Self Sabotaging Behaviors Limiting Your Success

Welcome back to the Driven Woman Entrepreneur podcast, you know that I am the speaker of uncomfortable truths and I do not do this to shame anybody or make anyone feel bad. As a matter of fact, I like to think of myself as the person who has your back and is trying to hold up a mirror to the things you don't even realize you're doing that are actually making it harder for you to be successful. I think more of us need to be successful and more of us need to be a lot more successful than we already are. So in order for that to happen, we have to have our eyes wide open, we have to catch ourselves doing those sneaky, self sabotaging behaviors that we don't even recognize we're doing because as long as you're working your ass off, you should be making bank. So you ready to get to it? We'll be right back after this brief intro music.

Okay, folks, let me just address the elephant in the room okay. You might be thinking, Diann, does everybody sabotage themselves in business I mean, everybody or is that kind of a me thing. Or am I, like, just better at it than everyone else or worse at it, depending on how you look at it? Here's the truth, everybody, sooner or later sabotages themselves in business in a whole variety of ways that we're going to get into in this episode. Now, it doesn't make sense, right, I mean, we're working really hard and this is our business, so it kind of reflects on us if we're not doing well. It really makes no sense when we want to succeed and we're working hard that we would sabotage. But here's the thing, humans are both conscious and unconscious beings. We like to think we are operating and making decisions on that conscious, intentional level. But in reality, as humans, we are primarily operating on the unconscious level and then justifying our actions and decisions on the conscious level.

So that's just being human, that's not a solopreneur thing, that's not a female solopreneur thing, that is a human thing to be unconsciously sabotaging yourself. Now, I want to give you some things to look for so that if you see these things, you can do something about them okay. So the first one, something you've heard me talk about a lot it's what I call the default yes. Now, this means you're saying yes to too many things, which means you're probably saying yes to some of the wrong things and it also means that you're overcomplicating and over committing. I think of it as a form of people pleasing, but it also means that you're avoiding doing the work of structuring your time and creating boundaries. Because when you structure your time and create boundaries, it prevents you from overindulging in the default yes, because it protects your focus and your energy for the most important tasks. This took me decades to recognize and resolve. Now it's one of the primary focus areas that I do with all of my clients.

Here's another thing that we do to unconsciously sabotage ourself, and it's related to this default yes thing. We avoid having systems and structures in our business and when I hear people say, I'm a multi-passionate, I'm a multi-potentulate, I'm a multitasker, anything that has multi in it to me, while it sounds good. And I have been that person who has used all those words to describe myself in the past what that's also telling me is this is a person who's really resisting systems and structures in their business because they think it cramps their style. They think it inhibits them. They think it just throws a wet blanket over their creativity and their passion and their joy. It's not true, there are ways that you can incorporate systems and structures, even rituals and routines in your business that preserve your creativity.

You know what else they preserve? Your energy, your focus, your drive, your passion. All that stuff that you absolutely count on to get the job done. Trust me, I get it. Here's another thing we do to unconsciously sabotage our success and not even realize it. A lot of us trust others too much while not trusting ourselves enough. Okay and what I mean by that is we are unconsciously avoiding doing more critical thinking and accepting full responsibility for our decisions we do this in a variety of ways and don't even realize it. One of the ways I've talked about on a previous podcast is what I call magic pill thinking. When we are looking for a magic pill, most of the time we don't realize we're looking for a magic pill, and sometimes we're actually looking for an actual pill. A lot of my clients have ADHD, many of my clients have anxiety, depression, all kinds of other different mental health challenges. So they oftentimes believe that they just have to get on the right medication or they just have to find the right doctor or the right treatment or the right coach or the right program or the right anything. All of that is what I call magic pill thinking.

Now, it's not our fault that we're looking for magic pills because modern marketing, especially online marketing, and especially in the coaching industry, basically tells us that what is being offered is a magic pill. I mean, the message is it's easy, it's fast, it's fun, it's lucrative. Anyone can do it. You can do it. You don't need any credentials. Here, let me show you, I've got the proprietary method that's absolutely going to work for you and you know what, we open wide and take a big swallow because that sounds awesome. It's the same technique that has made the weight loss industry, the beauty industry, and now the world of online marketing billions and billions and billions of dollars. But those dollars are all going into the pockets of a very small number of individuals, while the people who are supporting those individuals, folks like you and me, who swallowed that magic pill ended up not getting nearly as far with that so called proven program as we were promised.

