80. Understanding and Eliminating Self-Sabotage

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 80 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, I’ve got a fun topic for you understanding and eliminating self sabotage. Self sabotage is one of those things that we hear the term and you think you have a pretty good handle on what it means. But do you really, because if you find yourself engaging in self sabotaging behavior, then you’re not sure why you keep doing this to yourself, then you may not understand it as well as you think.

Because until you have a better understanding of what self sabotage really is, and how it shows up in your life, you can’t change it, or you can’t prevent it from happening. So in this episode, I’m going to help you to understand what self sabotage really is, how it prevents you from achieving your goals, why you do it, and how you can eliminate it from your life. Cool, it’s gonna be fun.

And just really quick, if you like this podcast, please come check us out on Facebook, we have this awesome community, the Running Lean podcast community. And the the Facebook group goes hand in hand with the podcast. It’s a place where you can ask questions and get answers, and get some support. And feel the love, feel the encouragement, get some inspiration, we talked about running, we talked about mindset stuff in there, I do a little coaching and training in there every week.

And right now it’s July, and we’re doing the dry July challenge. So it’s a place where we are taking the month of July and eliminating alcohol. And the group is a place where you can you know, kind of get supported through that journey if this is something you’re interested in. And you’re just you know, now hearing about this, you can still join in and, and and start with us it’s it’s kind of fun.

It’s not like alcohol is bad, or, you know, it’s not about good or bad. It’s not about moral judgments. It’s just about, you know, I want to see what it feels like to take a break from alcohol, maybe I want to improve my health or my running performance. And I just want to see how this will work. So come join us. It’ll be fun. It’s all about fun, right? Just search for the Running Lean community on Facebook, and join us over there. Cool.

And listen, I understand how overwhelming a lot of these topics can feel. You know, we talked about changing your mindset, changing habits, changing your, the way you’re eating, changing your exercise regimen, starting to do some strength training, getting into running, improving your running performance, all of these things can feel quite honestly overwhelming. And it can feel very confusing. And there’s a lot of conflicting information out there. And I get all of that.

That’s why I am a coach. That’s why I coach people every day to kind of navigate all of that stuff, and make it make sense for you in a way that will work for you. Coaching isn’t about you know, here’s what you do is like one thing that we do, we just here’s a list of stuff to do. And it works for everybody. It’s not like that at all. It’s about figuring out what works for you as an individual, what works for you, and your goals and your lifestyle and your likes and dislikes and your you know running performance and all these things we want to support ports support you where you are today and help you get to where you want to be tomorrow. So if you’re ever interested in working with me as your coach, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply.

And you’ll have to apply for coaching because I don’t work with everybody. You know, I want to I want to have a conversation with you. I want to see if this is a good fit for you. I want you to see if I’m a good fit for you for you. Like you may think like well, I thought Patrick would be awesome to work with. But then I started talking to him and I don’t think so.

I haven’t had that happen yet, by the way, but you know, it’s possible. But anyway, it just can’t hurt to have a conversation about coaching and what that would look like for you. Okay, so I’m here for you. If you ever want to do that, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, and we can talk about it. Cool. Awesome. All right.

I want to get into this topic today. I’ve been thinking about this for a few weeks now. And I’m excited about this topic because I think it’s really important to understand what self sabotage really is. How you do it, why you do it, and how you can prevent it.

And really one of the biggest keys here and the biggest takeaway from this episode is going to be that when you understand how self sabotage is showing up for you, and some of these things I’m going to talk about you may not have heard of before, and it may surprise you how you might be self sabotaging yourself or why you self sabotage.

But one of the keys is that when you understand what’s happening, just right there, this can be life changing for you, this can absolutely help you to just eliminate it from happening going forward. Okay, so just a really having a deep understanding of what’s happening with you and how you self sabotage is key to fixing the problem. Okay.

So the reason I really started getting into this and got excited about talking about this is because I was reading a book called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, and he talks about in the book, this this issue called, he calls it the upper limit problem. And this is a problem where we all have some sort of self imposed upper limit. And when we reach that upper limit, and we try to go past that upper limit, things get very uncomfortable.

