This episode is sponsored by Cure Hydration. You know that moment for me, it’s around like 2 or 3pm when my ADHD brain just decides we’re done for the day. We’re done here. The afternoon slump hits, the lights go off upstairs and suddenly answering an email or doing basically anything feels like climbing a mountain. That’s when I reach for Cure Energy. It’s a clean plant based energy drink mix made with 100 milligrams of natural caffeine and electrolytes so I get the focus and hydration boost I need without jitters, without a crash and without that like I drink battery acid vi that some of the energy drinks have. The peach tea and acai berry flavors are my current go tos. Crisp, refreshing and they don’t taste fake, y’. All. They don’t taste fake. I’ll drink one before recording a session or when I need to get help through like that afternoon drag. And honestly I I drink it anytime. My brain just needs to cooperate. What’s wild is that Cure Energy is only 25 calories and has zero added sugar. It actually helps me stay hydrated while giving me energy. Okay, I love coffee, but coffee could never Staying hydrated isn’t just about water. You also need electrolytes. And that’s why I love CUR Cure. It’s clean, it tastes great and it actually works. And remember, Cure is FSA HSA approved which is amazing. You can use that money to pay for cure and for I have ADHD listeners, you can get 20% off your first order@curehydration.com I have ADHD with the code I have ADHD. And if you do get a post purchase survey, make sure to tell them that you heard about Cure right here on the podcast. It really helps to support the show. Don’t just drink more, upgrade it right with Cure. VRBO Last minute deals make chasing fresh mountain powder incredibly easy. With thousands of homes close to the slopes, you can easily get epic Pow Freshies, first tracks and more. No need for months of planning. In fact, you can’t even plan. Pow Pow is on its own schedule. Thankfully somewhere in the world it’s always snowing. All you have to do is use the last minute filter on the app to book a last minute deal on a slope side private rental home book now@vervo.com. Welcome to the I have ADHD Podcast where it’s all about education, encouragement and coaching for adults with adhd. I’m your host Kristen Carter and I have adhd. Let’s chat about the frustrations, humor and challenges of adulting relationships when working and achieving with this neurodevelopmental disorder, I’ll help you understand your unique brain, unlock your potential and move from point A to point B. Hey, what’s up? This is Kristen Carter and you’re listening to The I have ADHD podcast, episode number 124. I am medicated, I am caffeinated and I am ready to roll. How are you? How are you? How are you? I hope you’re having the best day ever. Thank you so much for deciding to press play on this podcast. I couldn’t be happier that you are here with me today. I found out this week that this podcast is listened to in 160 countries worldwide and it is blowing my mind. Like you guys. This is absolute craziness. So to those of you listening on the other side of the world, I want to take a second and acknowledge you. Hi, how are ya? So glad to be connected to you. I just took a little snapshot here of like random amazing places that people are listening to this podcast. Greece, Kenya, Puerto Rico, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Taiwan, Hungary, Ghana, Swaziland, Hong Kong, Republic of Korea. Like what in the world? I really can’t believe that my work, my little ADHD brains work is making a difference around the world. Life is wild. I am so unworthy and I am so grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. I do not take it for granted. I don’t take your attention for granted. I know that as an adult with ADHD it is hard to engage with content. I don’t take that lightly. So thank you for being here with me and giving me a little sliver of your attention today. Now this episode is all about self sabotage, which is a behavior pattern that I see in a lot of my clients and even in myself. It’s a normal human coping mechanism that we use to protect ourselves from perceived danger. The problem with that is that it doesn’t usually give us a net positive result. Self sabotage keeps us from moving forward. It totally stalls our momentum and it’s often the reason why we get stuck. So we’re going to tackle all of this today. As we get rolling here. I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by Focused. Focused is an ADHD coaching program designed by an adult with adhd, that’s me. For adults with adhd, that’s you. There’s no neurotypical BS involved in this life changing program. Just mindset coaching from me and other qualified coaches, classes on ADHD related topics and an inclusive community full of fellow ADHDers ready to support you. Now listen to what my client Rachel posted this week in our Focused community. She says, I’ve been in Focused for a year and and even though I’ve never been coached live, I’ve watched and listened to all of you be coach and I’ve learned so much and grown more than I thought was possible. Now, friend, did you catch that? She’s never actually been coached live, but her whole life has