53. How to Stop Self-Sabotaging
Self-sabotage is a topic I’ve wanted to talk about on the podcast for a long time, but I kept waiting until my thoughts were a little more together on the topic. Yep, that was just perfectionism stopping me, which is actually a form of self-sabotage… kind of meta, right?
Perfectionism keeps us super small because we only do stuff we feel fully confident we can do perfectly, and as we know, that’s not how we grow and learn.
But self-sabotage can show up in so many other ways too. And the main one I want to discuss today boils down to the word “should.”
It’s not that “should” is a bad word. But it presupposes that there’s a right, or a best, or a proper course of action or way to be. And what I see often with myself and my clients is we subconsciously try to align our life and our career to the ideas we have about what those things should be like, even if we want a life that’s very different than the shoulds we’ve been taught.
To say that another way, many people use this word to force themselves to do, think, or be certain things, whether they want to or not, and often without full awareness of what they’re doing.
This is why it’s a form of self-sabotage. We say we want a certain kind of life or career, but we act against that desire, due to our shoulds. Then we’re confused about why we’re doing that. It seems like our self-sabotage is mysterious, but really it’s simple: we’re trying to follow all those shoulds at the same time as we’re trying to live life our way, and the combination is a recipe for disaster.
Tune in this week to learn more about self-sabotage and how you can stop doing it. I’m sharing how we use shoulds against ourselves, as well as some other beliefs that create self-sabotage, how they’re stopping us from having a happy and satisfying career, and what we can do instead.
If you want to supercharge your capacity to create a life that blows your mind, I have some one-on-one coaching slots opening up soon. Send me an email and let's talk about it or click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
If there are topics y’all want me to teach and talk about on the podcast, feel free to write in and let me know by clicking here! I’d love to hear from you!
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
How we self-sabotage by paying too much attention to the shoulds.
What shoulds are and where they come from.
How shoulds abdicate responsibility and choice.
Why we need to start questioning our shoulds and decide which ones we want to keep, especially when it comes to our jobs.
How taking away the idea of shoulds will give you back your freedom and open you up to more resilience.
When taking big steps towards your goals becomes a form of self-sabotage.
Some of the other socialized beliefs that cause self-sabotage.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about self-sabotage.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all, happy Wednesday. I just wanted to share with you that this week I’m having the opposite problem of the problems I had over the summer, which is to say it’s cold in my house.
So it’s October when I’m recording this at least, I’m not sure, I think this will still come out in October, maybe November. But for a long time it was real hot here in my house in Sacramento, even though I have an air conditioner in my office. It was a really hot summer, especially coming to California from Seattle. And that went on for a long time y’all. Like well into September we were having 90 degree days and I was like, “Okay, I think I’m good on that. Okay, cool.”
And then the weather did finally turn, and I was like, “Yes! The weather has turned.” But Alex Luchini, girlfriend, is having some stuff done, I don’t know, something with like the furnace and so we are not using it right now. It’s not that it doesn’t work, it’s not that we couldn’t use it. But I think when she was demoing the apartment that’s in the downstairs of our house, she maybe put a bunch of holes in the ducting because she was doing whatever, her projects down there.
So we don’t want to run it because basically it will not be very effective. We will be sort of heating ourselves and sort of heating random stuff. Also we live in this old giant Victorian and guess what? The furnace only heats and cools the main floor, and my office is in the upstairs. Which I was like, “Oh, maybe it’ll be warm up there though, heat rises.” But if there’s no heat on in your house and it’s cold out, there’s no heat to rise.
So long story short, it’s cold in my office, I’ve got two sweaters on. Hopefully we’ll get this furnace thing dealt with soon, and I think I’m going to order a space heater in the meantime. At least this week it does. Last week that was out for a few days. Was that last week? I don’t know.
Y’all listen, it is an adventure living in an old Victorian house while your girlfriend does a bunch of projects on in it. And it’s not that I would choose something different, it’s just there’s always something happening. And I get to use all my coaching tools on myself and all my thoughts and feelings, and all the problem solving I need to do around living in this house while we do projects on it.
But good thing I have all these tools. I can’t imagine actually having this experience without my coaching tools, which I probably wouldn’t have to because if I didn’t have my coaching tools my girlfriend and I probably would have broken up like three years ago. Don’t worry, this isn’t a secret, she and I joke about this all the time so it’s okay for me to tell you all.
