4 Signs You're Self Sabotaging Your Self Improvement #230

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If you’re new to my page my name’s Corey Boutwell. I’m the founder and CEO of men’s personal development company Set The Standard. I’m a professional bodybuilder, I have coached over 300 men to their full potential and created a multi six figure business in just 3 years. This podcast is where I share EVERYTHING I learn along the way.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Overcoming Self-Sabotage and Fear of Success
• 3:51 Navigating Through Growth and Self-Improvement
• 8:27 Exploring Self-Sabotage Patterns and Overcoming
• 16:14 Breaking Patterns for Self-Improvement
• 19:58 Achieving Mastery as an Entrepreneur

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Anytime you think something is wrong with you, it makes you hesitate, it makes you procrastinate, it makes you feel guilty, it makes you regret, it makes you feel embarrassed, like all these different things will try to control you in order to not feel the one emotion. Because this is why you self-sabotage yourself and how to get over it. So I'm going to tell you guys my self-sabotage, right? You know, there's times when you feel a little bit icky. You feel like, oh, I don't really want to get up as early today, I can't be fucked doing this. I know that I've got this big vision and this big vision and this big mission and these big goals, but for some reason I've just got no creative energy. I can't put my tasks or my mind into doing something and you go, oh, damn it, so I'll just do the bare minimum instead. I'll just, I'll just commit to this instead and I'll just scroll on my phone, I'll listen to a podcast, I'll go have a sauna or something instead of actually, instead of actually doing the thing. So I, for I don't know for a while now keep, keep catching myself in a pattern of self-sabotage where I feel like I have some sort of creative block. I feel I have some sort of writer's block, so I use some of the techniques, right, so use some of the techniques like I'll just lay down on the floor, completely still binaural beats, until something pops into my head and I go, oh my God, I've got this creative ability here. I can take action on this. Now. I will call my friends and talk to them about it, to soothe me or to confirm to me that I can be doing something else. Right, that happens.

Speaker 1: 1:41

And then I also, when I'm in self-sabotage mode, complain to my partner more and I have this like sort of sook energy, that's like, and I keep catching it right. Every time I go oh, I keep catching this and I catch it, and I catch it and I go. Why am I doing this? Why am I doing that? All that self-sabotage, all that self-sabotage right here, and what I've come to the conclusion of is it is just a fear of your own success, next level up, and you can say that right, because sometimes someone can say, oh, you have a fear of success, you have a fear of the next step, of leveling up and getting to that next level, and what I know for sure is it's a fear of responsibility that you think you can't handle yet and every time you sort of get to this next level, you have this feeling in your body where your nervous system has to expand its own capacity.

Speaker 1: 2:27

And during your own journey of becoming the best version of yourself, succeeding in entrepreneurship, having a partner, having a really awesome physique, part of that comes to having to let people down, having to have difficult conversations with people, having people call you out on your shit. No one talks about this in terms of the game to level up right and the people who get reactive and the people who feel angry about it, or the people who avoid and they shy away, they go. Oh no, I'm not going to talk about this or I'm not going to lean in. They're the ones who don't get the success that they really want to. They'll stay and cap themselves at the same level. But what I know for sure out of hanging out with some amazing entrepreneurs and starting to see the patterns, looking at, following journeys of different people who are winning and succeeding but knowing them personally is that they're so positive regardless. Every time something negative happens, they have this positive attitude of like oh, I'm gonna get in here and I'm gonna speak positive to this, I'm going to, even though I feel this way, I'm going to communicate how I feel and then bring it back to positivity and, and every single time, like those people are the ones who are, you know, making the 20, the 30, the 50, the 100 mil plus businesses, like for sure, they're so positive and they know what negative emotions feel like and what they are, and they just take them in and then they get them to the next level and every single time it's like okay, so that's why you're self-sabotaging is because you get to this level where you're ready for an upgrade.