changed. Besides the amazing content, that’s probably the best part about this program because we make it so, so, so easy for busy, distracted ADHD adults to engage with the content and change their own lives with while going about their business, like driving or running or washing dishes or mowing the lawn or whatever it is that you do. So if you want to take control of your ADHD Life, go to ihaveadhd.com focused to learn more. Do you guys like my advertising voice? I’m practicing switching it to like a really fun voice and I think it works. I think it works. Okay. All right, back to self sabotage. Today’s episode is a class that I taught in Focused last week. It’s a perfect example of the empowering teaching that we offer to our members. I hope you enjoy it. I hope that you are totally empowered to notice and interrupt the self defeating cycle of self sabotage. Enjoy. So let’s talk about self sabotage. This concept has just only recently been brought into my consciousness and it’s shocking to me how pervasive it is in my life how many self sabotaging behaviors I engage with. Even recently, like as recently as in the last week, I’ve noticed that I have wanted to engage in self sabotaging behaviors. Because of all of the work I’m doing, I am able to interrupt that cycle. Not all of the time, but a lot of the time. And so that’s the skill that I want to be able to impart to you today is the ability to interrupt the self sabotaging cycle. Okay, so it’s very normal for humans to self sabotage. I don’t want you to judge yourself, blame yourself, feel badly about yourself. This is normal human behavior and for most of us it was likely developed in childhood. Like these are behavior patterns that were developed in childhood just as coping mechanisms, just as survival modes. And I think, you know, some of that childhood trauma stuff mixed with ADHD symptoms is just a lovely recipe for self sabotage. Which is why my most ADHDers, especially adults, feel stuck. So who can identify with that? Maybe not, right? This Second, but in your life, have there been very poignant times in your life where you have just felt 100% stuck? And so the stuck feeling is, I know what I want to do. I can’t get myself to do that thing. Even when I get on a good, like, roll, so to speak, I seem to just somehow. Right. We are not well versed in naming self sabotaging behaviors, but I just seem to not be able to do it. Or, you know, I line up this perfect client and then I procrastinate and I’m not able to keep the client because I’m not fulfilling the work. Or I am, you know, I start exercising regularly and then one thing happens and so I just quit altogether. Our desire for consistency or die. Consistency or die. Right, like those are our two choices. I will either be consistent or I will die. Which then leads us to like, okay, well, neither of those are options. So we’re just going to stay stuck in the self sabotaging cycle. Our desire for consistency often leads us to self sabotage, which I’ve talked about a lot. I’ve talked about that a lot. We beat ourselves up for not being consistent rather than just embracing. Like, yeah, I’m not consistent, but I am persistent and I’m going to do this until it’s done. But I’m getting ahead of myself. So I do want to say again, self sabotage is normal. It’s a normal human behavior pattern coping mechanism. And when you notice it in yourself, which we might uncover today together, when you notice that in yourself, I want you to do your best to be very gentle with yourself. Right? We don’t need to judge, we don’t need to blame. We don’t need to like stomp on ourselves while we’re already down. We can just notice without judgment. All right, so I’m going to invite you today to create space for noticing without judgment. And that is maybe a skill set that we can work on developing. So essentially, self sabotage is a pattern. It’s a behavior pattern that you engage in that undermines your success, even despite your best intentions. It’s interfering with your own success, with your own goals, with your own forward trajectory. I would love to know from you if you can think back in the last couple days, couple weeks, couple months or years, whatever. I would like to know from you, in what ways do you notice that you might undermine your own success, that you might interrupt your own forward motion? In what ways do you notice that you kind of tend to fall into these self sabotaging patterns? And if you’re Listening to the replay. I just invite you to participate. So even if you’re not on the call live, you’re listening to the replay. Think through your own answer to this question and you can answer out loud like a weirdo because hey, we are here for it. I love it. I always tell you, I go for walks, I talk to myself out loud. My neighbors think I’m drunk. It’s totally fine. I downplay what has worked and I focus on what isn’t working. I delay responding to clients and I delay following through on what I said I was going to do. I don’t return calls or emails. I make my goals overwhelming. I hyper focus on creative passion projects and move on before I can earn income from them. That’s big. That is big. I procrastinate when I’m nervous about something, so I know