Okay, anyways enough about that, let’s dig into what we’re talking about today. Today we’re talking about sabotage and specifically self-sabotage. And this is a topic I’ve wanted to talk to y’all about for a long time, but I kept putting it off because I was like, “Oh, my thoughts aren’t cohesive enough. Oh, I don’t have a strong enough teaching about.”
And that was my perfectionism talking to me in my head, which is a form of sabotage, to be sure. Perfectionism blocks us from doing stuff because we’re worried that we can’t do it perfectly. Or we do it but then we don’t put it out there or share it with the world because it’s not perfect.
And that is definitely one way we can sabotage ourselves, and we kind of keep ourselves super small because we keep ourselves only doing stuff that we feel 1,000% confident we can do 1,000% well. And that tends not to be how we grow and learn and get better at shit that we’re not already good at.
And I also think on top of that, if we’re trying stuff but privately and not getting feedback on it, you can learn while doing that. That’s definitely a useful technique sometimes, but being willing to be vulnerable and put things out there even when they’re not perfect yet, I think helps us grow a lot faster and get to where we want to go a lot faster.
Not that faster is better, slow, and steady is cool too, you know I’m a big fan of that. But just sometimes it’s hard to do growth in the vacuum with ourselves, and when we're in the vacuum with ourselves we're usually with our own worst critic, who then looks at our beautiful thing that’s not perfect yet and is like, “This is dumb.”
So anyways, perfectionism is one of the kinds of self-sabotage I want to talk to y'all about. But the main one I want to talk to you about basically boils down to the word should. Let's pause for a minute and think about this word. What the fuck does the word should even mean? I mean, we're all using it all the time. What does it actually mean?
It can mean a few things. According to a quick Google search to define my term that I'm sharing with y'all, my term, the term should is used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness typically when criticizing someone's actions. Yes, it actually says that in the definition. It can also be used to indicate what is probable, like this should lead to that.
Here's the thing about the word should, it's not that it's a bad word. It's not that it's unhelpful, but what the word should does is it presupposes that there's a right or best or proper course of action. And what I see often with myself and my clients is that we use this word to force ourselves to do, think, or be certain things. Whether we want to do, be, or think those things or not.
And a lot of the socialization that we've absorbed in our childhoods, which I'm talking about all the time. Those, as Ramit Sethi calls them, invisible scripts by which we're running our lives, about how we just think things are supposed to be. That often comes through in shoulds. I should do this, I should do this, I should do this. I shouldn't do that. I definitely shouldn't do that. I know better than doing that.
These are all shoulds that presuppose that there is one right way. And what shoulds do is they abdicate responsibility. And they abdicate choice. They abdicate choice by saying like, “Oh, I don't get to choose what I would like to do, or what I think the best option is to do, because it's been pre-decided. It's taking my choice away.”
And it's abdicating responsibility because it's sort of a rule following thing. Like, “Oh, well I should do this. And if I do that and it doesn't work, I did what I should do so it's not my fault.” Or like, “Oh, it's unfair, I followed the rules, I didn't get the thing.”
Why is this a way that we sabotage ourselves? I think probably that's what you're wondering. Because yeah, it definitely can be an unpleasant concept that can keep people doing shit they don't want to be doing. But it's also a form of self-sabotage because we often use the concept of should to act against our own self-interest and our own desire and the kind of life and career we'd like to design.
It's kind of ironic and backwards, because we use should to control our choices, but what we think we're going to get by controlling our choices in that manner is the opposite of what we get. One example of this is like if we think, “I shouldn't talk about money.” This is a very common thought, “I shouldn't talk about money. It's not nice to talk about money. We shouldn't talk about that with our peers. We shouldn't talk about that over there. It's improper.”
That's a form of a should. That's a form of socialization that keeps us from doing something that could help us gather information that could help us have more of what we want. That should is keeping us from getting data.
Now, yeah, there might be specific rules in your workplace about talking about money, but there's lots of different places you could talk about money. But if you have this sense of should in your head and you aren't willing to question it, it's going to control your behavior and keep you doing a certain set of actions. Even if that set of actions doesn't lead to what you want to have or what you want to have happen.