Speaker 1: 3:51

Right, it comes in four phases, right, so you have a comfort zone phase which is like, oh, I'm in my comfort zone, I don't really have to do anything. The next phase is a transition phase. So you transition out of your comfort zone into doing something a little bit more challenging. Like, for me, my comfort zone phase, you know, in my business, is making something along the lines of 20 or 30 grand a month. It's like, okay, that's my comfort zone, right, and only investing into mentors that are, like, you know, two or three thousand dollars a month instead of eight thousand dollars a month, whatever, even though it's like ballsy as hell to do those things. Like, okay, that could be a comfort zone for me.

Speaker 1: 4:22

The transition phase is just knowing and doing the work. Like, okay, I'm in the work, I need to own this, that I'm in the self-sabotaging phase right now and I need to get to the next level. Then you go through a stretch phase. Okay, what are all the conversations? What are all the challenges? What are all hard, because when you have other people's responsibilities on you, that creates pressure.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Like for me, it's my community, it's my members, it's my clients, it's my staff members, like all of those people for me, I'm like I care about their opinions If I let any of them down, or even some of my people. That we hire coaches or videographers, like whatever it is, it's like, okay, can we any of these people? And now we have those expectations, my accountant, I have to meet expectations for them, right? So that's a lot of responsibility that you have to take and feel and if it's like you want to get to the next level, you have to be able to feel those emotions and process them, because if you keep sweeping them under the rug, you're just sweeping them all under there. What's going to happen is, eventually, it's all going to bottle up and you are going to absolutely explode, which you don't want to do. So that's my story, uh, currently, and those things happen regularly and I've been catching it, and for me to get over it and doing the actual task, I had to hire a mentor and basically it was just like the biggest thing is I could do all the tasks anyway.

Speaker 1: 5:39

So and what it is is setting up your environment, like I remember I was having for a while. I'm like why don't I have a block around getting in front of my podcast and talking to my podcast? And for some reason, I was like I have this fear of judgment. I feel like other people are going to hate me. I feel like the only time that I get acknowledgement from someone else is when I do a perfect job. So what are some things that I can do that aren't perfect? And can I just speak intentionally from the heart? And is it worthy enough that what you speak from the heart and what you've learned and the knowledge that you've gained is going to be valuable anyway? And just being able to say that gives you the freedom of thought. Freedom of thought starts to bring you confidence in the skills that you already have, which is absolutely fantastic. So that is like my own story.

Speaker 1: 6:27

What self-sabotaging feels like is resistance, right. What it feels like is, every time you go to do something, it's like I have this void or resistance, and usually it's met with some sort of shame, so you feel ashamed about something Shame wants to hide. So if you look at your emotions and your body separately, it's noticing that like okay, so I feel one emotion and how does it show up in someone's body? So, as a coach, when I'm facilitating and coaching people, I'm continually looking at them in their eyes and their whole body language to see how their body is responding to what we're talking about, because the body doesn't lie and there's energy that feels. Your face has emotions, like you know. When you feel sad, you get teary. When you get hungry, you salivate. When you get hungry, you salivate. When you get horny, you get an erection, right. So all of these things happen, and if you don't pay attention to what your body is doing, then it's like who's really in control, right, your body is, not you. So what we want to do is like, as a coach a really good coach will look at you and be aware of your nervous system and your body.

Speaker 1: 7:23

And the point that I was getting at is that shame, when it's avoiding your shoulders get hunched, your head goes down, your voice gets a little bit quieter and higher pitch like uh-oh spaghetti, oh, something bad's gonna happen, there's something wrong with me. Shame means there is something wrong with me, but that we wanna take our shame seriously, we wanna own that, because anytime you think something is wrong with you, it makes you hesitate, it makes you procrastinate, it makes you feel guilty, it makes you regret, it makes you feel embarrassed, like all these different things will try to control you in order to not feel the one emotion because you have to deal with you. And there's two things you got to do to work with shame. One working with shame is being comfortable enough is to work with, to, to own your shame is shifting your perception of yourself. That's number one. How can I shift my perception of myself? That's the question. The second thing you can do with shame is insert high quality boundaries and fight for them right, even though sometimes fighting for your boundaries is going to be scary and you're gonna think oh man, there must be something wrong with me, with fighting my boundaries. That is going to test your capacity for your own self-worth right. So this happens regularly.

