When I say “think,” I’m not talking about the kind of gummy pondering/wondering/thought-ing you do in the drift of your daily life while pumping gas or making your favorite banana-bacon sandwich (really?), but rather a deliberate and intentional engagement with an idea. Real thinking is what can happen when your existing paradigm (all the stuff you know) gets challenged and interrupted.
This thinking thing is not easy. It’s the kind of mental stretching required when you are quite literally forced to consider something else, something you hadn’t considered or at best partially considered, and then do the work to connect it to your life. Thinking is an interruption. Real breakthroughs become available in your life when you interrupt yourself and your automatic responses to whatever life presents you with.
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger once wrote: “The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”
You don’t think. There. I said it.
I’m not attempting to make you choke on the next hearty quaff of that iced venti half-caff sugar-free skinny cinnamon dolce soy latte that you’re currently sucking down like a freshly emptied Dyson on full throttle. We spend very little time doing the actual thinking that will inspire new lives for ourselves, and no, scrolling through quotes on Instagram doesn’t count as thinking.
The thinking you do throughout this book will help you to make sense of yourself.
What you do with that? That’s up to you, but I wouldn’t advise just sitting there with it. You could, oh, I don’t know, change your freaking life or something.
But it’s not a given. This is your life, and it needs work. You could spend your time challenging what I am proposing, or you could spend your time challenging yourself with what I am proposing. Each will produce a different outcome. It’s pretty damn obvious which one could lead you to change your life and which one will leave you spinning your wheels.
It starts by waking up.
In your day-to-day life you are, for the most part, on autopilot. It’s why you miss the exit on your way to or from work, why you put on your pants, shoes, or jacket the same way every time, brush your teeth the way you do, and generally just get life done. Automatically.
You’re not up on your toes, awake to your potential. You’re not alive to what it is that truly lights you up or engaged with the kind of life-changing stuff that will make this all worthwhile.
What you think is “awake” is actually asleep. You might wake up near the end of this existence, but that will probably be far too late for you. Wake up to that, at least.
While you read this, there might be some occasions when you’ll need to take a chain-breaking leap from the anchor of what you currently believe. It’s fine, you won’t die. Dare yourself to jump.
Here’s a little pointer. From time to time you might want to wake up to how you are engaging with this book. Check in with how you’re doing. I recommend breaking this process up into sections to give yourself time to percolate with what I’m proposing, take notes, highlight what you need, and come up for the occasional gulp of air. We are dealing with your propensity for self-sabotage, after all. We won’t be frolicking through the abundant, joyous fields of your heart’s desire in these pages. More like wading our way through decades of your unwanted strife, lack of fulfillment, and constant sabotaging of all that is good in your life!
This might not be comfortable for you.
Some of you might find what seems like a lot of bad news in these pages.
Oh well.
There are no unicorns or states of euphoria or, hell, not even a particularly sympathetic ear. There’s a time and a place for all that stuff. This is not the time or the place, that’s all. However, I do have a promise for you. If you hang in there until the end, do the thinking, uncover your subconscious motivations, and apply the ideas and principles, you’ll make more sense to yourself than you ever have, and you’ll have what you need to finally demand your life back.
It’s possible to interrupt the cycle of self-sabotage. Let’s get to it, shall we?
When I talk about self-sabotage, what do I mean specifically? Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines “sabotage” as
“destructive or obstructive action carried on by a civilian or enemy agent to hinder a nation’s war effort” or
“a: an act or process tending to hamper or hurt
b: deliberate subversion.”
But in this case, sabotage isn’t apparently committed by an “enemy agent”—or is it? Maybe the enemy agent is you yourself.
This is sabotage committed by us, against ourselves, and it can subvert just about everything good in our lives.
It is a deliberate subversion, though. Completely deliberate.
You can probably think of some examples of self-sabotage by taking a look at the people who have come and gone through the musty hallways of your life.
It’s always much easier to measure the decline of others than your own.
It could be an uncle who struggled with drug or alcohol addiction, stuck in a cycle of self-destruction he couldn’t seem to break free from. Or maybe it’s an old friend who lost their savings, their house, and even their family to compulsive gambling and the burden of debt.
Then there’s the sibling who binges on crappy food until their weight is hopelessly out of control and even their life is now in very real danger. Or the nephew who still lives with Mom and Dad in his twenties, thirties, or forties, shunning real-world independence, accomplishment, and growth and choosing a digital escape of video game conquests and internet porn. Hell, some of this might be what you’re dealing with yourself. These are all obvious examples of self-sabotage.
But what about the less obvious examples? Maybe you’re reading this and thinking you’re not that badly affected. Sure, you have your hang-ups and your vices. You’d like to achieve more at work or find a good partner or shave a smidgen of excess living off that tiny corner of your left ankle (okay, it’s a spongy layer of fat clinging onto your gut like a panicky squid, but I’m being nice here). You have goals of reading more, watching less TV, or getting in better shape. But your behavior isn’t nearly as self-destructive as in these examples . . . right?
But here’s the thing. The sabotage I’m talking about isn’t limited to those blatantly obvious examples. It’s also something that happens in lots of little ways throughout the day. It’s something we all do, and we’re doing it pretty much all the time.
It can be something as simple as constantly hitting that snooze button in the morning, or the tendency to show up a little late to places you’re scheduled to be. Not so late that it becomes a major problem, but you still find yourself rushing out the door as you shove your feet into your untied shoes and arriving five or ten minutes later than you’d like. Sometimes it looks like skipping breakfast and settling instead for a candy bar. Or maybe you’re one of those people who chronically procrastinate but always manage to get things done at the last moment, so you don’t think too much of it. Living on the edge, huh?
How’s that working out for you?