Procrastination & Other Ways We Self Sabotage
Procrastination is a form of creative avoidance, which is one way we avoid working towards our goals. This desire to put off what we are working on is caused by our sabotaging identities, a subconscious part of us. These sabotaging identities are designed to keep you the same as you’ve always been because even if you don’t enjoy feeling those emotions associated with the way you’ve always been, these emotions are familiar and it identifies everything that’s familiar as safe.
Where do sabotaging identities come from?
At one point in your life (under the age of 7), these identities were actually helpful for you. For example, my primary sabotaging identity makes me think I’m not good enough. When I was 3-4 years old, this was beneficial because it kept me striving to be better and pushing myself to learn more and more. This identity is the reason why I could read at a 3rd grade level on my first day of kindergarten – it gave me a high level of motivation to be a better person. Over time I have grown more and more but that identity has stayed the same. Fast forward 32 years and this identity which used to be beneficial is now holding me back because when I am working on things, it has become the voice of my inner critic telling me that I’m not good enough or I’m not smart enough.
This is the same for all six of the sabotaging identities – what used to help us is now holding us back. When you know what your particular sabotaging identity is, you can start to work with it so that it’s no longer running you! Besides identifying which sabotaging identity is holding you back, it’s important to recognize the ways you’re holding yourself back. When you recognize these patterns, you can use them as a cue to understand when your sabotaging identity has taken over!
In addition to procrastination, other common ways we self sabotage include:
- Chronic worrying: People tend to get stuck in a cycle of chronic worrying because it gives a sense of control over a situation. When something is out of your control, worrying can give us the illusion that we can do something about a certain situation. This in the end causes more harm than good however, causing more stress and anxiety than is needed.
- People pleasing: Sometimes we make decisions based on how it will make others feel. This can be self sabotaging as when we are in this mindset we aren’t making decisions or doing things based on what we want and we are holding ourselves back based on how we think this will make others react to us.
- Confusion: This is the sneakiest way we sabotage ourselves! By going into confusion and telling ourselves “I don’t know how to …” we are preventing ourselves from having to make a tough decision. Sure there are times that we don’t actually know, but it’s often that we use this as an excuse so we don’t have to move forward on our goals.
How can we reduce our self sabotage?
- Join my Empowered Living Membership! I will teach you all about the six sabotaging identities, how to spot them when they’re holding you back and what you can do to reduce the amount of self sabotage you’re experiencing. Plus so much more! Join now!
- Tap into your “big why:” Think about the deeper meaning for why you want something and return to that often. Your why is very important because it’s the motivation for everything that you do in life! When you recognize yourself in a self sabotage pattern take a step back and read your why statement to get tapped back into your power and take action.
- Connect with your higher self: Your higher self already has all of the answers. We can tune into our higher self by getting quiet and going within. Tap into that through meditation, walking in nature, journaling, or practicing gratitude. Any way that you get connected with your inner knowing is a great way to receive the necessary information from your higher self!
- Balance Your Masculine and Feminine Sides: Everyone has a dominant masculine or feminine nature. Masculine nature is active, external and often action taking. The feminine nature is more passive, thoughtful, creative and feeds internal energy. It’s important that we balance both of these energies so that one does not overpower the other. It’s very common in our culture to get stuck in masculine action taking mode and we get the best results when both of these sides are balanced. So ask yourself what feminine actions are you taking and how can you use them to support you in reducing your self sabotage!
Mirror Work Works!
Mirror Work Works – How to Improve Your Self Love!
Self love is an essential key to living a happy life. One of the most effective tools for increasing your self love is mirror work. Mirror work is a very simple concept – it involves looking at yourself in the mirror and saying/thinking nice things about yourself. Although it’s a simple concept, it’s not always an easy practice. I highly recommend doing these exercises if you want to improve your self love and acceptance.
How Does It Work?
When you look in the mirror, your emotions about yourself are reflected back at you. Whatever you are saying to yourself in your head is visible in the emotions on your face. If what you are saying to yourself is not very nice, this can be a challenging exercise at first. Thankfully it clearly shows you what thoughts you will need to shift if you want to improve your self love and live a joy filled life. And that’s the beauty of mirror work, it helps you become much more aware of those background thoughts you are saying to yourself, which is the first step at increasing your self love and the first step at shifting your mindset! The great news is that once you get into the habit of doing this regularly, it starts to become fun and you’ll learn to really enjoy this exercise!