Speaker 1: 8:27

What else happens is in the self-sabotage is you? We mainly feel safe, right, when we are a child. So when we're growing up, there is some sort of safety that we convince ourselves that we need, that our parents give us. So, for example, you could be someone who, every time you did something right or every time you did anything, your parents are just like yes, yes, yes, and we acknowledge you. We acknowledge you like so much praise. You're like oh, my parents are the best people ever. And now so much praise. You're like oh, my parents are the best people ever. And now you have this demon inside you. That's like if you do something that's not perfect or you get your praise taken away from you, you just get super reactive. Oh, spaghetti, oh, it could be the complete opposite. It could be like your parents never gave you any praise whatsoever. So when someone goes to give you praise, you go hell. No, I can't deal with this. Someone's gonna give me a thank. Someone's to give you praise? You go hell. No, I can't deal with this. Someone's going to give me a thank. Someone's going to thank you to me. No way, I have to be intimate with someone Scary as hell, right, so that'll prevent you from leveling up in business, like if I did a really good job at this, an excellent job, and someone's just like wow, I'm so happy with this thing that you gave me, it's like the best thing ever, and you go oh, I don't want to deal with that. So you can self-sabotage yourself from getting that love that you feel uncomfortable to receive. So I don't know what the journey is for you, what it was like, but it's for you to think about.

Speaker 1: 9:42

Okay, what was the thought of my parents, for example? Mine was. My dad was people-pleased all the time and I didn't really get any acknowledgement from him whatsoever. He tried whatsoever, he tried right, he tried to. But the only acknowledgement he would get is when I worked really hard, like I remember I stopped working with him. It was toxic as hell working with him and I worked at a clothes store, like a surf store, right, and I remember like the first day he walked into the manager this is a surf store, you work in the thongs, you chill and dad, like really embarrassing, was like oh man, oh, how's he going, whatever it is. And I was like, yeah, yeah, he's good, whatever it is. Uh, matt was a manager and then he's.

Speaker 1: 10:20

I remember my dad leaving was being like real travel, like working hard. You know what I mean. And the first thing you do when I'm sweeping is like, oh, make sure you step those things off the the broom, like get them off, so you're sweeping properly like motherfucker, I am not working for you anymore, don't you? You goddamn tell me what to do, right? So anytime like I self-sabotage when people tell me shit to do and it's not directed in like a professional, like a nice way, immediately triggered, I want to get self-sabotage because my dad used to people please and project it back onto me.

Speaker 1: 10:49

My mom was the opposite. My mom used to congratulate me all the time for everything that I did, but only when I was the best, and she would be really negative and scared when you know I was either going to come second or I'm not going to win and there'd be a lot of judgment around it. So I have this fear now for me I'll still sabotage if I get put in the limelight and I'm to be looking like I am perfect, right, someone's like. If I'm like, if I have to be the embodiment of some sort of like. If I feel that I have to be put into a position where I'm the best, I get really scared because I feel like I'm going to bring everyone else down. It gets really scary.

Speaker 1: 11:26

So it's hard for me to hold being the winner, right, because of the how my mom would judge everyone else who came, you know, second or third, and I just feel bad about those people. So I self-sabotaged myself from winning. So it's hard sometimes, you know, to stick to a routine completely to the T, right. And if I failed, if I'm like, if I try my best and I don't win this, I come second or third or something, I'm not going to get love from my mom, right, whatsoever. This is a good trait to have, right, because there's good, there's positives, there's pros and cons to what dad was like, there's pros and cons to how mom was right, and I'm like, if that for me, like, it's good because it helped me motivate, kick ass, stay, stick to a routine, be extremely disciplined.