Should can also lead to things like overworking. I should just finish up this project. I should be able to get this done in an hour. Being good at my job means I should blah, blah, blah, whatever the thing is. But again, what that does is it presupposes there's a right way to be and you have to be that way. And that by being that way you're going to get whatever it is that you want.
But often what we get, again, is the opposite. And that's why it's a form of self-sabotage. We think, “I should be able to get this done in an hour.” We do it, we don't get it done in an hour. We get frustrated, we judge ourselves and make it mean something's wrong with us because we didn't get it done in an hour. And then we think, “Well, I should finish it.”
And then we work late. And then what we've actually created is we're pushing ourselves down a burnout path because we've overworked, and we feel like shit emotionally from what we made it mean about us that we didn't get the work done in the amount of time our brain said we should be able to do it.
So what's left when we take away should? I'm sure that's a question y’all have. People are like, “Wait, what? If I take away should we’re all going to run through the streets naked screaming?” Probably not. I mean, I don't know what you're up to and what your brain wants to do when we take away should. But for most of us, it's not going to be anything like that.
It's going to be probably really subtle shifts for most of us. But shifts into living our life and building our career by our own design. And really creating space for our own insight, our own genius, and new interesting ideas.
If we take away the idea that there's a should and we have to do things that way, then what's leftover is we're like, “Here's the situation, here's the outcome I want, how can I get there? Let me brainstorm five different ways because there is no one right way. And then let me pick which way I'd like to try. And if that first way doesn't work, I've got four more. And if those four don't work, I've got a big, beautiful brain and I can design some new stuff to try out.”
Taking away the idea of should gives you back your freedom. I think it also opens you up to a much bigger sense of resilience. Because something about the word should also kind of indicates that if we follow the should we're going to get it right on the first try. And first of all, that's not how life often works.
Even when we follow the shoulds, we often don't wind up where we want to. That's like the lie that should tells you is like, “Ooh, if you follow my rules, you'll get the prizes.” And usually either we don't get the prizes, or we get the prizes and then we're still unhappy.
So taking away should gives you your agency back, but it also opens you up to more resilience of like, we can just fuck around and find out. We can just test and learn. We can just try things and see what happens and see what actually gets us closer to what we want to do and be and have in our lives and in our careers.
Now, this can feel scary, y'all. I get that. It can feel scary to let go of should. Should can be a little bit like those bumper guards at the bowling alley. A lot of our socialization is causing problems and fucking us up. It doesn't mean the socialization is bad, it just means we want to be aware and look at it and decide which ones we want to keep.
Some of the shoulds you might want to keep. But just asking yourself like, “What is the should here? Where did this should come from? Who did I learn this from? Would I take career advice from that person today?” If you wouldn't, then I would deeply invite you to question why you're following their shoulds. But we all do that, so no shade on you if you're doing that, that's very normal.
But a lot of the shoulds we don't need anymore. They were things that were instilled into us as ways to parent us and as ways to help navigate us when we were children. We're not children anymore. Unless you're literally a child listening to this, in which case some of my teachings may be relevant for you and some of them may not be. And that's a conversation you can have with your parent. And I do think there are coaches specifically for children. That was a bit of an aside.
Anyways, what's possible for you without shoulds? what's possible for how you can live your life if you take away the shoulds? Or at least are willing to question them. Okay, are shoulds the only kinds of thoughts that cause self-sabotage? No, they're not.
We talked about before perfectionism can cause the self-sabotage, shoulds can cause self-sabotage. Other kinds of socialization, socialized beliefs can also cause sabotage, especially all or nothing thinking is one. So if you think that something has to be this or it has to be that, but what you want is kind of a combination of this and that, the this or that thinking can sabotage you from having this and that.
So that might be confusing with me calling it this and that. But let's think about having a really successful career and raising children. Or having a hobby that you devote a lot of your time to, or having a very happy partnership. We have a lot of ideas in our culture that you have to choose, and you can have one or the other.
That's called all or nothing thinking and that can sabotage you too. Because if you think you can only have one or the other, then you're going to make choices to only privilege one or the other. Versus if you question that belief and you're like, “Maybe I can have both and.”