So we might have a self imposed upper limit of how much happiness we want to experience or how much success we can experience or how much you know how healthy we can be, or how much wealth we can have, you know, how much money we can have in the bank, or how much love we can experience any, it can be positive things, too. It’s not just about, you know, how much, you know, adversity can you handle it’s not about that, it’s about like, good things, right.

So we have this self imposed sort of upper limit, and when we hit that upper limit, we get very, very uncomfortable. And here’s why. Because your brain sees this upper limit, as unsafe, as unfamiliar. And as something that maybe it’s dangerous for you, you know, it’s out of your comfort zone. And so, you might be like feeling really good and feeling all this happiness, and you’re maybe you’re sticking to your eating plan, and you’re losing some weight, and you’re feeling really good.

And your brain is like, wait a minute, what is happening here, this is not normal, this doesn’t feel right, this feels uncomfortable, this place of like, everything is going well. And so what will happen is, and you don’t even know you’re doing this, but subconsciously, you pull yourself back away from that upper limit, you pull yourself back to what feels comfortable, what feels familiar, and what feels to your primitive brain safe for you. Back to your comfort zone, right?

Some examples of how this shows up for people is, you know, kind of what I was just mentioning, you start to lose weight, you’re starting to feel good, you’re sticking to your plan. And all of a sudden, you find yourself, you know, face first into a Boston Cream Pie. And you’re like, what is happening? Why am I doing this to myself? I didn’t want to eat this. But I find myself, you know, with a cupcake in my face, like, what am I doing here?

Because subconsciously, you don’t even know you’re doing this, you think, you know, it’s all just happening to you. But you’re, you’re doing this to yourself, okay, but it’s subconscious. It’s not within your awareness. It’s like outside of your awareness. Okay. Subconsciously, you’re just trying to get back to what, what you know, and what is familiar to you, and what feels safe to you and what feels comfortable for you.

And that is a certain weight, like, let’s say you, you know, you’re you’re on this track to lose 40 pounds, all right, and you haven’t lost, you know, you haven’t been down 40 pounds in 40 years or something like that. And it’s been, you know, 10 years since you’ve lost 20 pounds. And so you start to get close to that 20 pound mark, and all of a sudden, you know, this feels really unfamiliar and very uncomfortable for you.

And so subconsciously, you will do something, you’ll start over eating, you’ll start eating a bunch of crap, just to get yourself back to where you feel comfortable. Isn’t this sort of insidious? It’s very sneaky. What happens what our brains are doing to us here, okay, but we have to understand what’s going on in order to fix it.

Another example is, you’ve probably heard this one before people that win the lottery. So people that are, you know, have, you know, let’s say middle class, you know, they have you know, they they’re not used to having a lot of money, right? They’re just like, whatever, living paycheck to paycheck, they win the lottery, they get millions of dollars.

And I think the statistics are something like this. 60% of these people within two years are back to where they were financially, before they won the lottery, like they have this pull back to their comfort zone. Because having millions of dollars in the bank, investing it and making it grow, and like all this other stuff feels so uncomfortable for them. It’s so unfamiliar.

And they’re, you know, they just want to go back to what feels good and what feels comfortable for them. And everybody else, maybe even them would look at this situation and go, you’re crazy. How can you do this to yourself, this is total self sabotage.

But in reality, it’s so hard to discern what’s happening, because it feels like it’s automatic, it’s feels like it’s just happening to you. But it’s very, it’s very sneaky. And it’s subconscious that’s happening. It’s your subconscious at work, it’s your primitive brain at work, we have to just have this awareness to understand what’s going on here.

Another way this shows up is, you know, let’s say you want to quit drinking, and you find yourself doing well, for some time for some period of time, you might like, you know, we’re on day, eight now of the dry July challenge. And there’s people that are doing really well, and they haven’t had a drink in eight days.

And maybe some of these people will find themselves, you know, drinking tonight, and they don’t understand why. And it could just be that that feeling that they’re feeling and experiencing of like not being drunk or not being buzzed or not being hungover, whatever, that doesn’t feel normal to them. It doesn’t feel, you know, familiar. It’s not what they’re used to feels uncomfortable.

And your primitive brain just wants to go back to what feels comfortable. And so your primitive brain will be like you need to drink. And you might think, well, this is a dumb idea. Why am I doing this? And you might just find yourself doing it anyway.

