How to Stop Sabotaging Your Success

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Welcome to Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass. Jon is the founder and CEO of image group international and award-winning image consulting and personal branding pioneer established in 1989. This podcast will bring you old school wisdom, inspiring ideas, strategies and hacks for the new tech world. Here you will learn everything about personal branding: the system, the techniques and the right mindset to have a successful personal brand, image and reputation.

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Hello, folks, today our chat will be about how to stop sabotaging your success. First of all, let's understand what self-sabotaging is. Basically, it is a behaviour that undermines your success, despite your own values, purpose, and actions. Signs of self-sabotage include negative self-talk, waiting for the perfect time to start something, making excuses for justifying behaviour, surrounding yourself with unsupportive people, and the one that I love best is not keeping the promises you make to yourself. These are among many examples of self-sabotage. 

1:16
Self-sabotage is directly related to an underlying lack of self-esteem. The fact is that you can't really separate the two, as they both responding to a mindset failed with possible via insecurity and lack of self-esteem. But the way they grow with all aspects and recognize and self-sabotage is to understand that you can actually change it over time. And the first step to any growth is awareness. 

1:51
Now, let me tell you something you might not know about self-sabotage, it can and will damage your reputation. And quite simply, it will do that because your perception or people's perception of you will be actually damaged. Because they will expect one thing and see something else. For instance, if you're procrastinating in your work in your life, that's a form of self-sabotage that will also damage your reputation. If you're a people pleaser, you're constantly trying to make people appreciate you. That's also a form of self-sabotage, and will actually devalue you. Getting off track when you start to see progress and sabotaging yourself from the point of view of success. Among others, you know, it's I suppose, not setting or upholding boundaries, there are so many ways we damage our reputation. And sometimes we're not even aware that we're doing it. 

3:02
I will share with you some tips on how to stop self-sabotage. And first of all, to recognize what are some of these self-sabotaging habits. And as I mentioned before becoming aware, is the first step to success and your personal power. By becoming aware and practising over time, you'll get better at catching yourself as you drift into self-sabotaging behaviours. Awareness is based on reference to this subject around your conscious behaviours versus your unconscious behaviours. So if you're not aware, you know that you're actually sabotaging yourself, you will just continue practising what we would call is unhealthy behaviours. So self-sabotage in a healthy individual is really is generally driven by the unconscious mind. By the time your conscious mind realizes the self-sabotage, it's too late as the unconscious has already been activated. So that, you know, the smart thing to do here is to start catching yourself, you know, and how do you do that is by basically feeling your body and feeling the sensations of your body. What I mean by that is getting yourself to your centre.

4:32
The more you're away from your centre or your core, and that includes values and purpose that I explained earlier. The more you're going away from yourself, meaning you open yourself up to more self-sabotage. Examples of going off-centre include anxiety, include nervousness, Inc, and includes, you know, any type of insecurity that comes up in your body. Every time a particular subject comes up, so it's becoming aware over time and we practice you can get better at catching yourself, as you drift into self-sabotaging behaviours. The key here is to catch yourself before the event. But as I mentioned earlier, your sub your subconscious or unconscious mind is what's running the show here. So, you know, before your conscious mind catches that it might be too late. But with practice, you can certainly transform that behaviour. It's a bit like you're at the crossroads of life. So it's catching yourself and before you make a decision, which road to take, this is about you touching yourself, you know, touching yourself and saying, Is this the right decision? Now, I know it's not so easy sometimes, and we've all done it. But the key here is the practice, get back to your centre, your call, the more fearful you are, the more you're away from your centre. So the key here is practice, getaway. So you know, the out of the three steps. The first is to track the sensations in your body, versus what your mind is saying. 

