There I was, on Facebook, watching my news feed. The year was 2015, and I was stuck. I had been in private practice for 6 years and it had been good. My revenue was exceptional and I was living a lifestyle that I didn’t think was possible – but I wanted more!

I was still working with around 30 clinical clients, while managing a team of 5, trying to work out how to make part time and virtual assistance work for a growing enterprise, and get my head around what this thing called online marketing and sales was.

I had created some amazing connections online and was excited by the possibilities that this thing called the Internet was able to provide me.  I wanted more.

However, I was just so freakin’ busy that I didn’t spend any time thinking about what MORE meant and specifically what it meant for me.  To be honest, MORE superficially meant more money. Because that was going to solve everything else. If I could just earn more money.

I was continuing to live the lie that if I just kept being busy then I wold become increasingly successful – despite not having a clear definition of what success meant. But busy was good right? Busy meant things were happening.  Busy meant I was influential and important.

I was watching a couple of friends of mine who were doing MORE – they were making incredible amounts of money, and living this luxe lifestyle that I thought I wanted. There was lots of travel, lots of opportunity and lots of fun. Well that’s what FB was telling me. I wanted that.  I wanted THAT result.

So, I reached out to one of these friends and asked her if the sales training she had been doing would be a good fit for me. At the time she had been making tremendous gains in her life, that she attributed to this particular sales training. So I said – GIVE ME SOME OF THAT!

However, what I was saying yes to, and what was required of me where 2 very different things.

You see, I wanted the results. I knew how to work hard – very hard. I knew how to work so hard that I could make myself sick. I was resilient.  I knew how to do things, fall, pick myself up again and work hard again. But I wanted these results – I wanted the results of Freedom, Flexibility and Fulfillment – so I joined this sales coaching community.

So unaware of my own behaviours, I said yes to everything! When the content came through I filed it, telling myself I would get to it “later”. I got on every live call, and muted myself so I could do other things while I was on the call. I would turn up to my 1:1 coaching session with a list of questions, but no implementation.  I was living the lie that by some strange osmosis, just by being in the presence of others, their knowledge and skills would somehow attach themselves to me…

And this was not the first time I had engaged in this behaviour. No no no no. Looking back, I can see I did this with the very first Mastermind business community that I bought into in 2010. I had exactly the same philosophy – I remember telling anyone who was interested that even if 1/5 of the leaders “smarts” could be passed onto me I would be happy.

I had no idea how to learn this stuff, or even what I needed to learn. I was coachable yes, to a point.  I knew the right things to say, but I wasn’t implementing.  When I was implementing I was so overwhelmed I would be making myself sick.

I spent SO MUCH MONEY looking for the magic thing that would stick to me and propel me forward to the success I wanted to be…

What I had wanted was the Silver Bullet.  I wanted the results without doing the work.  I wanted those results, without exploring if the proposed method of achieving them was going to be a good fit for me.  And neither of the solutions I spent more than $50K combined on, were a good fit.

·      Neither of them understood some of the limitations to traditional online marketing that health professionals must be aware of.

·      Neither of them wanted to take the time to help me work out how to market and sell to my niche – both just assumed I didn’t know my niche well enough.

·      Both of them wanted to help me find a more online marketing friendly Niche to work with.

·      And both of them were awesome at telling me I wasn’t working hard enough – which was BS.  I was, just not on the right things at the right time.

I attended a 10-day residential for sales.  It was a lot of warm lead calling – we would work all night creating leads from social media, and then spend the next day simply calling and calling and calling until we had the opportunity to use the newly learned sales skills on people who answered the phone.  It’s a popular sales technique.

For 10 days, I would vomit (yes seriously I would) before the day started, and just get on with it.  My lead generation was poor, people taking my calls were few, and my conversion was terrible.  I assumed there was something wrong with me.

There was a leader board every day to see who had made the most “sales” in the room.  I was constantly at the bottom of the board.  I was coming last – which did NOTHING for my bruised ego, wounded soul and gut-wrenching fear that I was not good enough.

What was I doing? I was self-sabotaging.  I didn’t know I was – because well that’s a part of the cycle of behaviour. When we don’t know we are self-sabotaging, then we can’t actually do anything about it.  So, we keep doing it because, well, neural pathways.  We don’t know anything else and emotionally we feel safe – ahh we are such complex creatures.

I wanted someone else to fix it for me. I wanted the quick fix and automatic solution.  I wanted the result without doing the work. That, my friends, is not useful, is it not helpful, it is not sustainable.

It is however, expensive.  Expensive in terms of time, in terms of energy and in terms of money. And I see this act of self-sabotage in people all the time.  It manifests itself in people who

·      “Coach shop” looking for the next person to speak into their lives to make sense of the things and stuff they haven’t spent time thinking about.

·      People who do more training, become more credentialed, becoming more “valuable” to their clients instead of learning how to market, how to attract ideal clients, and how to work with these ideal clients.

·      I see people opting into the FREE things; asking for the all cheap and FREE advice; listening to all the podcasts; becoming increasingly confused, and overwhelmed and confused, and cynical and confused and burnt out…

There comes a time when we have to be ADULT and take a look at who we are and what we are doing, and ask ourselves – is this right for me right now?

And that is not an easy thing to answer on our own. After all, we get ourselves into the messiness of self-sabotage.  And it doesn’t happen quickly – it’s not like we wake up on a Monday and think – hey I would like some variety in my life, what can I deliberately mess up?

If we are smack bang in the middle of it, surely our perspective isn’t great and we have some rose coloured glasses on that don’t allow us to see what is really going on. And let’s face it – if we have invested heavily in terms of time and money and energy, we want that thing, that silver bullet to work. Despite all the evidence to the contrary we will want it to work damn it!

What do you need to stop?

DO you actually just need to stop, pause and find a reset button?

If you are working harder and harder and feel like you are treading water, then it’s time to ask –

What do I need to stop?

If you find yourself buying more training, credentials without any way of being able to be present for the training, or implement the training – then it’s time to stop and ask…

What do I need to stop?

If you find yourself bouncing from one great idea to the next without really finishing anything – then it’s time to ask…

What do I need to stop?

And now that we have some idea of where to start looking for what needs to stop, comes the tough part of finding someone, or something that can help you stop. You see awareness is one thing – creating new neural pathway; new habits and seeing real change take place, that’s a whole new ball game.

You can see where I’m headed with this post can’t you? If this post has triggered you in any way then you know you need to take action. It’s going to BUG you if you don’t act on this, and let’s be honest you deserve more than selling yourself short.

Now you get that a blog isn’t going to be everything you need to really address self-sabotage in your life right – you know that.  After all you would not suggest to a client of yours that they should just read 1 blog post and then not return for more clinician intervention.

So, I’m going to say it again – if this is something you want to know more about; if this is something you get is stopping you from reaching where you want to be, then let me take you through a tried, proven process.

I didn’t make this up. This isn’t some 7-step system from some self-help book. This is years of MY work, years of me understanding and applying what it really going on.  This is where tough love becomes life changing.  I can guarantee that it will transform how you think about yourself 😊 and with greater awareness comes the opportunity to not just change – but transform.

Go be your fabulous self – I’m here cheering you on!

PS – looking for the link to the Success Mindset Masterclass, here it is.