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Hey there, Maureen Chana here, founder of the Mindsights Academy, neurocoach to executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, and a neuroleadership trainer using insights from neuroscience to help you flourish and exceed expectations. Welcome back to another episode of Lead to Excel Podcast. I am absolutely thrilled to be with you today because today we're talking about something that is absolutely powerful and important to help you truly achieve high performance. And most importantly, to actually help you live the life that you want to live and exceed your expectations without holding yourself back. So, what are we talking about today? The topic is what's holding you back. So to start, I'll start with this question, which is our topic. What is holding you back? Have you tried to reach a goal such as losing weight, starting a new business? Maybe you want to be more assertive, or you might need to have a serious conversation with someone. Maybe have a discussion with a team member that is underperforming. But each time you're determined to do any of these, you find yourself disappointed when your efforts don't bring you any closer to achieving your goals. Or in some cases, you might find that you actually never get past thinking about all these things that you want to do, but actually never putting anything into action. So it literally stops in your brain. Maybe you're struggling to take the action to take your career to the next level. Do you remember being excited about attending a conference or meeting someone new and you live there determined to contact this person the next day only to convince yourself the next day that you're too busy at the moment or you're not actually ready? So, what do you do? You put it off. You might have set a date to start that new business, but close to the time you decide that you're not quite ready yet, you probably need to take one more course. That course you saw the other day. I think you need to take that course to get you ready. Have you ever had a deadline for a big project only to find yourself rushing the day before to complete it? Why? Because you spent too much time possibly on social media or whatever it is you do for avoidance. Should I tell you something interesting? You are not alone. When I started working for myself, developing training courses, the work I do involves doing things like editing videos. And I don't particularly enjoy doing editing. I'm fine creating the content, but editing, mmm. So what do I do? I found myself taking so many breaks to watch a video on YouTube. The videos I was watching were quite good and quite helpful. But should I have been doing it then? No. This ended up prolonging the time that it took for me to finish, and I found myself at that time missing the deadlines that I had set myself. If this sounds familiar, you are in a cycle of self-sabotage. There was once, quite a few years ago, that I needed to speak to a member of staff who was underperforming. And this had gone on for quite some time, and I had made up my mind that I was gonna do it. When the day came, I looked for everything I could do to avoid having that conversation, and this went on for months. I'm serious, it went on for so long. Every time I was meant to have this conversation, I'll put it off. And things kept deteriorating until it got to a time I literally had to ask someone to do it for me. Why? Because I hated confrontation. So what did I do? I put off things I should have done. Things got so bad, and that this member of staff really kept getting worse, and the impact it really had on the team was so bad because people felt that oh, he could do anything he wanted and got away with it because Maureen didn't say anything to him. The fact is that we have all been there, but it becomes a problem when you find yourself standing in your own way. Self-sabotage occurs most times without you even realizing that it's happening. In this podcast, I'm going to open your eyes to yourself to enable you to understand why you do what you do and equip you to break free from self-sabotaging. The sad thing about self-sabotaging is that if you have a goal, you can make sure that it doesn't happen with thoughts andor actions such as procrastinating. You know what I mean. When you find yourself telling yourself, I'll do it later. Are you thinking about taking your relationship to the next level? Then you find that it becomes the perfect time to pick a fight about the way the toothpaste is pressed from the middle, not the end. You know what I'm talking about. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever thought to yourself, I can never do? I'll let you fill in the blank there. Then you give up and you don't even try. Listen to me, that is self-sabotage. This summer I decided that I was going to lose 5 kg by December. Okay, I'm putting it out there so you can hold me accountable. But you know what happens? My son literally runs over to the kitchen to check on what I'm doing each time I step foot into a kitchen. Because my husband has this funny habit of buying these delicious streets, and I find my legs walking towards these streets all the time. While I tell myself that I'll start eating properly tomorrow. Maybe you also find yourself acting in ways that are counter to what's good for you. Like binge drinking, binge eating bars of chocolate when you know the importance of a healthier lifestyle, like I do. Maybe you find yourself putting off sending off that application form or making that phone call. There are million ways we self-sabotage, but some of the most common are procrastination, alcohol, stress eating, and interpersonal conflict. Actions like these are especially insidious because they're relatively small. It's just one small action, one small argument, maybe one trip to the fridge, one glass of wine, one Netflix movie, and in the moment, they may even seem quite helpful. Like watching YouTube is for me. But not helpful at the time I was doing it because I was watching those movies to put me off doing the editing