How To Stop Self-Sabotaging Your Love Life

Kevin Anthony 0:11
Welcome to the Love Lab podcast a safe place to get real about sex. Whether you’re a man, a woman single, or a couple, this is the show for you.

Céline Remy 0:20
We are your hosts Kevin Anthony and Céline Remy and we are here to guide you to go from good to amazing in the bedroom and beyond.

Kevin Anthony 0:27
All right, welcome back to the Love Lab podcast. This is episode 208. And it is titled How to Stop self-sabotaging your love life. Okay, before we get started in the show, I just have to tell you how ironic this episode is because we were supposed to have a special guest on to help talk about this subject.

Kevin Anthony 0:48
However, this particular guest self-sabotaged herself three times by canceling multiple times on us for a variety of different excuses. And she’s not here. And it’s funny because self-sabotaging is something that we see in the work that we do all the time, but we usually see it with our clients.

Kevin Anthony 1:11
But sometimes we do see it with other people in other parts of the business, whether it’s you know, somebody that wants to come on the show here or somebody that we’re doing business with in some other fashion, we see these patterns of self-sabotage over and over and over again.

Kevin Anthony 1:28
So today, we’re really specifically going to be talking about you know, self-sabotaging your love life. But this information will apply no matter what area of your life, you’re self-sabotaging. So all of that is really about self-sabotaging patterns.

Kevin Anthony 1:43
And then, of course, we’ll give examples as we go about how people tend to do this in their relationships, why it’s a problem, what you can do about it, how to recognize it, and how you can fix it.

Kevin Anthony 1:54
I can almost guarantee you that there’s a significant number of people listening to this right now, who are currently actively involved in self-sabotaging their relationship, and they are not aware of it. So if that’s you, make sure that you listen, do not tune out because you think, Oh, I don’t do that. Listen to the whole thing and then decide whether or not you tend to do these things because I’m willing to bet yeah, do

Céline Remy 2:20
Do you know how you know if you are self-sabotaging? If you’re currently in a relationship, and you’re not really happy, and there are things you want to change, and you complain about things, you’re probably having a pattern of self-sabotaging or you or your partner.

Céline Remy 2:37
And it’s a sneaky one because we self-sabotage all the time. And we’ll talk about why we’ll talk about it. Why, but we are usually not really aware of that. That’s the tricky part, the awareness

Kevin Anthony 2:49
thing, I can’t even tell you how many people we’ve sat there and go, Wow, that is massive self-sabotage. And they’re completely oblivious in a few cases. I mean, you know, obviously, when we’re working with clients, we have to point it out.

Kevin Anthony 3:04
But even with friends and a few cases, you’re like, you know, do I really want to go there with this person, like, I want to help them because they’re a friend. But you know how it is when you’re a coach, you don’t want to end up coaching all your friends because they just get annoyed with you.

Kevin Anthony 3:18
But we’ve had to point it out a few times. And they were like, What? What are you I don’t do that? What are you talking about?

Céline Remy 3:27
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Céline Remy 3:43
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Kevin Anthony 3:55
All right, so first, we got to start by explaining what we mean by self-sabotage.

Céline Remy 4:01
That’s a good place to start.

Kevin Anthony 4:02
Yeah. Okay, so you know, it may seem surprising that some people undermine their own good and they undermine their own intentions and their goals.

Kevin Anthony 4:15
And that’s basically what we’re talking about here when people do things, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that undermines what it is they say they really want.

Céline Remy 4:25
You know, you see it very well. Come January first, everybody’s their good intention for the new year and all their resolutions and they’re like, This is it. I am no longer eating cookies.

Céline Remy 4:37
I am exercising three times a week, or I am getting the relationship I want whatever it is they want. It usually lasts about three weeks, and then they’re back.

Kevin Anthony 4:49
You know, I used to work in the health and fitness industry for a number of years including managing a health club and managing wealth the whole club really but part of As part of that, the personal training department, and I can honestly tell you that January and February would be insane off the charts, busy, fantastic sales not only for memberships but for personal training services.

Kevin Anthony 5:18
And once February was done, would implode, I would say January, by far the busiest most people didn’t even make it past January. But, you know, like you’d see the gym yet, you couldn’t even get on a piece of machinery in January. By February, it was busy, but it was already better. And by March, it was back to normal.

Céline Remy 5:40
So why do we self-sabotage? And why would we hinder our own success? Because don’t we just want what’s best for us? And we do. And sometimes we don’t, it’s usually unconscious. So sometimes it’s conscious.

Céline Remy 5:55
Sometimes it’s unconscious, and we commit those acts of self-sabotage. Sometimes it comes from childhood. It could be pre-your relationships. And it could be low self-esteem, it could be problems with cognitive dissonance.

Kevin Anthony 6:13
Well, that’s a big one these days.

Céline Remy 6:17
You say one thing, and then you do another thing. And you don’t really understand that you’re not in alignment. But what’s really fascinating though, about that is that it’s usually something that this pattern happened because of neurological changing changes and wiring in our brain.

Kevin Anthony 6:42
But we’ll talk more about that don’t get caught into thinking well, yes, of course, that’s just my brain is rewired. Right, the reason your brain is rewired wrong is that you’ve wired it that way. Yeah, well,

Céline Remy 6:53
you had either something happened to you, or an experience that created an emotion, an emotion that was strong enough that you decided that you wanted to stay safe, in order to stay safe, you needed to do a certain behavior, because the unknown is unsafe.

