Self sabotage. It is something we all do. It's part of human nature, but for service leaders, it can have even bigger implications because we are leading teams and representing communities. So if you're finding that self sabotaging behaviors are disrupting your productivity or stopping you from accomplishing your mission and the way that you want to.
This episode is for you. My next guest, Dr. Judy ho literally wrote the book on it. Stop self sabotage is a science driven six step approach to removing self sabotage from your life. And if you're an English nerd, then the alliteration alone in this episode is going to be fun for you. but Dr. Judy. Is just a wealth of information on this topic and she really digs into some specific ways that you can disrupt this pattern.
There are three major takeaways from this episode, you're going to first learn how to identify your self sabotaging behaviors, what it is that's coming up in your life and disrupting your ability to be everything you want to be. Then what do we do about that? How do we actually remove those behaviors and replace them with something that is more productive and more in alignment with our values.
And finally, the practical steps for implementing change that changes behavior for the good for long term and for hopeful. Life welcome to passion and profits without burnout. I'm your host, Jacob Moore. I'm a speaker, coach, childhood suicide loss, survivor, and filmmaker who left Hollywood to follow my heart of service.
I've helped tens of thousands of people find the balance in their life between passion and profits. On the show. I'm gonna teach you how to build a trauma, responsive, resilient, and impactful community and organization. All without burning out. Let's get started.
So Dr. Judy ho has so many. Numbers and letters after her name that I, I'm not gonna try to get them all here. The acronyms are just they're, , they're too long to cover, so I'm gonna leave them in the show notes, but she's a triple board certified and licensed clinical and forensic neuropsychologist. A tenured associate professor at Pepperdine university and published author Penn, stop self sabotage, and I'll give it to you.
Straightish what your teen wants you to know. She's a researcher. She works with patients she teaches and she's just a fantastic human being. Very generous with their time. Please. Welcome my next guest, Dr. Judy ho. Well, hi, Dr. Judy, welcome to passion and profit. Hi, Jake. So great to be with you. And thank you so much for having me on your podcast.
Yeah, my pleasure. It's great to see you again. You have been, you know, very generous to to the community at five bridges in you know, sharing some workshops and, you know, giving your, your perspectives and advice to them in the past. So I, I appreciate you coming here to passion and profits to share some additional information.
Oh, I'm so, so happy to, and really excited about the topic today. So I think you're, this topic is so timely coming out of the pandemic and quarantine and reintegrating into life and work and trying to find balance. I know that I have struggled a lot with self sabotage. Why do we do it? We know better. Why do we self-sabotage well, Jake, it's something that we all do and it's a universal phenomenon for all human beings.
And the reason goes back to our biology and our evolutionary roots. So all human beings have two primary drives it's to attain rewards. And to avoid threat. That's how we survive as individuals and species, but sometimes for various reasons, whether it's personality experiences past failures, and we can get into all of those types of common reasons why this switch gets triggered.
A switch gets turned on, where we start to avoid threat much more than we are thinking about attaining rewards. So when those things are in balanced, everything's going well. But when we start to think a lot more about avoiding threat, that's when the stop self sabotage issue comes up, which is why I wrote the book.
Stop self sabotage, self sabotage becomes an issue when we start to think more about avoiding. And nowadays threat isn't running away from the saber tooth tiger. Nowadays threat is emotional and psychological threat. Like what if people won't like my ideas? What if I applied for this job? And I don't get it?
What if I ask this person out? And they say, no what if I move across country for this new opportunity? And it doesn't work out. And the funny thing is the fight or flight system gets triggered no matter. It's a emotional threat or a physical threat. So our brains and our bodies respond in the exact same way.
So when we start to think about avoiding threat more, that's when we start self-sabotaging that makes so much sense that in this time, when we've all felt threatened for various reasons, that that might be on overdrive for people. Absolutely. We are still essentially in the pandemic, although we're kind of in a new era of the pandemic, kind of thinking about this as a, some, somewhat of a phenomenon here to stay.
So how are we going to manage our lives? But in general, we have also the biological and the physical threat hanging over us to some degree on top of all of the emotional, psychological threats that we have to navigate. So right now we're kind of getting a double. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and you talk about that emotional aspect of it and, you know, that's something that, you know, I've, I've been speaking about a lot lately with five bridges in our clarity sessions is that there's sort of, there's a significant loss.