I know I should have been doing. But like a river eroding away rocks over time, self-sabotage creates a grand canyon of self-defeat from which it becomes really hard to climb out of. The question though is why do people self-sabotage? And I'll give you a few reasons. One is self-worth. Maybe you feel like you don't deserve to be successful. Many people strive and work hard because they are trying to make up for a sense of inadequacy. But when their hard work and high standard leads to rewards such as business success, monetary wealth, status or power, what do they do? They shoot themselves in the foot. Why would they do this? Why does this happen? Basically, as human beings, we like to be consistent. Our actions line up with our beliefs and values. But when they don't, we get uncomfortable and try to line them up again. That's why when people start to succeed but think that they are worthless, maybe believing that they're incapable, or you know what it is, you can fill in the blank here. They then pull the plug to get rid of the misalignment with their thoughts. These people end up with a kind of mindset of feeling that they know that it feels bad to fail, but because of the low self-worth and a belief of incapability that they have, actually failing doesn't feel as bad as succeeding. Because their mindset, their belief is that they are not capable. A second reason is fear of failure. Where people feel better to control their own failure than to let it blindside them. When these people believe the possibility of failure is too much to handle, what do they do? They take matters into their own hands. Self-sabotage isn't pretty, but it's a dignified alternative to spinning out of control. At least when you are at the helm of things, you can decide not to act, which then prevents you from failing. The question is, is this you? Another reason that people self-sabotage is comfort zone. People like to be consistent, like we've said. Time and time again, people choose consistency over happiness. If you're used to being neglected, maybe abused, ignored, or even exploited by people, by friends, or by family, it's oddly comforting to keep putting yourself in that position. You've probably been there your whole life, and that's what your brain is used to. So it becomes normal to you. And while you're not actually happy that this is happening, the negative limitations in you know that it's actually preferable to what you don't know. And if you listen to my previous podcast, you hear me talking about how the brain doesn't like the unknown, the brain cannot cope with uncertainty. So anything the brain perceives as uncertainty, it then sees as a threat. And that's exactly what's happening happening here. When being exploited, being abused, being ignored becomes normal to you, your brain knows it, identifies with it. Anything different then is perceived as a threat, which the brain will fight against. Another reason is looking for an excuse or someone or something to blame. If things don't work out, you then blame the sabotage instead of yourself. Now, this is where you start telling yourself, of course she left me. We argued all the time. Of course I did not get that job. I know I messed it up. I knew I'll fail the exam because I didn't start preparing on time for it. These reasons, while actually true, are actually more superficial and therefore easier to swallow than the actual, real, deeper reasons that you believe to be true. So that feeling of of course she left me. And the real reason that you're thinking is the real me is unlovable. Of course, I did not get that job because I'm not qualified enough for it. I spoke to someone recently, and the question she asks is, Why do I do this to myself? If you have said that to yourself, you may be an unwitting victim of your own bad habits, known as self-sabotage. Most people think of self-sabotage as possibly fear of success, but the fact is that it's actually not truly fear of success. It's more a fear of trying your best and not succeeding. It's a fear of being publicly humiliated as you worry about what people will perceive of you. My aim today is to empower you to be your best self, to have a rewarding and successful career, to have fulfilling relationships, to have better health, and for you to learn to become limitless and live your best life. And what's the solution? How do we get rid of self-sabotaging? How do you stop self-sabotaging? You probably are asking. Having a desire to do something does not always lead you to take the right action. You might have big dreams, you might have great goals, you might want to achieve great career progression, to rise in your career, to become an entrepreneur, to build your business to a very high level. But somehow, and you might find that you're not able to take the necessary actions towards achieving that goal in a consistent way. I've had people tell me, Maureen, I can't help it. I don't know what to do. I can't help myself. I don't have it in me to do it. I just know I can't. The fact is, that's not actually true. And today I'm going to give you one of the tools to overcome and eradicate self-sabotage from your life. So are you ready for this? Self-regulation. Self-regulation is when you actively control your behavior, your emotions, and thoughts in the pursuit of long-term goals. So behaviorally, self-regulation is your ability to act in your long-term best interest, which is consistent with your deepest values. It's also your key to success at work, in your studies, in your relationships, mental and emotional health, and ultimately to achieving your goals. But lack of self-regulation is the reason for the difficulty that many people have in unrealized goals. Self-regulation is one of the main things in emotional intelligence. And to learn more about self-regulation, have a look at my online course on emotional intelligence in leadership, and I'll put the link below. Being able to regulate your own emotions, being able to regulate your own thoughts is your key to stopping yourself from self-sabotaging. A quick way to achieve self-regulation