how and why we self sabotage + what you can do to prevent it

Welcome back to The Girls Classroom. This week we talk about the quiet destroyer - self sabotage. What undermines our growth, joy, and potential from the inside out, often without us even realising it.

• Self-sabotage can be conscious (procrastination, avoidance) or subconscious (self-doubt, perfectionism, fear of success)
• It often stems from limiting beliefs formed in childhood: “I’m not good enough,” “If I fail, I’ll be rejected,” or “I don’t deserve this”
• We self-sabotage by delaying goals, rejecting healthy love, downplaying our achievements, or staying in comfort zones that feel safe but stifle us
• It’s not laziness—it’s protection. The brain tries to keep us safe by avoiding risk, rejection, or emotional exposure
• The difference: sabotage says “it’s safer to stay small” while self-worth says “even if I fall, I’ll grow from it”
• Rewriting the pattern starts with awareness—naming the fear underneath, being kinder to yourself, and taking action in small, brave doses
• The limits we feel often aren’t walls—they’re stories. And we get to rewrite them

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro + What is Self-Sabotage?
• 3:30 Why We Sabotage: Psychology & Fear

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome back to this week's episode of The Girl's Classroom. This week we're doing how and why we self-sabotage and what you can do to prevent it. So, welcome back to another week. You know what I've noticed? I always start with so. It's the first thing I always say. Anyway, as I've said, we're going to go into self-sabotage and how and why we let it get in our way. And what we're going to do, so I want to go through why we do it first of all. The psychology behind it. I don't know what triggers us to do it. how we do it so you can recognize the behaviors which will then help us to go not only in yourself but in others and that will help us to move on to how we can prevent it so what is self-sabotage self-sabotage is behaviors or thought patterns that actively or passively prevent us from achieving our goals that's what it means when we self-sabotage it's and i i think it's such a stupid concept because While I was researching it, it just started to make more sense to me. But when I first thought of an episode of like, that's so smart, like what a great episode to make, I thought it's a bit stupid because why do people self-sabotage in the first place? Well, I've gone a lot louder now. I think that's better. Why do people self-sabotage in the first place? The only person you're hurting is yourself. So it's when I notice it's subconscious, it's not just conscious, and there, fair enough. But Why consciously self-sabotage? And I think we all do it, obviously. I catch myself sometimes like, what am I doing? I need to, oh my God. It is like the episode of The Cage of Pride where this example I had of a little child that, it's like when you're in primary school and you are sitting on the bench alone and for some reason, I don't know why you're there, but someone comes up to you and they're being nice and they're like, oh, do you want to come play with us? And for some reason you say, no thanks, I don't want to play. And then the other person goes off, you know, I've done a good deed. Go off with my day. I'm going to have a nice break time. And you sit there and suffer because you're the one that didn't want to just go play with them. That is a form of self-sabotaging. I wonder if I said that yesterday when I was talking about it as an example. Anyways, to continue on what it is, it's not always obvious and it can be as simple as procrastinating, which I found really interesting because procrastinating is such a common thing. Like it's one of my... episode ideas and it's something that I think everyone struggles with so to know it was a form of self-sabotage really made me see in a different light of like when I because I plan and then I wait a bit before I record since I've planned this I don't I'm not I haven't been procrastinating as much not that I've realized because anytime I do or I just like sit around whatever I think back to the episode like oh my god I am self-sabotaging right now and I gave so much hate on self-sabotaging how it's just stupid anyways Or it can be as deep as ruining something you care about. Psychologists define it as a form of self-defeating behaviour because even when you want something, your actions contradict your goals. It's a bit silly because why are you stopping yourself from being happier or like, I guess more successful? I'm not really sure. But why would you limit yourself in that way? The only person you're hurting is you. Do you know what I notice whenever I film these episodes? I'm always holding my breath because I can't breathe. Like I have to stop and I breathe for a bit. So off topic anyway. Self-sabotaging is often subconscious. So we might not realize we're doing it until we notice a pattern of frustration or failure. So reflection time, right? If you can think, try to think of a time when you... knew you were blocking your own progress, even if it hurt to admit. I can actually give an example. If you think about a time, the first thing that's come to my mind with this is if you think about when you were little and you used to like, I have a photo of myself when I was little and it's like this, I don't know, we'd gone to the beach this one day and you see all these photos of me at the beach and the last photo is me on a different sunbed hunched over, like staring at the floor, like in a really bad mood.