Céline Remy 7:15
So you’d rather stay safe, stay in what you know, even if it sucks, rather than step outside, because it’s is unknown, and you don’t know what to expect.

Céline Remy 7:27
And this neurological wiring of the brain, you can go and analyze it from the same point of view that you’ve created it, you can go to therapy, and you can, you know, you’re feeling depressed, you’re feeling angry, and you’re going to analyze what’s wrong with me, and I’m going to look at this, the more you do that, the worse your brain becomes.

Céline Remy 7:49
you actually have to step out of the energy and the emotion that created it, and you have to have an emotion that is equal to the energy of that emotion. But that’s the opposite in order to create a positive change.

Kevin Anthony 8:06
Yeah, so you know, what are we really saying here is that if you keep firing the same emotions, you are increasing, like think of a strands of a wire, right? The first time you fire that emotion, you create one strand and the next time another strand, and the next thing you know, you have one of those giant cables that hold bridges up, like that’s how thick and solid that connection is, right?

Kevin Anthony 8:29
So really just Repetition Repetition, repetition of a negative pattern basically cut that deep groove into your brain and keeps you doing the same thing now. Okay, having said all of that, let’s get back to self-sabotaging patterns in relationships. So we have some common patterns that you can look for.

Kevin Anthony 8:51
And then after that, we have how you can recognize that you’re actually self-sabotaging. So they’re similar yet they’re different, right? That’s why I’m introducing them both at the same time, right. So there are some common patterns in your relationship that you can look for.

Kevin Anthony 9:05
But there are also some things that aren’t necessarily relationship related. That are also clues that you tend to self-sabotage.

Céline Remy 9:15
So criticizing is big self-sabotage. You know, what’s interesting about criticizing, and I’m going to put maybe the first three together is this criticizing, blaming, and gaslighting. When you think about these behaviors, you are trying to get something from the other person when you are doing those.

Céline Remy 9:39
Now, it’s not a healthy way to get energy from the person. But that’s all you know. So you know that if you poke at the person if you criticize if you blame if you’re gaslight, you’re gonna get a reaction from that person. Now, usually, in a relationship, we managed to match ourselves with somebody that is perfectly smooth To respond to our buttons and our hotspots.

Céline Remy 10:03
And so that usually means that if you’re pushing if you’re poking the other person’s going to react a certain way. And you are into this codependent relationship and reactionary behavior that self-sabotage is.

Kevin Anthony 10:20
So people might be wondering, how is this really self-sabotaging, right? Well, because you want a certain outcome, right? And you think that by criticizing blaming and gaslighting, you’re going to get that person to achieve that outcome. So

Céline Remy 10:37
pick up your socks. He’s such as such are like a lazy person, and you left them on the floor

Kevin Anthony 10:43
right so that that criticism there is intended supposedly to get the person to pick up the socks. The problem is all the other person gets on the other side is fucking bitch I’m not only am I going to leave my socks, but I’m also gonna leave three pairs of socks there because you know what fucker? Right?

Kevin Anthony 11:03
This is what tends to happen. So here you go criticizing blaming gaslighting, trying to create a certain response in the person, then you often end up creating the opposite response that you’re trying to create.

Céline Remy 11:15
I don’t know about you, but criticism has never ever created change for me positive in a relationship

Kevin Anthony 11:20
doesn’t create change for anybody. No, but

Céline Remy 11:23
that’s usually the model we have. Because if you think about it, that’s how your parents behaved with you. They didn’t tell you how well, that’s really funny, because we have a young nephew, and he just turned one year old. And I’m witnessing my brother and his girlfriend, like raising this child. And they are amazing.

Céline Remy 11:44
They’re like constantly saying, he’s so cute, he’s adorable. And they send us photos, and I’m constantly praising him and seeing all these really positive, beautiful things. And, and I was like laughing about this because I think it’s amazing. But I’m waiting for the moment when this is going to change.

Céline Remy 12:06
Because usually that’s how we are when we have children, like super young, and people like oh, my gosh, you took one step and you fell on your butt Good job, you know, and they’re like, This is amazing.

Céline Remy 12:16
That comes a time in life where like, what, you only took one step you didn’t even try for two steps. I can’t believe I didn’t raise you better.

Kevin Anthony 12:26
You so there is an old school way of teaching that is based on criticism, which is you just pick out all the things that the student is doing wrong over and over and over again. And that’s supposed to motivate them to do it. Right. You really see this in traditional martial arts.

Kevin Anthony 12:45
You know, I like to talk about things that I have experience in, right. And I trained in traditional martial arts for many years. And this is the way that they traditionally teach. You could train for five years. And the only way you ever knew that you did something right.

Kevin Anthony 13:02
Was it just didn’t say anything at all. Right? So you get constantly No, wrong. No, that’s wrong. No, no, do it this way wrong, right? And then one day you do it, and they just don’t say anything. And you’re like, Yes, I think I think I did it right. I don’t know, they didn’t tell me but so it’s an old-school way of doing things which are focusing on criticism.

Kevin Anthony 13:24
Of course, we’ve done research on this. And we found that people are far more motivated by positivity than they are by negativity. Shocking. You mean if you tell the student he did something right and he did a good job, he’ll be more motivated to reproduce it than if you constantly criticize him. And with the partner, child exact thing with your partner

Céline Remy 13:47
over behaviors are over talking.

