Welcome to the podcast, everybody. I did not get a podcast out last week. I thought to myself, I don’t need to announce that. I don’t need to remind people of that. That’s the truth. I didn’t get one done last week. My husband owns a dental office and we were shorthanded, and so two and a half full days I was helping with that. One thing led to another. And then on the weekend when my whole family is home, I feel like I can’t get anything done. Like I don’t know about you, but it’s just the activity and everybody being around and all the noise and whatnot with my husband and my four kids and just also feeling responsible to people and kind of feeling like I got to be involved in what they’re doing.
And so I just ran out of time, but I’m happy to bring this one to you this week. This is born out of a workshop type thing that I do. I love doing them. And a studio had invited me to do a zoom class for their students.W hen I do this, I talk to the studio owner or the teacher, whoever is putting it on about what would most help their students. What are they dealing with? What do you think would be helpful to share? And then I kind of gather my thoughts on it and then I create something and, and I like it to be a little bit back and forth, a little bit Q&A little bit, um, engaging for them, but largely too, I teach concepts much like I do on this podcast.
And so this podcast is born out of that workshop, which was about holding yourself back. And to me, this is a little different than self sabotage. I’ve wanted to do one on self sabotage, but to me, self sabotage is like, we’re about to do this, you know, big thing. We’re about to take this big step forward, and we sabotage ourselves. But to me, I don’t know. Self sabotage feels like so much more intense to me or it feels like some way that we are really extremely holding ourselves back. And I don’t think that’s really what I want to talk about today, but it is very similar because in the case of self sabotage, there’s things we want to do.
There’s things we want to do to move forward. And yet we’re kind of holding ourselves back in a way. We might do things that make it so we can’t succeed or move forward. And when people are talking to me about this in my private sessions with clients, it’s, they’re talking about, they’re prepared to dance well, and they’ve been working on it and they’re getting into the performance and something kind of goes wrong.
They forget choreography, their brain. You know, drops out and they ask, and they ask, why am I sabotaging myself? And for the most part, I don’t, I don’t know that this is exactly self sabotage, because I do think so much of this is just, it’s a normal human thing. It’s a normal human brain in a high pressure situation.
And like I’ve said, our brains just do funny things when we’re under pressure and our bodies respond in different ways. And it’s a stress inducing situation. And so I don’t normally really categorize that as like, you’re sabotaging yourself. That’s just like a brain that’s like triggered. Okay. But it is kind of related.
So, but let me talk about what I want to talk about today, which is the ways that we get in our own way. And this list is endless and we could. Categorize a lot of things in here, but I’ll just give you a few kind of off the top of my head. I think that when, for example, we worry about what other people think of us, and we worry about how people perceive us, and we might be thinking about doing something, but we’re worried about being embarrassed.
Being embarrassed has a lot to do with how other people are going to perceive us and what other people are going to think about us. You might hold yourself back by putting things off. You might be putting off practicing. You might be. Scheduling practice sessions and then canceling them, you might be procrastinating decisions when I was getting ready to do my first competition.
I was like, putting off, putting off, putting off choosing a dress and I was kind of like holding it away. So I was procrastinating it. It wasn’t just that I just couldn’t find what I wanted. It was like, I knew that once I made that decision, it was like, I was doing this for real, you know, and so it was like I was procrastinating that I was holding myself back.
Another way you hold yourself back is we all tell stories about ourselves. We all have narratives that we tell about ourselves and we believe those stories that our brain tells us. Some things I’ve heard from clients just even recently is I am a slow learner. I’m not very emotional. I’m more left brained.
I’m not a good performer. I don’t have good posture, good feet. I don’t have the right body type. So for example, these are. Things that we believe about our self that we’ve identified with that we’ve kind of like made them like a permanent personality trait when they’re really just a thought, it’s just a thought or just a belief I picked up along the way, and I’m holding on to it and using it as a reason not to move forward, which goes along with making excuses.
One way we hold ourselves back is making excuses. We make excuses like, I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough money. I’m too fat. I’m too old. I’m too inexperienced. I’m not like so and so. And we’ll use whatever we can think of as an excuse for why we can’t succeed or do the things that we want to do.