it will be bad, but my ego will not be affected. Oh, that’s good. I put attention on problems instead of solutions. That’s really interesting. I love that you guys are bringing this to the forefront of our attention because I was not even going to mention that on today’s call. And this is why we all need each other and we are all colleagues together, learning and growing alongside of each other. Because I agree 100% that when we focus on what we’re doing wrong, we just keep doing more of the quote unquote wrong. Right. And when we can focus on and really feel the magic of what we’re doing right and we create more of those results. And so self sabotaging might look like putting your attention, putting your focus on the things that aren’t working or on the problems. Yeah. Imposter syndrome is one of those feelings that can 100% lead to self sabotage. Right. So we don’t give ourselves credit for our own knowledge, for our own expertise. So we keep ourselves quiet and we sabotage ourselves moving forward because of the fear that we, you know, are not credible. Of course it’s important to be credible and it’s important to have credentials and to have training, but really leaning into whether or not you have credibility and if you do, then just tolerating imposter syndrome without taking action from it is going to be the way out of that pattern. So self sabotage leads us to a lot of times feeling very stuck because when we begin to make forward progress, we engage, usually unknowingly, in self sabotaging behaviors that put us right back where we started. And so what I want to say to all of you today is all of our work goes back to self concept. I’m going to say it again. All of our work as humans goes back to our self concept work because that is the foundation for interrupting self sabotaging behaviors. Because here’s the real reason why we self sabotage. When our results or the potential of our results don’t match up with what we think and feel about ourselves, there is cognitive dissonance. I’m going to explain this a little bit, but I’m just going to tell you the concept like on the outset and then we’re going to go into detail. So when our results or the potential of results. So like if I complete this project, I will have these potential results. When those results are at a different level and let’s just say higher than our current self concept, the way that we think and feel about ourselves, then there is cognitive dissonance. Our brain and our body does not like it when results don’t match our self concept. So I want you to think about a scale or even just like a number line. So if you think about a number line from 0 to 10, okay, if your self concept is a 5, let’s just say, meaning the way that you think and feel about yourself is at a five, if you start getting results for yourself that are, let’s say at a 7, or if you begin to get opportunities that might yield results that might be at that seven or eight, whatever mark, then there is a discrepancy because the way that you think and feel about yourself is at a 5 and the results are up here at a 7. And so there is dissonance. There’s cognitive confusion in your brain about what’s going on. And so most of the time when we are not aware of this, we engage in self sabotaging behaviors in order to bring those results back down to match our self concepts. Who is with me? Who is getting this? Who is totally understanding? Okay, so our self concept’s at like a 5, our results are at a 7. And when we’re not paying attention, when we just don’t see it, we engage in these unconscious self sabotaging behaviors so that we can bring our results back down to where our self concepts matches. And so I shared this in a class I think last week, but I’m going to share it again. So my husband and I right now are kind of thinking through the process of whether or not we want to move. We love the house that we live in, we love the neighborhood that we live in. We love everything about it, except it’s very small and our children are growing into men. They are Growing so big now. The house that I live in right now is really cute. It is very comfortable, but it is nothing fancy. Ok? And so it is very comfortable for me as a pastor’s wife to have a house that is just totally not flashy. I know this might not seem like a relevant anecdote, but I promise you, if you will go with me down this rabbit trail, it’s going to be relev. The house that I live in, when you look at it, you’re like, oh, yeah, totally makes sense. Because, you know, Greg’s a pastor, Kristin has her own business. This house makes sense. If we were to move, which we don’t, you know, we’re not positive, but we’re, we’re thinking of moving. If we were to move, it’s going to be to a beautiful home. And I will tell you right now that that is so uncomfortable for me. So uncomfortable. And I am struggling so much. And even in the last week have said things to Greg like, I don’t know, I don’t think we should do it. This isn’t the right time. Finding a lot of problems and wanting to halt our forward progress. Not because there’s an actual problem, but because my self concept is very comfortable in our current home. It’s. It’s a home that makes sense. I’ve grown up in