Kevin Anthony 13:52
One of my biggest pet peeves over talking not just in relationships, but in business meetings, too. I am on the board of two nonprofits totally volunteer, by the way, and there’s one of them where they constantly talk over each other. It is the most frustrating thing.

Kevin Anthony 14:13
You have 15 people on a board and they’re constantly talking over each other. You want to strangle them at one point I said look, I’m gonna get a talking stick and you don’t open your damn mouth unless you’re holding that stick. Man, that one is rough.

Céline Remy 14:30
That’s so good. That’s ghosting. Ghosting is really kind of the silent treatment especially in a relationship because that’s how I see ghosting. Yeah,

Kevin Anthony 14:39
yes. When you’re physically proximate to somebody. Ghosting is considered the silent treatment. When you’re distant it’s called I’m ignoring your text messages.

Céline Remy 14:53
Number one is infidelity. That’s a huge self-sabotage one because you know that going in you know Oh, that this is not the right thing to do.

Kevin Anthony 15:02
Well, the problem with this one is, is that something’s not right in your relationships. But rather than try to fix it, you just go into the infidelity part, which not only doesn’t fix the problem, but if anybody starts to get a clue that there has been infidelity, you’re going to make that problem 100 times worse, right? So that’s majorly self-sabotaging.

Céline Remy 15:25
Number one is if you experience addictive compulsive behaviors, in a relationship that can show up with our porn, that can show up with a certain type of sex or fantasies, it could show up with, I mean, it could show up with food and gambling and things like that.

Céline Remy 15:43
But really, in the relationship, the way I’ve seen it with couples that we’ve worked with is usually around the realm of particular, fantasies, behavior, or porn.

Kevin Anthony 15:55
Yeah, yeah, the porn is a tough one. Because, you know, oh, yeah, I’m going to use porn to get in the mood, or, you know, to spice things up. But compulsive and excessive use of porn actually starts to create problems.

Kevin Anthony 16:09
because then suddenly, real life is not as exciting as porn, then guys started having trouble getting aroused, and they started having trouble maintaining erections, they will often masturbate very quickly to porn, which will then lead them to be premature ejaculators.

Kevin Anthony 16:25
All of those things will then negatively affect the relationship. And so you can see how that can be self-sabotage.

Céline Remy 16:31
And you know, what’s interesting, too, is that there have been many studies, and different people talk about how, when you do consume porn regularly, it can change a bit, your brain and your dopamine receptors.

Céline Remy 16:47
In that, again, the self-sabotage we’ve been talking about has something to do with your neurological wiring. So anything that is going to change your neurochemistry, how you behave, the hormones, the neurotransmitters, and all of these good things.

Kevin Anthony 17:02
Yeah, so in this case, it’s changing them in a negative way. And that’s the problem with pretty much all of these patterns that we’re talking about.

Céline Remy 17:12
And let’s talk about the few other ones that you could patterns, you know, having a relationship. codependency is a big one. Jealousy projected jealousy is huge, to stems from insecurity, low self-esteem, and then withholding sex and touch.

Céline Remy 17:31
And this is huge for relationships. Because if you are in a monogamous relationship, that you’ve committed, that you are only going to be with one another, and then you are taking away something from your partner that they cannot get anywhere else, that is not going to work well, in the long

Kevin Anthony 17:49
run. Yeah, so all of these things that we’ve talked about, are patterns that we tend to see with couples that create the opposite outcome of what they want because every couple will tell you, I want more connection, more love, more sex, you know, just a better relationship all around.

Kevin Anthony 18:09
And yet you watch them do these patterns over and over again. And every one of these patterns creates the opposite thing that they say they’re trying to get. And so that’s why it’s important to know what some of these sounds.

Kevin Anthony 18:21
And these, by the way, are not the only patterns, there are more. These were just the ones that can do the top of our heads, as we were sitting here thinking about common patterns that we see when we work with clients.

Céline Remy 18:32
And I want to point out that if you think the solution is just to change partner, where you go wrong,

Kevin Anthony 18:39
wherever you go, there you are, the behavior

Céline Remy 18:43
is the same. So unless you change yourself, your behavior, your self-esteem, and all of these things, which we’ll talk about in just a few minutes, then nothing else is going to change. It’s just going to recreate the same thing.

Kevin Anthony 18:54
Yeah. And you know, it’s so. So I guess I want to say hysterical about this is when you work when you do coaching, right? And you’re working with somebody, and you start to hear what’s going on in their relationship.

Kevin Anthony 19:09
Once you start to get a sense that this might be a pattern that they’re repeating, then you start to dig a little deeper, and then you start asking questions about past relationships. And then more details come out and more details come out. And what is absolutely hysterical.

Kevin Anthony 19:25
Sometimes it’s like, you see it almost instantly, you know what’s happening, and then you ask them these questions, and they’re like, oh, he, you know, I didn’t even realize that that did the same thing. And that one, too, it was just so funny that people don’t recognize it. It’s that whole, you know, wherever you are, there you go.

Kevin Anthony 19:47
In other words, this is a pattern that you are doing in your relationship. You likely did that same pattern in previous relationships. However, almost nobody ever says. Yeah, I know. It’s a pattern I didn’t My last relationship you’re like Nobody says that right? They all go, oh, well, now that you pointed out to me, I see it.

Céline Remy 20:07
That’s when things can start to change. But before we go into how to start changing this, let’s just look at recognizing if you are self-sabotaging, so we gave you some behaviors earlier, but here, they’re more like things, then they’re more subtle, because, you know, you may not be self-sabotaging in your relationship.

