What were the critical conversations going on around you as you grew up?
If, for instance, your parents didn’t have a lot of money (and most likely neither did their parents), you were born into their views and experiences of finances as a scarcity mind-set.
On the one hand, that might have taught you the value of a dollar and to be thankful for what you have. There are plenty of people who break out of that conversational trap and produce great wealth, but it’s far more likely you’re struggling financially within the same kind of framework your parents were in. Their struggle became part of your conversation.
You might be doing better, but you’re currently embedded within a group of unspoken financial rules and limits that you had no say in putting together. You have agreed to them, though. No one made you do that.
What if you have now become conditioned by your own agreement, to a “glass ceiling,” a limit of what you can and cannot do with money? What if your adult life is spent trying to reach for that ceiling, not only financially but in every area of your life? What if none of that “trying” was designed to actually get you there?
Self-sabotage is often what shows up when someone starts to hover near financial breakthroughs, when they’re getting close to the point of realizing their dream. At this point they realize they’ll have to figure out a new, unrecognizable life. Somehow, by seemingly (to them) bad luck or coincidence, they stumble at the last minute and begin to undermine their progress and make the kinds of choices that undo all they were striving for. They return to living within that inherited range of what’s possible. The range of the certain.
I’ve had clients who have built fortunes many times over. A lifetime of trying to get there, fleetingly getting there, and then crashing, over and over. You’ve had your own version of this in your life too.
Human beings are much more engrossed with the task of getting to the goal than actually achieving it or, God forbid, facing the horror of having to permanently deal with life AFTER they’ve done the something they’d always wanted to do.
As counterintuitive as it sounds, as a group we are seemingly drawn much more to the struggle than to the prize. That’s why, after you succeed, back into the struggle you go. At least that also might start to explain why some people, after accomplishing great things, the fulfillment of long-held dreams and fantasies, follow a path of self-destruction in one way or another to return themselves to their own personal struggle. The history of Hollywood scandal bulges with such tales.
An old coach of mine once asked me, “How good can you stand it?” I couldn’t answer him; I had never really considered the idea that there was a “good” beyond the one I was aiming for.
So, how good can you stand it? You might well shock yourself with the answer to that one. If you can tell yourself the truth, that is. The life you currently have would be a clue.
THE SINKING OF THE USS CONVERSATION
Those conversations you were thrown into covered every subject of life and, unbeknownst to you, became an important part of what ultimately set the tone for your life of self-sabotage.
Relationships, love, friendships, success, what’s good, what’s bad, politics, sex, race, faith, you name it, and all fully in existence before you even got here. Some of it was healthy, some of it unhealthy. Some of it was appropriate, some of it wildly inappropriate. Whether your family talked about these subjects openly and in detail or hardly ever or in very vague terms, they all played their part in shaping who you are to one degree or another. As you’re probably now realizing, that kind of experience has had a huge impact on you. The impact continues and is still happening every minute of every day and in every area of your life.
You’re not unique in this regard. It’s the same for every human being on the face of the planet and the ones yet to come.
The adults (and some of the children) from your childhood inadvertently rained wisdom down on your young ears, a wisdom that you turned either for or against yourself. But where is all that stuff you heard located? I mean, most of your childhood is all just a blurry mess of thoughts, dreams, and smells that occasionally spring to life when you pass the old neighborhood donut shop or hear your dad’s voice when he shouts at the TV. So where did it go?
It sank. It was gulped beneath the waves of your conscious thinking and was swallowed up by the unimaginable depths of the Mariana Trench of your subconscious. And there it all sits. To this day.
I mean, right now it just seems that you’re living your life—acting on what’s in front of your face, getting things done, watching TV, fiddling around on the internet, meeting people, paying bills (or not), driving your car, going on vacations, making friends, playing sports, reading, writing, daydreaming, getting high, getting drunk, getting off, getting mad—and that none of this old stuff is impacting you at all.
There’s plenty of information out there about the degree to which your everyday life is lived at a less than conscious level. Most of it points to the idea of your everyday actions being driven by some unnoticed and subconscious urge or drive for anywhere between 95 percent and 99 percent of the time.
In a paper published in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences,* a group of researchers, led by associate professor of psychology Ezequiel Morsella of San Francisco State University, took on the question of exactly what consciousness actually is—and came up with a decidedly gloomy view: It’s pretty much nothing. You barely control your conscious thoughts at all; it’s the unconscious that’s really in charge.
Carl Jung, considered by many to be one of the fathers of modern psychiatry and psychology (I prefer to see him as a philosopher and visionary, but hey ho), would have referred to your subconscious as the unconscious. It sounds a bit different when you say you’re unconscious for most of your life, huh?
Like you’re checked out.
