6. Setting boss boundaries with a smile. Have some scripts ready. Manners are your best weapon. "Thank you for thinking about me with this opportunity. I'm not able to commit at this time. I'm wishing you the best."
7. Your internal best friend will keep the high fives coming. Look nowhere else. You've got plenty from the Source of your divinely created being.
8. Engages with new ideas with the confidence of a master surfer. You're riding momentum and you're in charge. Take what serves you and ignore the rest.
9. Share emotional intimacy in containers marked by respect. And if you don't have any solid relationships yet, go to a local open mic in your community and grab that microphone and make a joke about your problems. You new friends will find you and hunt you down after the show.
10. Listen to your grudges and resentment. What lesson is your body trying to teach you? Learn the lesson and the voice of resentment fades naturally.
11. Surround yourself with outrageously positive people (like me! Sign up for my Substack, From Fawn to Fearless!) who pump you full of energy and lift you up. Always a great way to end up feeling amazing!!
12. Make social media work for you. What's your big idea? What gems do you have to share with the world? There has never been a bigger opportunity for shining your light.
13. Figure out your most important tasks and commit to doing them. Break the tasks into small chunks. Celebrate every little victory. It's all about momentum, friends. Like Tesla said, it's all about energy.
14. Practice unconditional love. Base your self-worth on your own level of presence. You are divinely created and you were born to have everything you want. All you have to do is show up fully for the present moment.
Very interesting. I am 74 and not growing older very gracefully so I do identify with some self sabotage. Such as my self confidence and my crafting, as in I'm not sure where to go next with my projects/products. Stuck in the old ways of doing things, like marketing. It's such a strange place to be, this getting older.
self sabotage. lush and lude. both. problem is I find self sabotage occurs as a bit of a wild thing, a demonic concoction of ideology and wild willowy evasionary tactics. They outsize me. And send me down into the rabbit hole with alice, alice in chains is a fiction whose bunny acts upon me as a terror and kind of relish. I have truly had to itemize my fictions, which all possess some beauty however terrifying, in order to address their domination... over what i do at times. I guess I dropped by here to say, it really helped me to at least become acquainted with why...what the fuck for did I do that... again. and helps me too, to find a sense of humor, for when the trigs take over again. First I gave them cartoon names, then started call them bunnies as a way to diversify.
Wow. I know this would never happen—but what if we could share this list with first graders like the letters of the alphabet? And then every year, students would grade themselves on these points. Why don’t we teach kids not to hold grudges and be better advocates for themselves? I feel like they taught me a foreign language in school and made me do to hard work of figuring out friendships and real life on my own.
Hysterical! I love this reverse way of showing the many ways we self-sabotage. It automatically keeps me from saying, "What if I don't want to do that?!" Love this. Thank you!
This is wonderful in so many way. I self-sabotage a lot - I think it's part of the AuDHD experience - but I've made an active effort to do it less and less over the years. Still happens, but drawing attention to it this way is priceless :D
This piece couldn’t have come at a better time, thank you so much! It was quite refreshing to read it from the opposite perspective, and I would love to see a follow-up note on little things we can do to be kinder to ourselves every day. I saw a note from someone about self sabotage Being present in their life due to ADHD. ADHD is a tricky undercurrent that can make everything we do a little harder. But building resilience and living with it can also give us gifts and strengths that we could never imagine. 🙏
Unfortunately, I see myself in all 15 and looking at it this way is very helpful! Because you can see how absolutely ridiculous it is to think,behave, and treat yourself this way. I’m practicing self care right now by reading Chris’s articles. But I self sabotaged myself by not reading them for the last three weeks. I’m going to go back and read each one because the advice has been soooo helpful and awakening. It’s what I’ve been looking for and has answered questions about myself. Thank you Chris for these wake up calls that I am putting into action!
The deepest self-sabotage I experience is time blindness, specifically related to the invisibility of transition times to my mind. Going to the gym? Oh, that’ll take five minutes!
How is that possible when it takes 15 minutes just to drive from my house to the gym, and another five minutes to park and walk into the gym?
I literally underestimate the amount of transition time every transition takes by a factor of 2–4.
My level of time blindness is a form of brain damage.
I understand this brain damage is a result of severe trauma, because I had to encode amnesia for traumatic events, which meant wiping out the last 10-20 minutes of my experience after the experience happened, hundreds to thousands of times. Which basically poked a hole in my mind’s capacity to conceptualize the time that exists in transitional moments.
So this brain damage of profound time blindness, my deepest form of self sabotage, which makes daily planning a nightmare of epic proportions, isn’t my fault. But it’s still my responsibility!
I’m a believer in 100% compassion and 100% responsibility. So, I have confidence that all of our self sabotage isn’t our fault, but it is our responsibility to heal it.
Off to buy another clock, do some extremely granular time planning, and do my best to schedule my day accurately instead of wackurately!
I check all the boxes. I'm an overachiever even when it comes to self-sabotage.
If I do it (self sabotage) first, then others will leave me alone.
I'm very interested to consider the opposite of all these, in growing our natural confidence which is our birthright:
1. Make decisions with 80% assurance. Confident people are comfortable with ambiguity and are willing and accurate guessers.
2. Engage in positive self-talk. Enjoy the "best friend/coach" in your head. You can access your internal wisdom and gain a life coach worth millions!
3. Become a self-care boss. Make a schedule for becoming the healthiest version of yourself and make it fun. Like buying cute tops for the gym!
4. Again- 80%. Not perfection. That's actually industry standard in my field, education. Once a learner has reached 80% mastery of a skill, move on.