Now, I think anyone who claims they know the secret, the way, the proven solution, the roadmap, or anything else in their sales page that is hinting at a guarantee without actually offering a guarantee, is playing to our very natural human desires for immediate gratification, comfort, convenience and ease. So we end up sabotaging ourselves when we open wide and swallow that magic pill because there isn't a person who's hearing my voice right now that doesn't know if something sounds too good to be true that's because it is. But those messages are playing to our very human desires to seek pleasure and by pleasure I mean ease, comfort, convenience and reward and to avoid pain, discomfort, fear, uncertainty, doubt, loss. So pretending that we don't know this means we are fully participating in self sabotage. We know on some level that something's a magic pill, but we still want to swallow it because we want things to be easier and more comfortable and less scary than we know they're probably going to be.

I am not victim blaming, trust me and I have swallowed plenty of magic pills oftentimes as I'm hitting the buy button, thinking and sometimes even saying out loud, this is probably a mistake. So I am right there with you as a human who is fully capable of self sabotage and has fully indulged in all the forms of self sabotage that I am sharing with you today, every last one. There's another way we do this as well in addition to magic pill thinking is all of us have biases and blind spots. So for example, if someone has a very expensive program, there's a lot of people who have the bias, if it's expensive, it must be good. Many of us have a bias that if someone has a big name in the industry or they wrote a book or that they have a podcast, they must be good. We only want to be mentored by people that we identify with and we like to identify with people that we think are good but it's a shortcut. It's a shortcut that assumes if we hire this person who has a big name, a big reputation, a book, a podcast, whatever, whatever that they're going to be good.

Because in a way that implies that if all we have to do is pay them, all we have to do is buy their thing, all we have to do is work with them and we will be good by association. It's not true. It's simply untrue. We actually have to do the work and they actually have to be the right person for us, their program has to be right for us. Here's a couple of other ways that we have biases. Maybe we want to work with people who have the same cultural background or they have a little blue check mark on social media and these are biases that might, they just might land you with the perfect coach, the perfect consultant, the perfect mentor, but not necessarily, because, again, it's a shortcut. And what we're trying to avoid is, again, critical thinking and taking full responsibility for our decisions. Now, nobody is hovering over the Buy Now button with the countdown timer and the whole scarcity all the things. Nobody is thinking I'm attempting to take a shortcut and avoid critical thinking and taking full responsibility for my decisions.

Nobody, nobody is thinking that. But again, because it's human nature to seek ease, comfort, convenience, reward, aka pleasure, and to avoid discomfort, fear, loss, doubt, uncertainty, aka pain. When we pretend we don't know this, we are indulging in a form of self sabotage. How about blind spots? Well, oftentimes we overlook information that might be helpful to us because we don't know what we don't know. Now, once we know more, we may then still be under the influence of the Sunk Cost fallacy. For example, I've talked to a number of people who have purchased program after program after program with the same coach and not getting results at any level of investment. It's like, what, I thought this was an isolated situation. I've actually heard it from a number of people. So somebody invested in a high end program with a big name coach, they went through the whole program, did not get the desired outcome, and instead of thinking, well, shoot, maybe I got duped, they invested in an even higher level, even more expensive program with the same coach, why?

Well, I think it's human nature to not want to admit we made a mistake, because that means we're engaging our critical thinking and taking full responsibility for our decisions. But there's also the Sunk Cost Fallacy that I've already put so much time and money into this, I've already made so many connections in this program, it would just be too painful or too embarrassing to have to start over somewhere else. So we keep doing something that actually isn't working, that is a form of sabotaging our success without even trying. Here's a few more and this is something I see a lot of my impulsive folks do and man, has this been me in the past. Jumping in without a plan, just winging it, being super excited by a new idea and just jumping in with both feet, spending a lot of money, a lot of time consuming a lot of emotional and intellectual resources, and just being basically under the influence of our own brain chemistry, our own manufacturing of our dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin and we're experiencing the love juice.