Céline Remy 20:26
But maybe you’re self-sabotaging in your relationship with money. Maybe you’re self-sabotaging in your work. It’s all about relationships. It’s a relationship with work with money with your partner. But there might be areas where you do it better than others.

Kevin Anthony 20:43
Yeah, so this list, you know, it’s funny, I sat down to write this list, and I was like, Oh, this is gonna be easy. Like, if we see so many of these, you know? And then like, I thought of a couple of them. And I was like, I just started drawing a blank. I’m like, why am I not remembering these?

Kevin Anthony 20:58
So then I did a little research. And as soon as I saw, like, everything that’s on this list, it was just like, Oh, my God, like all these examples of people I know, just started flooding into my head, like, oh, my god, yeah. Remember?

Kevin Anthony 21:09
So and so he was doing that. And remember her she does this run on a regular, and it was just like, Oh, my God. Yeah. So these are huge. And they are absolutely real. I have seen them. So many times,

Céline Remy 21:20
number one self doubts that repeatedly get in the way. I think self-doubt usually comes from not being good enough. Not believing in yourself. And so that’s definitely a pattern of self-sabotage.

Kevin Anthony 21:34
Yeah. So so how does self-doubt get in there? Well, self-doubt gets in there when somebody says like, it will just take something outside of the relationship. But actually, you know what, let’s take something inside of a relationship.

Kevin Anthony 21:47
You know, you start communicating with somebody on online dating, and you’re really excited about it. And then you start going, Wow. You know, she would say she couldn’t like a guy like me, I was looking through her photos, and all her guys are more buff than I am or younger than I am or nasty.

Kevin Anthony 22:03
You know what, you know, I’m not even going to message her back. Boom, right there self doubt getting in the way and causing you to self-sabotage, what potentially could have been a great connection.

Céline Remy 22:14
Number two, you focus too much on the negative. Most people are wired 80%, negative 20%. positive, happy people have that measure reversed. 20% negative and 80%. Positive. Now are happy people.

Céline Remy 22:28
Were they born that way? Or is it by choice? And by repeated behaviors that they became that way? I think it’s number two, but as well?

Kevin Anthony 22:37
Well, it is because here’s what science tells us. All right. So if you’re one of those people, like if you’re sitting there going, oh, yeah, you’re right, I do tend to focus on the negative shit. Why do I do that? nature, nature is why you do that because we are literally wired to figure out what is going on.

Kevin Anthony 22:52
That’s wrong out of self-survival. That’s why we do it. If we’re looking out across the plains, right. And we see beautiful, you know, fields of grasses and, and a beautiful lake and Oh, great. There’s fresh water and I’m thirsty. That’s what I need. But then there’s a lion there, the only thing you focus on is the lion because you’re like, Oh, crap, there’s a lion.

Kevin Anthony 23:17
If I tried to get water, I’m going to get eaten, like we are wired to pick out the things that are negative. Now, are we a victim of that? Absolutely not. Because as we know, 20% of people have figured out how to reverse it, and we can reverse it.

Céline Remy 23:32
Okay, number three, you frequently procrastinate. I see that one a lot working with clients. So they want to have a chance, and they hire one of us or both of us to work with them. And through the process of coaching.

Céline Remy 23:48
They receive different assignments or more things to do, you know, to create change. And sometimes, and you know, that we try, we call them home play because they’re usually fun. I mean, how often do you get an assignment to masturbate?

Kevin Anthony 24:06
Go play with yourself and have a great orgasm. I mean, how hard is that? Well,

Céline Remy 24:10
believe it or not, we’ve had several clients where it took multiple weeks and several coaching sessions, before they finally decided to get into it and do it. And then we’re like, oh, I learned so much from the experience. You’re like,

Céline Remy 24:25
yes. This is why we are coaching you and telling you to do this.

Kevin Anthony 24:31
You see this in a live if there are any therapists listening, I’m sure you see this all the time, too, right? You give fantastic advice to somebody and say, here’s a new thing that you need to start doing.

Kevin Anthony 24:42
And they come back week after week after week. And you check in with them. How’s it going? Oh, well, I was going to do it. But then you know, this thing came up and then that thinking um, but I’m gonna get to it right?

Kevin Anthony 24:55
Procrastination in relationships shows up in all kinds of ways. is like not doing the work that you need to do, whether it’s doing the work your coaches give you, or other types of things, it could be not having the conversations that you know you need to have in your relationship.

Kevin Anthony 25:12
You know, something’s wrong, you know, you need to talk about it, but you keep putting it off, putting it off, putting it off, right? fixing those physical things that are going wrong with your body, you know, you need to do it, but you keep putting it off, right? So procrastination is huge.

Céline Remy 25:27
Number four, you are always disorganized, and disorganization can prevent you from getting anywhere. You know,

Kevin Anthony 25:35
here’s the interesting thing about disorganization is okay, obviously if you’re disorganized, it’s really hard to achieve any sort of goal that you’ve put out, right? But the thing about being disorganized is it’s easy to fix. It’s really easy to fix, even if you’re terrible at organizing things.

Kevin Anthony 25:52
Because some people are like really great at organizing things. Like you put somebody who does, like professional organizing, you know, in your mess of a room or closet for a day, and you come back and you’re like, holy crap, like, this is amazing, right?