UNKNOWN: 4:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 4:34

And it reminded me of when I was little, I used to get into like strops. Like I used to get, how every child has like a, that's what it's called, tantrum. But when I would do it, I would storm off. So I would, I remember I used to open the front door, like I'm going to leave. And I'd open the front door. And when I opened the front door, then my mum would come and be like, sit back down. Like, what are you doing? But it wasn't until I opened the front door. And when we'd be out, like let's say we're at dinner and everyone's annoying me, I'd get up and go to a different, like an empty table. Or the sunbed. I remember I used to get up and move to a different sunbed. And I used to do this a lot when I was a child. And I guess that was, in a way... I'm not really good at self-reflecting, I'm trying to think. I think that was, in a way, a form of self-sabotaging. Because no one cared. I was four. Like, absolutely no one cares that I go up and go on the table. They can... It's literally... If they got up... It's very close, my point. So they can still see me. It's not like I'm in danger. No one cared that I'd moved a table. So it was just me that I was just ruining my own time. It's like, oh my God, you know what I just remembered? When I was a child, and I used to do this a lot when I was like five, six, and I'd be sleeping in my parents' bed. For some reason, in the middle of the night, I used to get up and sit on the side of the bed and just like sulk at the side of the bed until one of them was like, to come back to bed and then i'd come back to bed but i used to do that all the time i'm just remembering this now god i was such a painful child but you can see that's self-sabotaging i'm disrupting my own sleep i'm ruining my own time like i'm sitting there stropping and it's just long and like you know if you when you frown frown um you send signals to your brain that you're sad so even if you're on a fake frowning fake being sad even if you're doing that your brain um receives it as sad so you can actually make yourself sad along with when you're in a really bad mood and you smile it sounds so stupid and my mom used to tell me this when i was a child and it used to bother me because i don't want to smile right now i'm in a bad mood but when you smile it's whether you feel or not your brain um Basically, it sends a message to your brain saying you're happy. So when I'd be sitting there in a strop, I'd actually just make myself angrier and angrier. Anyways, so you self-reflect. Think of when you self-sabotaged last time you did it. You knew you were blocking your own progress, as I said, even if you didn't want to admit it. It's like when you're in the strop and you don't want to admit, like, you're doing this for attention. Anyways, so... To get into the psychology, so why do we self-sabotage? So there's a couple reasons, but I noticed a lot of it was fear. And a lot of things are fear that I've like, as I've been doing more episodes, I see we do a lot of things out of fear. And I remember when I was a child, my first fact I learned, was it my first fact? One of them, about psychology. And it was my first thing that I used to tell everyone is that human beings do everything to avoid pain. And, you know, to gain pleasure, but mainly to avoid pain. That's our biggest thing. That's every single action we do is to avoid pain. So I noticed a lot of these is fear and it's fear of the pain and we don't want to deal with it. Anyways, so why do we self-sabotage? So first of all, fear of failure. If we ruin something before we can fail at it, we protect our ego. Ego is like the negative form of confidence, right? There's also fear of success. So success equals pressure, which means attention, higher standards. Some people can fear the responsibility that comes with getting what they want. Okay, low self-esteem. We unconsciously believe we don't deserve good things, so we act in ways that prove that belief. Yeah, that's, yeah, you can notice. Silly, yeah? Imposter syndrome. Feeling like a fraud leads us to sabotage so no one finds out we don't belong. Comfort in chaos. Some people are more familiar with dysfunction or instability so they recreate it even when life is going well. And perfectionism. If it can't be perfect, why even try? This mindset causes procrastination and burnout. So, if we take a moment to reflect, think about how... Fear of success or failure has shaped the choices you've made. I feel like failure might be a bit more common. I don't, I've never, at least I'm not great at like reflecting, but when I think about it, I've never, I can't remember a time where I've made a choice out of fear of success. And I can't think of someone else doing one of those either. But maybe if you relate to it, I feel like failure might be a little bit more common. How... shape choices you've made I'm trying to think for myself of what choices obviously I've made but I'm trying to remember some that I've