MMS_SelfSabotage_Audio
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[00:00:00] Dr. Julia Jingles: If your beliefs don't align with your goals. Your brain will sabotage the goal every single time 'cause it wants to stay congruent with your belief.
[00:00:17] Welcome to Mindset Medicine, the podcast that dares the dig deep. I'm your host, Dr. Julia Jingles. I'm a physician, author, hypnotherapist, and the founder of Personal Awareness Medicine, and this show is for high achieving heart driven humans who are ready to stop the sacrificing of their sanity in the name of serving everybody else.
[00:00:35] Each week I bring mindset shifts, real tools, hypnotherapy back strategies, and others things to help you be happier, healthier, and more fulfilled, both at work life and in your purpose on the daily. Let's get into it. Let's get real about self-sabotage. 'cause I wanna be blunt, self-sabotage isn't random.
[00:00:56] It's a learned behavior, a protective reflex. Born from [00:01:00] fear, trauma, or false beliefs. It's the mental autoimmune disease of success. Back in medical school, I would clean my entire apartment, baseboards and all before I would crack open a textbook. I called it productive procrastination, but let's call it for what it really was.
[00:01:17] I was afraid of failing and fear of not being perfect, whether you're a mother, a nurse, a CEO, a wellness warrior, we all self-sabotage in ways that feel justified. But they're not. They're keeping you stuck. Self-sabotage is a subconscious survival strategy. It usually starts with a deeper emotional wound.
[00:01:39] Somewhere in your earlier years, you likely internalized one or more of these beliefs. If I fail, I'll be judged or rejected. If I succeed, I'll lose love or connection. If I'm visible, I'm vulnerable. So guess what? Your inner protector. AKA, the subconscious steps in, throws a wrench in [00:02:00] your momentum to keep you safe.
[00:02:02] Not successful, not seen safe. We all have this saboteur script and yours might sound like, I don't wanna be too much, I don't wanna outshine others. What if isn't the right time right now? The irony, these scripts keep it going in our brain. Don't keep us safe. They keep us small. Here's a neurological truth bomb.
[00:02:27] Your default mode network, your DMN is a set of interconnected brain regions that becomes active when your mind's at rest. When you're daydreaming, ruminating, or reliving past events. Sounds pretty innocent, right? But not so fast. This neuro network is self-focused. And while that's useful for reflection and creativity.
[00:02:50] It can also become the hamster wheel of overthinking self-criticism and identity reinforcement. What does that mean? It means that when you [00:03:00] sit in fear and you're thinking, what if I fail your DM N? And your brain is looping that fear on repeat, it's reinforcing the fear of failure keeping you safe. Does that make sense?
[00:03:14] But here's the kicker. Your brain loves repetition. So the more you think a thought, the more efficiently your brain wires in that neuro pathway. It's like forging a hiking trail. Every time you walk it, it gets more and more defined faster and faster and more and more automatic. So if you sit there in fear of, what if I fail, that neuro network will continue that loop over time.
[00:03:39] So when you procrastinate, your brain thinks just this once. Your brain's like, oh, we're gonna do this now. Cool. Let me make it easier next time. So when you procrastinate and you think just this, once your brain's like, oh, we're gonna do this now. Cool. Let's make it easier. Let's do this every time. So over time, the [00:04:00] hesitation becomes a habit.
[00:04:01] Doubt becomes default, and boom. Self-sabotage is now your biological groove that your brain prefers over time. But don't freak out because if your brain can be trained into sabotage, it can absolutely be rewired for success. That's why hypnotherapy working with a subconscious mind, future pacing, which is visualization of what's going to be in the future, and then anchoring your nervous system with a thought works so powerfully.
[00:04:31] This creates new neural patterns, new trails, and those new trails lead you out of the mental woods and into momentum and away from sabotaging yourself and procrastination. So I want you to ask yourself, what am I avoiding and what's the payoff for staying stuck? Because every self-sabotage act has a payoff, even if it's just comfort in the discomfort.
[00:04:56] Does that make sense? When we self-sabotage [00:05:00] ourselves, we're not moving out of our comfort zone and into the little risky behaviors that really moves us forward in our lives. So let's say you're procrastinating on launching your website or finally submitting your resume. The surface story might be, I'm just too busy.