When I first started, when I first stopped drinking, many years ago, I remember waking up feeling good. For the first time in a long time, you know, waking up, not feeling hungover. And this felt very uncomfortable for me. I had all this energy, I felt very clear headed. I wasn’t sick to my stomach. And I did not like that feeling. This was so uncomfortable for me. And so not normal it’s not funny.

Like I remember driving to work every day. And I had like a 30 minute commute or whatever to work. And I just remember everyday thinking, man I wish I just felt better. I wish I felt I wish I wasn’t so sick, driving to work, but then I would you know, then I stopped drinking. And then I was like, Oh my gosh, what am I feeling now as I’m driving to work, but this feels so uncomfortable.

I feel so like jittery and like, you know, clear headed like, this is crazy, you know, so that that felt very foreign to me and very uncomfortable for me. And here’s the thing, happiness can feel very uncomfortable. Feeling good, feels uncomfortable for us. We’re not wired, to seek out happiness and to pursue happiness.

We’re not wired to pursue joy, and to pursue love and to pursue success and to pursue good health. We’re wired to pursue comfort. This is not a bad thing, okay, you just have to understand that this is what’s going on in your brain. And this is something that we’ve evolved over millions of years, as human beings, we have this natural instinct to seek out the familiar to seek out what is comfortable for us to always be running back to the safety of what’s comfortable, even though comfort may be what’s bad for us.

It doesn’t matter, even though we know like I want to, you know, improve my relationship with my romantic partner. And so I’m going to like, you know, try to you know, I want more love, and more joy in our relationship. And then when you start to get that, it’s like, whoa, this feels really weird and feels uncomfortable.

I’m just going to pick a fight with them just to make sure we go back to where we were before, where everything was comfortable and familiar to us where we’re fighting all the time. Right? This is kind of insidious.

Now we just have to understand this is the way your brain works. It’s not a bad thing. It’s no moral judgment here. This is just how our brains are wired. And it’s okay. All change anytime we want to change anything, it’s somewhat uncomfortable. All change is uncomfortable until it becomes familiar to us. All change is uncomfortable until it becomes more familiar to us.

So we have this thing, and I see this all the time with with clients who want something for themselves, they want to lose weight, let’s say, you know, they want to quit drinking, they want to run faster. So they want something they’ve wanted this for a long time. That wanting is very familiar, it’s part of who they are. Right.

So maybe they’ve wanted to lose weight for 20 years, they’ve tried all kinds of things, and they haven’t worked. But they keep wanting it. And they keep having this wanting this wanting becomes the familiar thing for them, the wanting of the thing, the wanting of the goal becomes their comfort zone, they’re just comfortable wanting this thing, you know, you may want to quit drinking, and you want to quit drinking. And that’s just where you’ve been for a long time.

Or maybe you want to get in shape, and you’ve been wanting to get in shape for many years. You’ve wanted it for so long. It’s now it’s just a comfortable and familiar thing this wanting. But then you get the thing, you get in shape, you do quit drinking, you lose the weight. And now you start to you have to make this shift from the wanting to the having that feels really uncomfortable for people.

Okay, because you’re just so used to wanting something you’re so used to wanting, you know, to reach this goal, that having it feels weird and feels uncomfortable and feels unfamiliar and feels unsafe. I, you know, you you may have experienced this, if you’ve ever set a big goal for yourself, like running a marathon, you know, and you cross the finish line of that marathon and it feels so amazing.

But then all of a sudden, you feel sort of let down and you feel uncomfortable, and you feel weird and, and you’re like I need another goal, I need to put something else on the calendar, I need a bigger goal. This was my experience for sure. I ran my first real big race I ever ran was a 10k. And I remember thinking, oh my god, I just I’ve been training for this for so long. And now I’m out of the habit and it’s done. Now I feel uncomfortable having this thing like I have to want something else.

So then I was like I’m gonna train for a marathon. And then I needed something else. And I started, you know, training for ultra marathons. And then I was like, I want something else. And I started training for triathlons and Ironman and I want to run 50 Miles 100 Miles and in the wanting can go on and on and on. And it feels uncomfortable when we get the thing because now we’re not, we’re not in that wanting place anymore. Okay?