Kevin Anthony 26:07
How did you do that? So, the thing is, even if you’re not that person, and you’re not good at it, you can always hire people to simply organize things for you. Now, if you’ve ever run a business on your own, you know how important systems are, you have to have systems in place, you cannot run a successful business without having systems like, here’s how we do things.

Kevin Anthony 26:27
ABCD rather than trying to recreate the wheel every time you have to do the same task, you’ll never get anywhere, right? So what’s interesting is that people often use being disorganized as an excuse for why they’re not getting the things done in their relationship or in their life that they need to get done.

Kevin Anthony 26:42
Because I’m just going to do that. But then I couldn’t find the thing. And then the whatever. This is the easiest one probably of all of these if you don’t know how to get organized, just hire somebody to help you organize your life.

Céline Remy 26:54
Go on YouTube and watch the shows if you can afford to hire somebody. Right? This glass of inspiration. I love the shows. Number five, you think you are a fraud?

Kevin Anthony 27:05
Yeah, this one, this one is it’s similar to the self-doubt thing, but it just shows up a little bit differently. You’ll often see people like, I can’t keep this up in the relationship, I’m not really that person I pretended to be and you just find ways to bow out and not show up the way you should be showing up.

Kevin Anthony 27:29
You know, I mean, obviously, if you went out there and you really represented yourself as somebody other than who you are, then maybe you are a fraud. But other than that, if you didn’t do that, then most likely to a human being. Yeah. And it’s just self-doubt creeping in again.

Céline Remy 27:47
Yeah. Oh, that’s when it’s really huge. Number six, you’re always making excuses. Even though this may seem real, you couldn’t do this because your boss said that, or you tried to get to the appointment, but your car broke down, or it was time for your coaching.

Céline Remy 28:03
And well, you decided to not send your son to summer camp because he was a little tired. So then you can’t show up for your session. I mean,

Kevin Anthony 28:12
here’s the thing that gets me about this one. So I had to write even though they seem real, because every time this happens, the person will swear up and down to you that every one of these excuses isn’t really things that happen. Now, here’s the thing.

Kevin Anthony 28:27
Sometimes they aren’t, sometimes they aren’t. They’re really just made-up bullshit. But sometimes they really are real things. And so the person gets stuck in this trap of thinking, but they’re real things like how could I have avoided that right? Well, here you go. Yeah, the car broke down. That was a real thing.

Kevin Anthony 28:45
But why did the car break down? The car broke down because you procrastinated you knew there was something wrong with it, you could hear the grinding, clicking banging whatever it is noise and you didn’t take it to the mechanic for the last four weeks even though you knew something was wrong with it.

Kevin Anthony 29:01
Why didn’t you do that? Right? And that’s just one example is people think but it’s a real thing. My so and so really did do this or that’s really happened or blah blah blah, okay.

Kevin Anthony 29:14
But what did you do to create those other situations? And that’s the thing is people will literally self-sabotage their car as a way of self-sabotaging getting to that date on time, right, but that’s not their fault, but it’s not their fault, but you can see how you get layers of self-sabotage.

Kevin Anthony 29:33
Right? I self sabotage the car, which self sabotage the date, which self-sabotages a potential relationship which then self-sabotages my happiness in the future, right like you can see how this can get way out of hand. It’s like dominoes. You self sabotage in one area and boom, a whole bunch of dominoes fall over

Céline Remy 29:54
and never behaviors that you focus on the wrong tasks.

Kevin Anthony 29:59
You know, Apple, I’m thinking of it this way, right? So yeah, there’s just we’ve watched so many friends over the years to start businesses. And one of them, in particular, was starting a new business.

Kevin Anthony 30:13
And you know, it takes a lot when you start a new business like it started a few, not just this one here, but if you and it takes a lot of work, and there are things that you know, that you need to do, that will absolutely produce results and returns your

Céline Remy 30:27
logo, right? No, that is mugs and T-shirts, branding, right? So

Kevin Anthony 30:33
that’s the joke is right. Like, what you need to be focusing on is setting up your business entity, creating your product, you know, your curriculum, or whatever it is getting your website, your advertising, like whatever it is like, like, you know, creating, like b2b connections with other businesses, like all this kind of stuff.

Kevin Anthony 30:52
But instead, what do we watch? So many people do? spend weeks agonizing over the logo, a frickin logo. Nobody cares about your logo. Your logo only matters when you finally reach like Coca-Cola Company status, right? Like otherwise, when you’re a small business, nobody gives a shit about your logo, right?

Kevin Anthony 31:12
Last one. Sure. Pay somebody 20 bucks to create you a decent one and go and forget about it, you know, and it’s

Céline Remy 31:19
same in a relationship. Do you know? Are you focusing on the dishes in the sink? Are you focusing on who didn’t? Or who is mowing the lawn? I mean, so many things? Or are you focusing on things that bring you closer together? Do you know?

Kevin Anthony 31:33
Exactly, exactly. You’re focusing on the wrong tasks a lot of times, but why are you doing that? Because you’re avoiding the right tasks because all those other things that I named in business or in your relationship are hard, they’re hard, and they take a lot of work.

Kevin Anthony 31:50
And you’d rather sit there and dick around with pictures and mugs, right? Because it’s easy, and it’s fun, and you’re avoiding doing the real work.

Céline Remy 31:57
Okay, never behaviors that you intentionally create conflicts. I don’t think this one needs that much explanation. We’ve already talked about that. A big one is number nine is comparing yourself to others.