made like consciously to like avoid out of fear avoid failure I can't think of any right now but if I think in the rest of the episode I'll bring up how to recognize self-sabotage and that's what it's going to look like basically so First of all is procrastination, which is the one we've already spoken about and I think will be probably our most common one considering I just, I think so many people struggle with it and especially when you, oh, you're avoiding pain, you're putting off a task because you don't want to do it. It's like, what's an example? Oh, okay, when you have homework and you just can't be bothered to do it, can't be bothered to do it, so you just put it off and put it off and put it off and eventually it's you sitting there the next morning thinking, just scribbling down and limiting your own education because you couldn't you didn't want to suffer the pain of having to do it anyways next um picking fights in relationships that are going well you see that a lot in like films i see that a lot in films it's always the protagonist that's always picking fights um i wonder avoiding opportunities you secretly want I don't relate to that one personally. I'm trying to think. I'm really not good at this because I'm really trying to think of more examples and I can't. Not preparing for things you care about. Exams, auditions, interviews. I guess, yeah, exams when you don't revise and you should, really. Quitting just before the finish line. Saying I don't care when you actually do. Overcommitting so you can blame burnout if you don't succeed. Oh my god, is that a form of self-sabotage? What I wonder... I think I've done that so much before, specifically with this podcast. I remember when I first started up, I used to... No, I don't think that could be a thing. Overcommitting so you complain but not if you don't succeed. I shouldn't be doing a lot of... Okay, anyways. Negative self-talk. I'm not good enough. I always mess things up. Comparing yourself to others and using it as proof not to try. That I think many listeners will relate with because we used to get in the early... years of the podcast I remember when it was like a lot more problem-based and less fact kind of I guess fact information being given um I remember there were loads of problems about jealousy and comparison and social media there were a lot of those so if I've given you a list of like oh my god wait there's so many I gave you a list of like nine I think at 10 um Or 11? No, 9. If you can think of some behaviours from the lists I've given you, or even if you have other ones, you can put it in the Q&A below because that would be really helpful for me when I'm reflecting. Obviously, I've missed something. So if you can think of behaviours from the list or others that you've seen in yourself or even other people and how they're easy to dismiss as just part of your personality. So there's... so much stigma around the trait of like being lazy and I wonder if that's just a form of self-sabotage in the way of like you're avoiding pain but what is well um what are some behaviors seen in yourself what have I seen in myself should I see what I've procrastination I do that so much um not preparing for things you secretly care about oh no you just care about not secretly um Overcommitting so you can blame burnout if you don't succeed. When I wrote that, I didn't think it related to me. I wonder if it does. Overcommitting so you can blame burnout. That is actually going to stay in my mind. I've been thinking about that for quite a bit. So let's move on. So let's, if we want to go deeper and what is actually happening in the brain that causes this and why we self-sabotage to the point of what's going on in our head. So the amygdala, which is our fear centre, tries to protect us from discomfort, even if the discomfort is something like change, growth or uncertainty. Change is my least favourite thing in the world. And it's not even consciously. It's not even like, oh, I hate change. Everyone hates change. I physically struggle with change so much. I avoid it at all costs. I hate change. Even if it's good change, I can't stand change. It literally drives me off the wall. But... Change is good. It's like, change is... I don't want to get too much into this. I'm doing another episode on this, actually. Impermanence is the only permanent thing we have in life. Change is the only permanent thing in life, which is why it's just something you have to get used to. And I just don't think I can. And I don't know if... Everyone's terrified of change. I feel like it's in our DNA to be... That we like stable and we like the same thing. No one wants to change up. Actually, you know, saying that, sometimes people are like, oh, I'm sick of this now. Like, let's move on. And then need something new. Or like when you get sick of a book or a film. That's also change. But you can see when it's the fear center, the amygdala, trying to protect us from discomfort. That's what it means when human beings, every action we