There’s No Such Thing as ‘Self-Sabotage’. Here’s Why.
When you hold back from going after something you deeply desire, something that feels yours to have, you’re not self-sabotaging. You’re self-protecting.
Self-Sabotaging vs. Self-Protecting and Why the Words We Use in Self-Talk Matter
On the journey to success, the words we use to talk to ourselves are important.
The word 'self-sabotage' feels to me like another stick we are offered to beat ourselves with – another way in which we’re made to feel like all our problems are a result of individual weaknesses as opposed to being cultural and systemic.
When you hold back from going after something you deeply desire, something that feels yours to have, you’re not self-sabotaging. You’re self-protecting.
Your entire life, you’ve been taught consciously and unconsciously which behaviours are socially acceptable, and which are not.
You are likely the product of generations of people who were smart enough to understand that they were more likely to survive in society by keeping their heads down, never rocking the boat with big ideas, desires or opinions.
Especially for women. Even more so for minorities.
This conditioning was then passed down out of love for millennia. Training your children to be ‘normal’, compliant and unthreatening was the greatest offering of parental love possible.
But even though our culture has (mostly) moved on, the conditioning hasn’t.
9 times out of 10, the people I coach are not self-sabotaging, or “getting in their own way”.
They have simply internalised that conditioning about what behaviours keep them safest from social rejection, conflict and harm.
Fortunately, our society is now changing...veerrrrrryy slowly. But the conditioning needs a different approach, because it’s far less visible than the culture. It exists only in our minds.
Uncover Your Zone of Genius
In my Unstoppable programme, I coach people to find their ‘zone of genius’. To uncover someone’s zone of genius, we don’t go looking in the obvious places. We don’t look at what they already know, what they think they're good at, or what they’ve been praised or recognised for (although those are all great flags for strengths). We don’t look for it in what they use to earn money now.
No, genius is often deeply buried and comes cloaked in a layer of shame. Genius is usually the first thing a child gets taught to make smaller about themselves. Genius is what kids get bullied at school for; it's the behaviours their caregivers discourage in order to draw less negative attention and keep them safe.
Little girls who had a natural gift for commanding a room just using a certain tone in their voice got reprimanded for being bossy and immodest.
Little boys who had a tendency for deep sensitivity, gentleness or uncanny lie detection were shamed and told to bury their feelings.
Genius makes others uncomfortable. It has a raw energy of pure aliveness to it that can seem jarring. Genius seems to come from so deep inside a person, witnessing it is almost spiritual.
Genius challenges the status-quo, it tends to ruffle feathers — that’s precisely why it’s genius. True genius is a strength that isn’t valued by the dominant culture because if the individual has full mastery of it, it would make them too powerful.
But powerful individuals who can harness their natural genius to forge powerful relationships, build powerful communities, create transformational wealth and challenge the status quo is exactly what we need right now.
“What if everything that's been used against you can be a source of power?”
– Kelly Diels
Change Your Inner Dialogue
Returning to your natural zone of genius is a process of deconditioning. It involves peeling back those onion layers of self-protection by creating psychological safety for yourself — through support, your environment, building up your own reservoir of trust — so that it can be coaxed out from its hiding place and return to its rightful place as a source of power and influence in your life.
Adding more shame to the mix by using words like “self-sabotage” probably won’t work. It’s not you who is sabotaging yourself from going after what you want.
YOU have nothing to do with it!
Next time you catch yourself hesitating, not speaking up, negotiating against yourself and walking back on your intention for something you feel called to do, don’t reach for words like: “I’m self-sabotaging”.
Try something new.
Oh, I’m probably having this reaction because my nervous system is self-protecting.
Analyse the situation. Are there real risks to your physical or psychological safety? Maybe there are! And they need to be addressed.
But maybe there aren’t.
In that case, you can tell yourself: This risk is safe for me. Thank you, ancestors, for trying to protect me, but I’ve got this. I don’t need protection right now, what I need is courage. What I need is more information. What I need is support from someone I can trust.
Return to Your Natural Zone of Genius
I believe that we can only experience the ultimate life satisfaction and career success that is ours to have when we let go of 'normal' in order to return to what is most natural to us.
You were genetically encoded with that gift for a reason. What comes most naturally to you is precisely what the world desperately needs more of in order to have a healthy, balanced ecosystem.
In this new paradigm, individual success and collective success are inseparable. I want to live in this world – maybe you do too?
I’m Imogen and as a coach and mentor, I help people to be more prolific, productive, and present in their life and business.
I do this by developing and teaching unconventional strategies and tools that break cyclical beings free from toxic, unsustainable, and disempowering narratives about work and business to create unstoppable success without burnout or compromise.
If you’d like support to identify your zone of genius, book a free call with me to talk about coaching.
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