poverty. I want you to hear this. I’ve never lived in a cute house my entire life. Okay? Which is totally fine. Like, it’s fine, but it is true, right? Like, I’ve never lived in a cute house. If we move, the house is going to be beautiful. I don’t know if I am the kind of person that, that can live in a beautiful home. And so what’s happening is the result is if we’re going to put it on the scale, right, that’s like a level 9 results. And my concept, my self concept would be like more at like a six. And I’m just not in the headspace yet where I am comfortable moving into. Like, I live in a beautiful home now, this is such a benign example. Whether or not we move, it doesn’t matter. We love our home, we love our neighborhood. It’s totally fine. So this is an extremely benign example. But I think sometimes seeing it in an area that’s not triggering can be very helpful because then what you can do is you can take the example and you can apply it to maybe the areas of your life that are triggering, right? So I want to know from you, where do you notice that you are getting good results that Are maybe higher on the scale from your self concept that you intentionally want to bring it down. You intentionally maybe want to bring down your results so that they match your self concept. My self concept is I live in a small house, and I’ve worn that as a badge of honor for a long time. You’ve heard me say that a lot. Like, I live in a small house, 1700 square feet for five people. I’ve said that a lot. That is my self concept. That’s what is comfortable for me. That’s what my brain says makes sense. If we move into a big, beautiful home, My brain is like, danger, Something’s gone wrong here. This doesn’t make sense. We don’t belong in a beautiful home. We belong in a small, cute home, but not in a big, beautiful home. And so what my brain wants to do is find all the problems with this plan and halt the forward motion so that we don’t actually get the results that we want. Because the results that we want, they’re kind of scary. They feel uncomfortable. This is new territory that we’re not used to, and I don’t want to go there. Right. That’s what my brain is saying. Okay. I become a top performer, and then I lose the job and go back to an hourly rage wage. Sorry, I used the word rage. Maybe that was a Freudian slip. Yes. A similar example to the home example where I don’t feel pretty enough to wear beautiful clothes. How fascinating. Right. And so I’m going to self sabotage my own beauty. Right. Wear clothes that maybe don’t even fit. Right. Because I don’t feel beautiful enough to wear beautiful clothes. I’ve never thought of it that way. And I think that is fascinating. Yep. I often undercharge or I’ll over service if it’s a fair fee. Yep. Love. Okay. Ooh. I’ve been single for four and a half years now and done so much work on being okay with being a single mom title. Now that I rock that title and have been owning it for years, I see myself self sabotaging anything that has to do with dating. So you’ve embodied the title of single mom. You’ve been rocking it. It’s great. It’s working for you, of course. And then when you go to date someone, you’re like, wait, this doesn’t match up with who I say I am. And so I have to sabotage the dating relationship so I can maintain the self concept of single mom. Who’s rocking it. Thank you for sharing that. Okay. After I brainstorm all of the Amazing business ideas that were awesome. My brain started telling me that all the ways that I was going to fail because I am not good at the logistics and follow through. Yep, totally. And that is 100% self sabotage. So you start to imagine the potential results and this is why it is important for you to see that it is not just actual results that you are getting right now, but it could also be the potential of results. So, you know, maybe a company comes to you and they’re trying to recruit you and they’re like offering salary and benefits and like all of these wonderful things. So you have the potential there. It’s not even the actual results that you’re getting right now, but there’s a potential. And so your brain starts to say like, wait, this does not match up with who we think we are. And so we need to make sure it doesn’t happen. Right. So good. Somebody asked if this is similar to success intolerance. Yes, but this isn’t exactly success intolerance. Success intolerance can for sure lead to self sabotage. But I think self sabotage most of the time what’s at the root of self sabotage is fear. I don’t know that for sure, but that is my gut feeling is that at the root of self sabotage most of the time is fear. Fear of potential failure, fear of not being able to measure up. So maybe fear and self doubt. But isn’t self doubt also just fear? Like at the root of self doubt, isn’t that just fear? So I want to circle back so that we are all on the same page number one, all of us, all humans engage in self sabotaging behaviors. And maybe that is the answer on how to forgive ourselves when we notice it. This is a normal human behavior pattern. Self sabotaging is something that all humans do and only the humans who are keenly aware of of it and attuned to their own bodies, feelings, emotional needs. Only