That's come out of the pandemic in a way of life. That we have to reconcile the fact that like, that's not how things are anymore, to your point. We're still, we're still existing in that space. And, and what do we do? How do we move forward and live? And there's, there's a sense of mourning. That comes with the loss of the way that life used to be.
And even if we weren't physically threatened, you know, by COVID, there's still that psychological and emotional aspect that we have to reconcile. Right. You're absolutely right. And I think that feeling of loss and processing grief is so inherent in all of our experiences right now. We're all doing it in different ways.
Yeah. People are really going through all of the different feelings that, that brings up. And I don't think grief is a linear model. Although CBRA Ross had a great model, this sort of stepwise model. And I think it made a lot of sense. Yeah, I think that you kind of go through cycles and stages, so you might be in denial one day and acceptance another and then back to denial or then anger comes up, you know, so it can really morph At various times and sometimes in a surprising way.
And I think that's what we get caught up with too. You know, when we can't completely predict what's going on in our environment or even in our own emotional and and the thought state, it can wreak a little bit of havoc makes us feel a little bit out of control. And I think those stressful times is also one of the most risky times for self sabot.
Absolutely. And yeah, and that control factor, I, I think is inherent, right. We wanna, we wanna control our environment. We want to control ourselves, our minds, our bodies. And when there's that lack of control, then you know, it, it leads to that dissonance. That's like really hard to, to get over. So we know what the issue is.
We know that we are all. You know, self sabotaging. I would imagine then that if we're all doing it we should be able to remove the guilt around it. Right? Like we don't, we don't have to beat ourselves up about that. If we're all doing it, if it's part of human nature. Exactly. And I think that sometimes the narrative that we tell ourselves we're so mean to ourselves sometimes.
Yeah. That actually causes more self sabotage. So that second wave of thoughts or emotions that judges our first thoughts or waves of emotions or behaviors is actually much more detrimental than even the first thing. So. The self sabotage itself is not necessarily the worst thing. It's what we think about our self sabotage.
Yeah. That leads us then to more self sabotage in the future. And so this is why it's really important to think about really helpful ways to start turning this around and nipping this phenomenon in the bud so that you can move forward, but not, not being mean to yourself for the fact that you did it anyway, because like we said, it's a universal phenomenon and we all do it.
So. Yeah, no, I, I think that's really important to an important reminder that we need to be kind to ourselves and, you know, adding shame on to the pile is not helpful. In fact, it's, it's even more harmful. Exactly shame is such a powerful emotion and it can cripple us or cause us again to self sabotage or even to lash out at people who are trying to reach out to us and trying to care for us.
And so really making sure that shame IST part of the cycle and empowering yourself with the techniques to move. Yeah. Well, so if you listening out there have been self sabotaging, please take it easy on yourself. Give yourself a break. It's okay. We all do it. But now that we are aware that we're self sabotaging and we know, Hey, everyone does it.
It's okay. We don't need to have shame or guilt around it. We still wanna do something about it, right? We still want to stop. Self sabotage. You have a six step model that helps people in a very tangible way, actually do that. Can you share what those six steps are? Absolutely. Well, the first thing is, think about what your underlying drivers for self sabotage is.
So this is kind of pre step one, and you can find out what life factor is triggering your self sabotage and life is in acronym that I came up with to see why that avoidance, that avoidance switch gets turned on in the first place. And so life stands for low or shaky. Self-esteem. Hmm, internalized beliefs from childhood fear of change or the unknown and excessive need for control.
So you can take a free quiz on my website at Dr. Judy ho.com and you can see which of these four drivers are the ones that are. Causing you self sabotage in the first place. So for some people it might be a combination of the four, or it might just be one, but you can take this quiz and find out for yourself.
Then step one is really understanding your thought process. So step one is identifying your self sabotage triggers. Now all of us have different thought patterns that happen when we're stressed. and some of those thought patterns aren't very helpful. So it's really helpful to understand then what are the thought patterns that are holding you back that then leads you down this behavioral path of self sabotage?
So there are six primary thought triggers and some of the common ones are black and white thinking where you don't see the grays and everything's either all good or all bad. There's also the idea of mind reading, where you think, you know exactly what people are thinking of you and then you act accordingly, which sometimes doesn't I never do that in my relationships.