Then you're going to be willing to see the strategies and steps and tactics you would need to create both the happy, satisfying career and whatever else you want to create. Whether it's being really invested in your parenting and spending a lot of time on that, building a really deeply connected meaningful partnership or relationship. Or having some very time intensive hobby, like doing roller derby I've heard is really time intensive. So both and.
Okay, we're not going to talk about every form of self-sabotage because there are lots of them. But let's talk about one more. And I see this one a lot. The last form I want to talk about is taking too big of steps. And that might be a bit of a head scratcher for y'all because you're like, “Wait, if we're taking big steps, that's good, right? We're taking big steps towards our goal.”
It can be good. When it's a form of self-sabotage is when you're taking such big steps without leading up to them that they're not sustainable. And I see this a lot with things like movement routines, when people aren't doing a movement routine, and they want to add one into their lives.
And by the way, when I say movement routine, what normals call that is exercise. I just have such an attitude problem even about the word exercise that I don't call it that. So I call it movement routine. So that's what I am referring to.
When people want to add that in, a lot of times they don't add it in slowly, bit by bit like what I teach in too small to fail. They try to go from zero to 60. And that's a form of self-sabotage because it's not sustainable. They're not building into the habit and they're using willpower usually. And then so what usually happens is they'll do it for like three weeks or a month, or three days, and then they'll just stop. Fall off the wagon is what a lot of people call it.
So there's nothing wrong with taking big steps, but it's a form of self-sabotage when you're doing it in a way that actually is making it harder to create the change you want to create. Because when we do that, and then we fall off the wagon, then usually what happens is then people beat themselves up. And they're like, “I’ll never be able to do it.”
And then they either try to do the big step again, sometimes they try to do an even bigger step. I see this a lot where they're like, “Oh, I tried this medium step and that didn't work. So next time, I need to go harder, I need to go bigger.” And then they give up twice as fast because it's too big to be sustainable in that shift.
And the antidote to that is too small to fail, which I have a whole podcast episode on. But basically sometimes we sabotage ourselves by trying to be too perfect. Sometimes we try to sabotage ourselves by following all the rules. Sometimes we sabotage ourselves by thinking we can only have one thing or the other, versus both things. And sometimes we sabotage ourselves by trying so hard to go fast that we slow ourselves down.
Now the good news is, even if you've done some or all of these, or spent decades of your life in these tactics, which I have, that doesn't mean all is lost. You can learn how to navigate your life differently.
You can learn how to notice your socialization and the way you're following these rules and the way you're being perfectionistic, and where your thinking is all or nothing, and where you're taking too big of steps. And you can address all of that bit by bit so that you stop sabotaging yourself and start actually getting somewhere and making progress on the goals that you have for your life and your career.
And if you don't want to do this alone, you don't have to. You totally can do it alone; you have the tools to do it. And a lot of us won't do it alone. And I think it's a lot more fun and a lot more effective to do this work with a coach because a coach can see things about your brain that you can't see. I know that to be true, that's why I have my own coach.
So if you want a coach of your own to help you stop self-sabotaging and start getting your shit the way you want it to be so you can have the career and life you dream of, I would love to work with you. I've got room for new clients opening up soon. Come on over to my website and sign up for a consult.
All right, that's what I have for y'all today. Thank you, have a great week.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving women who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all, happy Wednesday. I just wanted to share with you that this week I’m having the opposite problem of the problems I had over the summer, which is to say it’s cold in my house.
So it’s October when I’m recording this at least, I’m not sure, I think this will still come out in October, maybe November. But for a long time it was real hot here in my house in Sacramento, even though I have an air conditioner in my office. It was a really hot summer, especially coming to California from Seattle. And that went on for a long time y’all. Like well into September we were having 90 degree days and I was like, “Okay, I think I’m good on that. Okay, cool.”
And then the weather did finally turn, and I was like, “Yes! The weather has turned.” But Alex Luchini, girlfriend, is having some stuff done, I don’t know, something with like the furnace and so we are not using it right now. It’s not that it doesn’t work, it’s not that we couldn’t use it. But I think when she was demoing the apartment that’s in the downstairs of our house, she maybe put a bunch of holes in the ducting because she was doing whatever, her projects down there.