In other words, you’re running around on autopilot almost all of your day, even with those “mindfulness” practices you’ve been taking on! It seems like you are in charge, you feel like you’re a conscious being, but the reality is, you’re not. You’re in a haze of automatic thoughts and behaviors masquerading as awareness. That’s why when you make a bold commitment to change, you somehow end up right back in that same old routine before you know it.
Every moment of every day, you are being driven to act by your own subconscious thoughts. Caught up in a relentless wave of your innermost self.
THE INVISIBLE YOU
As discussed in chapter 3, we are subconsciously hardwired for safety—seen in the way we automatically do the same predictable things in the same predictable ways over and over and over—while regularly and consciously yearning for something new, something different.
The problem is, the moment you take on something new, those embedded, predictable patterns and behaviors kick in. They sanitize your passion for something new, sober you up with a healthy dose of doubt or dissatisfaction, and draw you to act on the old familiar, safe, and mundane (and sometimes destructive) behaviors that had you stuck in the first place!
The power of the already existing “you” that you’ve become is too magnetic, too all-consuming, and too powerful. We are conscious beings addicted to the patterns and cycles of our subconscious and automatic reactions to life.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
—C. G. Jung
And while you may have a sliver of control over what you consciously think about, you don’t actively think about and choose what’s in your subconscious. It’s a gloomy, shifting mass of everything you’ve experienced in your life.
You have subconscious influences from your first crush, how often your parents hugged you (or didn’t), your goldfish Pete and the image of his little fishy body being flushed down the toilet, the dentist visits, broken bones, your friendships, “experiments” with your body, your failures, shame, successes, and pretty much everything you can imagine. All of it’s there in the recesse
s of your mind, whether it’s a tiny blip or a major milestone. Yep, it’s all sitting there, deep in the ocean of your most distant thoughts, percolating and pushing you this way and that, all too familiar and ultimately limiting.
You can explain your life, but how much of a say do you really have in it as you drift along?
For example, you might know why you get angry. You might even have gone to the anger management classes, learned the techniques, and read the books. Like most people, you are probably left with some strategies for avoiding or channeling that anger rather than finally getting to the heart of what it’s really all about. That trigger still dominates.
How about my “perfectionists”? You weren’t born being perfect, worrying about getting every little detail in your life just right, but you sure as hell have turned out that way. What are you doing about that? How much longer are you going to meander along in the unease and worry of that trap? That insatiable appetite for perfection gets hooked, triggered, and irritated by inconsequential and unnecessary BS that at the time seems totally necessary and completely consequential. The unrest and edginess of the desire to have things perfect is followed by the hopelessness of realizing that they never really are.
Then there are the perennially independent people. How are you doing out there all on your own? Maybe you’ve become too driven or self-centered or think you are some kind of one-man/woman show who can’t ask for or even need help. That subconscious strategy of having people think you have your shit together is starting to bite now, huh? That’s the problem with being independent: it gets fucking lonely, even when you’re surrounded by people.
The reality is, whether you find yourself in these examples or not, you have no idea what specifically constitutes your subconscious makeup or how powerful it really has been in shaping you. You do, however, deal with its impact every single moment of every single day. It’s called your life.
The vast majority of what’s in your subconscious is ignored, peppered with selective incidents, conversations, and selections of what your cognitive self sees as relative in any moment of time. Jung saw the subconscious as the key to unlocking our potential.
He viewed it as both our biggest weakness and our greatest strength.
“IT’S NOT ME, IT’S THEM!”
Let’s deal with the elephant in the book. Many people go the simplest, easiest route when trying to understand why their life took the turns it did. This is also a route we have to destroy now and forever. What’s the easy route? Blaming your parents for your life; they’re the softest target of all. It’s also the most crushing, fracturing, and damaging of pathways to take, not only to them but, more significantly, to you.
Having the parents you had was a big part of what you were thrown into. You had no say in that. However, pointing the finger at them for how you and your life turned out, for your self-sabotage and struggle to get what you want, will never give you the genuine peace of mind and all-is-well-with-the-universe kind of life you are after. Sure, you might use it as fuel for your determination for a while, but you’ll always be left with that gnawing, irritating little knot in your being. The back door of excuse will remain, and as long as that’s there, you’ll use it. It’s a boring and humdrum route. The highway to resentment and lack of fulfillment.
Even people who never met or barely knew their parents, or whose parents have passed away, often continue to play that game long into their adult lives. It’s obvious. And ordinary. I mean, they gave you life, they made all their mistakes with you, treated you this way or that, spoke to you in the ways that they did, screwed you up. Easy target, right?
Eh . . . not quite. You’ll end up stuck in that equation. Some of you are already preparing to unleash the dogs of war right now as I suggest this topic. Wind it in. Read on. You need this more than most.
If you’re reading this as meaning I’m getting ready to take sides, you’re absolutely right: I AM.