Speaker 1: 12:12

But also, when it comes to the self-sabotage or the dark side of it, it's like, well, let's say I'm competing in bodybuilding competition. Oh, I might eat this little snack. Right, it would come to business. Well, I won't send the dms today, you know. I mean I won't post the podcast today, I won't create something today, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do this one, I'll put it in my calendar, I'll reorganize this like whatever it is, um, or I won't do that and I'll get someone else to do it. I'll just talk about the thing and I won't take action on it, right? So all those things can come from.

Speaker 1: 12:38

Well, if I actually do these things and I try and I get to the top and I don't win, then I'm not going to get love. So I can confirm to myself well, I didn't give it my all anyway, I didn't try my best anyway. So now that I've third, second, fourth or failed, because I confirmed to myself that I didn't try anyway, right? So that's how you know your self-sabotage is coming in and absolutely ruling the roost, right? So it's out of a fear of not feeling safe, right? So what can we do about it? Right? How can we make sure that we do not self-sabotage any damn more?

Speaker 1: 13:16

So the first one is understanding your pattern. Right is getting really clear. Like, if you don't have any coaching and you're a male, you can come join, set the standard and we can do this for you, right? But if not, I'd be talking to your bros about it and I'd be thinking, hey, like sort of workshopping, what patterns do I have as a child that make me felt safe? Right, when did I receive love from my parents and what did that look like? I mean, you can understand what that looks like and you can find your pattern, sort of like I did then awesome. That's the first step to take.

Speaker 1: 13:44

The second one, for self-sabotage, to make sure that you're getting over. It is making yourself feel safe and regardless of what you're doing, right. So it's just asking yourself the question like my intention could be to make fifty thousand dollars a month. Could be to build an e-commerce business. Could be to make my training business really well, whatever it is, it might. Could be to scale the business that I'm working at what a promotion.

Speaker 1: 14:02

But so whatever it is is like where do I not feel safe? As I'm progressing and climbing this hierarchy? What doesn't feel safe for me? What doesn't feel safe for me is having the question asking my manager for a pay rise and then saying, no, why right, okay, what is everything that I can do to the best of my ability in order to get them to say yes. And even if they do say no, what am I going to do? Well, the first thing is you don't give up. You know they say no. What I'm going to say is okay, that's fine for this time, but when can I come back and like, if you're applying for a job or a promotion? When can I come back and do my tasks again and then prove to you that I'm deserving of a pay rise? And they'll say this, this, this, this and this, you go awesome. That's a lotident right. So this looks like a bit of a self audit.

Speaker 1: 15:03

So, first thing for a self audit, like, I taught this from a friend called Dia and you can go see her out. Uh, see her. I did a podcast with her and it was she's on instagram as disciplined girlie. All right, damn, I was trying to figure out where to get it right. Disciplined girl, you can go see it.

Speaker 1: 15:17

I got this from dia and she said at the end of your week, every single week, just write down the list of everything that feels icky, right, everything that feels gross, everything that feels mess, and you're just being really brutally honest with yourself. Okay, feel messy here, here, here, here, here yeah, gross, writing that down is extreme. I think it's extremely important and it's shattered work because it okay. If I start clearing these and I can create some room, I'm going to feel way more confident in myself and the decisions that I make, because I truly believe the deeper the roots to hell, the tour of the tree, the closer the tree is to getting to heaven Okay, and we're either moving from a place of let's get out of hell or we're moving to let's go to heaven, but we forget that our roots go down to hell as well. So what feels icky for us is anything that feels gross or icky is holding us like, is weighing us down and holding us back. So we need to go down into hell, fix what's going on in there so that when we get to baseline and we're on earth, okay, now we can start sprinting towards heaven. Right, and that's done just by.

