THE SECRETS

IN YOUR

SABOTAGE

BETH CLAYTON

“Your life will be transformed when you make peace with your shadow. The

caterpillar will become a breathtakingly beautiful butterfly. You will no longer have

to pretend to be someone you’re not.”

- Debbie Ford, 1955-2013

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 5

JUST WHAT IS SELF-SABOTAGE? 6

THE SABOTEUR IS BORN IN THE MOMENT OF A “TINY DEATH” 10

SABOTAGE IS SELF-LOVE IN DISGUISE 14

SO, HOW DO WE OVERCOME THIS SABOTAGE? 18

MY TEDX 23

INTRODUCTION

I used to despise self-sabotage; both my own and other’s. Much like the rest of the

world, I saw sabotage as an obstacle to push and grind through. After all, as a health

and life coach, I could see sabotage standing squarely between my clients and their

highest visions for themselves. It was the seeming enemy of their progress, their

hope and their empowerment.

I could see that their stuckness had very little to do with knowledge of how to start

to pursue their goals. Oftentimes, their vision was clear and their next best step was

right before them, waiting for them with open and welcoming arms. Their inaction

was rather the result of a distinct and powerful force at play that pulled them in the

opposite direction of their desire time and time again, and this force lived, to some

extent, in every single one of my clients. Once I recognized this, I became insatiable

in my understanding of this shadow self, beckoning them back to the same stale old

way of doing things, securing the same glass ceiling just centimeters above their

heads, and little by little, I began to fall in love with it.

It appears there is a conscious part of us that truly wants change, but oftentimes,

there is also an equal or sometimes stronger opposing unconscious force that does

not want change at all. That part of us is so intriguing. It masquerades as reason and

truth, and talks us out of rising to new heights and leaves us bolting, blaming, hiding,

numbing, procrastinating and ultimately, exiting the arena of change in our own lives.

If you are reading this, you are likely sabotaging your life, your dreams, and your

desires in one way or another. My goal is over our time together is to help you

understand what your sabotage is, where it originates, and how to interact with it in

a way that can actually start to accelerate your progress rather than halt it. My

sincere hope is that in the process, you start to fall in love with your own sabotage,

as I have my own. Ready to go for a ride with me?

Let’s start with the basics first.

JUST WHAT IS SELF-SABOTAGE?

Here is how Webster’s defines it: “The act of destroying or damaging something

deliberately so that it does not work correctly.”

Well, that would be well and good, except that a lot of times, we aren’t even aware

we are sabotaging ourselves. So, for our sake, here’s my definition:

The conscious or unconscious act of subverting one’s own desires.

Let’s make it even simpler:

You say you want to fly and yet you are finding ways to crash to the ground just as

you are taking flight, just as you are experiencing the bliss of soaring.

Watching my clients sabotage themselves was a huge mirror for me personally. It

opened my eyes to my own brand of sabotage, how it presented itself throughout

my life and still presents itself to this day, and once I learned the secrets to

overcoming my own sabotage, I was able to lead others in overcoming their own.

Now, with this definition in mind, I want to share one of my most vulnerable brushes

with sabotage with you.

The year was 2008 and I had just landed one of my first Broadway auditions. I was

beyond thrilled and of course, terrified. I mean, this was it. I was starting to play with

the big kids after working toward this goal for the better part of twenty years. I had

recently graduated from Rutgers University with my MFA in Acting and felt like I was

on the incline of a roller coaster ride. I was about to surrender and go for the ride of

my twenty-four-year-old life-time. Life was about to actually begin.

My hair was perfectly straightened, my wrap dress perfectly wrapped, and I walked

into the audition room of a prominent Broadway casting director. I could hear my

heels click underneath me on the hardwood floor as I made my way into the sunlit

studio.

My heart skipped as I made eye contact with the reader, took a deep breath, leapt

and began to lose myself in the work. I felt like I was just about to take off and then

I made the very jolting mistake of glancing at the casting director, who was looking

down at the table instead of up at me. I was thrown as they started shaking their

head and flipped my headshot and resume over to check out my credits. Finally, they

let their head drop into their hands. Panic rose in my chest, my heart plummeted and

I did the worst possible thing an actor can do. I started trying to make them like me.