6:09
Number two is to get back to your centre your core. Remember, the more fearful you are, the more you're away from your centre. And number three is practice, getaway. I'd also like to explain also about self-reflection. Self-reflection is about knowing thyself, there's no greater gift than knowing yourself, obviously, as the first step very, very similar to what the ancients said if you don't have any self-reflection, and you're going to automate your type of behaviours, self-sabotage, obviously will keep on coming back and coming back and coming back. So self-reflection is very important. And the final point on that also is about how to make small meaningful changes over time. And how do you do that is becoming again aware, so small, meaning meaningful changes in references, self-sabotage, would be making choices, but making reasonable choices, you know, versus choices that really come automatically from habits and conditioning? And some of those choices might mean, for instance, you know, you want to stop smoking, or alcohol, or drugs, or sex for that matter. Okay, special event, addictive behaviour. How do you do that? Well, first of all, you got to become aware that that's a problem for you. And if you don't think it's a problem, well, that's fine, because nothing's gonna change. So that's fine as well. If you don't want to change it, you don't have to. But if you decide to say, you know, or ask yourself, you know, it's time to move on from this was self-reflection, obviously, the step I mentioned earlier, and how to make some of these small changes, okay, will be what to do next. And some of the small changes are about making reasonable choices, it's becoming aware that some of these changes are no different self-sabotage if you're going to eat, you know, too much food and you feel that you're overweight, and it's sort of sabotaging your life. Well, of course, the first habit there would be to change, eating so much food as an example. And that's the same thing for the rest as well. So it's about you know, getting really clear. What are the outcomes you want to achieve? And also, How serious are you? Or are you just talking about it without actually activating and going into action about some of these changes? I think that's very important. And finally set up, you know, realistic goals and make plans with timelines. And that's where the element of, you know, keeping yourself in check. Yeah, definitely, you got to police yourself. And if you can't police yourself, get somebody else involved. It could be a friend, colleague, your coach, get somebody involved to actually make sure that you stick to your goals. And I admit this, it's not easy. It's not easy when it comes to yourself. Because sometimes, you know, it's so much easier to judge other people on their self-sabotage, as opposed to look in the mirror and look at ourselves. So you know, set some realistic goals, get really clear that that's what you want to do. And specifically, then get into action. And this is the key here. And you know, and hold yourself accountable. And if you can't do that, or, you struggle doing it for yourself, make sure you get a buddy or somebody that can at least hold you accountable, as per your promise. 

9:35
Before we finish our chat. I just want to share a story with you. And this particular story is about somebody specifically that overcame self-sabotage. So the example I want to give you is a business person that specifically self sabotage themselves. What I would say is constantly, though, we're successful But nowhere near as successful as they couldn't have been, and how they sabotage themselves, big time was around, always, first of all, other than their rounds, you know, their own self-talk that was very negative, and did not create possibility. The second way they did that was about putting other people down, including clients, including, you know, colleagues, and of course, including potentially, their friends. And what that created overtime was an energy that people really, you know, it was so negative, because they did not want to hear that. And even if it was true, even if it was true, most people will have a real problem, you know, sort of sticking around that energy for a long time. So over time, what that did was destroy their reputation to the point where, of course, they lost serious business, or they lost serious relationships with friendships and so on. And in the end, virtually, potentially, we're facing bankruptcy in certain divisions, because the reputation and the brand damage was so severe. So you don't want to go down that track. I mean, that's, that's a sort of extreme case that I've just shared with you. But it didn't start that way. You know, and, and as things accelerate, and especially in an environment where the pressure is really high, right, like example right now, you know, you don't want to be in behaviours of self-sabotage. And the reality is, if you are there are ways you can actually transform this, it's all a matter of really putting your hand up and saying, enough is enough, or what another, you know, the famous individual said once upon a time change happens when you're sick and tired of being sick and tired.

12:04
Okay, folks, we've come to the end of the show. As always, I'm going to kindly ask you to subscribe to the podcast on the platform that you're listening to. So every time we have a new episode, you will be notified. I hope this episode can help you with your personal professional growth. Remember to email me directly if you need help to stop sabotaging your success. The email is on the description of the episode. If you liked this episode, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues. You can also share it on your social media. You can follow me on Twitter at jon_michael or LinkedIn as Jon Michael and on Facebook as Image Group International. Last but not least, I can't ask you to write the show on Apple Podcasts. For this, you just need to click on the link on the episodes description. Thank you all see you next week wishing your abundance in all you do and have a great week. Cheers!

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Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass" Podcast is sponsored by Image Group International, a global team of practical, digitally savvy personal brand and image strategists, based in Australia, committed to maximizing your impact, influence and authority in the business world.   To learn more and apply for your personal coaching, seminars and group workshops please visit imagegroup.com.au or call 1800 631 311.