[00:05:17] I want it to be perfect first. But the real story might be, if I don't try, I won't fail. If I don't fail, I won't feel ashamed. If I don't feel ashamed, I can pretend I'm still in control. That's cool. That's not laziness, that's fear in high heels. Now, your challenge is this. What's the story you've been telling yourself and is it actually yours?
[00:05:41] Because sometimes our sabotage isn't even ours. It's inherited. It's generational patterns of playing small, staying quiet, or over-functioning for other people. And the good news is what you learned can be unlearned. So let's talk about the four faces of self-sabotage. [00:06:00] Let's unmask that, shall we? These are the four common disguises that self-sabotage shows up, procrastination, perfectionism, people pleasing and overwhelm.
[00:06:13] Let's start with procrastination that I'll start tomorrow. Lie that you keep feeding yourself. Yeah, that's kind of classic perfectionism. Your standards are just so high. You're never gonna finish, so you don't start people pleasing. If everybody else is happy, maybe you'll feel safe, but are you happy?
[00:06:35] Then there's overwhelm. If your plate is two full, you've got an excuse not to do the scary, life-changing things. All right? I used to say yes to so many committees, so many patients, so many families, so many friends, so many favors. I. I was drowning in obligations secretly hoping that the chaos would just completely justify my inaction for doing the things that I really [00:07:00] wanted to do, which is coaching and podcasting.
[00:07:03] But the truth was I was terrified of failing publicly. I put this off since 2007. I have been wanting to do this kind of coaching and teaching. So each of these self-sabotage styles has its own flavor or fear or false reward. Let's unpack them one by one because if you can name it, then you can tame it.
[00:07:25] Let's talk about anchoring with empowerment. Anchoring with empowerment is a powerful hypnotherapy tool that links a physical stimulus, such as a gesture or a touch to a specific emotional state. This we do so that you can access feelings on demand. It's like reprogramming your own mental hot key to remind yourself for confidence and calm.
[00:07:47] All you have to do is this simple movement. Why does. Anchoring work anchoring works because your brain is a pattern recognition machine. I've mentioned this before. It constantly forms [00:08:00] associations between external cues and internal responses. In other words, the outside world and your inside world. And often it happens without your awareness.
[00:08:10] It's subconscious example. Have you ever smelled someone else's cologne and suddenly been absolutely transported back to high school or. A heartbreak or heard a song that instantly made you feel empowered and excited. Even if you have been dragging all day long. That's anchoring. It's your nervous system.
[00:08:28] Say, oh, I remember this. Let's go there again, or, I remember this, I don't wanna go there again. The beauty of anchoring is that you can consciously create these associations now. On purpose and for your benefit, it's not woo woo, it's neuroscience. It's rooted in Pavlovian conditioning and reinforced through neuroplasticity.
[00:08:49] This is real stuff, folks. So when you repeatedly pair a physical cue with a positive state in your internal aspects of your life, your brain rewires it as a shortcut. [00:09:00] Over time, that gesture becomes the direct path to a feeling. Pretty cool. In other words. You get to tell yourself what you wanna feel, how you're gonna feel it, because you're programming yourself ahead of time that this is okay.
[00:09:13] When should you use this? Anchoring is really awesome to be used right before a really tough conversation or before stepping onto a stage or into a boardroom, something that's just awkward and uncomfortable during a moment of self-doubt, panic, or fear, or any other time that you might find yourself self-sabotaging, trying to pull you under rather than push you forward.
[00:09:34] You can use this technique. It's really awesome. 'cause what does is it helps you recall a peak state. It helps you amplify an emotion, it helps you set an anchor, and this folks gives you superpower. So let's start. First of all, I want you to recall a peak state, a time in your life that you felt absolutely amazing.
[00:09:54] You were rocking it. Your energy was great. You are confident. You felt confident, you're ready to rock it. So [00:10:00] now I want you to just close your eyes and remember that time when you felt unstoppable. If you're driving, keep your eyes open, please, if your operating machinery, just listen and imagine and use your visualization.
[00:10:12] But for now, for those of you who can close your eyes, remember a time when you felt unstoppable. Maybe it was a moment when you spoke your truth, you nailed that challenge, or you simply felt grounded and alive. Don't just think it. Remember with depth what you were feeling. Step back into that moment.