those few select humans are going to be able to interrupt this behavior pattern. Okay, so if you are just waking up to your own emotions, if you are just waking up to your own coping mechanisms, if you’re just waking up to your own traumas, you will likely be able to look back and see so many instances in which you did self sabotage. This may look like relationships that you self sabotaged. This might look like, you know, healthy, loving relationship that you had with someone that just felt satisfied, so undeserving and so uncomfortable. And so without even realizing it, you ruined it on purpose to get out of it because it didn’t match up with who you see yourself as as a human being. Now here’s the deal. That’s normal, okay? And I’m not saying that’s normal. So just go ahead and keep doing it, saying that’s normal. When you’re asleep, when you are not aware of how human psychology and how human behavior works, when you’re not in therapy, when you’re not in coaching, when you’re not even acknowledging or validating your own needs, of course you self sabotaged. It would be very bizarre if you didn’t actually. It would be weird. It would be like that doesn’t make sense. Okay, of course, of course, of course you self sabotaged. And so giving yourself grace for that, knowing now that you are learning and growing and waking up to those tendencies, that can kind of kick start your forgiveness, right? I want to circle back to self concept. Your self concept is how you think and feel about yourself. What you believe you’re capable of, what you believe you’re deserving of. What you believe makes sense for you, right? So let’s say that you are working at a fast food restaurant and you are making $10 an hour and somebody comes in and says, hey, I have this job for you. I want you to be the CEO of my company. It pays $100,000 a year, it has full benefits. Are you ready to go? It is very likely that you are thinking things like that doesn’t even make sense because I work here at McDonald’s or Burger King or Chick Fil A or Chipotle, my personal favorite, right? Like I work at Chipotle. It doesn’t make sense for me to be a CEO of a company. It doesn’t make sense for me to make that huge leap. And so what we need to do when we want level 10 results is we need to just start increasing our self concept little by little by little. So if your self concept, let’s say is at a 6, I would encourage you to say, okay, what do I need to do? What do I need to think and feel? What do I need to question or change in order for me to raise my self concept to a level 7? Every single time that we level up, we have a new opportunity to revisit our self concept and enhance it, reshape it, sculpt it, shape it into something else. Perfectionism, procrastination, avoidance, quitting. These are often self sabotaging behaviors. So I have an opportunity and I know that if I just take these three steps I will get positive results. Positive results don’t really match with my Self concept. And so I’m going to procrastinate so that I don’t get those positive results, or it’s usually a little bit more insidious. So, for example, I have a podcast. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it. It’s called the I have ADHD podcast. And it’s my job to get a podcast episode to my editor every Thursday. And I will tell you that your girl procrastinates on those episodes. Maybe you’ve heard me talk about that before. Now, there are different reasons why I procrastinate. One of the reasons is it’s just hard. And I don’t really like doing hard things all of the time. But another reason why I procrastinate is because when I am putting out a podcast episode, I am opening myself up to criticism. I’m being very vulnerable. I am giving people the opportunity to leave reviews that are sometimes really not very nice. And so to willingly put myself in that situation week after week, knowing that there’s opportunity for people to criticize, to be unkind, or for me to say something like impulsive and not even notice it and then put it out there and then be like, that is so hard for me. And so a lot of times I am procrastinating for that reason, but I don’t even realize it in the moment unless I check in and ask myself, hey, what’s going on here? We have that thing. Got to write and record this podcast. We why aren’t you doing it? And that’s when I can get real with myself and notice, oh, I’m feeling fear. Oof. I’m trying to protect myself from vulnerability. I want you to see that it’s a coping mechanism. The procrastination is actually a coping mechanism that is helping me to survive. Because podcast is scary, vulnerable. This could cause death, really is what my brain thinks. If someone says something unkind, then that’s going to cause your death. And so in order to cope and protect myself, I procrastinate. I can forgive myself for that because I see how that’s just a normal human behavior. That’s just normal. Of course I want to protect myself. People are so fascinating. Fascinating. Okay, so the question then is, how do we interrupt self sabotage, number one. We need to notice that self sabotage is a thing. We need to just really, like, be on the lookout for it everywhere, especially in this community. Hundreds