Think You're Self-Sabotaging? You're Not.

Have you heard of this concept called self-sabotage? It's a fairly common idea. A person has a goal, but does things that make the goal harder, or even impossible, to achieve. Here's the thing, they're not self-sabotaging. And here's why.

Hey there. It's me, Kore. And you're listening to Exercising Self-Control: From Fitness To Flourishing.

I dislike that term: self-sabotage. At least, I dislike what it's implying. It suggests you're at the mercy of hidden parts of yourself that are scheming to keep you from realizing your goals.

* You're not skipping your workout randomly. You “have to see that movie on opening day.”

* You're not eating an entire medium pizza to mess with your goal of losing 25 pounds. You're doing it because that's what you do on “Pizza Friday with the crew. It's tradition.”

* You're not sleeping in for the third day in a row. You are getting “quality recovery.”

That sure sounds like self-sabotage though, doesn't it? What else could it be?

Here's a story about The Choosing Self and The Conditioned Self. I briefly described these selves before. Today, you'll get a clearer description and a better understanding why you do the things you do.

John, a made-up person by the way, has a challenge every once in a while when it comes to choosing what he considers reasonable portion sizes when he's hungry. To the point at which it takes on the characteristics of what he calls “binge eating.” He's never gotten a medical diagnosis, but he uses that phrase. Every once in a while, when he's hungry and feeling stressed, he finds himself in his cupboards or his fridge, almost as if he's got no self-control, grabbing whatever food strikes his fancy and eating without restraint. All thought of sticking to his healthy eating intentions are ignored or completely forgotten. The focus in the moment is on the food, the flavours, and the act of eating.

He would like to lose weight and get his eating under control, but he struggles to get a hold of his overeating episodes. When John is stuck in the tunnel vision of that specific set of conditionings he sees the world from that perspective; he acts from that state of mind. However, he could choose to create any number of different experiences from the options available to him. And these different choices would yield any number of different behaviours and different results.

Story time's over. What am I getting at here?

If you have a pattern, a particular set of behaviours, like imaginary John and his binge eating, you can be sure that you have been conditioned to express those behaviours by choice, your own, or by chance, just the circumstances that have happened in your life.

Which brings me to the two concepts of self that you can use to better understand why you do the things you do. These are The Choosing Self and The Conditioned Self. The Choosing Self is your faculty of choice; your volition; your will. I mentioned this in How To Make Yourself Invincible. This is in contrast to The Conditioned Self. You can think of The Conditioned Self as the conglomeration of the choices you've made, the conclusions you've drawn, and the experiences you've had. In other words, your automatic pilot. No conscious thinking required.

The Conditioned Self cannot act beyond its training. It just does what it's been trained to do. Only The Choosing Self has choice. The behaviour of The Conditioned Self is triggered by the circumstances in the environment. For example, as in the story, “If hungry and feeling stressed, then eat whatever is available and in great quantity.”

I'll say it again, “The Conditioned Self CANNOT act beyond what it's been trained to do.”

If your Conditioned Self has not been trained to handle a circumstance, then your Choosing Self has to do it. You have to take responsibility for making a better choice. That takes a lot of awareness, focus, and effort. It’s difficult. When the Conditioned Self comes into play, The Choosing Self, for all intents and purposes, has been taken offline and is unavailable. There's fascinating neuroscience explaining why and how this happens. It's been called the amygdala hijack. But I'll save that for a future episode.

Here's a metaphor to sum this up. The Conditioned Self is the riverbed. Your experience, if you choose to go with the flow, is determined by the shape of the riverbed. You'll go where the riverbed directs the water. Maybe even over a waterfall.

However, you can choose to change the shape of the riverbed. This will take significantly more effort than just going with the flow. So, for a time, you'll feel uncomfortable, you'll feel awkward, and you'll likely