Hanna:
Hey before we get started today I want to remind you about something really fun, which is, at the time of this episodes release I am offering a masterclass about communication. If You’ve ever thought that you are terrible communicator, if you have something you want to communicate better, if you feel like communication always ends badly and you just wish you had some tools to be a badass communicator…or at least get you into connection and communication more easily, I have a two part masterclass for you. It’s available right now if you follow the link www.hannakokovai.com/communication. Or go to my instagrm bio and the link is there. It’s just $20 but I think it’s like a million dollars of value because you get a communication protocol you can use with ANYONE, forever, and that’s pretty special. I have to say I used it myself last week and it was brilliant. So I just have to tell you this one class might just change your life. There are about 16 folks at the time of recording this that have already gotten alot out of the class, and I just want to read you something I received today.
Sharing with permission, Esme said, “I was holding back from communicating with my husband about two things that were bothering me FOR YEARS. Yes, years. Finances and our intimate life. I listened to the classes and immediately opened up a conversation with him about both. There was so much I related to in what you shared about feeling Communication Constipation. I’ve been blocked, as I said, for years. I know I’ll use your protocol forever now. I added one step for myself because I noticed after hearing you speak about the conditioning to stay quiet, that that is ME, I have so many limiting thoughts about myself as someone who can or should speak up and what the repercussions might be that I’ve unintentionally taught myself that my opinions don’t matter as much, so I added to your first step of the protocol to check thoughts about ME. Because I can only show up as well as my thoughts about me. That was an incredible revelation. Thank you for sharing this gift. It’s worth way more than $20. Winky face.”
So thank you to Esme and everyone else who has sent me feedback thus far I really love to hear your wins and take aways so keep sending those to me. And if you want some aha moments about communication too go snag the class. It’s only available until June 30th. Once you purchase, you will receive an email within 24 hours with the link to the class recordings and also a few other bonuses. So get on that www.hannakokovai.com/communiation
Alright on to today’s episode. About self sabotage.
You ever commit to doing something and then sabotage yourself?
One goal I’m working on right now is enjoying doing the dishes. Not just doing them, which is a major struggle for me, but also enjoying doing them. I think that if I could enjoy doing dishes, if Could use thought work to actually enjoy doing the dishes then I could essentially do anything. Doing dishes is my kryptonite. This is my impossible goal. I may have talked about this before on the show I can’t remember but I have some very elaborate and deep rooted thoughts about doing the dishes that keep me really opposed to doing them. But anyways I’m committed to this goal but I the other day I was like wow I really just self sabotage all the time when it comes to doing dishes. I am a self sabotager. I’m like at the mercy of self sabotage. I wait until it’s really late at night so then it’s too late and I’m too tired. I go around the house and pick up other things that need to be put away and in the process find more important projects I need to work on. I don’t buy dish soap. Haha. I make it really hard for myself to do the dishes. But I was thinking about this idea of self sabotage, a lot of women use this term when it comes to like their desire to excercise more or lose weight or stay on a specific food protocol. Like one of my clients used this term a lot when she was cutting out sugar from her diet. She would say I just sabotage myself and go to the store starving and buy Oreos or whatever. Self sabotage is such a bitch.
But I was thinking about this term and how we use it and it was just occurring to me that what self sabotage really is is just being human with unchecked thoughts. It’s just your brain, braining.
So I want to start by just considering that self sabotage is not some newfangled trickery that is totally beyond our ability to comprehend so we must just submit ourselves to it’s overwhelming power. And like give up and give in to it’s mysterious hold it has on us. No. It’s not.
Let’s just call it how it is with some serious grace; you are just being human.
We say oh I want to lose weight or I want to make more money or I want to stop staying up so late and then we give all this credit all this power by claiming it’s this thing called self sabotage which to me sounds pretty elaborate. Like I didn’t want to eat chocolate but then this secret spy part of me highly trained in the art of sabotage created this strategic plan to put chocolate in my path and convince me that I should eat it...no, your brain is literally just doing it’s basic job. It does it wonderfully. And it’s basic AF.
Seek pleasure, avoid pain and expend minimal effort. That’s what our human brain is wired to do.