So we don’t want to run it because basically it will not be very effective. We will be sort of heating ourselves and sort of heating random stuff. Also we live in this old giant Victorian and guess what? The furnace only heats and cools the main floor, and my office is in the upstairs. Which I was like, “Oh, maybe it’ll be warm up there though, heat rises.” But if there’s no heat on in your house and it’s cold out, there’s no heat to rise.
So long story short, it’s cold in my office, I’ve got two sweaters on. Hopefully we’ll get this furnace thing dealt with soon, and I think I’m going to order a space heater in the meantime. At least this week it does. Last week that was out for a few days. Was that last week? I don’t know.
Y’all listen, it is an adventure living in an old Victorian house while your girlfriend does a bunch of projects on in it. And it’s not that I would choose something different, it’s just there’s always something happening. And I get to use all my coaching tools on myself and all my thoughts and feelings, and all the problem solving I need to do around living in this house while we do projects on it.
But good thing I have all these tools. I can’t imagine actually having this experience without my coaching tools, which I probably wouldn’t have to because if I didn’t have my coaching tools my girlfriend and I probably would have broken up like three years ago. Don’t worry, this isn’t a secret, she and I joke about this all the time so it’s okay for me to tell you all.
Okay, anyways enough about that, let’s dig into what we’re talking about today. Today we’re talking about sabotage and specifically self-sabotage. And this is a topic I’ve wanted to talk to y’all about for a long time, but I kept putting it off because I was like, “Oh, my thoughts aren’t cohesive enough. Oh, I don’t have a strong enough teaching about.”
And that was my perfectionism talking to me in my head, which is a form of sabotage, to be sure. Perfectionism blocks us from doing stuff because we’re worried that we can’t do it perfectly. Or we do it but then we don’t put it out there or share it with the world because it’s not perfect.
And that is definitely one way we can sabotage ourselves, and we kind of keep ourselves super small because we keep ourselves only doing stuff that we feel 1,000% confident we can do 1,000% well. And that tends not to be how we grow and learn and get better at shit that we’re not already good at.
And I also think on top of that, if we’re trying stuff but privately and not getting feedback on it, you can learn while doing that. That’s definitely a useful technique sometimes, but being willing to be vulnerable and put things out there even when they’re not perfect yet, I think helps us grow a lot faster and get to where we want to go a lot faster.
Not that faster is better, slow, and steady is cool too, you know I’m a big fan of that. But just sometimes it’s hard to do growth in the vacuum with ourselves, and when we're in the vacuum with ourselves we're usually with our own worst critic, who then looks at our beautiful thing that’s not perfect yet and is like, “This is dumb.”
So anyways, perfectionism is one of the kinds of self-sabotage I want to talk to y'all about. But the main one I want to talk to you about basically boils down to the word should. Let's pause for a minute and think about this word. What the fuck does the word should even mean? I mean, we're all using it all the time. What does it actually mean?
It can mean a few things. According to a quick Google search to define my term that I'm sharing with y'all, my term, the term should is used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness typically when criticizing someone's actions. Yes, it actually says that in the definition. It can also be used to indicate what is probable, like this should lead to that.
Here's the thing about the word should, it's not that it's a bad word. It's not that it's unhelpful, but what the word should does is it presupposes that there's a right or best or proper course of action. And what I see often with myself and my clients is that we use this word to force ourselves to do, think, or be certain things. Whether we want to do, be, or think those things or not.
And a lot of the socialization that we've absorbed in our childhoods, which I'm talking about all the time. Those, as Ramit Sethi calls them, invisible scripts by which we're running our lives, about how we just think things are supposed to be. That often comes through in shoulds. I should do this, I should do this, I should do this. I shouldn't do that. I definitely shouldn't do that. I know better than doing that.
These are all shoulds that presuppose that there is one right way. And what shoulds do is they abdicate responsibility. And they abdicate choice. They abdicate choice by saying like, “Oh, I don't get to choose what I would like to do, or what I think the best option is to do, because it's been pre-decided. It's taking my choice away.”
And it's abdicating responsibility because it's sort of a rule following thing. Like, “Oh, well I should do this. And if I do that and it doesn't work, I did what I should do so it's not my fault.” Or like, “Oh, it's unfair, I followed the rules, I didn't get the thing.”