My accent became more ludicrous, my arms started gesticulating wildly as the

reader’s eyes grew wide in mild shock. Suddenly, I was outside myself, as if

witnessing a pathetic stranger flubbing the opportunity of a lifetime. When I was

excused, I could hear my heels click beneath me as I ran to the closest ice cream

truck I could find.

This wasn’t even the moment of sabotage. Stay with me here.

My representation called a few days later and the news wasn’t good. Casting said I

missed the mark, had no idea what I was doing, and was very, very green, which is

industry lingo for underdeveloped, but all I could hear were the screams of

“imposter!” I full on lost it in Andrew’s Diner on 46th and 7th. My world was rocked

right along with my sense of self, and the pain I felt in that moment would dictate

how I would interact with my artistry and career over the next couple of years.

The hurt didn’t stick around for very long before the blame game began. It wasn’t

my fault. It was the casting director’s fault. It wasn’t my fault; I was sent in for the

wrong project. The crazy entertainment industry didn’t understand me. I had to shift

the blame off of myself because the vulnerability felt too real, too excruciating. I just

wasn’t good enough. I had fooled myself. After all this time of studying, my dreams

would likely never come to fruition. I couldn’t be with those thoughts. I had to escape

them through making it someone else’s fault.

A couple months later, out of the blue and much to my surprise, I was called back in

by the same casting director, for the same part.

They actually wanted to see me again! Logically, I understood that this was another

opportunity to redeem myself, to show them my chops but a strange force came

over me and I turned the audition down. I told my reps that I refused to go in, to

put myself in that situation again with a casting director who made me feel the way

they did. I told myself I was standing up for myself, that this was empowering. They

were a bit shocked, and tried to reason with me. I mean, it was Broadway after all,

but it was no use. My mind was made up and I got what I thought I wanted.

I never auditioned for that casting director again.

Ooof! You feel that? That, my loves, was sabotage at its finest, and the force that

came over me was that of my internal saboteur, and whether or not you realize it,

you have one too.

We all have an internal saboteur.

And our saboteur looks and sounds so much like us that we may believe it is us.

My saboteur had ALL the dirt on me and she knew just how to push my buttons in

a way that could leave me hiding on my couch with wine, a box of cereal and a big,

heavy blanket of blame, self-doubt and resignation.

Underneath all of the many tactics she used, the basic message was the same.

I know who you really are. You can’t fool everyone forever. They will see that you are a

fraud eventually. They will see you are stupid. They will see that you are a loser. It’s just a

matter of time.

My saboteur possessed my kryptonite and she wasn’t afraid to use it if she had to.

So, why does our saboteur use our own kryptonite against us? Why does our

seeming enemy within pull this crap?

It starts with looking at how this kryptonite developed. It starts with looking at why

their ammunition has such an impact on us.

THE SABOTEUR IS BORN IN THE MOMENT OF A

“TINY DEATH”

There are certain moments in life where our whole world changes. Reality quakes

underneath us, the ground opens up and a new (and sometimes tragic) perspective

reveals itself. We have many of these moments in childhood and pubescence when

we are still very much processing and learning about life, how it works and how we

fit into all of it.

A lot of times, these pivotal moments occur when we are simply following our bliss;

going after what makes us happy, loving big and unapologetically, putting ourselves

out there in a big way, or creating something new. Something happens and kicks the

crap out of our heart and suddenly, without warning, everything looks and feels

different.

Oh, and no one gets out of these moments. It is a part of our human experience.

My acting teacher used to call these moments “tiny deaths.”

When I started to trace back, I could vividly recall a moment of a “tiny death” where

all the pain points in my kryptonite converged, causing a big bang. In that moment,

my little bliss-following exposed self was traded in for a protected and armored one.

Let me paint the picture...

When I was nine, I loved to dance in my basement (like a wild woman being stung

by bees) to the soundtrack of Cats. I would dance for hours, uncontrollably spinning

and spinning, often wearing old dance costumes from when I was little that were

way too small. I hadn’t been in a formal dance class since I was around five and I

begged my mother to go the premiere studio in town.