That’s it. It’s not wired to consciously consider not eating Oreos. Eating Oreos is the easiest, most pleasurable, un-painful thing to do. Just like not washing the dishes. Much easier than washing the dishes. Also unneccessary to my brain’s survival. Like my brain is just braining, just saying yeah but not doing dishes is easier. Eating the chocolate is easier than sitting with the urge to eat the chocolate and processing your emotions and saying no to something that gives instant gratification.
If you hear the word self sabotage and it’s like instant confusion about how the hell you’re going to navigate through it, if that word feels like a really tricky elaborate difficult thing to you…notice what it actually is. It’s literally your primitive brain keeping you safe. That’s it. It’s your unconscious thoughts driving your actions.
And that’s what we do in Coaching, we get conscious. That’s it.
So what if you weren’t self sabotaging, which to many of us feels like something really vindictive and sneaky and kinda makes me mad at myself too. Right? I get mad when I say that I’m doing that. Self sabotage sounds like something we need to be really put off by and angry about.
What if instead of that you were just being human? Then what? Could you release the need to beat yourself up, question your every move, over think it and inevitably make things more difficult and end up with the same result again and again. If you were just being human could you notice that it isn’t necessary for you to give up on yourself so easily?
It’s kinda difficult to see the harm we are doing in blaming this thing called self sabotage for why we aren’t getting what we want, but here’s what happens when we blame this thing self sabotage and we make self sabotage into this like creature outside of our control… we do a couple things
1- we make it less of our responsibility because our actions are coming from this thing that
“Just happens” so it’s out of our control. So we have zero power to stop it.
2-We completely let go of the ability to process & allow our humanness
3-We focus on not having done and our energy goes there and we create MORE of the same
4 - we reinforce our inability to follow through or do good or be enough through the failure
So that’s the first thing I will offer, to stop telling yourself that you are self sabotaging. It’s not helpful for most of us to think that way. It just confused us and depresses us, frankly.
Instead, wow, how human of me. How human of me to want to avoid the pain of doing something challenging. How human of me to seek the simple and easy pleasures. How human of me to find it uncomfortable to change or do something that is new.
Ok so let’s stop using this term to hurt ourselves more and offload responsibility and control to some horrid beast called Self Sabotage.. and let’s start from compassion to try to figure out what’s going on and where we can intervene.
And here’s what I think is going on. Self sabotage, or what we are now just calling being very human, is an action. It’s an action or an inaction. Right?
Self sabotage is a way to label the action of doing something that proves you can’t trust yourself. Whatever it is. I eat Oreos. I don’t do the dishes. See I can’t trust myself. See, I’m not good at this. See, I’ll never be able to get it.
And whenever I’m doing the action of trying to prove that I can’t trust myself, I know that my thoughts are behind it.
Usually the thoughts are something like I’m not good enough. I never succeed. I am not worthy of this. I can’t.
To me self sabotage is what happens when we are letting our subconscious get off on not being enough. Not being able. Or capable. Or worthy of trying and failing and calling it learning. You are LETTING your subconscious, your unconscious mind, get off on not being enough. You are doing that. So there’s your control. There’s your power back. Take the power back from that thing you called self sabotage and notice that if you are participating in this action, this behavior of self sabotage, it’s because you are letting your unconscioius mind get off on not being enough. And you don’t have to do that.
So listen to how this works:
Your unconscious mind thinks “Im not enough”. You Feel defeated. Or deflated. Or like a failure…and then you do something to prove that it’s true that you’re not enough like buy a bunch of Oreos. Which is SUPER easy compared to quitting sugar btw. And then look, I get to have proof that I’m not good enough to quit sugar.
That’s like the most tantalizing feeling for your primitive brain. You don’t have to change AND you prove your thoughts right.
It makes sense right? But like why? Why does your subconscious want you to believe you’re not enough or good or worthy?
Your subconscious gets off on not being enough. And every time you do the thing that sabotages your success and progress, it’s because your subconscious is like having mini orgasms.
Your primitive brain is getting off on not being enough because not being enough is easy. It’s easy. That’s it.
Imagine being able to think the word orgasm and have an orgasm.
