Your Self-Sabotage Survival Guide

How to Go From Why Me? to Why Not?

Karen Berg

• Publisher: Career Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781601633514
• eBook ISBN:
  9781601634092
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Do you feel like everyone around you is getting ahead while you're stuck in the same old rut?

And do you blame everyone and everything for your situation--except yourself?

Many of us walk around engaging in negative behaviors and mindsets, and don't even realize we're doing it. Every day, people work harder and harder to get--nowhere.

It's time to stop being second-rate; it's time to be great! With more than 25 years in the trenches, motivational expert Karen Berg shows you how to transcend the ordinary and become extraordinary with this firm, tough-love program about getting to the point, getting what you want, and getting ahead.

Your Self-Sabotage Survival Guide will help you refocus your energy and get back on track, first by helping you identify the elements of self-sabotage, then by providing sound advice for reinventing yourself and eliminating sabotage from your life.

This essential guide will help you get rid of the "buts," banish the "if onlys," and break the cycle of playing it safe. Complete with anecdotes and expert panel interviews, Your Self-Sabotage Survival Guide features checklists, worksheets, quizzes, and more to help you finally get the success you deserve--because you earned it.

PART 1

ELEMENTS OF SABOTAGE

There’s no business like show business—and all business is “show.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer or a graphic designer or a maître d’. As Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” For performers, it’s essential to give a good “show,” but it matters for all of us. Most of us forget that; we forget to be aware of ourselves, and that’s where sabotage starts to creep in and take over.

We have to be as aware of ourselves and our actions as actors are at auditions. Everything we do needs to be treated like we’re determined to clinch that big role. In this day and age, we’re “on” all the time. All eyes are on you, to achieve or fail. That’s why you need to set your mind on achieving and work at it every day—except we don’t do that. Instead, we allow ourselves to be carried through our careers on the backs of bad behaviors. As a result, we don’t get anywhere.

It’s time to turn that around—first by awareness and then by action.

Get yourself a fresh new journal to use for this book and keep it handy as you read. The journal will become your own personal chronicle of how you overcame sabotage, and will make a great reference if you ever begin to slip back into the clutches of self-sabotage.

In this short section, I’m going to outline some of the many ways people sabotage themselves professionally and personally, and help you discover which sabotaging behaviors you may be guilty of. In the next section, we’ll work to fix them.

Let’s go!

1

Your Biggest Obstacle: YOU!

It had long since come to my attention that people of
accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them.
They went out and happened to things.

—Leonardo da Vinci

Are you not getting ahead in your life and career due to any of the following situations or reasons?

“I was born to the wrong family.”

“My parents didn’t push me when I was growing up. That’s why I can’t get ahead.”

“I was born in the wrong era.”

“I wish I had time to take a professional enrichment class.”

“My boss doesn’t understand me.”

“I had all the right qualifications for the job. I guess they didn’t like me.”

“I was told I would receive some help to finish my project, but I haven’t received any.”

If you’re sabotaging yourself, you’re not alone. Self-sabotage is an epidemic. In my experience, roughly 85 percent of people sabotage themselves.

Self-sabotage is insidious, profound, and universal. Many of us walk around engaging in negative behaviors and mindsets, and we don’t even realize we’re doing it. Every day, people from all industries are working hard to get nowhere. This is because in every single sector, from education to entertainment, from medicine to marketing, people—smart, highly educated people—sabotage themselves by not being in the moment, by letting their thoughts spiral out of control in business meetings, and by drifting away from the point. Not to mention the havoc they wreak on their professional persona with their social media footprint! Did you know that even your doctor Googles you these days? You have to be careful what you’re putting up there in social media—and yet, people aren’t.

Even top-level executives sabotage themselves. Here’s a recent example that comes to mind.

Paul and his team were a group of high-level executives that had been given a chance to make a huge deal with a corporation based in Africa. If they made the deal, it would be a crowning achievement for their group and a giant coup for their company. Needless to say, they took the job very seriously. They worked nights and weekends getting ready. Paul missed a big family reunion, while other members of his team ducked out of various soccer games and date nights. Paul’s second-in-command, Regina, even missed attending a wedding.