You’ve gotten so good at wanting that having it just seems too big or too scary or just weird or uncomfortable for us, okay. And when we get close to reaching a goal, sometimes we will self sabotage will pull ourselves back from achieving the goal so that we don’t get it so that we don’t have it so that we don’t have to make that switch from the wanting to have.

So you might be close to losing weight. And you might think to yourself, like you know, you don’t really deserve this, like who do you think you are? What are people gonna think of me? Or are I’m really not good enough, I’m not going to be able to sustain this. This is really not for me, this might be for other people, but this is not who I am.

All of these thoughts are going to come up and all of these things are going to come up and they’re going to make you want to go running back to safety, running back to what feels safe and comfortable and familiar for you, which is the wanting.

And so you’re just going to continue with the wanting and you’ll just go go through that your whole life. I work with people every day who are like I want this so bad, Patrick. All right, cool. And we start to make some progress and they find themselves month after month, week after week, whatever it is just self sabotaging.

They don’t understand why this is a big part of it. Because having the thing just feels too uncomfortable for them. Well, now that I’ve lost the weight, how am I going to make it work? How am I going to sustain it? And a lot of times it’s just just keep doing what you’re doing.

If you desire you lost the weight and this is how you’re going to keep it off right it’s not a big mystery there. But we get so used to the wanting that the having just seems too too uncomfortable to deal with for us. And I think part of it is like we have this idea that once we get somewhere once we have the thing that we can just coast we can just like cruise, put it in a cruise control and we don’t have to work anymore at it.

So the discomfort you feel around having something I think that’s increased by this false belief that when you get the thing that you know you’ve been chasing for so long that you can just coast like when you reach your goal weight then you can go back to eating whatever you want. When you hit your marathon PR then running is you can just coast like running. It would just be so much easier, and you can just, you know, he pretty much no effort anymore, right?

Or let’s say you quit drinking for 30 days, and you hit 30 days, and then all of a sudden, something’s gonna happen where you just no longer gonna crave alcohol anymore. And you know, I have to do any work around this again. And the truth is, none of this is true, like the work is ongoing, right, you don’t get to some destination, and you have your thing, you have your goal, you’ve reached your, your goal, and then your work is done. And you, you know, can just rest and just chill and cruise control, right?

It doesn’t really work that way. Sorry. It’s just not right. This is, you know, the, the work is ongoing. You know, it’s how you live your life from here on out. Like, if you change your diet, so that you’re, you’re losing weight, and you’re feeling good, and you’re fueling your runs properly, and you’re becoming the healthiest version of you. That’s not something you stopped doing. It’s just not like there’s no, there’s no destination, there’s no finish line that you’re crossing, and then you can go back to doing what you were doing before.

There’s no “there”, that’s better than here. Okay, there’s only here. And that’s okay, and what you’re doing right now, if you’re on this, on this journey of self discovery, if you’re on this journey of personal growth, if you’re on this journey of becoming the healthiest, most badass version of you, then that is your journey from here on out. And that’s cool. That’s okay, that’s good.

We want to be on this journey, we’ll want to keep learning and growing and exploring becoming more always. So when, when it comes down to it, self sabotage is really a product of a lack of self awareness, you just don’t understand what’s happening, you just don’t understand the way your brain is working. Right.

And when you don’t understand what’s going on in your brain, it just can seem like everything is happening to you. Like, you know, everything’s happening to you. You know, when you have the self awareness, when you understand how your thoughts create your feelings, and your feelings, drive your actions. This is when you can start taking back control. This is when you understand that you have the power to change whatever you want in your life.

And psychologists call this type of self awareness, they call it emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand, interpret, and respond to your thoughts and feelings in an enlightened and in an in a healthy way. And so the root of self sabotage is really is a lack of emotional intelligence, the root of self sabotage is a lack of self awareness. But when you have self awareness and emotional intelligence, it kind of looks like that.

So emotional intelligence is like you have a feeling, you have this feeling inside you that maybe you have a feeling like anger, like you understand what the feeling is, you can name it, I have, I’m angry, I have an urge to drink something or to eat something, I’m having a craving, these are all feelings, I’m stressed. This is a feeling I’m bored.