We're literally in love with our new idea, but we don't have a plan. I promise you, you will come down, I've experienced this so many times. It is kind of like falling madly in love with someone and then waking up the next morning and going, oh my God. Jumping in without a plan simply because your brain chemistry was elevated, yeah, that can lead to quite a bit of self sabotage. The problem is it feels so good in the moment and it's like this combination of magic pill thinking plus impulsivity that as we're overindulging and we are even remembering all the time we've done this with really shady regrettable outcomes, we think but this time, this is the one. This is the magic pill, this is the idea, this is the program, this is the whatever, whatever our new thing is, this is going to be the one that's going to make everything better.

No, very likely not. Hate to poop on your parade, but I've been at this for a minute, so we got to have a plan and I'm really good at partnering with people to make plans out of their chaos. They're like, I don't have a plan here, I can't figure out a plan. I can because it's your chaos, not mine. And it's awfully hard to figure that stuff out for yourself, it really is. Here's a few more, most of us have a lot of trouble visualizing the success like, we may be able to see the end goal, that empire, however we define success. We might be able to visualize the end game, but we're not able to visualize and recognize and celebrate what day to day successes look like. And if we don't recognize them, if we don't celebrate them, we cannot maintain our optimism, our energy, our motivation, our enthusiasm, our drive and when that happens, we give up. We change direction, we start over, we rebrand, we pivot, we start another business. Any of this sounding familiar?

I promise you I have done all of these things. And if you do not recognize them as a form of self sabotage that you're not even trying to perform, you will never reach the level of success that you could have, that's the hard truth. Now, we're going to get into some really specific things procrastination. Now, I seriously doubt that there is anyone who listens to this podcast who is not a world class procrastinator. The self sabotage aspect of this is that we put off the work that really matters and could actually move us ahead. Now, it may also mean on given days, and this applies to me too, sometimes we're not getting any work done at all, but we typically procrastinate on the work that really matters so clearly this is not intentional. Clearly this is not logical because why would you do that to yourself? It's unconscious and one of the most self sabotaging forms of procrastination, and I see this all the time, is when we put off doing sales generating work.

Let me say that again, the biggest way to sabotage ourselves and sabotage our business and sabotage our success is when we procrastinate on the tasks that bring us clients, that bring us sales, that bring us leads. And usually we're not just lying around eating bon bons and watching Netflix usually we are spending a great deal of time focusing on busy work. And when you are busy with work, your brain is satisfied. You're not thinking consciously yeah, but none of this is going to move the needle. You're busy, you're occupied, you're focused, your time is being eaten up. It feels like work. It's just not the kind of work that's going to keep you in business and this is an extremely common form of self sabotage. We don't see ourselves doing it and because all behavior is habit forming I know you've heard me say that before, it can be a really hard habit to break and it can literally put you out of business if you do it long enough.

Here's another one not getting feedback from others, or worse, ignoring good feedback when we do get it. Now, full honesty here, this was me for a really long time, but I finally had to come to the realization that just because I'm self employed doesn't mean I should be working in a silo or an echo chamber. Now, a silo is when you're just hunkered down, doing your own thing, and you're not asking anything of anybody. An echo chamber is when you surround yourself with other people who are doing the same thing you're doing at about the level that you're doing it and with about the level of success that you're doing it. That's an echo chamber because you've literally surrounded yourself with other people who are sabotaging themselves in the exact same ways that you're sabotaging yourself.

Now the weird thing is, you might even be able to recognize that they're doing it while still be completely ignorant of the fact that you are too. That's just the curse of being human, I'm afraid. Here's a few more, most of the really high ability people that I know and that I like to work with set really unrealistic goals for themselves, their expectations for what they think they can get done in a day, an hour, a week, a year, grossly unrealistic. And if that's you, that is a form of self sabotage because even when you're getting results, you're never going to feel successful. And I will tell you, some of the people that I've seen go through crushing burnout were actually crushing it in their business, but couldn't see it. They could not see it because their goals and their expectations were so unrealistic that no amount of revenue, no amount of profit, no amount of clients, no amount of contribution, no amount of success ever felt like enough. That is a really painful way to blow your business up and put yourself in burnout at the same time.