do is to avoid pain. So it's our brain trying to avoid discomfort. And I guess change is just discomfort. Growth is discomfort. And uncertainty. No one wants to be uncertain or confused. It's not a nice thing. The prefrontal cortex... is it's just like our logic and like where planning happens gets overridden by emotional memory especially if we have a history of failure rejection or criticism i guess like a trauma no we build cognitive distortions like catastrophizing or all or nothing thinking that fuel sabotage i remember when i was um restarting the podcast i would do this thing where i'd say you know what It's now or never. And it was just silly because it's not going to be never, but I'd say if it's not this month, it's never happening. Anyways, habits are stored in the basal ganglia. If you've been in the habit of doubting yourself, your brain defaults to that pattern unless consciously interrupted. So, if you want to think, reflect. Think, how do you think the brain is trying to keep us safe but actually stops us from living fully? It's like we've been designed, I guess, to survive. We weren't really made to flourish. I remember the other day I was reading this book and it was saying human beings weren't designed to be happy. We're not meant to be happy. It's not in our nature. makeup, I guess. We're here to survive. We're here to eat and grow and sleep and live and just survive on the planet. But we're not meant to have a happy existence. If you want to have a happy existence, you have to get into control of it. And so the thing with being in control of your emotions, and I found this so fascinating, I still do actually, because what I think is so special about psychology is that you learn so much about your brain and how it works. And, you know, if you pick up this, you're going to do this. It's a bit of a silly example, but you learn so much of how you function that you can twist it to your advantage. If you know how you work, you know that this cue will make you happy and this cue will make you sad, just to make it as basic as possible. Then you know what to do when you need to do it. You just feel so much more in control. And specifically when I was first learning about it, I remember feeling so... control of my emotions like anyone can do anything and it's not gonna shake me that didn't actually work that was like a good year ago or two but it's it's nice to feel that control and it's nice to feel that you you know what's happening and it's not so i guess ignorance is bliss but but um it's nice to know what's happening and how you can know what the brain is trying to do because if the brain isn't made to make us happy but if you know how it works you can Use that knowledge to your advantage to make you happy. So where does self-sabotage happen the most? So I'm going to give some examples. School and like achievement. So not revising, leaving things to the last minute, not speaking up in class when you know the answer. Friendships. So that's when you're pushing people away, not opening up, overthinking and assuming people hate you. Then you have romantic relationships, picking people who aren't good for you, starting arguments to test them, leaving before they can leave you. Hobbies and passions, telling yourself you're not talented enough, quitting something you love out of fear that it won't be worth it. Opportunities, not applying yourself for things you want, so programs, jobs, competitions, because they won't pick you anyway. When you think of those lists... Where do you notice yourself getting in your own way the most? Where do you notice self-sabotage happening the most for you? For me, you know, when I look and read that list, I can see school, you know, leaving last minute, not putting your hand up in class. I told a story in a different episode about when I was a child in English and I would never put my hand up because I had this stigma. And I had this idea of like, I'm great in English. It was just a thing. I'm good at English. And so... I didn't want to put my hand up and get it wrong because it just felt like it would mean that I wasn't good at English anymore and I wouldn't have that subject that was like mine. So I never put my hand up and I noticed how it was a form of self-sabotage because it was limiting me. Wow, this really links into the episode I did yesterday. Jeez. Where else do I notice myself getting into my own way? Hobbies and passions. No, I remember when I started... I started back a lot of hobbies that I used to do as a child in 2025. 