Читать книгу Stop Doing That Sh*t - Gary John Bishop - Страница 7

There’s nothing quite so damaging as the human desire to be right.

When I talk about self-sabotage, what do I mean specifically? Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines “sabotage” as

“destructive or obstructive action carried on by a civilian or enemy agent to hinder a nation’s war effort” or

“a: an act or process tending to hamper or hurt

b: deliberate subversion.”

But in this case, sabotage isn’t apparently committed by an “enemy agent”—or is it? Maybe the enemy agent is you yourself.

This is sabotage committed by us, against ourselves, and it can subvert just about everything good in our lives.

It is a deliberate subversion, though. Completely deliberate.

You can probably think of some examples of self-sabotage by taking a look at the people who have come and gone through the musty hallways of your life.

It’s always much easier to measure the decline of others than your own.

It could be an uncle who struggled with drug or alcohol addiction, stuck in a cycle of self-destruction he couldn’t seem to break free from. Or maybe it’s an old friend who lost their savings, their house, and even their family to compulsive gambling and the burden of debt.

Then there’s the sibling who binges on crappy food until their weight is hopelessly out of control and even their life is now in very real danger. Or the nephew who still lives with Mom and Dad in his twenties, thirties, or forties, shunning real-world independence, accomplishment, and growth and choosing a digital escape of video game conquests and internet porn. Hell, some of this might be what you’re dealing with yourself. These are all obvious examples of self-sabotage.

But what about the less obvious examples? Maybe you’re reading this and thinking you’re not that badly affected. Sure, you have your hang-ups and your vices. You’d like to achieve more at work or find a good partner or shave a smidgen of excess living off that tiny corner of your left ankle (okay, it’s a spongy layer of fat clinging onto your gut like a panicky squid, but I’m being nice here). You have goals of reading more, watching less TV, or getting in better shape. But your behavior isn’t nearly as self-destructive as in these examples . . . right?

But here’s the thing. The sabotage I’m talking about isn’t limited to those blatantly obvious examples. It’s also something that happens in lots of little ways throughout the day. It’s something we all do, and we’re doing it pretty much all the time.

It can be something as simple as constantly hitting that snooze button in the morning, or the tendency to show up a little late to places you’re scheduled to be. Not so late that it becomes a major problem, but you still find yourself rushing out the door as you shove your feet into your untied shoes and arriving five or ten minutes later than you’d like. Sometimes it looks like skipping breakfast and settling instead for a candy bar. Or maybe you’re one of those people who chronically procrastinate but always manage to get things done at the last moment, so you don’t think too much of it. Living on the edge, huh?

How’s that working out for you?

There are probably examples in your relationships too. Think about the times when you argue over nothing, hold onto grudges too long, hide or lie about your emotions, judge yourself or others too harshly, or just don’t call your mom or dad or friends as much as you should. Surely that’s not self-sabotage?

The straight of it is, these are all actions that diminish relationships over time. They eat away at and destabilize healthy connections with the people we care most about. Sometimes to the point where we no longer care about them.

We become disconnected from the people we care about. And we feel justified. Oh boy, are we justified. There’s nothing quite so damaging as the human desire to be right.

How can that NOT be an act of self-sabotage?

On the other end of the spectrum are the people who will cheat on or break up with their partner on a whim as a convoluted way of protecting themselves from being hurt in the future. Other people will become obsessively jealous over imagined affairs, creating discontent and disconnect so that there’s no relatedness left. You might be someone who has done this. How did that turn out for you? There is such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy, even if it’s not as mysterious or glamorous as we sometimes read about. Sometimes it just looks like imploding our relationships.

With regard to our health, self-sabotage can manifest itself in the ways we eat all the wrong stuff at all the wrong times, how we put off our exercise plans or use the excuse of getting caught up in the mundane details of our daily lives to explain our lack of action. We might give ourselves excuses to have “just one” cigarette or glass of wine or slice of cheesecake (which, of course, turns into more), skip doctor’s visits and checkups, or just not pay enough attention to our body and what it’s telling us.

Again, these aren’t extreme examples. They’re often subtle, so we don’t even realize what we’re doing or why we’re doing it. Even if we do realize these actions are a problem, we don’t understand that they’re part of a larger pattern, a pattern that’s carrying us in a predictable direction. The kind of pattern that keeps you perpetually weaving the life you currently have.

Skipping one little dentist’s appointment or having one extra piece of chocolate cake isn’t a big deal, right? Eh . . . wrong. What if that’s part of a bigger plan? One that you’re not keyed into, at least consciously.

You see, this self-sabotage thing is a product of something larger, and it’s affecting every part of your life.

There’s a reason why so few make it out of the trap of their own mind. The trap all too often seems to be just fine from day to day.