I all ever.
Yeah. It's something that we all will do because we're trying to predict our environment again. Right. But that's another common trigger for a lot of people. There's also personalization, which is a trigger, which essentially leads you to always make it about yourself. And it's more that you're trying to do your best, but.
As a result, you start to compare yourself with everybody and think that you're coming up short, or maybe when somebody is upset, you think that it has to be about you. And it can't just be that they're having a bad day. Right? So these are sort of common things that happen or catastrophizing that's another thought trigger where one bad thing happens and you think that everything's.
Messed up from now on. Right? And so there's six thought triggers and you can find out what these are. Again, I have some free resources on my website where you can look through and there's a little quiz that you can take to find out what your thought triggers are. But the first step is really to identify the thought triggers because everything starts with your thoughts, thoughts.
Then lead to feelings and actions. Mm-hmm . So if you can just rewind the tape of your life a little bit and say, what was I thinking just before I did the self sabotaging thing, or just before I experienced this negative emotion, right? That's going to set you up to know what to intervene on. Gotcha. So, so those, those triggers are really, and, and it's funny cuz as you're going through them, I'm like, oh I do that.
Oh, I do that. I do that too. And I, and I think I always equate it to like, oh, that's trauma brain, right? That's that's a script that I learned when I was a, was a kid, you know, when I experienced, you know, early childhood trauma and that's just, that's just how my brain works, but the way that your.
Describing it, like that's not ex exclusive to. Just someone with, with trauma brain that like all people do that. All people do that. And I think it's because when we are stressed, we really try to boil things down to the basics. Mm-hmm and we maybe take too many shortcuts. So these thought triggers can thought.
Can be essentially shortcuts in your brain. It's sort of like when something stressful happens, you have like an old way of thinking. And instead of actually looking at the situation and maybe going through the complex process of considering all the factors. When you're stressed, your brain is trying to economize.
It's trying to say what's the easiest way out of this situation, but sometimes those shortcuts are actually self sabotaging, as opposed to really taking into account all of the nuances that need to be taken into account, especially during a crisis moment. But it's just the way that our brains work, because it's trying to save energy.
It's trying to save time, especially when you're already overwhelmed with so many feelings and right. Stressful situ. Yeah. Okay. So that's really helpful to just know like, Hey, your, your brain's actually trying to economize here is trying to shortcut. So what it's doing is actually smart. The result of it is not helpful, but your brain's not necessarily broken just because trying to do this.
exactly your brain is actually trying to help you. And so sometimes it's also very important to remind yourself, to be kind to your brain, right? Your brain is not messed up. Your brain is not wrong. It's just trying to be protective of you. But you know, sometimes those protective mechanisms go awry. It's like anybody who cares about you in your life, whether it's.
Caring parents or caring family member. Yeah. Of any kind, you know, sometimes they're overprotective of you and you're like, okay, back off, I got it. You know, it's kinda like that your brain is overprotective and sometimes it takes them MIS. That is a great comparison. I like that. I appreciate that. And by the way folks will, we'll drop a link in the show notes to both of those resources that Dr.
Judy's talked about for those self-assessments and tools. So don't worry about that. We'll make sure you get those. All right. So we've talked about the, the pre-assessment we've talked about triggers now. What do, what do we do next? What's next in this six step process. so step two, once you've identified your thought triggers is to learn to deactivate your triggers and reset the emotional thermostat mm-hmm
So there's a couple of different ways once you've realize which negative thoughts are getting in your way in terms of how to work with them. And you can first start to question your thoughts because not all thoughts are reality, even though we might think that. Right. Right. So it's important to. Learn some techniques to start questioning your thinking.
And one of my favorites is evidence four and evidence against. So essentially you literally write down the negative thought on top of a page, and then you draw a line down the middle of the page. And then on one side, you write evidence for this thought. And on the other side, you write evidence against this thought.
And when we say evidence, we don't mean just more thoughts. We mean actual things that people can observe. Like it's not just you who's thinking it it's that if you tell somebody about it, somebody can say, oh yeah, I saw you do this. Or I saw this happen, right. It has to be something that can be observable by somebody other than you.