When I started dance classes, I could tell I was much taller and heavier than the other

girls. I was already sprouting little breast mounds while the other girls were tiny,

petite and flat-chested. They all wore Danskin leotards, with tight buns and lip gloss.

I had wild and crazy hair and wore an outfit I thought looked pretty cool. It was an

old cloth pink bathing suit (that was losing its elasticity) over a pair of blue plaid

stretch pants, with black jazz shoes. I hope you took the time to picture that.

One day while stretching behind a group of girls, a girl in front of me looked back,

snickered at me and said in a voice, as if over a megaphone:

“You seriously smell like a sewer.”

My ears immediately started buzzing as time slowed and the color drained from my

face. My brain was drowning. Panic rose in my check as my heart plummeted,

seeming to light my face on fire.

“Did everyone hear that?” I asked myself.

“Stand up, passe de bourres across the floor,” the instructor shouted.

Suddenly, it was my turn, but I was so worried I smelled bad, so overwhelmed, so

embarrassed and flummoxed that I had trouble figuring out what I was doing and

started tripping over myself.

The instructor was annoyed, “Don’t you know your right from your left?”

I could only see white because the truth was, under pressure, I couldn’t remember

my right from my left. I tried to hold my hands up to remind myself but was so

panicked, I couldn’t remember which way the L was supposed to face.

“No, your OTHER left,” the teacher barked. Laughter followed. I ran out of the dance

studio.

In that moment of extreme vulnerability and heart-ache, a part of me splintered off

and became my protector. My saboteur was born and her words were clear.

NEVER let anyone see your weaknesses again. Deep down, you are a loser and imposter.

Keep it hidden or no one will like you.

And this was the same saboteur who showed up after that Broadway audition,

refusing to go in again, transporting me back to that dance studio, reminding me

what happens when I dare to follow my bliss, when I dare to fly too high.

And she kept popping up.

Years later, a new dream was born. I found myself finding success on the path of a

health coach and loving it. I started dreaming about all of the things I could do and

the impact I could have. I was starting to feel pretty damn powerful. My business

was growing and huge opportunities were opening up for me.

And the strangest thing happened….

I started smoking again.

I hadn’t smoked in years. Now, social smoking may seem like a small thing but as a

health coach (come on now), it was playing into my saboteur’s hands beautifully. She

reminded me of my true nature: reminded me that I was an imposter and a fraud,

that people would reject me if they saw the “real” me.

Luckily, I recognized this pretty quickly and met with my mentor to try to figure out

how I could silence this nasty, powerful presence.

In a session with her, I described how much I despised this part of myself. She

destroyed everything. She made me do things I really didn’t want to do. How could

I destroy her? I was primed and ready for battle.

Her mouth twisted into a smile as she let out a big laugh and looked me squarely in

the face.

“Oh, you can’t kill that part of yourself. She’s staying for good. That, my friend, is the

part of you that needs your love and acceptance the most, and she is not going to

shut up until she gets it.”

I sat for a moment, dumbfounded, trying to grasp what she had just revealed.

And there it was…

SABOTAGE IS SELF-LOVE IN DISGUISE

I began to see that my saboteur and that nine-year-old were the same; that my

saboteur was merely the armored second skin of my most fearful, most exposed,

most freaked out nine-year-old and her job is a noble one; to do or say ANYTHING

that will keep that girl out of the proverbial dance studio.

And I had been wrestling and attempting to silence my saboteur when she was just

trying to protect me from feeling like she did that day; like the smelly girl wearing the

wrong clothes who was pretending to know her right from her left.