2025 was really like, I'm going to be... super hobbyful I mean I would have loads of hobbies this year and I started a lot at once and I remember my sister saying to me she was like you're not gonna be able to keep it all up because you're quite you get frustrated easily and you're going to like do it and you know whatever you miss it once or you don't do so well one time and it's gonna make you want to quit and then you're not gonna be able to continue it And so with that in mind, that made me so conscious of every time I do one of my hobbies, I'd notice, like, for example, tennis. If I miss the ball, nope, I can focus. And I keep going, even if you have a really, because tennis is a bit frustrating, or even other sports or hobbies are. It really made me, it's what I was saying with like, you know, with the knowledge is to your advantage. It just made me a lot more aware of like, I will not sabotage this for myself. Like this is, this is what I want. This is what I'm going to do. So I have to just lock in and focus and not ruin it for myself. Because the only person that will be at a disadvantage, the only person I'll hurt is myself. I wonder, that's quite an interesting behavior when it's humans do everything to avoid pain because so much is painful, but it leads to pleasurable things and it's not it's not fun to revise and 24 7 and work super hard but it's rewarding and it's pleasurable when you then get into the school you want you just have a lot more freedom it's not fun to what's another example it's not fun to play tennis every day when it's just like like you miss the shot, you miss the shot, you just keep going, keep going, keep going. But when you start to get good, then it's suddenly pleasurable and it's an enjoyable sport. A lot of things are like that and it's funny how it's made up. Like if you reflect and think of activities or sports or hobbies and just things in life and situations where it's pain to gain pleasure. And it's funny because our human... Our makeup is that we avoid pain, so then we're avoiding that pleasure. And it's funny that when I'm thinking about it now, most things are painful. That sounded so funny. Okay. Now, where do you notice yourself getting your own way the most? I feel like for me, maybe it's school and achievement. I feel like that might be where I notice myself getting in my own way the most. Well, that's nice you can know where it is, why it's happening, what's happening. Now, how to notice it in real life, like as you're in, as you're moving, as you're physically self-sabotaging, as you're getting into that bad mood, as you're saying, no, I don't want to play with you. If you remember my example of the child on the bench that doesn't want to play. How do you notice it while you're in the moment? So, If you feel nervous right before something good is about to happen, you start doubting yourself more intensely when you're close to a goal. I remember I saw this quote a while ago of... I really test my memory in this episode because I always remember quotes about this topic, but I can't remember the exact quote and I'm not taking a good 20 minutes to find it. What was the... It was like you're getting close and it's hard because... You're so close to the finish line and that's what makes it harder. I'm going to continue. You pick at flaws or create drama during peaceful times. I feel like that's also something people do when they're bored. When you're bored and you can notice yourself self-sabotaging because of chaos and drama. You downplay your accomplishments or successes. You use humour or sarcasm to avoid talking about the things you care about. You convince yourself that it doesn't matter even though it clearly does. So if you think for yourself, have you ever created a problem when there just wasn't one and just because things were going too well? I'm going to try reflect while you reflect. Think of when have you created? I feel like everyone's done it. It's a human behavior. It's not that these are things when I say reflect and it's like, have you ever done this? It's not that it's wrong because the fact I'm asking, the fact I'm learning about it, I'm not going to say anything that isn't quite relatable. So all of these things is that I assume every listener will be sitting there like, oh, I can remember, like, I, I don't know, I started an argument with my friend just because I was in a bad mood. And I just like, I don't know, I was just being, or like, okay, perfect. When you think of, if you're in an argument or you're in, I don't know, you're in some kind of conflict. And so why are you arguing? You know, and you think about it and you're like, stop, you know, I don't know. Or if it's something stupid, it's like you really can notice in that moment with things you don't know why. What am I angry about and why am I actually angry? I remember when you're young, it's such a massive deal. I'm actually young. But I mean, when you're like 12 or 13, it's such a massive deal when someone speaks badly about you behind your back. And it's a huge deal. But... unnecessary, don't you think? It's like, oh, I just, I can't be bothered for the conflict. I don't know where I'm going. Should I continue my thing? So we've spoken about how to notice it, how to realize you're doing it, what's actually happening in the brain, why we do it and what it looks like. Now, how do we stop self-sabotaging or just reduce it a bit? Because I guess it's a human behavior. You can't just decide you're going to stop.