Céline Remy 32:10
And that’s huge. Like Kevin mentioned, if you are on, you know, on online, and you’re comparing to other people, that’s our own photos, that you’re not good enough. Or you’re constantly looking at other people around and how they’re doing their relationship, and you’re not looking for inspiration, but you’re looking for, like, ways to beat yourself up. And that’s not going to help you. You know,

Kevin Anthony 32:33
the thing is, there’s always gonna you’ve probably heard this before, right? But there’s always gonna be somebody smarter than you better looking than you, faster than you stronger than you taller than you whatever.

Kevin Anthony 32:43
Like, there are always people that are somehow better than you in some way, right. And so the trap that people get into is they start comparing themselves to others. And when you do that, you can always find somebody better, which means you are always somehow not good enough.

Céline Remy 32:59
Yeah, that’s a tough one. Yeah. Number 10. You are questioning if this is the right thing for you. This is huge in a relationship. And we’ve seen it so many times, that people are not fully in. And they have one foot in one foot out. And they’re still looking even though they’re saying them in and they’re committed.

Céline Remy 33:16
And at the same time, they still questioning is this the right thing? Should I do it this way? Oh, then perpetual questioning, and then never move forward? Because they’re still wondering, I’m not getting the clearance? Or I don’t know, should I be doing this? Or should I be doing that? Should I buy this car? Should I do this computer? Should I do that?

Kevin Anthony 33:34
You see this all the time. It’s like somebody starts building the business thing you get, somebody starts building a business, they spend months working on it, and then they’re like, I’m not sure if this is really what I want to be doing.

Kevin Anthony 33:46
And then they switch now, like, you might after putting in a bunch of work, realize this isn’t the business for you. That’s totally valid and acceptable. And then you move on. The problem is, when you start to see that somebody’s done this 2345 times you start going okay, look, look, this has nothing to do with what you’re choosing, you’re just sabotaging yourself over and over again.

Kevin Anthony 34:07
Because you don’t really want to be successful in business for whatever reason you feel that you’re not worthy of it or you know, you’re afraid of doing the work or whatever it is.

Céline Remy 34:17
And we all have some degrees by the way. I mean, not many people, unless they’ve done the work have overcome that. So don’t beat yourself up. And last, but not least is perfectionism. This is

Kevin Anthony 34:28
a sneaky one. We have seen this one a lot too and perfectionists never realize they’re self-sabotaging. They always think nope, I’m almost there. I’m really going to do this.

Kevin Anthony 34:40
I just have to make it a little bit better before I release it before I build it before I put it out there before you know approach her or before we get married or you know whatever it is.

Kevin Anthony 34:53
You’re constantly trying to make things perfect. There is nothing perfect literally nothing perfect in this world needs Sure is actually not perfect. You mean if you look at the Fibonacci sequence, and you compare that to the golden mean, the golden mean is perfect.

Kevin Anthony 35:08
The Fibonacci sequence is an approximation of perfect Well, which one does nature use the approximation of perfect, you can see so many representations in nature of things that are almost the exact proportions to the golden mean, but never quite exact.

Kevin Anthony 35:28
Nothing is perfect. If you wait for something to be perfect before you act, you will never act.

Céline Remy 35:35
All right, I can’t wait to talk about what can you do now to stop sabotaging and the first steps to get started. But before we do that, we have a special invite for you. If you are a committed couple who is stuck in a rut and just going through the daily motions, instead of connecting the way you used to, and you’re tired of still mechanical sex at like spontaneity and fun, and you don’t want to live a life of average.

Céline Remy 35:58
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Céline Remy 36:13
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Céline Remy 36:19
So what can you do to stop self-sabotaging?

Céline Remy 36:23
So number one, you must start by acknowledging that you self sabotage, we spent a long time of this show giving you examples, behaviors, and ways to understand because, without awareness, you cannot change it. You have to see the unseen.

Kevin Anthony 36:41
Yeah, and this is the number one problem that we see is that the overwhelming majority of people that are self-sabotaging, I would say 99% of them are completely unaware they’re doing it.

Céline Remy 36:53
Number two, you have to identify the ways in which you tend to self-sabotage, what are you going to do? And really also what’s behind this? So for me, the biggest thing that I’ve been working on is, that I’m not good enough is that belief.

Céline Remy 37:11
And so as I’ve been going through life and looking at things, sometimes it may look like I’m upset about something in particular on the outside. But once I go dig deeper, and I go, like, why is this really bothering me?

Céline Remy 37:26
So we can go back to the socks? Why is it really bothering me that these socks are laying there on the floor and not being put away? Well, because it shows the person doesn’t, doesn’t care, you know? And then okay,

Kevin Anthony 37:43
this is about my mountain biking socks, isn’t it?

Céline Remy 37:48
Are two pairs, before I did the laundry,

Kevin Anthony 37:51
I leave them in the garage by the washer because they’re way too dirty to actually put in the hamper.

Céline Remy 37:57
And but the bottom line is, you know, you can go down? Why is this bothering me like asking the question, Why? Why and go at least three times deep to start to get to the real answer. Because first, we did too much on the, on the mental.

Kevin Anthony 38:13
Yeah, so. So, you know, that’s nice, actually, step number five, but we’ll get there. So just to reiterate, step number two is we gave you a bunch of possible patterns.

Kevin Anthony 38:24
And so try to identify which one or several of those patterns that you do, which then leads to step number three, which is to employ strategies such as maybe an accountability partner to prevent you from self-sabotaging.