When it comes down to it, people, including myself, sabotage for one of three of

reasons:

1. FEAR OF OUR OWN TRUTH

We say we want something but we don’t actually want it. The authentic desire is not

there. Maybe it is an old dream that is outdated, or maybe we are telling ourselves

we want something because our mother wanted that for us, our society has told us

we should want that, or we are afraid to disappoint our acting teacher from high

school. We wind up sacrificing our truth because we are too afraid to go against the

grain, the status quo, to look bad, or of confrontation. This is also a sister reason to

#2 and #3. You will see why. Being honest is too scary, so we just keep lying to

ourselves and others when are unconscious intention is actually a positive one, to

set fire to a path that is no longer aligned. We don’t start to fly because we don’t

want to fly that way in the first place.

2. FEAR OF CHANGE (AKA FEAR OF PAST PAIN)

Let’s say we really do want what we say we want. Well, there are a lot of potential

implications of attaining that. Life could change, circumstances could change, we may

not be able to control or cope with things in the same way.

Our minds cannot perceive of a reality that hasn’t previously existed for us. It is like

a black hole, which to our thinking mind is like death, so it tries to predict what is

possible through the lens of the past.

We attempt to cope with the future by looking for all the potential problems and

trying to avoid them. But we can never cope with the future because it is nothing

more than a mind projection. It simply hasn’t happened yet and may look nothing

like the past. So, our projections almost always stem from past experiences. Our

actions are then born out of attempting to avoid past pain in a future that doesn’t

exist yet. The problem here is that our genius lies in the present moment, not in

trying to control circumstances that aren’t yet real. We can only EVER cope with the

present moment as it reveals itself.

When it comes down to it, fear of change is actually more about fear of pain we have

already experienced and we get something out of our own sabotage. We get to feel

safe and at home, even if feeling safe at home totally sucks.

3. FEAR OF LOSING PEOPLE (OR RELATIONSHIPS CHANGING)

This type of sabotage gets right to the root of our most primal instincts to fit in, to be validated and to seek love, lest we be left alone to fend for ourselves. As social animals, when we are left on our own, our emotional and physical survival can feel threatened.

I hear of this quite often when clients start to actually succeed. They may start getting comments from family or friends that threaten or diminish the stand they have made for their health and happiness.

Things like…

“Are you going to go anorexic on me?” (when the person is a totally healthy weight)

“If you stop drinking as much, what the hell are we going to do together?”

“You’re fine the way you are. I don’t want you to change.”

“Who do you think you are now?”

“You are so boooooring now.”

“I liked you better before.”

“You’re all weird since you started doing x,y,z.”

When we look at the reasons someone might say this, it’s not hard to see that it typically has to do with their own fear. They may fear losing that person as they change. They may fear how that person’s success may reflect on their own and make them question themselves in an uncomfortable way. So, they may invalidate the person succeeding to lessen that feeling of discomfort or failure, and to cover up their own avoidance of taking responsibility in their lives. Without the courage to risk and fail, they may even hope their friend fails.

Another possibility is that the person trying to succeed may be creating a story that isn’t actually there. They could be taking someone’s comments to MEAN they are going to be rejected even when that was not intended, especially if part of the way they bond with one another is through the activity that is now changing, like drinking or eating. What if my hubby and I can’t eat cookies in bed together anymore? What if my best friend and I can’t bond over what a mess our work lives are anymore?

Bring on the sabotage! Security, safety, belonging and acceptance have now been threatened (whether it was intended or not). BRING ON the sugar! Bring on the booze! Screw the gym! They may start slacking off at work and sleeping in. They are willing to trade in their vision and their own happiness to ensure safety in their relationships.

There is an obviously a problem here because they wind up making themselves smaller, break their commitments to themselves and the more they do it, the more

they lose respect for themselves, the less they trust themselves, and the easier it becomes to default to the stories they have about themselves (like being a fraud, lazy, a loser, a hack). Then, they experience that stuck feeling over and over again and have trouble breaking free from the vicious circle.

In our fear of losing someone, we don’t consider that our relationships will change anyway.

People are constantly shifting and changing, and we are only one part of the relationship. Even if we stayed exactly the same and our life circumstances never shifted, others would change. No amount of minimizing our truth or power is going to guarantee someone sticking around.