So an example of this might be, if you have a negative thought of I'm never getting promoted, the evidence for would be, well, I haven't gotten promoted yet. And I've been at the same job for three years. So that's evidence for this negative. but evidence against it is I've gotten two really awesome performance reviews.
in this last year. So that tells me that I'm headed somewhere. Right. And it's really important to do that because most of the times you will find that there's definitely something in both columns, even though when we first have the thought, it just feels like it's completely and unequivocally true.
Absolutely. The second way to. Deactivate your trigger is to then create a new balance thought. Okay. And a new balance thought means that you're taking into account both of those things. And so I love the yes, but technique, which is yes. Fill in the blank and recognize something that isn't going well right now that would speak to your negative thought.
But. Recognize something that is going well or something that's in process that is about your attempt or your your, your try at making it better. Right. So, yes, I haven't been promoted yet, but I have a great relationship with my supervisor and I think we're headed in the right direction. Right. So recognizing both sides of the situation is a super important part of deactivating your triggers.
The last one that I really like is about changing your relationship to that thought. So sometimes you have a negative thought and it's just hard to get it to unstick from your brain, but that doesn't mean that you have to let it linger all day long and affect your feelings and your actions. So, one thing I love to do is this technique called label.
So sometimes we have a negative thought and it feels like it is true or it's gonna come true. But if you just add this little tiny clause in front of it, it changes the way you deal with the thought. Okay. And that little tiny sentence is I'm having the thought that, so let's say you have a negative thought, like I'm never gonna be able to start my own.
That feels like it's true. And it'll probably stop you from doing things to start your own business. But if you just add this little clause, I'm having the thought that I'm never going to be able to start my own business. You can see how it distances you from the thought. And also you're checking that thought like this is not true.
I'm just having the thought. Yeah. I'm the agent who is having this thought. Yeah. This thought is not having me. And this thought is not me. It's essentially a mental event that has happened. And it does not have to mean that this is reality, that that really reminds me of. Some subconscious work that I've been doing and some reprogramming, you know, in the theta state and, you know, using those indicators and the way that we share language with ourselves you know, universally true statements are universally true.
If we don't make them subjective, we don't make them about us, then it's still true. And our subconscious will clinging to that and hold that truth. Right. And it, and it sounds like this, this checking, you know, gives you that same opportunity to say, to, to create that distance and to say, Hey, I don't have to be this thought.
I don't have to, this doesn't have to be unequivocally true. I am having this. I love that. Exactly, exactly. And a really important piece of this is also making sure to manage your emotion. So resetting the emotional thermostat is really understanding that all negative emotions are not bad. They're adaptive, they're telling you something and to not be afraid of them.
And so in my book, I go over a lot of different strategies on how to deal with negative emotions in a way that accepts them. It doesn't necessarily rush to change the quality of the emotion because yeah, the funny thing is if you wrestle with it and try to change it, it actually fixed around a lot more than if you just accept it and say, you know what?
It's like waves in the ocean and it's gonna come and it's gonna leave. Yeah. And it actually does end up leaving so much sooner. It's also important that. You do create essentially like a positive bank for positive emotions, so that it's a way to combat your negative emotions when they come up. So in my book, I talk about different positive and pleasant activities that you can do that take under two minutes sometimes.
Just so that you can build up that positive emotional bank. And that way, when you have a negative day in terms of your emotions, you have a lot more resilience to deal with it also. I love that. I, and I love that imagery of the ocean and the waves coming in and out. And, you know, I'm reminded the fact that when a wave comes in, it carries with it.
You know, sand and particulate and, you know, things that wash up on the beach and contribute to that ecosystem, right? It's, it's bringing, you know, new, fresh, and those thoughts can do the same thing. They can make those positive deposits in that bank that build up, you know, that, that, that shoreline, which is, you know, improved.
I think that's beautiful. Thanks. Great. So, so much. Yeah. What you said right there was perfect. I mean, that's exactly the goal of some of these techniques. That's great. So we've identified our triggers. We are now working to deactivate and reset that emotional landscape. The third thing that we do in this next step, what's that.
Is release the rut. And this is all about the basic ABCs, but the ABCs are not the alphabet. It's actually antied behaviors and consequences. So there's always something that precedes the self sabotaging behavior. And then it leads to a certain consequence. So it's really important for you to understand what is that sequence, because sometimes the consequence could actually lead you to self sabotage again in the first place.