For a lot of women that would eliminate so much stress and pressure and awkwardness.
What fun! What ease!
That’s what it’s like for your subconscious brain to believe you’re not enough. It’s so fun, so easy. You don’t have to do anything to prove that you’re not enough except do nothing. Wow. Your brains like daaaammmnnn that feels good.
Your subconscious mind finds so much pleasure in the not enough ness. The spinning thoughts, the replay of your failures greatest hits, that’s your subconscious’s foreplay.
The recurring patterns you see in your life that you use to prove your not enough-ness, your subconscious loves those. The Oreos. The piles of dirty dishes. The thing you do to sabotage your success or your goal. Your subconscious loves those things. Those actions prove that your brain is right, you’re unworthy and not enough so don’t even try. Your brains like don’t even try.
So first we need to recognize that there is a part of you, a very strong-willed, driven part of you that is getting off, daily. With ease. Your brain is like mmmm girl, just keep doin what..you’re...doin.
Haha was it last weeks episode when I said I want to make my mom gasp at some of the things I say on this show. Hey mom.
Ok so here’s your primitive brain in orgasmic bliss, eating cookies, self sabotaging behavior all day…and what are you doing, you with your conscious, human prefrontal cortex brain full of ideas about the future? You are being a total cock block. You’re like I have goals I have ideas and desires that are going to require me to do something like put down the cookies and sit with the discomfort of the urge to eat them all, and feel the sugar withdrawals and watch my husband eat cookies in front of my face and also look at me like a weirdo because we’ve always eaten cookies together and now I’m not and maybe he won’t love me anymore and now I have those thoughts to deal with…it’s like your brain was in pleasurable relaxation mode and you just walked in and turn on all the lights and said ok let’s get up and get to work instead.
Jarring, for your brain. Cock block.
No wonder your brain is like um get out of here with your stupid stupid goals.
So again if you had found the holy grail of pleasure, you think orgasm and it happens, you’d probably be pretty resistant too if someone came in and tried to take that power away from you.
Your subconscious mind, the primitive part of your brain I like to call it, is literally in bliss when you let it think that you are not enough. Because it just get’s to direct you to keep on being “not enough”. Of course when you go poking around in your brain suggesting something different your brain is going to throw a fit.
So, we need to recognize that when we see the behavior of what we call self sabotage, it’s coming from a thought somewhere in your unconscious mind and it sounds like “I can’t do this”
“It’s so hard for me to believe that I could be good”
“But it seems impossible to believe I’m good enough to do this.”
“I’m not worthy.”
Those thoughts are buried somewhere underneath “I just want a cookie right now.”
All of those thoughts of not-enoughness…those are arguments from your subconscious for the erotic turn-on it’s addicted to.
SOOOO what we can do after this awareness? After you’ve realized oh it’s some thought that my unconscious mind is literally curling her toes over that probably sounds pretty rude and awful to say about myself which is causing me to act on sabotaging my dreams…what we can do is to argue from our conscious desires and get excited about the turn-on we want to be addicted to now: our holy as hell erotic as fuck human enoughness.
I want you to get addicted to your enoughness. So we have to stop letting our brains get off on not being enough by walking in and turning on the lights…and not apologizing for that.
Ok plug your ears for a minute if you are easily offended. I’m going to offer a really inappropriate metaphor I just thought of. So mom seriously stop listening.
Have you ever caught your partner jerking off? There’s nothing wrong with that but you’re like holy hell could I blow your mind with what we could do together. There’s more here than a laptop and your right hand. Again, nothing wrong with that. Just like there’s nothing wrong with your brain sitting in not enoughness because it’s keeping you from being hurt or disappointed by potential failures, it’s keeping you in the instant gratification of shoving oreos in your mouth and loving the taste. Like lots of people go through life not feeling like they are good enough and also being perfectly adequate humans in the eyes of others and living a full life. Like nothing inherently wrong with getting off on not enoughness.
BUT there’s more out there than that. And that’s where we want to “ehem excuse me, you want to see something really fun and erotic? How about knowing that you’re MORE than enough now and you’re on your way to something that seems impossible but you’ve got it. Maybe I could be good at this. It’s true I can think differently and rewire my nervous system. I could be enough. I am enough.”