And then you understand that you have a thought that caused that feeling, you know, you maybe you’re thinking you know, a drink sure would take the edge off right now or eating this cookie will probably make me feel better. Or my husband should show more support. For me, these are thoughts that cause feelings, my husband should show more support for me might cause you to feel anger.

And so you have a feeling you understand what it is you can name it, you know the thought that’s causing the feeling. And then you allow that feeling to just be there without having to do anything to change it or to make it go away. This is what emotional intelligence looks like. You can have a feeling you understand what it is where it’s coming from, that you’re having these thoughts that are causing the feeling. And then you don’t have to do anything about it.

You can just have a feeling of wanting to drink or not drink, you can have the feeling of you know, wanting to eat the cookie, but don’t eat the cookie. You could have the feeling of anger at your husband and you don’t yell at him. Even though you’re angry with him. You can just be angry. And that’s cool. This is what emotional intelligence looks like.

And honestly, it’s just one of those things that you have to practice because it feels kind of terrible at first, until you get better at it. Because it’s so uncomfortable. It’s so unfamiliar and you’re in this place and you’re outside your comfort zone because all of a sudden things are coming up and you just got to deal with it. You just got to let it be there. Just allow it to be there. Allow that anger to be there without doing anything about it without acting on it.

But you practice it and you get better at it. And then you practice it some more and you get, it gets easier for you. And it becomes just a part of who you are. Emotional Intelligence is something you can learn, and practice and get good at. And listen, you’re already doing this in other areas of your life, like, you know, your co worker sends you a nasty email and you just want to punch them in the face, but you don’t, you don’t punch them in the face, even though you feel like it, you got angry, you’re feeling the anger, you understand, it’s just a feeling and that you don’t have to act on it. Right?

Because you know, there’s like negative consequences that go along with this, you probably get fired, or, you know, get go to jail or something. And the same goes for sticking with your eating plan or not taking a drink, you can still feel like you want to drink, you can still feel a craving for a cookie and not eat the cookie. You can just be there with that urge to drink and not do anything about it. Just be there. It will feel uncomfortable. It will. It’s cool. Just feel uncomfortable. No biggie.

I was just talking to someone last night who was telling me she was really proud of herself because she was sitting at dinner with friends and she’s trying not to do sugar and flour right now. And there was a you know, basket of bread, they just kept putting these baskets of bread in front of her at this restaurant.

And she just looked at the bread and was like, nope, not doing it. And it felt uncomfortable. But she just just let it be there. Just let it let the discomfort be there. And just went on with you know, talking with their friends and eating dinner and all this other stuff with all this bread just staring at her in the face calling out her name, eat me. Just didn’t do anything about it. You know it wasn’t comfortable, but she got through it.

And the more you practice stuff like that, the better you get at it, the more the more you practice not drinking when you feel like taking a drink like you may be at a party and you don’t know anybody there and you feel super uncomfortable. You’re like I just know a drink would sure make make things easier here.

Don’t do it, just feel uncomfortable. Be the uncomfortable person at the party. You know what other people are probably uncomfortable to. But is that drink really going to help you in that situation? Probably not. Maybe you can just go talk to somebody, you know, just talk to one person, ask them, you know what they do ask them about their family, their kids, whatever. Just you don’t have to drink, you don’t have to make yourself feel comfortable all the time. It’s okay to feel uncomfortable.

So understanding this emotional intelligence piece is so key and understanding the that your thoughts create your feelings and your feelings drive your actions. This is key to ending self sabotaging behavior. The key to changing anything in your life really, is to practice a different pattern, you got to practice a different thought feeling action pattern, you have to train yourself to prefer habits that are good for you.

Like you have to make the good habits familiar to you. And they won’t be easy until they become familiar won’t be comfortable until they become familiar to you. So you have to practice doing it. Like you know, not eating the bread. That’s a good habit. Right? If you don’t eat bread, and everybody else is eating bread, you got to practice not eating the bread. And then that’ll become easier for you. And it’ll become more familiar to you.

And when you do this and you practice it, you get good at it, you expand what’s comfortable for you, you your comfort zone gets larger, you expand your comfort zone. And listen, it’s not enough to know what you should be doing. You know, it’s not about good habits versus bad habits. It’s not about being a good person or a bad person. It’s never about a moral judgment. Never.