is what I call relabeling your thoughts. And this is simply recognizing when you have a thought that you know is going to limit you and cause you to self-sabotage. Actually, adding a prefix to the thought process. So, for example, if you tell yourself not to apply for a particular job because you feel you're not good enough, you add a prefix to it and say, I notice that I am having a thought that I am not good enough. So, what this does in essence is separate you from that thought process so that instead of telling yourself, I am not good enough, so I will not apply for the job yet. So, what you're doing in essence is acknowledging the fact that you're having the thought but not identifying the thought as you personally, and this will then help you by separating yourself from the thought to now identify the fact that this is a limiting thought, and you can then take the necessary action that you need to take. Now, there was a client of mine that applied for a senior leadership role and was turned down, despite the fact that she was very qualified, she knew she could do it, she'd been actually doing part of the role anyway, but was not given the job, and it completely knocked her confidence. And this was someone who, as she was growing up, had been told that she wasn't good enough, and so she had it in her in most cases that she wasn't capable anyway, and when she applied for it, it completely knocked her confidence. Now, this might be you, maybe you've been compared with your sibling andor compared with other people, and you are told that you are not good enough, so you've grown up with that belief in you that you're not good enough. So, what then happened with this, my client was when another position came up, she did not apply because she told herself that she wasn't good enough and she wasn't going to get it. So, what I got her to do was this technique of relabeling, where she then identified that this was a thought process that was now preventing her from doing what she should do and preventing her from getting what she should really get and what she truly deserves. And she was very capable of doing. And what she did eventually was that she now applied for this new role and got it. Another technique to help with the self-regulation that is regulating the thought process and emotions that you have that then affect the actions you take, is what I call recognize and release. So this is recognizing the thought process that you're having and then being able to release it, to let go and separate yourself from that thought process. So, what it does is creating a space between your thoughts and your emotions. So creating a space between what you're thinking and what you're feeling, and a lot of times you hear people go, Oh, it doesn't feel right, oh I don't feel right. And all and in most cases, this is actually the way you self-sabotage yourself, it doesn't feel right, so you don't do it. So, what you're doing, in essence, is actually now recognizing what that thought process is. The key here is to recognize that thought is something you have and not who you are. Now we know that there are times you have negative thoughts that would actually help you and prevent you from doing something that can be dangerous or something that can be detrimental to you. So, what this recognize and release process is is being able to stop and think about what you're thinking, and then know at that point whether it's a thought that is a reality or one that is a distortion or a distraction, one that is there to prevent you from actually taking the action that you should be taking. So, in essence, it gives you time to actually think and then take the appropriate action. But you can see from all this that the bottom line is that you have a choice, you can reverse this process, you cannot just think it and hope that it would happen. You've got to physically take action to do it. Another technique which I like by Dr. Judy Ho in her book, Stop Sabotaging, is implementation intentions, and this technique is a way to actually kind of seal your plan to enable you to resist the kind of short-term temptations and impulses that will come to distract you or detract you. One of the things I always emphasize about is the fact that your brain is a cognitive miser. What does that mean? That means that your brain uses a lot of energy to do new things, it needs a lot of energy to process things consciously, and that's why most of what we do is run by our unconscious brain. You might have heard people say that we don't use all our brain, that we probably use just about 10%. That's not actually true. You use all your brain, but subconsciously, 90% is actually run subconsciously. You know, so that's when you're an autopilot of things you're completely oblivious about. So anything that you can do to help your brain process your reactions and behaviors automatically without using a lot of energy increases your likelihood of actually making it happen. So, for example, if you have a plan mapped out in advance, it's actually much easier to act on than one that you kind of just end up trying to go with the flow. Because when you're doing that, that becomes a new plan that your brain needs to think about and process. And what it will do in essence of is first of all look for one that is already aware of, one that it already knows, and that's what it will do. And what it already knows might be the way you've been limiting yourself, might go back to the limiting beliefs and thought processes and mindset that you have. So, what you do in essence is have a plan mapped out about how you're going to carry things out or how you're going to act in essence. So that then acts as a shortcut for your brain to just step into right away and use so that when things get tough, your brain will then look for the shortcut that you've given it as opposed to this new plan that it's trying to do, which it doesn't recognize, then it goes back to what it's already aware of. The format for creating this implementation intention is saying that when a situation like X arises, I will perform this