UNKNOWN: 25:49

So

SPEAKER_00: 25:50

one thing that I'm not sure if everyone's going to want to do but I feel like it might be the most what's so hard it might be the most helpful one something like that it might be the best one is you just name it like while you're doing it and you notice you literally just say out loud I am self-sabotaging right now and the awareness will just reduce the power I doubt Anyone's going to be, I don't know, it's an argument. Stop, I am self-sabotaging. Or you know who might actually want to do this? One of my friends, she always gets into bad moods. She goes to these like waves. She goes to these like waves of bad moods and we'll talk about it after and she'll say like, oh, I know I look pathetic. I know I'm being pathetic. I'm just like, I just don't know why I do it. Like I can't snap out of it. I tell her this. I know for a guarantee, it doesn't matter where we are, what we're doing. She's not the kind of person who would care. Stop. Stop. I am self-sabotaging right now. You know what I'm going to do? I think it'd be quite helpful because I feel like the most common one is that when you're in a bad mood and there's no reason for you to be in a bad mood, you're just in a bad mood because you're self-sabotaging. I wonder if you can notice. I'm just like moving around. It might be helpful to just stop. I am self-sabotaging. And you stop in the moment because it's just hurting yourself. So who actually cares? Say it out loud. It's quite helpful, I think. Should I continue? Because some people might not want to do that and didn't want to listen to it for that long. Trace the fear. So ask yourself, what am I afraid of if this whatever situation works out? Reframe failure. Instead of what if I fail, ask if what will I learn if I try? Journal your patterns. So track times that you've given up or procrastinated to try to spot common triggers. One thing that actually might be helpful, and I recommend, it's my biggest recommendation. You know, you can say a lot of things about hobbies and life and whatever advice, but this is, for me, one of my resolutions of 2025. And it was a massive one for me. So I was in my room, and this is like a week before, no, two weeks before 2025. And I was in my room with one of my friends at the time. And we were looking at old diaries and stuff. And I found, I used to find a lot of diaries when I was a child. And I found one of year seven. It was the funniest thing you've ever seen because it was, I could read. And it was people I was, you were friends, I was friends with in the moment. And I was reading back of like, God, she said this to this guy and this to this guy. And every day it's like, oh, she said that she gossiped about this one and gossiped about this one. It was so funny to look back and I was so grateful that I had it because I wouldn't remember any of that. I just remember year seven as a blur. But having that is like, wow, I forgot what day-to-day was like. And you really see like day-to-day life was so hectic. There was no reason. It could have been so peaceful and it wasn't. And so I decided that would be so cool if in 2025, I had a diary entry every day. So I start doing it before 2025, like a week before to start building the habit. And then I see on TikTok something like my 2025 resolution is having a title for every day, like a title, like a TV show. And so you write a diary entry every day and you title it, you give it some random title. I don't, the TV show is a bit useless because like it's not helpful. You just give it a title. And mine, a lot of mine are like questions or like thoughts, big, like what I've thought about the most that day or something that happened that day that just shocked me that I was like, God, like, Like I have, I've had, you know what's even more helpful is when I've been planning episodes, I flick back and I look at titles and I go, wow, that's a great title. That's going to be an episode. And some episodes have the title names, whether they're released or not yet, but I have a lot of episodes that I, the title is a title of my diary that I took because it was helpful. And I feel like that was the most helpful resolution because yes, you know, you've got the whole, you know, downtime and it's helpful to like write before bed and it's nice. That is one thing. The second is having the document. It's incredible. It's so useful. It's, if you don't remember something happened the day, like I couldn't, I was telling my friend a story and I couldn't remember what happened that day, but on the day I'd written down every single thing I'd said in some, I don't know, something. And I could literally read it to her. I could read her the page. It's so helpful. And I know when I'm older, I'll be able to look back and I can see the day to day of what, what it was like. I find it so... I think it's my best resolution. I'm so glad. I've nearly finished mine, actually. I need to buy another. But it's so helpful. It doesn't matter that it's halfway through the year. I'm one of those people that's like, I need an opportunity that I love the new year because I love the opportunity of like, it's fresh. Like you can come with new goals and resolutions. You can reinvent yourself tomorrow if you want. Like you can just start tomorrow. And it's so cool, you know, seeing how the numbers stack up and... Everything that's happened, having that day to day, it's honestly incredible. So I have to look back and be like, what? It's so helpful. It's completely off topic, but I really recommend it if you want to start doing that. Trust me. I remember I started doing it in year seven because I'd watched The Vampire Diaries and Elena Gilbert in The Vampire Diaries writes a diary. And I was obsessed with that show. Oh, my God. I lived and breathed that show for a good year. And every time I do it, I'd write in my diary when I read it. It's like, I feel like Elena Gilbert right now. Like, I'm Elena Gilbert. Like, I am Elena Gilbert right now. And