It’s just about changing what’s familiar to you. So don’t judge yourself. For you know, wanting to eat the bread, you’re not a bad person because you want to eat the bread. That’s just what’s comfortable to you. It’s just what you’ve done. It’s what’s familiar to you.

Change what’s familiar to you. And you can change anything you want in your life. And honestly, you’re right now where you are today, you’re already good at doing everything you’re doing today. Okay, here, like whatever you’re doing today. You’re good at already. This is comfortable for you. Okay, all the habits that you have right now all the thought patterns, all the things you do automatically or that seem automatic for you. This is all familiar, it’s comfortable and safe. This is your comfort zone.

So when you want to change something, it’s going to feel uncomfortable to you. Are you willing to go through that? Are you willing to feel uncomfortable to change? You have to be willing to feel uncomfortable? It’s the only way you can change anything in your life. Are you willing to do the work to feel terrible for a little while until things start to feel more familiar, more habitual, more comfortable for you?

And you’re probably saying yes, Patrick, I am. And people tell me yes all the time. In advance, they tell me yes, before they feel uncomfortable. They’re like, of course, I’m willing to feel uncomfortable. But then when they actually do start to feel the discomfort, and they start to feel kind of terrible, then they’re like, Hell, no, I didn’t sign up for this. This is not what I thought you meant when you said I was going to be uncomfortable.

And I’m like, Yeah, that’s what it is. It doesn’t feel good. It feels terrible. And it’s okay. You can get through it. It’s temporary. It doesn’t last forever, you can get good, you just got to practice it. But it’s funny, because people are, are all in with the discomfort ahead of time. You know, they’re like, Yes, I’m willing to feel uncomfortable in a few weeks, no problem at all.

But then a few weeks go by, and they’re like, Oh, I really feel terrible. Get me off of this thing, you’re like, Nope, you got to just stay where you are. That’s the only way you got to get, you just got to get through it. So, but when you when you start to feel that discomfort, that’s when you start engaging in the self sabotaging behaviors, even though you don’t even know you’re doing it, you’re going to start to do things just to get back to the comfortable just to get back to the familiar. Even if it’s something that’s bad for you.

You know that, like let’s say you’re trying not to drink alcohol right now. And you know that, you know, drinking alcohol is bad for you, let’s say okay, and you just know that you want to take a break for those months, you know, and it’s gonna start to feel uncomfortable, and you’re gonna find yourself wanting to drink or maybe you find yourself drinking, even though you don’t want to do that.

Consciously you’re like, I don’t even want this right now. Subconsciously, your primitive brain is like, you got to get something good, you got to get something to make you feel more comfortable here. Alcohol is what we usually do. So let’s go back to doing that. Alright. Even though you know, it’s like, it’s not good for you. It’s not healthy. It’s not what you want for yourself in this moment, you’re going to do it anyway.

Listen, if you find yourself stuck, or find yourself not making progress toward a goal, you need to hear this, you’re not stuck because you’re incapable of change, you’re stuck because you don’t feel like doing what it takes to change. I’m going to say this again. Because I think this is really important.

You’re not stuck because you’re incapable of change. You’re stuck because you don’t feel like doing what it takes to change. You don’t feel like doing what it takes to change because what it takes to change is getting uncomfortable is seeking out the unfamiliar, seeking out the uncomfortable. And we get hung up on labels sometimes like we use these labels of like we have good feelings which equal comfort and safety and familiar familiarity and we have bad feelings like discomfort, danger unfamiliar. And I just want to say right now that I don’t think these are accurate labels, I don’t think any feeling is good or bad.

Being a human being means we get to experience all of our emotions, the quote unquote positive emotions, the quote unquote, negative emotions, we experience joy and sadness, happiness, and sorrow, peace and confusion, you know, anger and contentment, we get to experience all these things. And it’s cool, it’s cool, we can experience all these emotions, we’re not going to die from feeling our feelings, right.

But when you live your life from a place of always trying to avoid any of these negative feelings, you’re going to find yourself stuck in a loop of always trying to avoid feeling stuff, you’re going to always be seeking pleasure. You’re always going to be avoiding discomfort, avoiding anything unfamiliar. And you’re gonna find yourself stuck and frustrated, and never becoming more never changing anything.

