I don’t have a relationship with my mother given her toxicity, which I’ll go deeper later on how to deal with removing people from your life. However, I have done a lot of work and still do meeting that shadow side and giving it space to express itself.
Our shadow side isn’t something we can get rid or fix because it’s part of us. We can meet it, talk to it to understand why it’s created all those blocks and behaviors that hold us back, and give it space to feel heard and loved. Doing that is absolutely necessary in working past them to have what you really want.
For me, I have come to an understanding with my shadow side and allow myself to converse with it so as anything comes up for me, I can understand what’s really going on. It’s not easy and requires facing things like massive insecurity, feeling like I can’t be my authentic self for fear of being rejected or unheard, but it’s so worth it in the end.
I may not have everything I want yet, but my overall joy in life is so much better. I’ve done work with my shadow self through meditating and visualizing that part of me and asking it questions, I’ve written the question why over and over while thinking of a block to get answers out. I’ve written letters to myself to give it love and apologize for ignoring it. Each time I do that or anything else, I start to feel more connected, more vibrant and alive.
If you haven’t done anything like this for yourself, try it. It’ll feel weird at first but it’s so worth it.
