SELF-SABOTAGE DOES NOT EXIST

Self-sabotage doesn’t exist.

“Of course self-sabotage exists, Paul”, you might be saying to your screen as you roll your eyes.

“What else explains all those things we start doing to change our lives before sabotaging ourselves and quitting?!”

If you’ve been following the traditional personal development world for any length of time, the idea that self-sabotage doesn’t exist might come as a surprise. You might even instantly want to dismiss it.

Until I started delving into the world of human behaviour eight years ago, it was one of those things I just accepted without really thinking about it, partly because so many people talk about it as being true.

I’ve realised over the years, though, that the whole principle is flawed because it’s built on the idea that when we think we want to change any part of our life, that conscious thought is the most important one, so when we fail to follow through on what we chose consciously to do it must be because we’re sabotaging ourselves.

But that’s not true.

Only about 3-5% of who we are is determined by our conscious mind, with the other 95-97% controlled by our subconscious.

Which means when we decide consciously that we want to do something like, say, going to the gym to get fit, it’s actually only about 3-5% of us that wants to do it.

And the kicker is that the 95-97% subconscious part basically doesn’t want us to change anything, because all it cares about is keeping us alive and meeting our basic subconscious needs.

It doesn’t care about us being happy, having more money or looking better around the pool on our next holiday.

Which is why when we consciously try to force our system to change something it often doesn’t work.

It’s not self-sabotage, it’s self-protection.

Our subconscious mind does everything it can to override our conscious choice to change something because it’s afraid if we make the change we might not survive.

It sounds crazy if we only look at it from the perspective of what we consciously and intellectually want in life, but when we look at it from the perspective of our subconscious mind and what its purpose is, everything makes more sense.

It wants to protect the identity we’ve already created because it knows in that identity we’re alive and our needs are being met, whether or not we’re happy or fulfilled.

Which is also why many forms of therapy and coaching aren’t hugely effective.

They only focus on the conscious mind, leaving our subconscious programming to carry on pulling us back to where we started in order to keep us safe.

Which means to make real, lasting change to our lives, we need to change our subconscious programming so our system feels safe wherever it is we want to take it.

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