When we put off key decisions like we overanalyze or we just focus on less important things and we're putting off the really important decisions. And one of the ones I see a lot, that's obviously a form of self sabotage is when we really are not good at things we are trying to do all the things, not because we are a bootstrapper, not because we are DIYing it. Not because we're in the very, very beginning stages we're making money, we're generating leads, we're closing sales. We have a good offer, we can and should be getting help in our business and we're not doing it, that is a perfect example of putting off a key decision. One of the key decisions I see female business owners put off far too long is usually the first hire and it's usually a part time virtual assistant. Almost every female business owner I've ever met or worked with put off hiring a virtual assistant way too long and made their life much more difficult than it needed to be frankly, sabotaging their success without even trying.

Another area is what we focus on, I've sort of alluded to that in some of the things I've mentioned previously, but these are the things I refer to as focus factors that really mess us up. One, trying to focus on too many things that is related to the default yes and just falling in love with whatever our shiny new idea is. And of course, if we thought of it and we love it, we want to do it. You cannot focus on too many things at once, you have to focus on the things that really matter and that can take a little effort to figure that out. Oftentimes that's something that you need a mentor, a consultant, or a coach to help you with because it's really hard to know what the most important things to focus on in your own business, especially as a solopreneur, because you're doing everything. So it's like, well, everything needs to get done, everything needs to get done by me or at least delegated by me to my assistant. So how can I be focusing on too many things, I have too many things to focus on.

No, there are systems and structures that we can put into place that make this much less chaotic. Many of us tackle the easy things first instead of the most important or the most difficult. I've had a lot of people try to convince me that they start with the easy things and then they kind of as they gain momentum, they work their way up to the more difficult. No, they don't. I don't and I hate starting the day with the most difficult thing as much as everybody. It is, honest to God, the only thing that really works for me. Because I've lied to myself six ways from Sunday and sabotage my own success without even trying for many, many years by telling myself that if I don't feel like doing the hard thing now, I will basically feel more like doing it later. Which is basically what you do when you put something off, you say, okay, I know I need to do it. I intend to do it, I fully plan to do it. I'm totally doing it, I'm just going to do it later.

That becomes never and that feels really shitty because you're not only procrastinating and self sabotaging, you're doing it with the thing, the very thing, the most important thing that would actually make your business better, your success easier, and take a load of stress off. So it's human nature and many of us need someone to help us with that kind of stuff. A lot of people put out fires instead of preventing fires. And can I just say, when it comes to multitasking, and this is something that I used to claim, that I used to put that in my resume and I would bring it up in job interviews, that I was really good at multitasking. Now, after studying neuroscience for quite a few years, I realize I was engaging in a fast paced game of rather inefficient task switching and if you are a proud multitasker, you are too, I promise. Another thing we tend to do is ignore signs of burnout and I'm going to talk about that specifically a little bit later.

But burnout is beyond fatigue, it's beyond exhaustion, it's just literally all systems are shutting down and it is no joke. And when we ignore signs of that, we do so at our own expense and the expense of our business. Distractibility is something that oftentimes becomes a way to sabotage ourself and in the most innocuous ways, like checking email or checking our social media, got to be on social media to market your business. But checking your email at the wrong times or checking your social media too often, or even not often enough, can be a form of self sabotage that we are completely unaware of. One of the big ones that I see with a lot of my clients, and that's certainly been a case for me in the past, is allowing too many interruptions that disrupt our workflow. Because even if we think we just snap right back into focus, we don't, we can't. And a lot of people get really irate when someone interrupts them because they know that once their focus is disrupted, it takes them a long time to regain it and they may not get back to the level that they had.

Now, I have been talking for a number of minutes now about things like self sabotage and procrastination and perfectionism and people pleasing and problems with time management. So if this kind of sounds like a list of traits associated with ADHD, it kind of is. And the reason why is many small business owners, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, creatives have these traits, including me and this is true whether they have an official ADHD diagnosis or not. But here's the thing, the positive traits of ADHD contribute to our success. So the trick is not to just focus on one side of the equation. There are people who say ADHD is the entrepreneur's superpower. There are people who say there's no way I can successfully pursue my goals working on my own with ADHD. Well, it's the same condition, folks so I think what we have to do, in all fairness, and this is whether you're officially diagnosed or not, is not just focus on one side of the equation, not just say it's a superpower or it's a curse, because it's both.