Mirror Work Exercises
I recommend trying these exercises everyday for 21-30 days to dramatically improve your self love!
- Start off by smiling: this is one of the easiest places to start with mirror work. Stand in the mirror and close your eyes. Think about something (anything) that makes you really happy. Feel those happy feelings in your body and allow yourself to have a big smile from these feelings of happiness. Now open your eyes and keep smiling at yourself in the mirror for 1 minute. Notice how beautiful you are when you are smiling.
- Compliment and love yourself: this is the next step in building onto your mirror practice and can be added on after doing the smiling exercise. It’s very simple – look in the mirror and give yourself compliments out loud or in your head. They can be any kind of compliment (about your physical appearance, your personality, etc). Just spend 2-3 minutes complimenting yourself and saying “I love you” to yourself. Look at yourself as you would your best friend and simply be kind to yourself with your thoughts and your words. If you notice yourself having a not so nice thought about some part of you, be sure to find ways to compliment that part of yourself. The trick to this one is to look yourself in the eyes and say I love you to yourself so much that you actually believe it and the reflection of you says “I love you” back.
- Gratitude for your whole self: this is the most advanced type of mirror work. I strongly recommend working through the first two exercises before even attempting this last one. Again, the idea is simple – look at yourself in the mirror and give yourself compliments and be grateful to yourself for how amazing you are for 5 whole minutes. The catch? This exercise is to be done while you are standing in front of the mirror naked. Looking at every part of yourself in the mirror means that you can’t hide your negative thoughts about your body from yourself, they’ll be reflected back at you. Each time you notice yourself saying something negative, find a way to compliment that part of yourself. Although this may be the most difficult exercise, it’s definitely the most powerful and transformative.
Show Yourself Grace
Mirror work can be very tough in the beginning but the rewards make this exercise worth doing. Remember that like anything else, this is a process and it’ll get much easier with time. Even practiced people like myself can have negative reactions to looking at yourself in the mirror. Heck, I’m a mindset coach and I still catch myself occasionally saying negative things about myself when I look in the mirror. But I know firsthand how much this works! Fifteen years ago, I noticed that I never looked in the mirror. I would go days, weeks, even months without so much as glancing in the mirror and when I did I would grimace and say terrible things to myself in my head. After doing mirror work, not only do I now look at myself in the mirror, the vast majority of the time my first response is to say something nice to myself in my head. This exercise has helped me learn to love myself inside and out!
Benefits Of Mirror Work
The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. So if you’re saying negative things about yourself, you’re probably saying negative things about others and the world around you. So the benefit of loving yourself more will show up in every area of your life! Practicing self love daily will help reduce your overall stress and anxiety, boost your confidence and self esteem, increase your happiness and satisfaction with life, allow you to start living your full potential and so much more.
How else could your life improve when you increase your self love? Try it yourself today and find out!
Choose Happiness Today!
Happiness is amazing for your health! It improves your immune system, decreases your blood pressure and reduces stress in your body! However sometimes it’s tricky to feel happy when you’re stressed or unhappy in life. Thankfully it’s still possible to choose happiness no matter what the situation!
Here are some tips on how you can shift your mindset to choose happiness!
- Choosing happiness is NOT about ignoring negative emotions! It is very important to feel your emotions even if they’re negative! When you resist or ignore your negative feelings, they persist in your life and tend to get even louder. If you want to release negative emotions, it’s important to honor your feelings by acknowledging their presence and accepting the fact that they’re there. When you acknowledge and accept your negative feelings, you allow them to be released.
- Visualization is a great tool to shift into a feeling of happiness! Taking a moment to visualize things going well in whatever situation you’re in gives you a mental and emotional boost. The great thing about visualizing yourself as being happy is that the brain doesn’t know the difference between the visualization and reality. So not only are you normalizing the feelings of happiness in your body, you’re actually convincing it to shift into an emotional state of happiness to match the visualization!
- Gratitude is an excellent way to embrace your happiness. No matter what is going on around you, it’s possible to pause and find gratitude for things around you. If you’re in a negative situation this can be tricky but it’s still totally possible. By choosing to focus on gratitude, your choosing to see the silver lining in the situation and you’re consciously choosing to be happy in that moment!