5. Dwell on possibility! Emily Dickinson has an AMAZING poem about this: I Dwell in Possibility. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52197/i-dwell-in-possibility-466
6. Setting boss boundaries with a smile. Have some scripts ready. Manners are your best weapon. "Thank you for thinking about me with this opportunity. I'm not able to commit at this time. I'm wishing you the best."
7. Your internal best friend will keep the high fives coming. Look nowhere else. You've got plenty from the Source of your divinely created being.
8. Engages with new ideas with the confidence of a master surfer. You're riding momentum and you're in charge. Take what serves you and ignore the rest.
9. Share emotional intimacy in containers marked by respect. And if you don't have any solid relationships yet, go to a local open mic in your community and grab that microphone and make a joke about your problems. You new friends will find you and hunt you down after the show.
10. Listen to your grudges and resentment. What lesson is your body trying to teach you? Learn the lesson and the voice of resentment fades naturally.
11. Surround yourself with outrageously positive people (like me! Sign up for my Substack, From Fawn to Fearless!) who pump you full of energy and lift you up. Always a great way to end up feeling amazing!!
12. Make social media work for you. What's your big idea? What gems do you have to share with the world? There has never been a bigger opportunity for shining your light.
13. Figure out your most important tasks and commit to doing them. Break the tasks into small chunks. Celebrate every little victory. It's all about momentum, friends. Like Tesla said, it's all about energy.
14. Practice unconditional love. Base your self-worth on your own level of presence. You are divinely created and you were born to have everything you want. All you have to do is show up fully for the present moment.
No high-fives in my internal best friend.
Very interesting. I am 74 and not growing older very gracefully so I do identify with some self sabotage. Such as my self confidence and my crafting, as in I'm not sure where to go next with my projects/products. Stuck in the old ways of doing things, like marketing. It's such a strange place to be, this getting older.
Make a commitment to yourself eg to do a certain task the next day… then change your mind because you ‘don’t feel like it’ and feel bad.
self sabotage. lush and lude. both. problem is I find self sabotage occurs as a bit of a wild thing, a demonic concoction of ideology and wild willowy evasionary tactics. They outsize me. And send me down into the rabbit hole with alice, alice in chains is a fiction whose bunny acts upon me as a terror and kind of relish. I have truly had to itemize my fictions, which all possess some beauty however terrifying, in order to address their domination... over what i do at times. I guess I dropped by here to say, it really helped me to at least become acquainted with why...what the fuck for did I do that... again. and helps me too, to find a sense of humor, for when the trigs take over again. First I gave them cartoon names, then started call them bunnies as a way to diversify.
Very creative! It certainly achieves the goal of highlighting how ridiculous all of these things really are when stated so clearly.
I check almost all of these. Working on them. Great post!
Wow. I know this would never happen—but what if we could share this list with first graders like the letters of the alphabet? And then every year, students would grade themselves on these points. Why don’t we teach kids not to hold grudges and be better advocates for themselves? I feel like they taught me a foreign language in school and made me do to hard work of figuring out friendships and real life on my own.
But if I don't self-sabotage I'll have to rely on someone else to sabotage me, otherwise I might accomplish my goals (shudder)!
Hysterical! I love this reverse way of showing the many ways we self-sabotage. It automatically keeps me from saying, "What if I don't want to do that?!" Love this. Thank you!
This is wonderful in so many way. I self-sabotage a lot - I think it's part of the AuDHD experience - but I've made an active effort to do it less and less over the years. Still happens, but drawing attention to it this way is priceless :D
This piece couldn’t have come at a better time, thank you so much! It was quite refreshing to read it from the opposite perspective, and I would love to see a follow-up note on little things we can do to be kinder to ourselves every day. I saw a note from someone about self sabotage Being present in their life due to ADHD. ADHD is a tricky undercurrent that can make everything we do a little harder. But building resilience and living with it can also give us gifts and strengths that we could never imagine. 🙏
Well said!
Unfortunately, I see myself in all 15 and looking at it this way is very helpful! Because you can see how absolutely ridiculous it is to think,behave, and treat yourself this way. I’m practicing self care right now by reading Chris’s articles. But I self sabotaged myself by not reading them for the last three weeks. I’m going to go back and read each one because the advice has been soooo helpful and awakening. It’s what I’ve been looking for and has answered questions about myself. Thank you Chris for these wake up calls that I am putting into action!
Leaving my space cluttered so i can’t get things done or relax.
The deepest self-sabotage I experience is time blindness, specifically related to the invisibility of transition times to my mind. Going to the gym? Oh, that’ll take five minutes!
How is that possible when it takes 15 minutes just to drive from my house to the gym, and another five minutes to park and walk into the gym?
I literally underestimate the amount of transition time every transition takes by a factor of 2–4.
My level of time blindness is a form of brain damage.
I understand this brain damage is a result of severe trauma, because I had to encode amnesia for traumatic events, which meant wiping out the last 10-20 minutes of my experience after the experience happened, hundreds to thousands of times. Which basically poked a hole in my mind’s capacity to conceptualize the time that exists in transitional moments.
So this brain damage of profound time blindness, my deepest form of self sabotage, which makes daily planning a nightmare of epic proportions, isn’t my fault. But it’s still my responsibility!
I’m a believer in 100% compassion and 100% responsibility. So, I have confidence that all of our self sabotage isn’t our fault, but it is our responsibility to heal it.
Off to buy another clock, do some extremely granular time planning, and do my best to schedule my day accurately instead of wackurately!
Thank you for this. This series is absolutely wonderful. Thank you truly