now it's a different motivation. Now it's like, it's hard to stop. But I have every single day since a week before 2025 documented. It's incredible. It's really, I love it. It's so nice to have it all done. I feel like I'm like documenting. Of course, no one else cares. It's my day to day. It's a bit boring. But for myself, it's quite nice. Let's get back to the topic. Where was I? Oh, I was saying reframing failure. So asking yourself, oh no, I was saying journaling your patterns or tracking times you've given up or procrastinated to spot common triggers. How I got into diarrhea is I'm saying, if you have that, so now I can go back and I can spot triggers of like common situations that come up in my life and how they, how I react, how I behave. And you can see, you know, How to break a pattern is to respond differently. And I can notice that pattern a lot easier because I can see how I behave, how I react. So yeah, it's quite helpful to look and see when I've procrastinated, see when I've given up. And then when the situation comes up again, I can learn from my mistakes. So should we continue with how to stop self-sabotaging? Practice self-compassion. So you're not lazy or broken, you're scared. So try to talk to yourself like someone you love. Visualize success. It's hard to become what you can't imagine. Practice picturing yourself doing well and surviving it. Use micro goals. Big goals can scare your brain. Break them down so they feel safe and achievable. I remember, I don't know if, I think I had said on the podcast, but I used to have, I have a lot of, God, I actually can't remember the word, but I used to have this like saying kind of thing that I was saying, When you have a goal and you set massive goals, it's like this big, imagine this like big square, this big block in front of you, depending on how big your goal is. And it's just huge in front of you, like triple your height, huge, depending, you know, whatever. So when you notice that to achieve your goal is basically to get from where you are and climb on top of the square. There are no dents. There's not just a plain block. You have no way of getting to the top. You can't get to the top. There's no helicopter. There's no ladder. There's no whatever. cheat code you've got you can't get to the top you can't climb up because you physically can't reach it so what you do is you start carving and you're breaking into the block a staircase you break steps like that and you can make some steps bigger some steps like tiny little steps and some huge steps and but just steps that are achievable then you notice it's so much easier to get up that staircase that is how i always describe goals and um when i for myself when i'm thinking of goals it's how i picture them because it's so much more achievable And that's what I meant with this note. So using micro goals, basically. So instead of that big block, you're cutting into little small steps or bigger steps, or you can change size of the steps. Anyways, should we continue? Surround yourself with non-judgmental accountability. People who remind you of your goals without guilt. Now, I've given you a lot of how to stop self-sabotaging. So think on what small changes you can make to... stop a cycle of self-sabotage or what issues you can what issues you have been doing if you've already thought about it noticed it i think naming is the most helpful one micro goals are super helpful for not wanting to it was one of the forms where i said it was you don't want to opportunities not applying for all things you want because they won't pick you anyway that's not great or um quitting something you love because you won't be good enough like It's like these big goals. You're like, well, I'm not going to achieve anyway. Like, give up. Like, I'm wasting my time. There, you cut it into micro goals. So you keep achieving things every day. I think that's helpful. The journaling is just great, full stop. Like, no matter what topic, it's incredible. And I think naming it is great. I'm going to tell my friend that whenever she gets in a bad mood, and I'm going to start doing that. So as we end this episode... When I'm thinking of other ideas, you can see, as I run up this episode, some things have come to me. Self-sabotage isn't laziness, but it can be perceived as that way, as I was saying before, because it's a protective mechanism. And you can see how it can be tied into identity. And people often sabotage because their self-image hasn't caught up with their potential. Yeah, you can... Wow, it's... I think it was an interesting episode. I have a couple quotes, okay? Your comfort zone will destroy you and sometimes the worst thing that happens is nothing because you stopped yourself from even trying. That one's good. The second one I like. Sometimes the worst thing that happens is nothing because you stopped yourself from even trying. Yeah, jeez. Well... This was a great episode. I really enjoyed filming this episode. Actually, it flowed a lot easier than some other ones. And it's so helpful and it's really... I've learned a lot from recording it and planning it of self-sabotaging and I can see how I actually am guilty of self-sabotage. Guilty. I mean, everyone does it, but I self-sabotage. So if you enjoyed this episode or there are other ones you love... Please text someone in your phone right now, anyone in your phone, and refer this podcast. You can message them saying, listen girls, to the girls' classroom, or you can just send this episode or another one of your favourites. In the girls' classroom, we also feature problems where we offer advice and give help. And those are odd episodes that we do as well as information ones. So if you have a problem or you need advice or a query or anything, You can message us on Instagram, which you can find in our description of this episode, or email us at thegirlsclassroomatourlook.com. I'll always be quick to get back to you if I can. 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