[00:10:32] Hear what you heard, feel what you felt. See what you saw. Feel the emotion in your body. And amplify it. Make it bigger. Make us twice as big. Feel it twice as exciting, twice as confident, twice as confident. And as that memory becomes more and more vivid, dial it up. What are you seeing now? What are you hearing now?
[00:10:57] What are you smell? What are you wearing? [00:11:00] You wearing bright red, bright purple, black. What is that? Confidence? What's fueling that courage, that calm, rise it in your body. Feel it, breathe it in, and own it. Feel that time. Now, set an anchor, a physical anchor. At the peak of that emotional experience, I want you to apply a simple gesture.
[00:11:21] Put your thumb and forefinger together. Or tap your chest or tug on your ear lobe, pick one. You're now in this peak emotional state. Pick a physical movement that you can anchor to that feeling of indescribable confidence, courage and calm. Feel it rising in your body, connecting with that physical gesture and say to yourself out loud or silently.
[00:11:46] This is my power. I've got this and I am unshakeable. Say something that feels true to your bones. Come up with your own. I do. I'm happy. I'm healthy. I'm a healer. That's me. Give [00:12:00] yourself the power to remember. Find your physical anchor, create your gesture and your saying. This is my power. I've got this, and I want you to practice this every day.
[00:12:13] Revisit that memory, feel that emotion. Set the anchor again. The more you do it, the more you can recall it when you really need it. If you do this five to seven times over and over, building the association, more reps equals a stronger signal. Now you can deploy it in real time. When you're feeling fear or doubt or sabotage creeping in, you can fire your anchor, do the gesture, say your phrase, breathe and feel the physical neuro system responding instantly because now you've taught it how to go back to that empowered state.
[00:12:51] You can open your eyes now if you haven't already. I kind of forgot, didn't I? I get really passionate about this because the [00:13:00] visualization capacity of ultra high level successful people really do this. Before my gymnastics routines, I ran it over and over and over in my mind so that my body memory was there before I did it.
[00:13:16] When I was preparing to speak at a medical school conference years ago, I was sleepless, nervous, self-doubting, and I was a mess. But I did anchor back to a moment when I led a life-saving code in residency. I remembered the power, the clarity, and the trust in myself. I pressed my thumb and forefinger together.
[00:13:35] I took a breath and said, you've done harder things, Julia. I then stepped on that stage. I was grounded. I had some stage fright, but it didn't control me. I had more purpose than fear. Anchoring gives you autonomy over your emotional state. It teaches your body how to shift from panic to power, from freeze to forward, from sabotage.
[00:13:58] To strength [00:14:00] on command. It's like having an emotional emergency kit in your back pocket, and the best part is you already have all the ingredients, your mind, your memory, your body, your breath. You just need to reconnect them.
[00:14:17] If stress and overwhelm or that relentless inner critic have been running the show, it's time to take back control. You don't need another motivational quote or a feel good pep talk. You need a system, a tool, something that actually works when life gets messy. That's exactly why I created mindset medicine worksheets.
[00:14:35] No fluff, no filler. Just proven strategies that are powerfully designed to help you rewire your thoughts for clarity and confidence, break the cycle of overwhelming minutes. Set boundaries that stick without the guilt and turn stress into focus and action. This isn't about theory, it's about real transformation.
[00:14:56] And the best part, this podcast comes with a worksheet designed specifically [00:15:00] for what you're learning today. No more wondering how to apply this. It's all mapped out for you. And if you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and start making real shifts, grab today's worksheet below because life's too short to stay stuck.
[00:15:13] Check out the episode specific worksheet for today's podcast below.
[00:15:21] All right, let's get real here. Let's talk about truth, trust, and tiny steps. You don't need another planner, another podcast, well, maybe this one or another guru. You need alignment and you need activation. So here's the truth. You won't hear in most productivity advice. You are not stuck because you're undisciplined.
[00:15:41] You're stuck because you're trying to outrun your subconscious. Let that sink in. If your beliefs don't align with your goals, your brain will sabotage the goal every single time. 'cause it wants to stay congruent with your belief. So [00:16:00] instead of trying to bulldoze your way with willpower through all the resistance, with more and more hustle, let's do something radically different.
[00:16:08] Let's slow down enough to tell ourselves the truth. Ask yourself, what do I really believe about my potential? Not what your inner critic is saying, but what you act like is really true. What am I afraid will happen if I actually succeed and be brutally honest? Will people resent you? Will you outgrow your tribe?