Step back a step or twenty and, eh, not so much.

It’s little wonder that those big dreams of yours seem nigh impossible, given how challenging you’ve made it just to get out of bed in the morning. I mean, really? On one hand you talk about wanting to be an author or a business owner or going back to school, while at the same time you’ve reduced your life’s potential to the lofty aim of getting up at the first alarm buzz or fighting the meaningless battle of prizing yourself away from your cell phone a little more often.

But ask yourself, if you really wanted to advance in your career, why would you be giving all of your attention to crappy little problems like not being able to get up in the morning? Why are you getting wrapped up in petty no-difference crap rather than the kinds of issues and actions that are going to move mountains, that are going to authentically engage you with real progress, real accomplishment, and real purpose?

If you really wanted to have a great love in your life, why in hell would you keep nitpicking your relationship to death until that connection decays right in front of your eyes? If you really wanted to get healthier or lose weight, why would you keep screwing around in such ordinary and uninspiring ways when it comes to making the changes you say you want to make?

You just can’t keep responding in ordinary ways if you are truly out to live an extraordinary life.

There has to be a potent demand on yourself to rise, to reach for greatness when compelled to take your typical low-road route, and there’s no magic potion for that demand.

It’s not a feeling or an attitude. It’s more like a sick-of-your-own-nonsense approach to certain areas of life. If that deflates you, look again. It needs to enliven and inspire you.

Telling yourself the truth is rarely easy, but it’s a surefire way to free yourself from your own subconscious self-sabotage trap. What makes self-reflection challenging is that you’re both the con artist and the one being conned.

You see, we chalk the problems of our lives up to one of two things: either we believe there’s a failure in our character or we blame our problems on external factors. We think it’s just a matter of trying harder or getting lucky or knowing more. We think we just didn’t start the right business, meet the right person, or find the right diet.

In reality, what we consciously think we want isn’t lined up with what we are actually driven to do in the depths of our subconscious.

In Marcus Aurelius’s personal writings to himself, which later became the famous philosophical work Meditations, he noted that

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”

In our modern age, our soul is a tie-dyed fabric of all the thoughts and impressions and dreams we’ve had or have been given since we were babies. In the same way the dye seeps into the fabric, these thoughts are deeply embedded in our mind, in our subconscious.

And it’s all too often not the color we want it to be.

That color you’ve dyed your soul, that set of invisible rules that have been embedded in the back of your mind, in your subconscious, is what determines your path through this life. It’s not your determination, not your circumstances, and most definitely not your luck.

Luck is for those who cannot define their success, and if you cannot clearly define it, you will most likely never be able to repeat it.

THE THREE SABOTEURS—AN INTRODUCTION

If you want to start doing something about your not-so-private little head game of self-sabotage, you’ll need to first systematically uncover and then go about interrupting the conversations you have with yourself. Not the surface thoughts, but rather the repetitive, profoundly deep and dark internal dialogues that rattle around in your mental cage and guide your every thought and emotion. The stuff under the rug.

This will allow you to finally see your “three saboteurs,” three simple internal statements that do real and lasting damage to you and your life. The three saboteurs are the fundamental conclusions you have come to about yourself, the other people in your life, and life itself. I know you might find it hard to believe that your entire existence is unraveling because of three simple internal statements, but it is, and in these pages I’ll help you uncover not only why this is happening but also what your unique statements are.

How did you end up with your three saboteurs? We’ll get to that. How do they impact your life (beyond the obvious)? We’ll get to that too. How do you get yourself out of this crap? Oh, we’ll get to that one, trust me.

For those of you who “Why? Why? Why?” the hell out of life, I have some answers for you too, although that incessant search for the answer is in many ways why the question is never satisfied.

Why? Oh, puhleeeeease!

I am out to unveil the inner workings of what makes you sabotage. We’ll start at the beginning of your life and work our way to the very point of the spear. Today. In the first few chapters, we set the stage for why human beings would even have a propensity for sabotage in the first place, but it’s safe to say your penchant for messing with your life didn’t happen in a vacuum. Certain things had to happen in your life, in a particular sequence, some of which are common to all human beings, some that are unique to you. We’ll uncover what these are for you.

This will take some work, and as you move through the chapters you might find yourself wiped out or in a state of confusion or fear. That’s fine. The important thing is that you do not check out. Push through. On the other side of that state is a life you’ve always wanted to get to but somehow never could. Really.

I’m drawing a line in the sand with you right here.

You might discover that the effort you put into these pages is commensurate with the effort you have put into your life. That statement alone could change a life. Or not.

Get your head out of the sand (or your navel or wherever you currently have it buried) and make whatever you are reading here make a difference for you. You can do that at least.

“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Okay, champ, let’s get rolling.