Speaker 1: 16:14

It's just an emotion, right, and you can't control that. No matter who you are, you have the best life, living, having all the best things around. You turn about the best people, exploding with your growth, feeling so good about everything that's happening in life, but then you start thinking about yourself or other people and you start feeling like, oh, that's gross. I feel depressed, I feel anxious, like what? What is this emotion that's going on? It's like, cool, well, there's some parts of you that feel gross, that you need to move on so that you can start focusing on what you most want to do to you, so that you can start making your way to heaven, baby, right. So when you write down that list of everything that feels icky and you have the conversations with the people, you do the tasks that feel gross. Okay, now you've freed up some room, right. So now you can start sprinting and becoming more productive with your own self-confidence, which is absolutely brilliant, right? So the whole gist of that is basically, we start small, we go back to our foundations and we clear everything up, right, it's a bit like a bit of an once you start working on the ickiness audit that you do at the end of every week.

Speaker 1: 17:13

Then you start going through your routine. Okay, am I getting up the time that I really want to be getting up every single day? Yes, no. Am I getting out of sleep that I want to get every single day? Yes, no. Am I doing the ice baths, the saunas? Am I sticking to a routine that I want to, that I desire to do. That's going to help me become the best version of myself. Yes, no, sometimes you can go. Oh, yeah, five o'clock is early enough in the that look like for me. Am I really eating the ingredients that I want to be eating? Am I sticking to the diet that I want to be sticking to?

Speaker 1: 17:43

The bigger foundation that we have at us at the beginning is going to help us get to the next level, and what happens is when we start growing and we start expanding, is that we start forgetting, like we forsake ourselves and our own body and our own environment and our own foundations right, and we let small things slip routine this slip. I watch a little bit of tv here. I'll do a little bit of this here. What that's called is the comfort zone baby and how I talked about those four phases. You get back into the comfort zone phase, right. So that's what it looks like. We're consistently getting pulled back down to the comfort zone phase and we can find it by doing a self-audit to figure out what feels icky and then going over our routine and then that's essentially it. That is how you work on your own self, self-sabotage and then finding the patterns that are going to, you know, prevent you from here.

Speaker 1: 18:29

The second one is finding the patterns that contribute to your self-sabotage. You can do them yourself, you can do it with a coach, you can even go go into chatgbt and you can say hey, chat, can you please help me find my patterns of self-sabotage that I've gotten from my parents and ask me one question at a time and chatgbt will help you, like, figure that out too, so you can help figure out your pattern. But if you don't like that, on that pattern in the real world, every time you start hesitating, every time you start procrastinating, oh, that's a pattern for me, right? That's what I've been doing for like the last, I would say, the last few weeks. Every time that there's a hesitation, a procrastination, a pause in something, I'm like, okay, this is a self-sabotage. And I remind myself again where this comes from Mom or dad.

Speaker 1: 19:11

Why, awesome, this Awesome? This is the fear of me leveling up, this is the fear of my next success. So get ready, baby, let's turn this into excitement, because you're about to live the best version of you. You're about to live your best life. You're about to become the best version of yourself. Who are you when you're at your most brilliant, your most capable? Do you give a fuck about what anyone else thinks? No, no, you don't. Can you hold space? Can you? Can you be willing to let other people down? Can you be willing to piss people off? Can you be willing to let yourself down? Can you be willing to have the whole world judge you? And can you be willing to have the whole world love you? Right, so? And just that willingness of that happening doesn't mean that it's going to happen, but just that willingness to go in and be authentic and transparent with it anyway is going to help you break all of those patterns, so that you become the best version of yourself.

Speaker 1: 19:58

Well, you want to make it. Well, you want to be extremely awesome entrepreneurs and anyone listening to this podcast. You want to be the highest level entrepreneur. You want to have the best quality relationship and you want to have a physique that you're completely proud of. And you want to be wisdom. You want to be wisdom, wise and philosophical as fuck, so that everyone you talk to leaves your presence feeling inspired and you can when you work on yourself. So big love, guys. I hope you took a lot out of this podcast. If you did, please share it. I'll see you in the next one.