Kevin Anthony 38:37
So once you know what those patterns are, that you tend to do, put systems in place to help you stop doing them or prevent them from happening. And

Céline Remy 38:48
maybe just, you know, pick one or two. Don’t go for 15. Because it’s going to be overwhelming and start with

Kevin Anthony 38:54
one starts with your biggest one, the one that shows up most often. You can ask

Céline Remy 38:58
friends to go out, you know, to call you out when they witness you doing it. Or you can ask your partner you know, but maybe you could also have a loving way to mention that because usually being called out on your pattern is triggering.

Kevin Anthony 39:12
Yeah, that’s why it says Ask a friend, friend to coach therapy, you know, whatever whoever you’re working with, or just whoever you’re close with somebody who can be really honest with you, like, you know, you know, I’m coaching a client right now, who was on a trip with a good friend of his, and they were in the car driving back from this trip and my client was talking saying something and his friend just looked at him and said,

Kevin Anthony 39:40
Why do you always do that? It just called them right out on his pattern that he had been doing over and over again and being negative. Yeah, so in the nap particular case, my client was saying a bunch of sort of negative things about himself in regards to the trip without seeing just how positive the trip actually was.

Kevin Anthony 40:00
He was and so his friend called him out on it. My response to that was, that’s a great friend. That’s a good friend, that’s a friend that you need to have in your life. Somebody who can be really raw and honest with you and say, Hey, knock it off. You’re doing a pattern here. That’s self-defeating or self-sabotaging.

Céline Remy 40:15
Yeah. So then that leads us to five, which is to find the underlying reason why you keep doing it. And I mean, I kind of linked it with two because it’s a process that you usually do, moment to moment.

Céline Remy 40:29
But that, that asking the why, and seeking and going deeper and deeper, we’ll get to the root cause, I want to share a few things that have helped me and have helped some of our clients to shift because remember, at the beginning of the show, I was talking about how you can’t change from the same state of mind that created the self-sabotage.

Céline Remy 40:52
So you got to be able to bypass your unconscious and go into your subconscious to rewire things. Not everybody. It’s not easy. So you can work with somebody, you can work with a coach, you can work with a hypnotherapist with somebody who can help you get there.

Céline Remy 41:11
But there are steps you can do. You can meditate to rewire your brain and find a technique that works for you. Because when you meditate, you basically learn to let go, you learn to open up, you learn to surrender, you learn to recreate new neural connections and new wires, and that can help you to just show up differently.

Céline Remy 41:35
Little by little, just because you sat once for 20 minutes is not going to be enough, okay, you got to give it time, it takes anywhere from six weeks, 100 days for things to shift, you know, so most people say three weeks, but it’s not enough. gotta commit.

Kevin Anthony 41:52
Yeah, so So meditation can obviously rewire your brain. But if you’re trying to find the underlying reason, sometimes those reasons don’t make themselves apparent until you’ve really done deep work. And meditation can actually help you figure out what those underlying reasons are.

Céline Remy 42:09
Another practice is to practice daily gratitude. Remember, we talked about how the wiring in the brain how people are 80%, negative 20% Positive, by doing daily gratitude, you start to shift that balance, you start to look at, what am I grateful for? What can I be appreciated for, and that changes your outlook on life.

Céline Remy 42:32
And it’s interesting, because if gratitude is difficult, the simple act of looking for things that you’re grateful for, is going to already start to rewire and change your brain independently of whether or not you come up with something.

Céline Remy 42:48
But the fact that you are searching and looking for it and trying to make those connections is shifting things in your brain. So it’s worth doing even if it’s hard. And never practice. And this is big too. And maybe Kevin can talk more about it because you are certified in NLP Neuro Linguistic Programming.

Céline Remy 43:09
This is something that I felt I invented, I discovered that it was it existed already out there, but is to start to roleplay and to roleplay from the different characters of the story, and to see all of the different elements.

Céline Remy 43:25
So if you are having a hard time forgiving something, it could be yourself forgiving somebody, a parent who did a really nasty behavior, you’re never doing forgiveness for others, you’re always doing it for yourself to liberate yourself. And when you start to roleplay and see it from all different angles, you can start to have more awareness and understanding and it can help you to liberate yourself.

Céline Remy 43:50
Now remember that you never will with the act of forgiveness, whether it is forgiving yourself or someone who has wronged you will never suggest that you are not condoning the behavior, okay, this is different this the behavior and this the person, so you can not be satisfied with the behavior, but you can forgive the person.

Kevin Anthony 44:13
Absolutely. So, you know, you mentioned the NLP thing. So like role-playing can do two things. If you roleplay from the point of view of different people involved in the situation, and you put yourself on the other side, you may actually then be able to have compassion for who they are, what they’re going through, and why they behaved the way that they did.

Kevin Anthony 44:33
So that’s one value from it. From the NLP perspective, roleplay is a little bit different in the sense that we want to reinforce the changes in the pathways right? So like, you know, we do a certain behavior and then we roleplay a different behavior.

Kevin Anthony 44:52
And by role-playing that different behavior, we are then creating new neural pathways for the new behavior. So we’re rewiring the brain by doing that, you know, you hear people say it all the time and like, just fake it till you make it right.

Kevin Anthony 45:07
And that’s a version of it, it’s not quite the same, because you really have to tap into the emotions of it, you have to really feel the deep feelings of it. And you can’t just lie to yourself and know you’re lying to yourself, because it doesn’t really work.