We can’t control how others feel about the changes we are making, or how we are growing. That is their business. And it’s not their job to approve of us, it is ours. Staying in our own business means being true to ourselves, stepping into our own power and authenticity. If a relationship is truly important to us, it also means taking responsibility for being as compassionate and communicative as possible to help keep our relationships alive as they grow and change, recognizing that this may come with some tough and vulnerable conversations. Some relationships will fall away, and new ones will form. That is part of the fundamental shifting and changing seasons of life, and cannot be halted by sabotaging our desires.

SO, HOW DO WE OVERCOME THIS SABOTAGE?

First, we must put down our weapon. Our saboteur, contrary to popular belief, is not the enemy within.

Maybe your saboteur is the twenty-year-old self who was just cheated on for the first time, or whose best friends turned on them in middle school and is lost in extreme isolation and confusion, or a self that gave their dream all they had only to have a crushing disappointment.

Whatever moment that saboteur is born out of, its efforts are always well intentioned. It feels it has to protect you. It may try a lot of different tactics; seducing you into eating the chocolate because you deserve it, belittling you into resignation and cynicism, sweet-talking you into a cigarette, or verbally slamming you into a wall if need be. Its tactics will escalate if you ignore it, and its intention is always the same, to keep you out of the arena of new potential pain. Your concerned saboteur thinks it is saving your life, and the more you ignore it or tell it to shut up, the more it thinks it needs to set up an intervention, the more extreme the voice becomes, the crueler the stories become.

“What we resist persists.”

- Carl Jung

That is why, instead of resisting or shoving our saboteur down, instead of telling it to shut up, we have to accept and invite it into the conversation and meet them where they are instead (at the age they are). They have a different level of awareness than our current self, and it is our job to walk back to meet them, not try to drag them down the road. We need to seek to understand our saboteur’s wounds and how the current circumstance is triggering that wound.

Overcoming your saboteur isn’t about overcoming them at all. It is rather about making peace with them.

We need to learn how to live alongside our saboteur, and that usually looks like befriending it. Regardless of how much we would like it to, our past pain is not going away. It is ours for good. But we don’t need to identify our pain as BEING us, but rather a part of a complicated and beautiful whole.

So, how can you start to apply this in your everyday life?

1. START TO RECOGNIZE HOW AND WHEN YOUR SABOTEUR POPS UP. WHAT IS THEIR USUAL M.O.?

Anytime your thoughts and feelings urge you out of alignment toward your deep

desires, it is a really reliable sign that your saboteur’s pain has been activated, and

they are loading up on stories that justify inaction and stuckness. Yes, they are a part

of you, a functional strategy developed by the mind to keep you swimming in circles

in the resistance pond instead of toward the larger ocean of change but they are not

the entirety of you. Just because they sound like you doesn’t mean they are you.

And their words may FEEL true:

“Just one potato chip…”

“Maybe you don’t want this after all.”

“It would be so much easier to just stay at home instead of going to the gym. Oooh,

a new episode of “Real Housewives” is on!”

“Why bother, no one cares anyway.”

Realize that any time you are on a new threshold, this saboteur will become

electrified and emerge and try to hijack your limbic system. It is a given.

Your saboteur is your resistance to change personified, and once you get past the

first layer of defense, they are so very vulnerable. Keep track of how your sabotage

manifests so you can start to see the patterns of how they hold you back.

2. LOOK AT THEM AND SAY HELLO

When you notice you are about to engage in a sabotaging behavior, take a moment.

Tarah Brach (an amazing Buddhist therapist, look her up) calls this the sacred pause.

In this sacred pause, you have the opportunity to choose to step away from the

potential behavior and touch base with yourself. If you can, take ten deep breaths,

put your hand on your heart and breathe into it, allowing yourself to breath in

whatever you are feeling without resistance.

Allow yourself to visualize the part of you that is deathly afraid to change because

they are convinced it will be more of the same pain. Let them manifest before you

without judgment.

