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| I love me some Amy Poehler. She speaks the TRUTH! |
Women who sabotage their own life experience.
Sabotage can take many forms but ultimately lead to one destination: a diminished outcome, experience, and life. Sabotage is an insidious and powerful force that can overshadow the truth of who we are. These limits can be devastating in the long term when we allow ourselves to create patterns of sabotage that become as comfortable to us as a warm blanket. We get used to the sabotaging behaviors and begin to see them as perfectly normal and acceptable. We CONVINCE ourselves that this is the "truth" of the matter.
For women, there are some clear kinds of sabotage that hold us back. I know them because a) I use some of them and b) I observe them in my friendships with women. Take a look and see if you recognize any of these in your own life.
"I don't deserve it" For too many women, their life long dreams lay dormant for years, decades, and a lifetime because we have convinced ourselves that we are not worthy or deserving of chasing our dream. How do you deactivate this self sabotage strategy? If this is your go-to sabotage strategy, see if you can locate an experience in your life that was the defining moment that the "I don't deserve it" script was born. It could be located in your childhood and come from your family experience, it could be located in the classroom when you were a child, it could be something that happened in your adult life. When the voice in your head says to you "You don't deserve it" change the script. "I hear you insidious voice in my head that does not have my best interest in mind. I recognize why you are saying this and I give you leave" (Say it with a dramatic, Shakesperean tone for extra impact!)
"I will focus on everyone else in my life first" Oh my. This is one I see far too often in women. As a young mom, I let this get in my head and I was over compensating in crazy ways to be the ultimate Super Hero Mama. I am not sure when I deactivated this script for myself but it was somewhere around Maddie's 4th grade year at school. I did some soul searching and trying to understand WHY I was doing this. One AHA Moment! for me was recognizing I was trying to impress some nameless, faceless person out there in the world. I also had to be honest--I had some wounds from my childhood because my mom was a "working woman" who rarely (never) attended school events and was certainly never the home room mom! It was interesting work to recognize that at the same time I was so proud of my mom for working and providing a strong role model of a successful business woman I also was dealing with feelings of being short changed because she was not a stay-at-home-mom. That was where my "recovery" began.
As women, we invest in everyone around us, working like crazy to make everyone else's dreams a reality and there is nothing left in our tank for ourselves. We all know where this happens the most: Our kids. If your entire existence revolves around your children, it is a good bet that you use this strategy to sabotage your own life experience. This strategy can different forms:
"But what will they do with out me around? They can't get by without my constant, never ending attention and care" or "But I love it. I love doing everything for everyone in my life 24-hours-a-day. It's just the best. I really enjoy it. This is great. Hooray!" are two common examples. I am not suggesting that you could not possibly love your role as mom. I love being mom to Maddie and Trinity. I also recognize though that every human being on earth needs to be three dimensional. If your existence is one dimensional then you need to do the work to find out why.
The first step to deactivating this script is to take one day of the week to do something that fills your cup. Don't apologize for it. Don't overcompensate before and after because you feel guilty. Do enjoy and revel in the experience and make it a priority in your week. Put it on the schedule. Art, Dance, Book Club, Wine Tasting, a class at the community college on graphic design--whatever it is that gets you closer to realizing a hope or dream is a start. That is the secret to taking back your life--one small change to get you started.
"Everyone else is so much _______________ richer, skinnier, smarter, prettier, younger, blah blah blah." Social comparison is in our most basic human nature. I love when adults pretend that this somehow ends after high school and we are all suddenly these self-actualized adults. Self delusional much? This self sabotage strategy is a powerful one because it can keep us paralyzed by a) never starting because we will never be ___________ enough and b) measuring our own action/situation/status against someone else and always coming up short. I am not going to lie: this is the most destructive script in my head when I consider my professional life. There are people out there who do what I do that are so much father ahead of the game than I am. I have to check myself (before I wreck myself) on a regular basis to resist the urge to compare myself to others. If you suffer from this too, how do you deactivate? Start simple: Grab a post it note and write on it: "My beginning may be someone else's middle" and put it on your bathroom mirror. This simple reminder will begin the healing process of always comparing yourself. The truth is, we only see a lot of the surface of someone's life and have little insight into the struggles that Ms. Beautiful, Ms. Super Rich, Ms. Amazingly Skinny deals with day to day. We all struggle. We all have challenges. The world is a better place when we work on our "stuff" and resist the urge to compare. And I will tell you one more thing: there may very well be another person in the world who sees you and thinks "I will never be as ____________ as she is." The takeaway is simple: It's ALL RELATIVE!
"It's too late to start on that" Oh no you didn't. We have all seen the posts on facebook about the 80-year-old who went back to college and got a degree or the 70-year-old who ran her first marathon. Do you know when it's too late? When you are in the ground (or in an Urn on your kid's fireplace mantle). It's never too late to start on making a dream of yours a reality. I think a lot about being on my deathbed (morbid I know) and pray fervently that I have no regrets. How do you deactivate this self sabotage strategy? First put it on paper. What would it entail for you to realize the dream you have? Next, brainstorm other places where you could realize the dream that would be achievable in the short term. Here's an example: You always dreamed of being a nurse. On paper, the investment it would take to go to nursing school would require a lot of time and money to get there. Consider ways you could tap into what you always loved about being a nurse that would not require you to go to nursing school. Try out a volunteer role at the hospital up the street that would allow you to do things that fulfill some of what you love about nursing. Take six months or a year to volunteer and see if this fills your cup. Then make the decision about nursing school--if you LOVED your volunteer role, but want more, then take a leap and sign up for nursing school.
"I will bury this desire from the world and take it to the grave with me" I want to live a life that is full of risk-taking to have experiences that will make my life fully lived. I don't want to have any regrets on my death bed. That means speaking into the universe my most pressing desires. Mark, my husband, and I talk a lot about what our lives will look like in our empty nest stage. We love to travel more than anything and that is where a lot of our talk resides. We talk about it all the time, and make plans for how we will realize our dream to travel the world. I also want to: learn photoshop, take cooking classes, learn to do all the dances I see on Dancing with the Stars, visit South Africa, write a fiction book, take Improv classes at Second City in Chicago, and more. I speak these to the universe and to the people around me because when I do, I believe I set the universe in motion to move me closer to realizing these dreams. But I also know that I must do the work to make it happen. That means strategizing. One of my mantras is "I can't have it all at one time" This gives me a sense of calm in knowing that there are seasons and chapters in my life and each thing will happen when it is meant to happen. If you have buried your dreams and desires, how to you deactivate? Start by speaking one thing into the universe today. Do it out loud. Grab your tennis shoes, head outside, talk a walk and talk. Don't worry if people pass you and look at you funny. Do it. Move your dreams and desires out of your own head and heart and speak it. Next, write it down. Put it on paper and put it on your bathroom mirror. Then, share it. Who do you trust the most in your life? Tell that person you have a dream you want to make happen. (And ask them their dreams....) Make a decision on where you will begin and realistically determine a time frame for making it so.
This is not an exhaustive list of how women sabotage their own dreams and desires. What would you add to the list? I will leave you with my favorite quote from Anais Nin:
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
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