Kevin Anthony 45:20
But, but you get the idea. Like, I think that helps you understand what we mean by roleplay, which is really stepping into what you want to be or who you want to be. And reinforcing that over and over and over again.

Céline Remy 45:33
Yeah, and the brain doesn’t know the difference between an imagined scenario and something happening in real life. So my favorite is literally to rehearse a behavior so many times in my head, that I no longer remember wherever or not I really did it, or if it’s just been in my head, but it’s becoming part of who I am. Yeah. And this is really huge.

Kevin Anthony 45:53
All right, the last one on that list we kind of already mentioned just worked with a coach or a therapist. So you know, this was you know, how the whole point of this section was, what can you do to stop self-sabotaging, so we give you a bunch of things you can do on your own.

Kevin Anthony 46:07
And if you need help with that, work with somebody like us, you can work with a therapist work with a good therapist, but there are a lot of really crappy therapists out there.

Kevin Anthony 46:15
There are some really amazing people out there. And there’s a whole bunch of just really crappy ones. It’s like George Carlin once said about kids, kids are like any other segment of the population, with a few winners and a whole lot of losers.

Kevin Anthony 46:29
That’s true. You know, it’s like you’ve heard, what do you call the doctor who graduated last in his class? A doctor, doctor, right? There are good ones and bad ones. So find yourself a good one.

Céline Remy 46:39
There is one trap to avoid. And we’re just going to address that, as we’re winding down today’s show, is how do you avoid the trap of guilt and shame? Once you’ve discovered that you’re self-sabotaging.

Céline Remy 46:51
And this is a really big step that you need to be able to take. And in short, it’s a word called self-forgiveness. But we’re going to give you a lot more than that. Technically two

Kevin Anthony 47:03
words hyphenated. Yeah, so so self-forgiveness really like. And so we actually have a four-step process for doing that. And the first one is accepting responsibility. So really, the first step to self-forgiveness is you have to take responsibility for whatever it is that you have done whatever pattern you’ve been doing over and over again.

Kevin Anthony 47:32
Sounds simple, right? Man, this is so hard for most people to do, they do not want to own their shit, they will come up with every excuse in the book, blame it on every person that I’ve ever met, or sometimes they even blame it on people that they haven’t met?

Kevin Anthony 47:46
Well, it’s because the President said whatever, or the Supreme Court did, whatever, that’s why I’m doing this. No, you’re doing that because you did it, you did it take responsibility for it. So you just have to accept responsibility. That’s number one. Number two, you

Céline Remy 48:03
got to express any remorse, give yourself permission to process. You know, sometimes, it’s not possible to go back in time, and talk to a person who might be dead or not be around anymore. You don’t need to have them around, you can write a letter and burn it, you can do this energetically with the intention, I do that a lot more.

Céline Remy 48:27
Because most of the time, this process is really all about you. The other person doesn’t really need it. Sometimes it can happen. It could repair a relationship, and we’ll talk about this in step three. But most of the time, it’s really just a deliberate use of so you know, a simple, I’m sorry.

Céline Remy 48:46
You know, there’s a practice called Hooponopono. And it’s a Hawaiian prayer. I’m sorry, please forgive me. Thank you, I love you. You repeat that there’s a song to it. There are plenty of people teaching that but it’s a beautiful prayer to help you just let go. Yeah,

Kevin Anthony 49:05
so you accept responsibility. You express your remorse for the situation, you understand that it was wrong or that you could have done better or whatever it is. Number three is to repair damage and rebuild trust.

Kevin Anthony 49:18
So once you’ve done the first two things, then you just got to go out there and fix it as best you can. Not everything can be fixed. Not everything will be mended perfectly the way it was before, but you do the best you can.

Céline Remy 49:32
And number four, you focus on renewal. Look at how this mistake has made you a better person. There is a point to learning from it. Exactly. There is a point in life where you have to move on. You can no longer keep beating yourself up for mistakes you’ve done 25 years ago.

Céline Remy 49:51
This is part of what self-forgiveness is all about being like I did the best I could with the tools I had. But at this point Now I’m choosing to live life fully. And this is a way of celebrating who you are and not keeping yourself trapped and self-sabotaging.

Kevin Anthony 50:10
Yeah, so there you go, that is our show on self. So I can’t even believe it’s taken us this long to do a show on this because this is something we have been witnessing for years in our work.

Kevin Anthony 50:22
And it’s a huge pet peeve of mine. I can’t even believe we haven’t done this before. I want to thank the person who self sabotage themselves right out of this show, for bringing this to our attention and getting us to actually do a show on it. But there you go.

Kevin Anthony 50:37
That is how to recognize if you’re self-sabotaging how to break those patterns, how to create new patterns, and how to avoid the trap of guilt, which really comes back to self-forgiveness. So there you go, everybody, really, really think about this and get honest with yourself because you will most likely find some area in your life where you’re doing one of these things to some extent, and that’s okay, have self-forgiveness, but fix it and move on.

Céline Remy 51:08
I’m very big on writing things down. So grab a pen and paper and dig deep.

Kevin Anthony 51:13
Alright, right everybody. That’s all the time we have for this episode, and we will see you next week.

Kevin Anthony 51:23
We hope you liked this episode of the Love Lab podcast. If you enjoy this show, subscribe. Leave us a review and share it with your friends.

Céline Remy 51:31
And for more free exclusive content. Join us in the passion vault at kevinanthonycoaching.com/vault

Kevin Anthony 51:43
forward slash vault. Thanks for listening. And remember, you’re amazing