[00:16:33] Will what? Change your identity? I'm gonna tell you I am petrified prior to doing this podcast that people are going to judge me, hate me, not like me, say bad things about me. But here's the thing, they probably are, there're gonna be people that aren't gonna like me. There always have been. I'm not an easy person.
[00:16:54] Sometimes people either like it or they don't, and I'm gonna have to let that go. [00:17:00] Because I stepped out of my professional veneer and into really who I am. And let's face it, not everybody's gonna like me, and not everybody's gonna like you. I want you to also ask yourself, are you addicted to proving or performing?
[00:17:13] Are you chasing the gold stars even though those gold stars don't align with your truth about what you want? And lastly, what's the tiniest most obvious step that you're avoiding and why? Here's the thing. The thing that I've learned over 31 years in medicine coaching and real life, messy human experiences, self-sabotage starts with self-deception.
[00:17:37] Healing starts in honest reflection, and here's the shift. It doesn't require a five day retreat in Sedona or an $8,000 mastermind. Although those are lovely, it requires tiny steps in alignment with your truth, the real truth with a capital T, not what you've been telling yourself, not your generational [00:18:00] crap that you've been bringing along for years and decades, your truth.
[00:18:05] So I want you to visualize something for me. Imagine a big, beautiful train engine and that engines, you now imagine your thoughts. Your beliefs and your habits are the tracks. They're your guidepost. And no matter how powerful that engine is, it's not gonna go anywhere unless those tracks are leading you there.
[00:18:28] And if the tracks are rusted with fear, misaligned with old trauma, or leading to somebody else's destination, you're still gonna follow those tracks. Alignment isn't sexy, but it is what creates momentum. Ask yourself, what am I willing to trade for my potential? Am I over identifying with my limitations and what's the one small step I can take today to disrupt this sabotage cycle?
[00:18:57] Even if it's something as simple as sending an [00:19:00] email you've been avoiding or saying no to something that's been draining you, or drinking water instead of doom scrolling on your phone or setting a timer and riding for five minutes. Maybe it's walking around the block with your phone off. That's not small.
[00:19:16] That's a boundary that you are setting. That's you trying to get into alignment and that's you getting back your power. 'cause here's the truth, bomb self-sabotage doesn't mean you're broken. It means your subconscious is doing a job a little too well. Your brain loves the familiar and it's your job to retrain your brain.
[00:19:37] And trust me, you don't need to bulldoze your brain into compliance. You just need to guide it gently, consistently towards what you really, truly want. When you take tiny steps in alignment with your truth, something magic happens. You start to rebuild trust with yourself and that trust, that's what heals the sabotage cycle from the inside out.[00:20:00]
[00:20:00] Let's do a little future visualization called Future Pacing. This is an NLP and hypnotherapy. Practice that conditions your brain to experience a desired outcome before it happens. We've done it a little bit already to build familiarity, safety, and readiness for success. So when the real moment comes, your mind responds to, oh yeah, I've been there.
[00:20:23] I've got this. We did this already because we talked about how the subconscious mind drives 90% of your thoughts, reactions, and behaviors, and again. It can't distinguish vividly between imagined experiences and reality. The more you repeatedly visualize yourself as focused, powerful, and in motion, your subconscious will start building the neurologic roadmap to get you there.
[00:20:47] This technique works because it helps to bridge the emotional gap between where you are now and where you wanna be without triggering sabotage. It makes the unfamiliar feel safe and safety well, that's what [00:21:00] gets the subconscious on board. If you're again driving or operating machinery, hit pause now and come back to it or just visualize why you're safely doing it.
[00:21:09] Otherwise, I would like you to shut your eyes and get grounded. You can sit or lie down in a quiet space, and if you're ready, you can close your eyes gently letting your shoulders drop, unc clenching your jaw, and taking a long, slow breath in.
[00:21:28] Handout.
[00:21:33] And then I want you to breathe into your nose for a count of four. 1, 2, 3, 4. Hold, 2, 3, 4, and exhale up to six seconds. And again in 2, 3, 4, hold two. [00:22:00] Three, four, and out for six through your mouth. 4, 5, 6. Feeling your body settle, allowing your shoulders to relax, engaging in quietness and peace. Now, gently bring your mind to a moment.