- Positive affirmations & positive internal monolog are a great way to shift into happiness! Choosing to have an upbeat attitude and say positive things to yourself is encouraging and supporting. When you practice this you can have a great day and feel good no matter how much things seem to be falling apart around you. And similarly, positive affirmations are also programming your brain with positive things. Whatever we repeat to ourselves is programmed into the subconscious and it’s the job of the subconscious to make it true and find where it’s already present in our lives!
The Words You Say Matter!
Your internal monolog or the “voice inside your head” plays an important role in it can help you recognize how you see yourself and become aware of the thoughts that you have. A positive internal monolog is beneficial as it can help to decrease stress and relieve anxiety and depression. Your internal monolog is also a direct reflection of how you see and communicate in the world. This means a positive internal voice will reflect in positive actions externally and a positive view of the world!
A tip on how to shift your internal monolog:
It starts with awareness! Be aware of your inner voice and pay attention to what it is saying. Notice that not everything your inner voice says is true, the more you begin to realize this the easier it is to start to shift your thoughts and see your negative inner voice as not true.
- An exercise that helps with this- Pause throughout the day for 1 minute to ask:
- What am I thinking about right now?
- What am I feeling right now?
- You can remember to do this exercise by setting alarm reminders to go off randomly. You can also put a sticky note on your mirror that you’ll see everytime you wash your hands and look in the mirror (this is a great time to check in with yourself)!
Once you have awareness about your internal monolog, then you can start to identify what you’re thinking or saying to yourself that is holding you back. The easiest way to do this is to reframe the negative thoughts to be positive ones (ex: “This is a struggle for me” to “This is an opportunity for me to grow!”). Then anytime you notice yourself having that negative thought, you pause in that moment and say to yourself. I choose to see this in a positive way and repeat the positive phrase to yourself. If you want to learn more tips about how to shift your internal monolog, reach out to Kitty for additional support!
You Are Whatever You Think!
You are whatever you think!
There is some really fascinating research showing that you are whatever you think you are, which is why it’s so important to visualize yourself as successful! Your words and thoughts can limit or empower your entire life! A growing amount of psychology research has shown that you are whatever you think you are. In other words, your perception of yourself can actually change your physiological state!
A really cool study from 1981 called “Counterclockwise Study” once demonstrated that you are what you think and you can actually reverse your aging with your mindset!!!
The Study
Scientists asked a group of men in their 70s to do one simple thing for 5 days – pretend it was 1959. Not talk about that time but actually live as though it was that time and pretend as if they were 22 years younger. They were all put in a house that was secluded in the woods during this time. All of the decorations, furniture, and conditions of the house were made to look like it was 1959. The mirrors and any indication of the current time frame was removed from the house although the house did have pictures of them from when they were 22 years younger. These men read magazines, listened to radio shows and even watched black and white TV shows – all from 1959. They even ate food from 1959 and spent all of their time discussing sports and current events from that time. There were 2 control groups: one of men where nothing was changed and there was another group of men that were in the same 1959 environment but were asked to reminisce as though it was 1959 (instead of pretending that it was 1959).
The goal of this study was to get men to mentally trigger their bodies to reverse age and exhibit signs that they were younger. The results were ASTOUNDING and have changed what we understand around the psychology of aging!
The Results:
Prior to the study, these men had extensive testing and physiological measurements taken. Comparing the end results to the beginning is where the magic of this study really comes out! These men had statistically significant improvements in physical strength, gait, eyesight, hearing, memory and dexterity. In the group of men that pretended it was 1959, 63% of them had cognitive improvements. On average, they grew about 1 inch of height in just 5 days! Men that had started with a cane and unable to carry things left this house 5 days later without the cane and carrying their own suitcases! People outside of the study were asked to look at before and after photos of these men and the AFTER photo was rated to look 2 years younger on average!
Conclusion:
Just by pretending and thinking that they were 22 years younger, these men actually reversed their age in just 5 days!!! This is profound because it means that our brain has such strong control over our body that it can actually change our physiological measurements! Since you are what you think, this means that age is only a number and by simply believing that you’re younger than you are, you can reverse age your body! Your positive mindset actually defines your physical and mental abilities! Your expectations of yourself and your abilities are extremely powerful! So choose wisely how you want to view yourself!!!