particular response. Now, we've we know from a lot of studies that this kind of implementation intention are very effective in helping people stick to goals, whether it's actually writing down the exact time and date of when you're going to carry out a particular task, or when you're going to make a particular phone call, or when you're going to send a particular email, or when you're going to complete a particular application form. So what happens is that it increases the odds that you stick with the habits like studying, emailing, whatever it is, or exercising. So basically, people who make a specific plan for when and where they will perform a new habit are much more likely to follow through with it. The problem is that too many people try to change their habits without these basic details figured out. So you tell yourself something like, I'm going to eat healthier, or I'm going to send an email today to this organization or to that person, or I'm going to have a conversation with this person who's been underperforming in my team or who keeps making mistakes in my team. So basically, what you're doing is leaving it to up to chance and hoping that you will remember what to do or you will do it. But the fact is that things happen, life happens, and when other things come in the way, that's quickly brushed aside. Because remember, the brain will go to what it's aware of or to that shortcut that you've given it. So basically, an implementation intention sweeps away all the uncertainty, sweeps away the foggy notions like I want to work better, or I want to be more successful, or I want to be more productive, and actually transform them into concrete plans of action. Many people say that they lack motivation when in reality what they actually lack is clarity because it's not always obvious when and where you're going to take actions. You know, a lot of people spend their entire lives waiting for the right time to do things or to make an improvement. But with this kind of implementation intention, once you have a plan, for example, and say to yourself, I'm going to look at emails once I get into work in the morning at nine o'clock, and then I'll look at my emails again at one o'clock, and then I'll look at my emails again at four o'clock before I leave. That stops you from constantly dipping in and out of emails or when they ping up your looking and being distracted from doing what you need to do. A study in the British Journal of Health Psychology found that 91% of people who plan their intention to exercise by writing down when and where they would exercise each week ended up following through with it. Meanwhile, people who read motivational materials about exercise but did not have a plan where and when they would exercise showed no increase compared to the control group. So one of the ways to actually implement this effectively is what's known as the if, when, and then statement. So let's look at it. So it's basically designed to help you achieve a goal by preparing yourself, one, to register certain cues in settings where you can then go on to achieve the goal, and secondly, to take an appropriate action triggered by the cues that are consistent also with the goal that you want to achieve. So let's look at some examples. And let's use the example of me going to watch YouTube when I should have been editing my work. So if I feel an urge to watch YouTube when I haven't finished editing my videos, then I'll take a 10-minute walk to clear my head and then come back and carry on with my editing. So another example could be when I'm tempted to check my emails, I will remember the set times that I have dedicated to check the emails during the day and only check them at those times. The key basically is to be specific because a generalized goal does not generally result in strong commitment to the goal. But it all comes back to actually identifying what your thoughts are, what your beliefs are. And that's why I've decided to run a live masterclass session soon. So watch out for it. But also look at my online academy at the Mindsite Academy, and you get lots of tips from the courses that I run. Try these out, use them, practice them, but remember you cannot expect instant results because what you're dealing with are programs, mindsets that you've had for years. But I can assure you that you can transform your behavior from self-sabotaging to self-enhancing so that you can achieve the goals that you want to achieve. You can do it. You just need to be determined to do to make that change. So thank you once again for tuning in. And remember that this big challenge of self-sabotaging, procrastinating is not unique to you, it's not unique to your manager or to your team members, but you've got the ability to change it, you've got the ability to actually stop self-sabotaging instead of working against yourself. You you are more than capable to enable yourself to take the actions you need to take to change your behaviors, to change the limiting habits and achieve the goals that you truly desire and deserve. So do visit my website at morencherna.com or look at the online courses at the mindsightacademy.com. They'll truly help you to embrace this and put them into action. And I'll be there to help you, I'll be there to work with you, to guide you. And I truly hope that this really makes a big difference for you. Three things before I finish today. Remember to subscribe to this podcast. If you haven't, make sure you click on that subscribe button wherever you listen to this podcast. Because once you subscribe, you will not miss an episode. So please leave a review, leave a comment, leave questions. And if there's any topic that you want me to talk about in the future, also let me know, and I'll most certainly do it. Anything to help you rewire your brain is my mission. I'm on a mission to help as many people as I can to rewire their brains so that they can live that life that they truly desire, so that they can be more productive, so that you can achieve high performance as well. I sincerely wish you a very successful and blessed week ahead.