Why is this a way that we sabotage ourselves? I think probably that's what you're wondering. Because yeah, it definitely can be an unpleasant concept that can keep people doing shit they don't want to be doing. But it's also a form of self-sabotage because we often use the concept of should to act against our own self-interest and our own desire and the kind of life and career we'd like to design.
It's kind of ironic and backwards, because we use should to control our choices, but what we think we're going to get by controlling our choices in that manner is the opposite of what we get. One example of this is like if we think, “I shouldn't talk about money.” This is a very common thought, “I shouldn't talk about money. It's not nice to talk about money. We shouldn't talk about that with our peers. We shouldn't talk about that over there. It's improper.”
That's a form of a should. That's a form of socialization that keeps us from doing something that could help us gather information that could help us have more of what we want. That should is keeping us from getting data.
Now, yeah, there might be specific rules in your workplace about talking about money, but there's lots of different places you could talk about money. But if you have this sense of should in your head and you aren't willing to question it, it's going to control your behavior and keep you doing a certain set of actions. Even if that set of actions doesn't lead to what you want to have or what you want to have happen.
Should can also lead to things like overworking. I should just finish up this project. I should be able to get this done in an hour. Being good at my job means I should blah, blah, blah, whatever the thing is. But again, what that does is it presupposes there's a right way to be and you have to be that way. And that by being that way you're going to get whatever it is that you want.
But often what we get, again, is the opposite. And that's why it's a form of self-sabotage. We think, “I should be able to get this done in an hour.” We do it, we don't get it done in an hour. We get frustrated, we judge ourselves and make it mean something's wrong with us because we didn't get it done in an hour. And then we think, “Well, I should finish it.”
And then we work late. And then what we've actually created is we're pushing ourselves down a burnout path because we've overworked, and we feel like shit emotionally from what we made it mean about us that we didn't get the work done in the amount of time our brain said we should be able to do it.
So what's left when we take away should? I'm sure that's a question y’all have. People are like, “Wait, what? If I take away should we’re all going to run through the streets naked screaming?” Probably not. I mean, I don't know what you're up to and what your brain wants to do when we take away should. But for most of us, it's not going to be anything like that.
It's going to be probably really subtle shifts for most of us. But shifts into living our life and building our career by our own design. And really creating space for our own insight, our own genius, and new interesting ideas.
If we take away the idea that there's a should and we have to do things that way, then what's leftover is we're like, “Here's the situation, here's the outcome I want, how can I get there? Let me brainstorm five different ways because there is no one right way. And then let me pick which way I'd like to try. And if that first way doesn't work, I've got four more. And if those four don't work, I've got a big, beautiful brain and I can design some new stuff to try out.”
Taking away the idea of should gives you back your freedom. I think it also opens you up to a much bigger sense of resilience. Because something about the word should also kind of indicates that if we follow the should we're going to get it right on the first try. And first of all, that's not how life often works.
Even when we follow the shoulds, we often don't wind up where we want to. That's like the lie that should tells you is like, “Ooh, if you follow my rules, you'll get the prizes.” And usually either we don't get the prizes, or we get the prizes and then we're still unhappy.
So taking away should gives you your agency back, but it also opens you up to more resilience of like, we can just fuck around and find out. We can just test and learn. We can just try things and see what happens and see what actually gets us closer to what we want to do and be and have in our lives and in our careers.
Now, this can feel scary, y'all. I get that. It can feel scary to let go of should. Should can be a little bit like those bumper guards at the bowling alley. A lot of our socialization is causing problems and fucking us up. It doesn't mean the socialization is bad, it just means we want to be aware and look at it and decide which ones we want to keep.
Some of the shoulds you might want to keep. But just asking yourself like, “What is the should here? Where did this should come from? Who did I learn this from? Would I take career advice from that person today?” If you wouldn't, then I would deeply invite you to question why you're following their shoulds. But we all do that, so no shade on you if you're doing that, that's very normal.
But a lot of the shoulds we don't need anymore. They were things that were instilled into us as ways to parent us and as ways to help navigate us when we were children. We're not children anymore. Unless you're literally a child listening to this, in which case some of my teachings may be relevant for you and some of them may not be. And that's a conversation you can have with your parent. And I do think there are coaches specifically for children. That was a bit of an aside.