[00:22:18] 30 days in the future, you've been consistent, you've been aligned, and you've been on purpose. What are you seeing? Are you sitting at your desk? With clarity and calm, are you standing tall after finishing something you've been avoiding? What do you hear? Maybe it's silence. Maybe it's your own voice that says, I did it.
[00:22:43] What are you wearing? Notice the details, the colors, the textures. Feel the clothes on your body. What are you feeling when you've been consistent, aligned, and on purpose? Ease, pride, [00:23:00] peace, strength. Let that feeling expand in you like a light. Stay with it. Feel it doubling, feel it increasing. Feel the glorious sensation of peace and ease and strength.
[00:23:20] Let's stay with that. Now in this future version of yourself, I want you to speak in the present tense. You're telling yourself these following things repeat after me. I wake up energized. I trust myself to follow through. I say no when I need to. I show up fully in my life, imperfect but powerful. I am becoming who I was always meant to be.
[00:23:55] Let those words become your breath and feel them landing in your body. [00:24:00] These are not just affirmations but truth. Let them coach your nervous system with certainty. And now I would like you to place your hand over your heart and breathe into this new future version of yourself, letting that energy of vision move into your present body.
[00:24:18] Inhale that feeling, exhale, any resistance and say to yourself, this is who I am becoming. I'm ready now. Let that knowing Ripple through yourselves. You don't have to force anything because you are simply aligning what's already inside you. Slowly start bringing your awareness back to your breath, wiggling your fingers and toes, and when you're ready, gently open your eyes, bringing that [00:25:00] feeling with you.
[00:25:03] That's right. Future pacing is more than a visualization tool. It's rehearsing your greatness. It's bypassing the ego spheres and plants roots of readiness in your subconscious. This is especially powerful for high performing professionals who live in reactive mode. You're often solving everybody else's chaos, but this technique trains your mind to prioritize your own clarity.
[00:25:28] And let's be honest, if you could imagine the worst. Hello. Anxiety. You can absolutely imagine your best. The difference is one keeps you small and the other unlocks your super conscious self. If you practice this visualization, this future pacing every day, just three minutes a day, consistency, not perfection, that's what builds new neuropathways, wakes up your brain.
[00:25:57] So how about we wrap up to wake up here? [00:26:00] Here's what I want you to know, my friend. You weren't born to live under your potential. You weren't designed to live in fear of your own greatness. And guess what? You don't need fixing. You just need freeing. You're not lazy, you're not weak, you're not broken.
[00:26:14] You're just overdue for a mindset upgrade, and now you got some tools. If nothing else today sticks. Let this be the tattoo on your soul. Self-sabotage is not a character flaw. It's a conditioned strategy that you have learned to succeed and survive To this point, you didn't choose it, but now you can un choose it starting now.
[00:26:37] Today you learned how to identify your sabotage style. Are you a procrastinator, a perfectionist, or a people pleaser? You learned how to call out hidden beliefs that might be running the show subconsciously, and you've learned how to rewire anchoring a physical gesture with an emotional experience and future pacing, which is visualization and connecting it with the future [00:27:00] to rebuild trust with tiny aligned action.
[00:27:03] So now what? You practice it, you play with it, you fall forward. You show up as a person who knows she's worth it or he's worth it even when it's messy. This is the art of personal awareness medicine. Not changing who you are, but returning to the wholeness that you have always been. If today's episode Solidifier sparked a truth or cracked something open, please share it.
[00:27:29] Don't keep this medicine to yourself. Please leave a comment, share it on social, forward it to a friend who's been stuck in the loop. Let me reach my dream together a hundred people in a hundred days by sharing this. You can help me do that. Let's break the cycle for someone else who needs this right now, because this is how transformation multiplies.
[00:27:48] This is how we shift the collective. You can always find me on my social media links down below and until next episode, may you be happy, be healthy, and be fulfilled.[00:28:00]
[00:28:05] Outro: Thank you for listening to Mindset Medicine with your host, Dr. Julia Bolen. To learn more about mindset medicine, go to www.juliabolinmd.com and connect with Dr. Julia to find out how our team can help you today. Join us again next week for more expert tips, tools, and strategies to become healthier, wealthier, and wiser in your personal and professional life.