And the reason why this can happen is because sometimes that consequence of the self sabotaging behavior is that it allows a tiny bit of emotional valve release. So one good example of this might be, if you have a little bit of social anxiety, You know, you make a plan to, to go to a new to, to a new setting, you know, maybe a party where you really don't know many people.
So you make this plan. You're pretty anxious about it. and that antecedent could be that lead up. You know, sometimes we have that anticipatory anxiety. So we start rehearsing catastrophic situations that could come up. Like you go to this party and no one talks to you. Right. Never done that. So then the self-sabotaging behavior might meet might be that you call the host and you fake a stomach illness and you say, I'm sorry, I can't come to the party.
Right. The minute that you do that, you actually feel this sense of relief. That consequence, the immediate consequence of that self-sabotage behavior is you feel calm. You feel calm now, you don't have to be anxious about this party. Right. Right. But that reinforces the more long term consequences are that you're gonna feel maybe ashamed.
And also you might be more likely to do this again in the future. Yeah. It gave you that five, 10 minutes, one hour relief from all of that anticipatory anxiety, right? This is kind of how phobias develop. And it's just one example of when you identify the ABCs, really being able to see that pattern that leads you back into that self sabotage.
Yeah, I, I love that this is fascinating because you, you see it play out in real time. And the game that I like to play is that, that what if like, what's the worst case scenario that, that could happen here? You know, if I, if I go and let's play that out, what's the worst case scenario. And how does that stack up against my experience?
Around being in these situations, flying on a plane, these other, you know, things that create anxiety and it's like that AB column, you know, the evidence doesn't support this. And in fact, most times when I do follow through and engage in that social activity, I actually have a good time and I know that I can leave at any time.
Right. And trying to avoid. That moment, that momentary gratification of releasing that anticipatory anxiety is really tough, really tough. So how do we do that in a more sustainable way? How do we have that release that leads to longer term, you know, more beneficial behaviors over time? Well, this brings us to step four, which is replacement, not repetition.
So how do we do this? Well, once we've identified our basic ABCs, what's keeping us in this self sabotage loop. We can address this in a couple of different ways. And one of them is to actually set up your antied. The triggers that lead you into the self-sabotaging behavior. In a way that might not lead into it as much.
So one example of this would be, let's say you're somebody who is developing your own business, kind of as a side hustle right now, you've got your nine to five job, but then you're trying to develop your own business on the side. And one of the things that leads you to self sabotage, making more progress is that you leave developing your high side hustle to.
Late at night when you're already tired from your nine to five job. Mm. And when you've already had a big dinner and you're just exhausted, so you just keep not making progress. Right. You know, one of the things is to try to change the environment before even the behavior. So. Does that mean that, for example, you're gonna start working on your side hustle 30 minutes a day in the morning and you get up 30 minutes earlier.
Yeah. You know, that could be a way that would lead you into less incidences of self sabotage because you're sharp in the morning. You're awake and you're gonna do this first before you get tired doing other things, right. That's one way to change it. It's just think about the antecedent, those things leading to the cell Sage behavior, just changing those environmental forces in the first.
But the second thing is to essentially do the behavior that you actually want to do as opposed to the self sabotaging behavior. And then see what happens with the consequence. So actually, you know, the example that you just gave Jake was perfect. It's like if you have any kind of social anxiety about networking, going to a party, when you know that it's actually gonna be good for your business or good for your social life.
Just forcing yourself to go and then actually evaluating what happens afterwards. And it's really important that you actually evaluate it because otherwise your brain is just gonna like skirt past that and think the way that it's always thought. So it's actually important to either tell somebody about how that actually went or write it down in your journal.
Like I went to this networking party. My first thought was that it was gonna go terribly. And I was not gonna find anyone to talk to, but instead I've talked to three people who I really connected with and we exchanged phone numbers. And I think that it's gonna be a great business connection, right? You need to actually make that explicit because then you remember this new consequence and the next time that's going to prime you to be able to take these non self sabotaging behaviors with much more frequency.
I love that you are describing one of my favorite things, which is self experimentation and, you know, going through that process of, you know, guessing and checking, and then reinforcing that, that positive behavior. I, I love that. So when we replace instead of repeating, then there's an opportunity to rewrite those scripts and reprogram the brain for.