It truly is and we need to be honest with ourselves about both our strengths and our struggles, because focus, motivation, time management are all really important in business. And we need to be honest with ourselves so that we can put the systems and the structures in place to keep those challenges in check. Because when those challenges are in check, then and only then, can we leverage the ADHD strengths of creativity, original thinking, high energy, risk taking, and hyper focus. So how do we combat this self sabotage and ramp up our performance? Well, you probably realize by this point in the episode that you've engaged in quite a few of these self sabotaging activities I've mentioned. If not, you should listen to it again, because an entrepreneur who's being honest with themselves and is even a little bit self aware can't help but recognize that these behaviors are very, very common for all of us. And if you're like me, you've indulged in many, if not all of them at one point or another, even if you aren't right now.

Now, I know it may seem overwhelming, but you might be asking, so can I change all these behaviors at once? The reality is you can't, your brain would literally explode. But the first step is recognizing and admitting to yourself that you do engage in these behaviors. And it's not easy to recognize them and to be honest with yourself, because for many of us, there's a lot of shame involved. But it would really go a long way towards toning the behavior down when you could say, oh, yeah, I do this under these conditions, or when this happens, I do that. Now, I don't suggest to anyone that you try to change all these behaviors at once. What I do suggest, and when I'm working with someone as a client, we zero in on the ones that will make the biggest difference or offer the best rewards and that might be just one. I think of it as like your Jenga block, what is the one thing we can focus on that will literally make all the other things kind of collapse? So we're literally getting a lot more birds with that one stone.

So for starters, like, think about how you plan out your time. Now, I know a lot of people are like, I'm not a planner. Well, yeah and you're probably frustrated with the level of success that you've been able to achieve. So do you have a list of your priorities for the year, the month, the week, and the day. That's a plan, no lie. If you know what your top level priorities are for the year, and since the year is already half over, let's just do it for the second half of the year, then the month, then the week, then the day. This creates a massive shift in your ability to focus, your ability to set boundaries, your ability to recognize when you're being interrupted, when you're distracting yourself, like just focusing on the most important things for those time periods. Now, maybe you have a list of all the things you need to do on a given day or a given week and do you really look at it?

A lot of people it's crazy, but a lot of people make a list and then they don't look at it, or they look at it in a very superficial way. And I suggest that the way we look at it is, how much is my time actually worth? Because if you're working really hard all week and maybe even into the evenings and weekends, but you're working on the wrong things, how big a problem for you is that? How much of a missed opportunity in your business is that? I would suggest that however long you spend thinking about managing your time, you could benefit significantly by spending a little bit of extra time on this key task. What is your time actually worth?

Now, if you are a consultant and you charge, let's say, $300 an hour for your consulting fee, then your time is worth $300. And if you are using up hours upon hours upon hours, every day, every week, every month, doing tasks that are $10 tasks when you could be earning $300 for that hour, that's a form of self sabotage. Now, I'm well aware that coaches and consultants and other experts are not able to work 40 hours a week at their full rate. Obviously, there are a lot of other tasks that support your business, and there are also tasks that don't have any money attached to them, like brainstorming, planning, strategizing. There's no dollar value attached to that, but those are actually your most important and most valuable uses of your time.

The next self sabotaging activity that I would recommend you focus on is learning how to manage fear, uncertainty and doubt, specifically the fear of change. Because I promise you, if you're doing things in your business that are not working and you are afraid of changing things because you think maybe the new thing is going to be even more ineffective, you're sabotaging yourself without trying. Now, this is not easy and confronting our fear is challenging and it does not come naturally, so we avoid it, that's human nature. One of the things I do which might work for you is I have a reminder set on a regular basis to ask myself, what would I be doing right now if I had no fear and I don't have it set at regular intervals. I have it set at sporadic intervals so I don't anticipate it. I used to have it on a regular basis and then as soon as I knew it was about to ping me, I would just turn it off because I didn't want to be reminded and I was avoiding.

So now it's like an unscheduled visit to my brain that kind of taps me on the shoulder a little bit because we're always afraid of something and it is not the fear that holds us back. It is the unacknowledged fear, the unconscious fear you can't fight the thing that you don't even know is there. Another way that I try to mitigate fear is by placing hard limits on things that feel risky for me. So for example, if I'm going to launch something new, I'm going to write down a hard limit kind of like imagine if you were going to Vegas and you said, I'm going to take this amount of money, I'm going to gamble this amount of money. And once I have lost this amount of money, I'm walking away from the table, I'm going back to my room, and I'm not going to the bank to get anymore. Period. End of subject.