They labored for weeks preparing the PowerPoint and perfecting their presentation. Because these were top-level folks, they understood that the international language of business is typically English, so they prepared their entire presentation in English. Like machines or robots, they never once questioned whether the language they were going to be presenting in was the correct language for their client; they just robot-ed forward.

At last, the work was done and it was the team’s time to shine; they were loaded with confidence. They landed in Africa a full 24 hours before the big meeting to get proper rest, go over their presentation, and make sure the room they were presenting in could accommodate their tools.

Finally, the meeting time arrived, and the team geared up to greet the client. But as soon as the head of the group entered the room and greeted Paul with a warm “Bonjour” Paul’s heart sank into his shoes. For all his team had been on top of, they missed one crucial detail: the country they were to be presenting in used French as their go-to business language, not English.

After all that time preparing, not to mention the thousands of miles they traveled, they were thrown out of the conference room. After all that work, they didn’t even have a chance to present, let alone make the deal, all because no one thought to break out of the routine and learn more about the country they’d be presenting in. They all just went about their busy work, not considering the world beyond their spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides.

Words From the Wise—Deborah McCarthy

Director, Results Delivery Organization, Alcatel-Lucent

It’s Up to Me

Here are some aspects of self-sabotage I witnessed in my career.

Faking who you are:I always try to be true to myself and genuine in my dealings. One of the factors that contributes to self-sabotage is being someone you’re not and saying things that are simply not your own. It is impossible to defend or sustain being something I am not. I don’t even try. In the long run, it leads to failure and disappointment, both for myself and the people who depend and believe in me.

Doing things for the wrong reasons: Always do the right thing for the right reasons. I cannot let my “personal” agenda get ahead or be more important to what I do and who I support.

Not “owning” it: When I question the value of who I am and what I bring to the table, I am no longer able to fit in naturally or make the contributions I’m truly capable of. There are always going to be people who try to marginalize you and what you contribute. I forgive their ignorance for not understanding what I’m saying and doing, and their built-in biases based on a host of misconceptions.

At the end of the day, if I truly am giving it my all and doing what is needed, that’s what matters. I tune out the critics and move on with what needs to be done. Accepting that not everyone is going to like or value me allows me to focus on the people who do.

What’s in Your Way?

You can never be too sure of yourself. There’s an old saying, “The devil’s in the details,” and that saying applies definitely here.

You don’t need to be a full-on self-saboteur to sabotage yourself. You can be firing on most cylinders and still be out a crucial one. What could have benefitted Paul and his team was to have a back-up plan in place—to anticipate things that could go wrong and prepare for them. They didn’t anticipate for all that could go wrong; hopefully, they won’t make that mistake again.

For most people, though, self-sabotage doesn’t happen by missing a small detail. It’s a culmination of missteps, miscalculations, and misperceptions. And the wrong behavior is a biggie.

Successful people make themselves stand out—and for the right reasons. They actively pursue opportunities in which they can stand out. This is a fairly known concept. As a communications coach, I have always been disturbed that so many people don’t try to stand out. They avoid the spotlight and being set apart. They don’t want to take chances and put themselves out there. Why? Fear is one reason. What if I take a risk and it backfires? What if I take a stand on something, and it pits me against my boss or even the CEO? What if my proposal changes the way that business gets done and eliminates jobs? What if my colleagues lose their jobs? What if I do, for speaking up?

The basic stance becomes that it is safer not to stand out, that it’s better to follow the existing blueprint and not try to break the mold, or rock the boat, or any other beaten-to-death metaphor you can use.

Complacency can be far worse. Complacency is not the same as fear, but it can come from fear. Sometimes complacency happens because people are fearful to act; sometimes because they are comfortable and unmotivated. But it can have disastrous results.

Take for example the Madoff scandal. A recent New York Times article by Floyd Norris talked about the “confusion” at JP Morga...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Elements of Sabotage
• Part 2 Review! Renew! Reinvent!
• About the Contributors
• Index
• About the Author