5 ways you may be sabotaging yourself!

You have dreams. You have a vision for the life you want to be living.

We all do. That’s part of what makes us HUMAN!

But if we have these dreams, why are we so often not LIVING them?

Why do we keep striving for them and wanting them and wishing for them… and still not having them?

So often, we can see that life SOOO clearly… except we’re still not living it. Still not able to get there. Still stuck living the reality where we feel trapped.

But the reality is that ANYTHING is possible for you.

So why don’t you have what you want already?

Here are five common reasons I’ve found when working with my clients.

#1: You don’t really know what you want.

This was so true for me for so long. I THOUGHT I knew what I wanted, except that I wasn’t sure if it felt right still. This was true before I bought my practice, when I knew I wanted to be more in control of my life and thought that owning a business would be the solution. This was true before I started my first online business, when I thought my only goal was to have more financial flexibility.

Yet none of those steps were what I really wanted.

What I wanted was to be able to live life on my terms, in my flip flops, with no alarms, and to be able to HELP people at the same time. 

When I got clear on those goals - freedom and impact - then I was able to make every single decision in my life according to those goals.

But notice that for me, those goals are very broad ideas, not specific “I want to own a 4 bedroom house on 10 acres and work at a 2 doctor practice” type ideas. 

For me, that specificity didn’t work. For you, it might. 

It comes down to what FEELS good. 

Ask yourself what you want, then tune into what comes and how that answer makes you feel.

And then when you’ve got an answer that feels good, GO FOR IT!

#2- You don’t believe you can actually have it.

This is another huge one for so many of us.

We have certain ideas put into our heads by our families, our societies, our employers and teachers. Ideas about how the world works, and how it DOESN’T.

I was taught I had to work long hard hours in the same job for 40 years to ever make any real money.

But I didn’t want that!

The life I wanted, where I could travel full time, didn’t include working at the same job for 40 years like my family had done.

So for many years, I didn’t think the life I wanted was an option.

And because our brain has filters inside of it that affect how we see our world (the reticular activating system), my brain literally couldn’t see any opportunities because I was convinced they weren’t there!

If we decide it’s not possible, then it’s not.

NOT because it’s truly not, but because our brain won’t be capable of seeing opportunities.

We have to start to believe that we can have what we want. That the opportunities and pathways and doorways are out there, even if we don’t know where they’re going to come from or how they’re going to work.

When we believe they’re out there, only then will our brain be able to find them.

#3- Even once we believe it’s possible, our nervous system might think it’s too dangerous.

Your nervous system's primary job is to keep you safe.

And it’s very good at it’s job.

But what it considers dangerous can vary depending on your past experiences.

If we’ve been told that the only way to be successful and “acceptable” is to work a certain way, then not working that way feels very dangerous to our subconscious.

If we’ve been told that wanting certain things is bad, then it won’t feel safe to want them. (I still have to work to be comfortable saying “I want to be massively wealthy!”)

So even if we start to believe it’s possible, our nervous system might come up with all the reasons that we can’t have it.

And this can be subtle. This can be anxiety that is holding us back. Reasons that seem logical about why this isn’t the right time. Life feeling crazy with all the things we need to do so we never find time to do the things that would actually move us forward.

It’s our job to start to teach our nervous system that it’s safe to go for our goals. It’s safe to want what we want, and to have what we want to have. 

It’s our job to feel the fears, then realize we can do it anyway.

#4- We don’t say no enough.

Related to number 3, one of the most common ways our nervous system will keep us where we are (SAFE, even if we’re not happy) is “helping” us to say yes to everything.

We have a to-do list a million miles long, we’re putting everyone else first and doing all the things they want us to do.

And we look back in a week or a month or 10 years and realize that we were so busy, feeling so productive, but really, we got NOTHING done.

We are no closer to our dreams, no closer to our goals.

Learning to say “no” is one of the most powerful skills we can acquire.

And by the way, learning to say “no” includes learning to say it to ourselves! (This is part of the internal boundaries I work on with my clients.)

And #5- We don’t set ourselves up for success.

You’re clear on what you want. You’re working on believing you can have it. You’re making sure you’re not overextending yourself or putting everyone else first.

So then why don’t you feel like you’re making more progress still?

It’s so easy in today’s busy world, in our busy lives and jobs and careers, to get dragged into survival mode.

I consider survival mode to be where we’re so busy doing everything we need to do that we never pay attention to what we want to do. (This is related to #4, we aren’t saying “no” enough.)

But then we start putting ourselves first, getting better at saying “no” to others… and still don’t feel like we’re moving.

We don’t have the daily habits built up yet. We aren’t taking the daily steps. We aren’t leaning into what we want on a DAILY basis.

Because it’s not how our brains are wired yet. Our nervous system is still wired to keep us safe, to keep us busy. 

So we think about our goals when we think about them, occasionally or when we see a reminder… 

But we aren’t thinking about them DAILY or taking the daily steps.

And so we stay stuck. Even if we’re clear on what we want and believe we can have it.

This is important: This is the biggest area we can create change in our lives! When we start to improve on this area, when we truly start leaning into what we want and decide that we’re GOING to create it, no matter what… then the other steps tend to fall into place.

But first we have to truly decide we’re going for it, and take the daily actions and steps to make it happen.

Which one of these steps spoke to you the hardest? Which one are you going to work on first?