So now that you’re on to your brain, what we want to do is we wanna make it harder and harder for our brains to go back to the thoughts of not being good or not being enough by consciously practicing what we will say when we catch it. Or what we will think, when we catch it. And how will you know when your brain is offering a thought of not being enough? When you see yourself in self sabotaging behavior. Or like about to do a self sabotaging behavior. Right?
Now watch how this works:
You are at the grocery store. I am using this stop eating sugar example because it’s easy to see but apply this to anything you do that is self sabotage against your goals.
So let’s pretend your goal is to quit sugar and you’re at the store. And you see the cookie isle and you walk down it. Ok so you’re about to put the cookies in your cart, and you’re like okay this is I know the first part of my self sabotaging behavior. You’ve caught yourself. You’re like ehem, excuse me. And you know that this behavior is COMING FROM a subconscious thought like “I’m not capable of following through.” Like in the moment the thought might just be YUM, cookies, but you’re not going to change your behavior by trying to think that the cookies aren’t yummy. They will be yummy if you eat them, so that’s why we need to be aware of the unconscious deeper thoughts about not enoughness so we can unravel that.
Ok and in that moment you can think to yourself, I am actually enough, right now as I am. I am good. I got this. Some thought like this that feels most aligned for you. Ok and the first second or 5th time this may not work but I promise there are plenty of cookie isles to practice in. haha so you keep practicing.
“Im enough right now as I am.”
And instead of feeling powerless, defeated, you feel empowered. And from there, I decide not to buy Oreos, knowing that it doesn’t matter either way I’m still enough, so there’s nothing to sabotage.
You see the difference? The unconscious thought was I’m not enough, and you feel defeated or liek a failure and then you eat the cookies and prove you’re not good enough and a failure. Right, but with a new intentional thought like I am good enough right now, you can feel empowered, and make a really great decision that is aligned with your future goals.
Make the easy thing hard. The easy thing is for your unconscious brain to keep running on that not enoughness. Make it hard for your unconscious brain by interrupting it whenever you can. Even when it has nothing to do with this particular goal. Practice interrupting. Ehem, excuse me, what are you up to? What are you thinking? I think there’s something better. And soon the hard thing, the intentional, conscious thought, soon that will become easier.
Alright, you wanna make the hard this easier and the easy thing harder, faster? Join me in private coaching. I offer 1:1 coaching for women who want to manage their minds and their nervous systems with confidence, kick anxiety, and start living into their most fulfilled lives.
One of my mentors says, I think it was Brooke Castillo, I’m almost sure I remember her saying this, that listening to the podcast versus actually getting coached is like the difference between reading a book about massage and actually getting a massage. I think that’s such a genius analogy. Because Like you can learn about massage and trigger points and muscles and you can give yourself a self massage and use different tools and props to lay on and move around and yes it’s amazing, if you do that you will get some serious relief and release… but then you get a massage therapist and you’re like Oooohhhh, I get it now. And I literally had this experience recently I went to Austin to visit my sister who is a trigger point Yin teacher and she helps people heal their bodies and by default their minds, she’s incredible if you are in need of some body work for tension release I’m going to shamelessly plug her right now she’s at Triggerpointyin.com. But like I have all the props at my house, I lay on lacrosse balls and rollers and do stretches but then I went there to her and in 1 hour got more relief from her actually touching me, showing me in real time how to do certain exercises properly and it was like OH OK, I get it now. This is what it’s supposed to feel like.
Right so the point is: if this podcast is helping you, if you’re into this, if you’re like ok I feel like I get it, at least kinda, come get the real thing. You get me, one on one, privately for one hour every week. If you’re done reading about massage and you want an actual massage, come to Coaching. If you’re done listening to me talk about brain orgasms and you wanna just have a brain orgasm, come to coaching. I hear people’s feedback about the show all the time that are like omg my life changed hearing this insight and I’m like that is amazing and EHEM, you wanna know what’s even better? Private Coaching is where it’s at if you’re ready, come. Brain orgasms. I’ll see you there.