of adults with ADHD who are working together to make forward progress, who are working together to change their own lives and have persistently improved Results. Hello. You guys are going to be very prone to self sabotage because what happens often is you start to make progress and then your brain’s like, wait a second, we’re not someone that shows up on time. What is even happening? And so instead of doing the self concept work to embody the identity of someone who shows up on time, we just sabotage ourselves and stop showing up on time. We accidentally oversleep or we accidentally get stuck on our phones in the parking lot and like just happen to lose track of time because we have not yet embodied the identity of someone who’s capable and not just capable, but like, those results are expected. Who’s with me? This is big. Okay, so y’ all understanding that especially for those of us who are on a quest to improve and to change our lives, really understanding that we are going to be susceptible to this self sabotaging pattern. That’s number one. Number two is you’re likely going to recognize the behavior prior to anything else and so. Or the desire to take the behavior. So for example, last week when I’m chatting with my husband and I’m like, we should probably shut this whole thing down. Let’s just stop this process. I don’t think that we’re doing the right thing. Circling back to like the discussion of should we move or shouldn’t we move. As I’m discussing this with my husband, my therapist, my coach, it became so obvious that like there wasn’t actually a problem. There was not an actual logical or logistical need to change the plan, but it was the fear of the results not matching who I think I am. That’s why I wanted to change the plan. So I had this really strong desire to change the plan. I would say it was an urge. So we talk about urges once in a while in here. And an urge is just like a strong desire, but it’s a desire backed with urgency. Like, I need to call, I need to cancel, I need to do it now, I need to quit right this second. That urge, if you can notice it, you can go back and you can coach yourself through the lens of this was a self sabotaging coping mechanism. Why? Why did I do it? What was the motivation? What did I think I was going to gain from this? And was it accurate? Like, am I glad that I did it? Was this good or bad? Like, did it have a net positive or a net negative result in my life? And that is really what looking for here? We’re looking for, are we getting a net positive or a net negative result? If I were to engage in this behavior. If I’m going to procrastinate today, is that giving me a net positive or net negative result? If I avoid this project, is that giving me a net positive or net negative result? Now when we were kids, there was trauma avoidance as a coping mechanism. That was a net positive result. We needed that. But now we are grown as adults, we can take care of the things. Right. We have what it takes to meet our own needs in a way that we didn’t when we were children. And so reminding myself of that, for example, if someone leaves a review on the podcast that is not kind, I have what it takes to take care of myself. Like reminding myself of that. Listen, I’m going to take care of you. I got you. You’re not going to be alone when this happens. You have a support system. You have exactly what it takes to self soothe when this happens. That’s really important. Yeah. The next thing is to feel the feeling. So why do you self sabotage? What is that feeling that is leading to the self sabotaging action? In psychology we know that all action is taken from an emotion. So we have this like strong emotion and then we take action from that emotion. If you can notice the emotion without taking action, that’s going to change your life. Hear me again. If you can notice the emotion without taking any action, but just noticing the emotion and interrupting like, okay, I’m not going to do anything. I’m just going to feel that will allow you to then disengage from anything that might be self sabotaging. Do you know what we don’t like to do? We don’t like to feel emotions that we deem negative. Fear, imposter syndrome, self doubt, anxiety. That’s not fun. Instead we want to solve for it. And so we take action thinking that the action is going to solve for the emotion. Actions do not solve for emotions. Right. The goal is to continually take action that gives us a net positive result. So the way that you can tell whether or not an action serves you, is it giving me a positive result or a negative result? I mean, that’s pretty clear, right? But to go farther, even backward, into the cause. What is the actual feeling that is driving the action? Noticing that feeling and being willing to feel it. So for example, if you notice that your action is, I don’t call my clients, I avoid them. What is the feeling that’s leading to that? Avoidance. And are you willing to expand your capacity to feel it? Feelings are hard. We cannot action our way out of feeling. We have to Feel our way out of acting. So instead of taking these self sabotaging actions, I’m just instead going to feel what I feel is fear. Fear doesn’t feel good. But I am big enough, I