The behavior that we actually want to have. Absolutely. And it's really about reprogramming because our brains start to automate certain things over time. And this is why those old ABCs got established in the first place. Right? So in the beginning, trying to establish a new ABC is going to be tougher, but just know that your brain is gonna automate that eventually also, and it's gonna become your new normal, and it's gonna be a lot.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and to the point of, you know, the mornings, that's something that, you know, that would be exactly the way that I would hack. You know, situation is, Hey, let's do this in the morning. Let's get up 30 minutes earlier. And the funny thing is, is looking back. I, I was not a morning person, you know, throughout my twenties.
And I progressively got up, you know, 15 minutes earlier, day by day by day until, you know, I became a five Amer and that's how. I ended up building my business was stealing that extra 15 minutes until I had a morning routine that, you know, was meditation working out and planning my day. Now that is such an ingrained part of my habit and my day that I don't even have to think about it.
It just automatic it's on autopilot, like you said, but it took. That behavior change that modification over. A period of time and reinforcing that, Hey, this works, Hey, this works and being tired is not the worst thing in the world. Exactly. I'm so glad that you shared that personal story, Jake, because I have a very similar, personal story.
I never thought of myself as a morning person, but over time I've adjusted. I'm totally a 5:00 AM or like you too. And I've gotten some of my best work done in the morning and also having a morning routine that makes me feel ready for the day. No matter what the challenges. Yep. Absolutely. That's when the direct downloads come for me is in that, that early morning, hour.
nice. Okay. So so we've replaced instead of instead of repeated what's step five. Step five is a value a day, keeps self sabotage away. So obviously we're talking about some hard work. We're gonna have to replace some old ABCs that were ingrained over time that have some inherent reward to them.
That's why we do them. Right? Cause it gives you that emotional valve escape as we've been discussing, but how do we persevere? How do we keep motivated? How do we have that willpower when things get tough? Well, it's important not only to be committed to your goal, but it's actually more important than anything that your.
Are seated in your most important values. Now values can't be checked off like goals. It's not like once you run a marathon, you just check it off. The list. Values are ways in which you want your life to reflect who you are on the inside. It's how you wanna be remembered, how you wanna be talked about when you're not in the room and you can't check values off.
You can only decide to move with them or move against them. Right. And so common values could be things. Spirituality community. Knowledge those are just a couple of values, but there's a lot of other values. There's thousands and thousands of values. And even if Jake and I both have the same value as one of our top values, let's say integrity.
We will choose to live those out differently in our day because of our different activities and our different professions and what it is that we're doing on a given day. Right. So. Everybody's values are totally personal to them, but what's really important is that your goals are linked to your top values because then when the going gets tough, you're going to keep going, because you're gonna remember that it is important for you to keep moving with your values.
Anything that is worth anything in this world is going to have both positives and negatives. Yeah. But if you think about the value behind them, you're gonna keep going. Right. So starting a new business. Going back to school and getting a degree, getting married, having children, all of those things have such excitement to them and such positivity, but also trepidation and nervousness and all other kinds of negative emotions.
And if we were so caught up in the negative emotions, we'd never be able to persevere and do those things that are so meaningful to us as human. Absolutely. I love that that that's such a great perspective. And I, I actually drew an arrow from goals to values and. Those two have to be linked together.
That's that's really great. I actually, with my with my therapist, I did a recently did a value sort and went through the process of identifying values. So we started off with a sheet of paper that had, you know, like you said, hundreds of different values on it. And I had to go through the process of.
You know, slimming that down to my top values and it, it was incredibly difficult the, the process but it was so clarifying and what it's done for me personally, and professionally has been really fantastic. And there, there are some great tools out there for value sorts that, that you can find if if that's something that would be, would be helpful for you.
Yes. I actually have a values card sort on my website, again, it's free for download, so I know that we're gonna put the link there. But you can do exactly what Jake was talking about. I'm so glad that you went through that. I love doing the values card sort. I do it once every month or so just to see if anything's shifted around change.
And it's also a great way just to remember what your top three or five values are, and then just, you know, even at the end of the. Being using that as part of your reflection process. Okay. Like, let me think about my top three values. Did I make contact with all of them today? And if not, how can I recommit to them in the next day?
You know, what can I do tomorrow to make sure that this value of knowledge or spirituality or community or integrity is being met in some way? I find that to be a really helpful part of my, essentially my daily reflection process that I try to. I, I appreciate that. And, and thank you for the reminder that that's not a static thing that it's something to revisit and actually go through because we're ever changing and evolving.