Anyways, what's possible for you without shoulds? what's possible for how you can live your life if you take away the shoulds? Or at least are willing to question them. Okay, are shoulds the only kinds of thoughts that cause self-sabotage? No, they're not.
We talked about before perfectionism can cause the self-sabotage, shoulds can cause self-sabotage. Other kinds of socialization, socialized beliefs can also cause sabotage, especially all or nothing thinking is one. So if you think that something has to be this or it has to be that, but what you want is kind of a combination of this and that, the this or that thinking can sabotage you from having this and that.
So that might be confusing with me calling it this and that. But let's think about having a really successful career and raising children. Or having a hobby that you devote a lot of your time to, or having a very happy partnership. We have a lot of ideas in our culture that you have to choose, and you can have one or the other.
That's called all or nothing thinking and that can sabotage you too. Because if you think you can only have one or the other, then you're going to make choices to only privilege one or the other. Versus if you question that belief and you're like, “Maybe I can have both and.”
Then you're going to be willing to see the strategies and steps and tactics you would need to create both the happy, satisfying career and whatever else you want to create. Whether it's being really invested in your parenting and spending a lot of time on that, building a really deeply connected meaningful partnership or relationship. Or having some very time intensive hobby, like doing roller derby I've heard is really time intensive. So both and.
Okay, we're not going to talk about every form of self-sabotage because there are lots of them. But let's talk about one more. And I see this one a lot. The last form I want to talk about is taking too big of steps. And that might be a bit of a head scratcher for y'all because you're like, “Wait, if we're taking big steps, that's good, right? We're taking big steps towards our goal.”
It can be good. When it's a form of self-sabotage is when you're taking such big steps without leading up to them that they're not sustainable. And I see this a lot with things like movement routines, when people aren't doing a movement routine, and they want to add one into their lives.
And by the way, when I say movement routine, what normals call that is exercise. I just have such an attitude problem even about the word exercise that I don't call it that. So I call it movement routine. So that's what I am referring to.
When people want to add that in, a lot of times they don't add it in slowly, bit by bit like what I teach in too small to fail. They try to go from zero to 60. And that's a form of self-sabotage because it's not sustainable. They're not building into the habit and they're using willpower usually. And then so what usually happens is they'll do it for like three weeks or a month, or three days, and then they'll just stop. Fall off the wagon is what a lot of people call it.
So there's nothing wrong with taking big steps, but it's a form of self-sabotage when you're doing it in a way that actually is making it harder to create the change you want to create. Because when we do that, and then we fall off the wagon, then usually what happens is then people beat themselves up. And they're like, “I’ll never be able to do it.”
And then they either try to do the big step again, sometimes they try to do an even bigger step. I see this a lot where they're like, “Oh, I tried this medium step and that didn't work. So next time, I need to go harder, I need to go bigger.” And then they give up twice as fast because it's too big to be sustainable in that shift.
And the antidote to that is too small to fail, which I have a whole podcast episode on. But basically sometimes we sabotage ourselves by trying to be too perfect. Sometimes we try to sabotage ourselves by following all the rules. Sometimes we sabotage ourselves by thinking we can only have one thing or the other, versus both things. And sometimes we sabotage ourselves by trying so hard to go fast that we slow ourselves down.
Now the good news is, even if you've done some or all of these, or spent decades of your life in these tactics, which I have, that doesn't mean all is lost. You can learn how to navigate your life differently.
You can learn how to notice your socialization and the way you're following these rules and the way you're being perfectionistic, and where your thinking is all or nothing, and where you're taking too big of steps. And you can address all of that bit by bit so that you stop sabotaging yourself and start actually getting somewhere and making progress on the goals that you have for your life and your career.
And if you don't want to do this alone, you don't have to. You totally can do it alone; you have the tools to do it. And a lot of us won't do it alone. And I think it's a lot more fun and a lot more effective to do this work with a coach because a coach can see things about your brain that you can't see. I know that to be true, that's why I have my own coach.
So if you want a coach of your own to help you stop self-sabotaging and start getting your shit the way you want it to be so you can have the career and life you dream of, I would love to work with you. I've got room for new clients opening up soon. Come on over to my website and sign up for a consult.
All right, that's what I have for y'all today. Thank you, have a great week.
Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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