can expand enough to feel this feeling. And then I can decide like for example, maybe Greg and I will not end up moving and that’s okay, but it’s not going to be because of fear and it’s not going to be because of self doubt. Does that make sense? It’s going to be from certainty, from self assurance, from knowing, from confidence. So the action itself is totally fine if I decide, nope, we’re going to stay here for another year or two. It’s great, it’s no problem. But deciding that from certainty rather than deciding it from fear, that’s the important thing. Okay, I’m going to answer a couple of your questions. I’m struggling to see where I self sabotage. Do you have a question I can use or a way to look at my life so I can see it more clearly? You know, it might be a helpful conversation to have with someone who knows you well to ask them, are there patterns that you see? Like for example, am I avoiding relationships or am I keeping myself stuck in my career or whatever. You fill in the blank. What pattern do you see? But you can also ask yourself, is there a pattern that is keeping you stuck? Maybe it’s a procrastination pattern. Perfectionism is also sometimes a self sabotaging pattern. And so this is very much like my example of the podcast. So I want it to be perfect. I want to make sure I don’t say anything stupid or impulsive. I want to make sure that nobody might have a problem with it. You know, we’ve listeners all over the world, but I want to make sure that I, you know, no matter what gender or race or ethnicity culture like that, I don’t say anything that might offend anyone ever. That’s a perfectionistic tendency because I am afraid of criticism, right? And so if I notice the pattern of I procrastinate writing my podcast every week, then that pattern is okay, self sabotaging. Why am I self sabotaging? What am I trying to avoid? For me it’s exposure and vulnerability. And then I can begin to gently have these conversations with myself where I can move myself into a net positive result rather than a net negative. How do you feel deserving and worthy? This is huge. Where does worthiness come from? So we know that feelings are caused by thoughts, right? Human psychology tells us feelings are caused by thoughts so do you believe that you are worthy? Do you believe that you are deserving? Now, for those of you who struggle with worthiness, it’s likely that you have had experiences in your life where people have told you that you’re not worthy or people have treated you as if you are not worthy. And the problem here is that you’ve believed them. And of course, as a child, you’re going to believe every adult in your life. Like, of course that’s you’re supposed to. That’s how children are, right? Like as kids, we just believe everything people say. And if there’s ever a problem, we just assume that it’s our fault or we’re told it’s our fault. And we believe like that is how a child operates. But you are an adult and you get to decide whether or not you are worthy. And you are someone who gets to decide whether or not you are deserving. For me, it is very easy to understand my own worthiness and your worthiness because of my Christian faith, because of my belief in God, because I believe that we were created by something outside of ourselves. So I didn’t just show up here. I was created and designed with a purpose. That belief is just a thought. And I am 100% willing to say that is just a thought. But guess what? That is a thought that works really well for me. That is a thought that yields net positive emotion, net positive action, net positive results. And so if you need to do some work on worthiness, this is all in the self concept workbook. And even in the self concept workbook, I do talk about how, like, I understand that not everyone has a belief in God. And that’s okay. You need to just decide if you’re worthy or not. Like, literally make the decision. Are you? If so, how do you know? Like, those are questions that your brain does need you to answer. I believe I am worthy because xyz. So for me personally, I believe all human life has inherent value. That we are all 100% lovable, we are all 100% worthy, all 100% valuable. And none of us can do anything to increase it or decrease it. We just are worthy. Which is why I no longer have drama about, like, I used to feel like, man, I didn’t get XYZ done and it would really impact how I felt about myself. My own worthiness. And now I am able to peel away what I produce from my own worthiness, my own value, my own lovability. We are going down a huge rabbit hole. But I do think it’s important because if you don’t believe at your core that yes, you are valuable, deserving and worthy of positive results, then you’re not going to do the self concept work, you’re not going to make these changes, you’re going to avoid it, and it’s going to be this like, underlying, like me. And so the solution here is not to set more alarms, but to just start to think about am I worthy or not? I feel like I’m lying to myself. I would just ask why am I worthy? Is your, I think you’re married. Like, is your wife worthy? What makes her worthy and you not worthy? Is like your kid or your niece or your nephew. Are they worthy? What