So of course we need to check in with it. And actually, if, if you, if you all want a a top tip for this do a value sort yourself. Ask your partner and this can be, you know, your life partner, romantic partner, or a business partner to do a value sort as well and see where they overlap or how they're different.
It's a great approach to understanding, you know, communication needs wants. Love languages. It's a great conversation starter. Totally agree. And I think that also helps in terms times of conflict because it really helps to speak to one another in a way that is still compassionate and speaks to what is most important to them.
And it really helps you to manage those stressful times. Yeah, absolutely. All right. This has already been so informational and I've learned a lot. I'm really excited here as we. Come to the sixth step in your process of stopping self sabotage. So step six is to create a blueprint for change. So vision boards are great, but I think a lot of times people run into vision board problems because it's sort of these big goals and dreams without that prescription of how to get there.
There's not that blueprint as you would for a house, this dream house that you wanna build. Right. But it doesn't have those details of the foundation or yeah. Where the hallways are gonna be, or you know, where the windows and the doors are. And it's kind of like this when we're thinking about visualization tools and how to make them most effective for you.
So visualization is very important. You do need a visual reminder of all of the things that we've been talking about, but it's important that in that visual reminder, There's also the specific steps so that you actually know how to go about this in order to reach those goals. So again in my book, I go over essentially a template for how to put together everything that we've already talked about, but all on one page and it's downloadable again for free on my website.
So you can go and look at that template there, but essentially it's kind of like gathering all the knowledge that you've gained from those prior five. Making it personal to you putting it on this one page that has everything all together and putting it in a place in your house where you can see this daily, that way, whenever you do come across some kind of obstacle and you find yourself on the verge of self sabotage, you literally just go and consult this blueprint and it'll have everything that you need on there to avoid the self sabotage.
And if you've already self sabotage, how to get back on track. Yeah, that that's fantastic. I, you have to have the actionable steps, the, the theory of it, it's important. It's important to go through that process, but to really disrupt behavior to reprogram you, you have to have the action that follows that, right.
Yes, absolutely. And I think it's really important that it's top of mind, you know you go through the steps, you've done all the techniques, but if you don't rehearse it, if you don't make contact with it on a daily basis, then it's not really gonna work. Right. So it's important that you keep working these steps and this step six, this visualization tool is a great way to do that.
I love that. Dr. Judy. What is your final nugget of wisdom for our listeners out?
Well, my final nugget wisdom is that no matter what you've been through and no matter what failures or mistakes you think you've made, it's never too late. To make the change that you need to have the life that you want. Mm-hmm , doesn't matter if you're 20, 50 or 80, our brains are capable of change at any time.
That neuroplasticity is so awesome and really believe in yourself. This is all that it takes for you to start to envision a better life is to believe in yourself, work these steps, learn techniques and. Once you start to see some of these changes, your brain's gonna recognize that. And other changes will come a lot easier to you.
I love that Dr. Judy ho is the author of stop self sabotage six steps to unlock your true motivation, harness your willpower and get out of your own way. This has been a high level overview of her stick. Six step system. The book goes into much more depth and there's a ton of free resources on her site.
We'll link everything here. Dr. Judy, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And your knowledge very much. Oh, thank you, Jake. Always great to be with you and thanks for all you do. My pleasure. Take care. You too. My biggest takeaway from this episode is that we have to tie our goals to our values, but if we don't know our values, if we haven't gone through the process of identifying those values, going through a value sort, then our goals are meaningless and there's nothing anchoring us to this idea of.
Why we're doing what we're doing or better yet, why we are disrupting this self sabotage. It all starts with values and grows from there. Fantastic takeaway. I learned a ton from Dr. Judy. I'm sure you did too. I would really appreciate it. If you could just take a few seconds. Share this episode with a coworker, a colleague, a mentor, anyone who you think might find the information valuable.
I would really appreciate it. Thanks so much for being here until next time. Be well,
thanks so much for listening to passion and profits without burnout. I hope that you found some impactful takeaways and if you did, I'd love to hear. Share a screenshot on your IG story, tag me, or send me a quick message. This show is for you. So any feedback is welcomed. Hey, and make sure you're also subscribed to the show.
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