Because you’re always trying to avoid feeling half your feelings, basically. All right. The way you stop the self sabotage is to get really good at feeling uncomfortable about embracing the discomfort. Get out into the unfamiliar territory, on purpose, do it on purpose. Do things that are hard, do things that don’t feel good, but that will move you in the direction of your goals and dreams. Do the hard stuff even though you don’t feel like it?

This is like the key to accomplishing anything is you make a plan and then you stick to the plan even when you don’t feel like it. Even if it feels you know unfamiliar even if it feels scary. Even if you don’t understand how it’s all going to work even though it feels uncomfortable. I’m doing this right now for myself.

I started, I found myself getting to this place where I kept hitting snooze in the morning a bunch of times, like I set my alarm for six o’clock, and I would hit snooze a bunch of times, right? And listen, as an entrepreneur, I get to make my own hours. Okay, so I’m like, Yeah, I make my own hours, I can get up whenever I want to, you know, and I just found myself wasting time.

So hitting snooze, you know. And I decided in pretty recently, a few weeks ago, that I was going to be the kind of person who got up at 5:30. And started working and just got to work right away. And so I’ve been doing that I’ve set my alarm for 5:30. I don’t hit snooze, I use my, you know, phone as like an alarm. And so I hit stop. And then the feet are on the ground. Every morning, 5:30, stop, feet hit the floor.

And this, I got to tell you guys, this feels terrible. It’s really hard. It’s very unfamiliar for me, for me, because I’ve been doing this snooze thing for like, a long time, you know. And it’s uncomfortable, it’s unfamiliar, I don’t like it, it feels terrible, I’m tired, I want to sleep more. I feel like I need more sleep, you know, when I wake up in the morning.

But I gotta tell you, every day that I do this, I feel better about myself, I’m building confidence in myself, because that hitting snooze over and over again was like a form of me self sabotage and wanting to stay in the familiar. And so I’m forcing myself to break that habit. And this is how you do it.

You just got to get out into the unfamiliar, decide what it is you want for yourself and do that thing, even though you don’t feel like it. When my alarm went off this morning at 5:30. I was deep in sleep, I was in the middle of some dream. And I was just like, so deeply asleep. And I open my eyes. And I hit stop and the feet are on the ground. And I got up. And literally within like two minutes, I’m wide awake, and it’s fine.

But it’s like, you just got to do the hard thing she got to do what, what you need to do, even though you don’t feel like it. I don’t feel like getting up at 5:30. But I’m doing it. I’m getting a lot done. And I feel so much better about myself and the self sabotage has stopped.

So here’s your homework for this week. I got a homework assignment for you. I want you to decide what it is you want for yourself. And then I want you to see what you are doing or not doing. Because you just want to stay with the familiar and the comfortable.

So what do you want to be doing? Or what do you want to stop doing? Because it’s too hard or unfamiliar or uncomfortable. So this could be you know, not drinking or sticking to your food plan or sticking to a running schedule? Or running faster or doing weight training, or doing speed work or whatever it is for you. What is it that you want to be doing? Or what do you want to stop doing? But you’re not because it’s unfamiliar, because it’s uncomfortable, because it’s hard because you don’t feel like it.

I want you to do that thing this week. Do it even though you don’t feel like it. So if you tell yourself, I don’t want to be eating sugar this week, then don’t eat the sugar this week. And there’s going to be times when you are going to feel like eating the sugar. Don’t do it.

Or you’re going to say you know, hey, I want to, you know, do speed work two times this week, and then you’re gonna wake up and you’re gonna put your running shoes on, you’re gonna be like, I really don’t feel like doing this right now. This I hate speed work. It’s so hard. I’m gonna feel terrible. Do it anyway, even though you don’t feel like it. This is how you stop the self sabotage. This is how you change anything that you want for yourself.

Okay, so that’s your work for this week. Cool. Let me know how that goes for you. I want to hear about it. You can post your homework assignment, you can post your results in our Facebook group. Cool. Alright, that’s all I got for you guys. I hope you got something out of this episode today. And if you did, I would love it if you would share this with a friend I love you all keep on Running Lean. Talk to you soon.

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