do they need to do to deserve their worthiness? What is it about them? What have they done in the world? What contribution have they made that allows them to be worthy? At what point did you stop being worthy? Like, these are all deep questions, but I do think for you it is self sabotaging and that’s okay. Bringing your awareness to it is huge. Right? And so now you get to question like, am I worthy or not? And if not, why not? And what makes one person more worthy than another person? Like, these are important questions that we need to answer in order to kind of collectively bring our self concept back to like, oh yeah, we’re humans, we deserve to be loved. We are lovable. Any advice for self sabotage around money and actively increasing our success, tolerance or feeling like we are deserving? I procrastinate sending client invoices and writing proposals even when I know these clients want to pay us. The advice is to identify the discomfort. That’s really the answer here. Oh, it feels uncomfortable to have money. Who would have ever thought? I think most of us have always thought, when I have money, it’s going to feel amazing. Or people who have money must feel amazing about it. No, that’s just a lie. The important thing here is to say, like, hey, it feels uncomfortable to have money. Okay? Okay. That’s how it feels. So now the next question is, do I want to have a net positive or a net negative? Like really bringing your awareness to that. All right, it feels uncomfortable to have money. Does that mean that I don’t want to have it? Right. Like, let’s just get very clear with ourselves. I feel uncomfortable. I want to ruin this so I don’t have to feel uncomfortable. But do you know what else is uncomfortable? Not having money. Ask me how I know. Way I spent most of my life, decades and decades of not having money, right? And so yes, having money, the capacity to have might be very small and increasing. That might be uncomfortable. But if you’re choosing between discomfort and discomfort, at least choose the discomfort that yields you a net positive rather than a net negative. I’m going to say it again. If you’re choosing between discomfort and discomfort, not having money is uncomfortable. Having money is uncomfortable. Which one do I want to choose? Well, I’m choosing between uncomfortable and uncomfortable, discomfort and discomfort. So I might as well choose the discomfort that leads to a net positive result rather than a net negative result. Why do we get stuck in these feelings of unworthiness and not deserving? I don’t know the answer to that, but my gut feeling is that this is the human condition and my own personal belief, which totally does not have to be your belief at all, but my own personal belief is like, this is why we need God, because our own human condition is. We feel unworthy and undeserving. That’s just my own belief. So. And you know what a belief is? It’s just a thought that we think a lot. Love it. Okay, so here’s the thing. As we raise our self concepts, it’s really important that we become the person who can get those results or who deserves those results or who it just makes sense that has those results. So, for example, I need to become the person if I’m going to move into a house that is like, whoa, that’s a pretty house. If I’m going to do that, I have to first work on am I the person who can do that? Am I the person who can just like move from this very average, like, fine house into like a whoa, whoa, that’s a nice house. Right now I’m not. That feels real weird, real uncomfortable. But do you know what Greg and I talk about? We talk about creating a space, like a home for us in two years from now. So I’m not thinking about a house for the now me. Is this making sense? I’m thinking about a house for the two years from now me. She’s way ahead that two years from now me. Like, her whole life is so different. And you guys know, likely if you’ve ever moved before, it’s a hassle. It’s like, it’s hard, right? So I don’t want to do it again in two years. I want to just go ahead and be able to live in the house that two years from now me will be like, oh, yeah, this totally makes sense. Can you create the business that two years from now you is like, yeah, this makes sense. Can you develop the relationship that two years from now you is like, oh yeah, this makes sense. So don’t necessarily do it for the version of you that’s right now. Do it for the future version of yourself. That version of you who has continuously been showing up and doing this work. I just love you guys so much. Like why can’t we just hang out together all day long? I love you. I like you. Talk to you soon. Hey adhder, I see you. I know exactly what it’s like to feel lost, confused, frustrated and like no one out there really understand understands the way that your brain works. That’s why I created Focused. Focused is my monthly coaching program where I lead you through a step by step process of understanding yourself, feeling better and creating the life that you know you’re meant for. You’ll study, be coached, grow and make amazing changes alongside of other educated professional adults with ADHD from all over the world. Visit I have ADHD Focused to learn more.