So for me, I would place a hard limit on the financial risk I'm willing to take on something new and I often use this and I do this a lot more is say I want to write this new thing. I want to come up with this new idea, this new campaign, whatever it may be. I give myself a maximum amount of time that I'm willing to put into it as well as some must achieve milestones. And the reason why I do this is because maybe like you, I'm a perfectionist. So I will procrastinate on doing something and then once I get started, I have to just keep making it better and better and better and better. Well, you know what, you can end up spending an inordinate amount of time on something that turns out to be a total bust no matter how perfect I make it.

So I give myself a maximum time limit, this is how much time I will devote to this risk I'm taking because I have no idea whether it's going to work or not. And I don't want to indulge in the sunk cost fallacy of thinking, this has to work, I've been working on it for 20 hours. Well, no, you should have put a limit on it. Now, I also believe if you want to be successful in business, you need to be in good mental shape. I mean, how can you make good decisions? How can you engage in critical thinking and accept full responsibility in your business if you really honestly can't even think straight? You're not well rested, you're not well hydrated. You're not eating enough or eating the right kind of foods. You're stressed, you're burned out. You're working around the clock.

You cannot achieve optimal results because under these conditions you're going to feel crappy. So I believe the three things that make the biggest difference and I encourage my clients to set optimal and minimal for each of these. If you can get 20 minutes of exercise three times a week get your heart rate up to a healthy level that's like a minimum and you don't have to join the gym. You don't have to buy a peloton. You could take the dog out for a brisk walk. You can put on your favorite dance music in the living room. You can play with your kids and swing them around like there's lots of ways you can get some kind of movement into your day 20 minutes three times a week. It will benefit your body and your mind I promise. Now people always ask me when they say yes you're right I do need to do that, when should I do it?

Well I used to tell all my clients years ago you got to work out in the morning because there's so many benefits to working out in the morning. But the reality is a lot of people are not morning folks and a lot of people have other responsibilities in the morning that they would literally have to get up the ass crack of dawn to be able to exercise in the morning. It's not going to happen. They may do it for a couple of weeks and then it's not sustainable. So if you can get it done in the morning there will be many many benefits including getting it out of the way so you know it's done and starting your day feeling like a winner. But that being said if the only time you can exercise regularly is in the evening then that is when you do it. Now here's the thing you're not the only entrepreneur dealing with struggle to get self care fit in. And in the midst of all of the self sabotaging behaviors that I've been talking about every other entrepreneur is dealing with this too and even the huge big corporations.

And here's one more common form of self sabotage I see when a lot of people are saying, wow, it's summer already. It's Q2, wow, the year is halfway over and a lot of people are saying, I haven't hit my revenue targets for year to date. But when they tell themselves nobody buys in the summer and I'm just going to wait it out and then ramp things up in the fall, I'll bounce back then, I think this is a risky business. I mentioned this earlier in the episode, but I decided this year, instead of just talking about it, just kind of calling out this problematic behavior, I want to do something about it. Now, many people like to travel in the summer, like to go visit family and friends in distant places, slow down their pace, take advantage of better weather, the opportunity to relax. And if it's built into their business plan, then they should absolutely do it, because they've already factored in that time off, and it does not mean they have extra pressure in Q3 and 4.

But I rarely see people give themselves an unplanned sabbatical and bounce back in September, fully refreshed and ready to roll. Most of the time, they spent the whole summer feeling anxious, and now it's September and they're in a state of genuine panic. So this year I'm doing something that I've never done before. And here's what it is, I am offering to work with people in shorter term engagements than my usual signature coaching program. For the last several years, I have only been available to work with people in a twelve week, one on one intensive. But this summer, for the first time, I'm calling it Choose Your Own Adventure. Now, there are a variety of summer offers, anywhere from one day with me to six weeks. And the goal of these summer sessions is so that you can make sure you are making progress and moving your business forward even though it's summer so by fall, things are going to look a whole lot better than if you sabotage your summer by doing nothing.