I’m taking YOUR side here! But that doesn’t mean you and I are going to agree. I have a feeling we might well disagree. Fine. You’re the one who’s self-sabotaging here, though, not me (at least not right this minute). It’s time for a change. Your change. You with me here? Read these words with that kind of commitment in mind. A commitment to change.
Before you start throwing anyone under the bus, remember that everyone in your life was thrown into the fire, just as you were, and has lived inside the trap of their inherited BS, just as you have done. I know, I know, when you were growing up, your parents were supposed to have all the answers, all the wisdom, supposed to have been perfect human beings like your friend’s parents or the ones you saw on TV, right?
Still think your parents should have known better? Yeah, maybe they should have. But also, right now, so should you, and how has that worked out?
We’re all human beings, trying to make it, often failing, sometimes disastrously so.
Perhaps your relationship with your parents is “okay.” It’s often not a good sign when you describe any part of your life as “okay,” let alone some of your most important relationships.
Maybe you have already dealt with this and cut your parents out of your life, so you’re feeling pretty good about yourself right now . . . nope, that ain’t it, either.
Listen to me carefully. The single most important thing you can do for your life is to release anyone (including yourself!) from blame for how your life has turned out. This includes parents, friends, neighbors, everyone. If that irritates you or enrages you, if you find yourself turning to your go-to argument or all-too-familiar upset, take some stock here. You are arguing to keep the life you have. You’re making a case for sabotaging yourself!
Notice how you are completely run by that emotional trigger. What are you doing to yourself? What are you filling your life with? Suppressed anger? Quiet resentment? Clinging to the idea that you’re broken or dead inside? Really? Is this worth it? I mean . . . come ON!!!
It’s time to stop blaming your parents, or anyone else for that matter, for where you’ve now landed in life. That explanation has run its course. It’s tired and worn and out of juice. Even if you were thrown into the worst circumstances, it’s your choice now to turn your life around, make it better, learn and grow and break free of where you came from. You have choice from this moment on.
I GOT YOU, WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT
Listen, I know there are plenty of people who will sympathize with you, who will look at what I’m saying here as if I’m some kind of bully, or I don’t know what I’m talking about or what people go through, or I have zero compassion for others. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Here’s the deal—YOUR REAL LIFE is lived in moments, and whether you like it or not, you’re always in this moment.
I find it funny when people say “Be in the moment,” as if there’s some kind of freaking alternative. You’re always here. You’re just not always here for what’s here.
The question is, what are you doing with this moment, right fucking now—what are you using it for? Are you spending these precious moments of your life bathed in resentment about the life you were thrown into, the genetic facts you can’t change, or the web of conversations that have kept you trapped under a glass ceiling? Or are you finally willing to release yourself and everyone in your life from the blame?
Ultimately, figuring out who is to blame solves nothing. All it does is explain and keep you stuck.
That’s your choice here. It really is black and white.
Choose. What are you going to fight for? The past or the future? Your self-sabotaging BS or a long-awaited freedom?
In this very moment, you’re doing either what you usually do or something else entirely. That’s always the case until you die. Moment by moment.
Perhaps it’s time for you to get interested in that something else. You cannot free yourself with conditions. Either it’s free or it’s not.
You have to be willing to own your life for how it is, no blame, no anger, no
resentment. It went the way it did, you turned out the way you did, and now it’s game on and into the future we go.
Don’t know how to do that? Aha! I have the very thing just for you!
Take a moment here and look back at your life. In particular, look at your background and upbringing. Now, what are all the ways you have used that thrown-ness to justify yourself?
What do you justify? Your bad temper? The three dollars in your bank account? Your past relationships? That you didn’t go to college or failed there? Your body shape? Your sense of self-worth? The quality of your friendships (or lack thereof)?
Dig into this a little. Take your time to uncover all of the ways in which you look to the stuff you had no say in to explain the life you now have.
You were thrown in; you had no choice in it. Now, own it!
Think of this like outsourcing. Your life has been about explaining and justifying and excusing yourself, in effect giving away your power to outside influences. But now, it’s about bringing all that stuff back in-house, about getting your life together and recognizing yourself as the one and only true source of change.
It’s you, and it always has been. Bring it home, baby!
Let’s crack on.
06
Establishing the Truth
Your “truth” and “the truth” are not the same, even though you have designed your life around the idea that they are.
We have the first two foundational parts down: what you were born as—a magic little sponge; and what you were thrown into—a certain life with ready-made conditions that you had no control over. That now requires us to uncover the final piece of the equation that completes the groundwork before we start uncovering your unique saboteurs. It’s worth reminding you that understanding the background I’m putting together here will allow you to make sense of yourself in a very real way.
Stop Doing That Sh*t Page 5