When I saw my saboteur, she was intimidating and angry, and I could swear her eyes

were glowing red but when I acknowledged her and stepped toward her, this

powerful saboteur started to crumble under my gaze into a heap outside of that

dance studio. Her eyes were actually red, but from crying and I could see her pink

bathing suit over a tiny, pubescent belly. I could see her blue plaid stretch pants

inching up her calves, and the wayward curls framing her face. She became the

smelly nine-year old who had just experienced humiliation for the first time. Seeing

who she really was allowed me to empathize with her, and empathy is your way into

a partnership with your saboteur.

When you look past their defenses, you may be able to pinpoint the moment of your past they are living in, and the trauma they have just experienced.

3. ASK THEM WHAT THEY NEED FROM YOU (SHORT OF CRASHING DOWN) AND GIVE THEM WHAT THEY ARE ASKING FOR

Your saboteur has needs, and stepping into a productive relationship with that saboteur means that you acknowledge those needs and do your best to commit in a way that still keeps you in flight. After all, you are asking your saboteur to step up

for you, to trust you as they step into a really scary place so that you can fulfill your desires. This may require that you listen to their requests as well.

Ask simply, “What can I do for you? What do you need from me to feel safe?”

When I communicated with my saboteur, that nine-year-old was clear. I need YOU to do the work so I KNOW there is nothing wrong with me. I need you to believe it so that I can believe it. I need you to have my back if I get hurt like that again and take care of me.

What did this translate to in practical terms?

I committed to the murkier work of self-investigation to let go of old ideas and stories. For some, this could look like therapy. For others, it is yoga, meditation, a vision quest, travel, spiritual investigation. For me, it was hiring a coach that helped me to shift my entire perspective on myself and my past.

This looked like building trust with myself so that I knew I was always keeping integrity with my own values and desires. Others could say what they wanted (including that I was a smelly fraud), but what mattered is that I was being true to myself. And this required committing to treating my body right with healthy food, exercise and self-care. This required paying attention to when I betrayed my own ethics or stepped out of alignment with my desires, and re-committing to them. This required that I follow through on a whole new level in my life. This required being kind to myself when I wasn’t perfect, or when I didn’t know the answer. This required a commitment to continued growth on a mind, body and soul level because it required that I forgive myself, that I start to forgive others and that I operate from the most loving place that I can muster on any given day.

When it comes down to it, what my vulnerable self-needed was for me to take the reins of my own power and show her time and time again that she could trust me with them, that if I fell, there was enough self-love there to lift me back up again, that I wouldn’t die.

What your saboteur needs from you may look like a lot of things, but what it usually comes down to is that your saboteur needs a commitment to your healing them, to your allowing them on the journey without judgment or condemnation and to carry them when they are beaten up.

Remind them that they aren’t getting fired from their position.

That doesn’t mean that you put them in charge, however.

No, it is okay to spend some time with your saboteur but it might not be helpful to put a nine-year old or the self that just got her heart-broken or the self that needs to throw a tantrum in charge of the GPS.

Oftentimes, you may have to take the exact opposite action they request you to take.

They say, “This doesn’t matter, eat the Cheetos.” Tie up your sneakers and walk out the door to the gym.

They say, “You won’t get this job anyway, why bother preparing?”, you prepare the HELL out of that audition or interview. And you can pat them on the back while you are doing it, because their voice let you know exactly what steps to take.

When I learned what was really going on, I suddenly fell in love with my saboteur,

with the part of me that is hurt, alone and scared.

I now see self-sabotage as an INCREDIBLE opportunity toward breaking ourselves

open into deeper truth and understanding of our beautiful, complicated selves. I see

our saboteur as the gate-keeper to a deeper truth, and the challenges they present

as a path back to ourselves.

When our awareness grows, so does our potential. Acquainting ourselves with the

intention behind the force of sabotage is a glorious process toward freedom. When

we put all the puzzle pieces together from a place of compassion and acceptance, it

can lead to profound acceleration toward our highest visions.

MY TEDX

If this e-book really jived with you, take a moment to check out my TedX talk on this

very subject. And if your saboteur tells you “Maybe later,” click on this link right about

now. Remember, take the counter-intuitive action!

Seek not to destroy your saboteur, but rather to understand them. Because when

you step into a partnership, even though you may be the one to initiate flight, they

will be the one to keep you flying.