We might also blame others and maybe not take responsibility or not take accountability. It’s like, oh, he’s not teaching me the right things, or she’s not teaching me the right way, or she’s not giving me as much time as I need, or as long as that person is dancing, I can’t be successful, or so and so isn’t making enough time for me, or they leave me out, or they don’t include me.
So these are ways that we’re looking outside of us and kind of blaming others. For why we can’t have the things that we want, but really it’s just us holding ourselves back by believing such things. This can also include like taking things personally, things people say, criticisms from teachers, from coaches, um, and just making it feel personal and then getting in.
Involved in a lot of drama about that. Another big one is dwelling. Dwelling on mistakes. Dwelling on bad results. Dwelling on accidents or mishaps. Dwelling on critiques. Dwelling on things that people have said to us. This also looks like rumination. It also looks like overthinking. So we’re just Letting things take up a longer time in our brain than necessary.
We’re like drying them out and we’re consuming a lot of energy, keeping those things alive, and that’s holding you back all of us. I’m sure overemphasize the negative and under emphasize the positive. Okay. This is in your dance moves. It’s in your practicing, it’s in your performances, it’s in your lessons.
We’re just overemphasizing what’s wrong and we’re under emphasizing what’s going well, and that is holding you back. Another one that I think is so fascinating is doubt. Doubt is so normal. It’s so human, but it’s so strange because if you think about it, I saw, um, Kobe Bryant talk about this and I shared it, the video that I found in joyful ballroom, the free Facebook group, free Facebook group.
But, um, he talks about doubt and how doubt is just such a funny thing because doubt is just like, I don’t know. I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I’m ready. I don’t know if that’s possible for me. I don’t know if I’m capable, but we won’t know. Until we do it. And, and when we do it, it’s either going to go well or it’s not going to go well.
So we’re either going to find out, yes, we are capable. Yes, we can do it. We’re going to find out. No, not yet. We still have learning to do and whether it goes well or whether it doesn’t, we get up the next day. And we try again. So the doubt doesn’t really have a purpose. It doesn’t, it’s not useful, right? So doubt is something that we indulge in that we just got to go do the thing to see where we’re at.
And we spend a lot of time putting things off because of our doubts or even not applying ourselves fully because of our doubts, but we’re not going to know if we can do it or not until we apply ourselves fully. And like really do it and really try, which is another one. Sometimes we hold ourselves back by not really trying.
I had a client tell me this just this week. She said, if I don’t give my all, then if I fall short, then I don’t have to own the results. So such good awareness, right? Like not really trying, not really giving my all, not engaging a hundred percent is a way that you’re holding yourself back. Now I want to kind of distill this.
to simplify it for you. And I think this distills down to really kind of one big reason that we get in our own way. And that is that we are designed to stay safe. Your brain. It’s number one responsibility is to keep you alive. It’s to keep you surviving. And I’ve mentioned it in previous podcasts, but the things that ensure your survival are one seeking pleasure to avoiding pain and three conserving energy.
This is called the motivational triad. And this part of your brain is very, very strong. This is the part of your brain that you are probably kind of battling and wrestling with on a daily basis. Okay, because anything that you want requires probably delayed gratification and this motivational triad totally gets in the way of that because the motivational triad totally prefers instant gratification.
So the things that we want to put off, the negative habits that we have that we want to get rid of so that we can have our best life. They require us to overcome this part of our brain. And when we’re talking about dancing, we’re talking about holding ourselves back, I think we’re mostly talking here about avoiding pain and we’re avoiding emotional pain.
And as far as the brain is concerned, emotional pain is just as painful. If, if not more so than physical pain in your brain, it’s the same. Part of the brain where it gets lit up. So emotional pain is just as bad as physical pain and your brain is going to want to avoid it. Now this emotional pain, I kind of, in my mind, divide into two types.
There’s it’s anticipating old pain, which means like I’ve experienced pain like this before I’ve experienced a situation like this before or something kind of similar. And this feels the same. And so I want to avoid it because I don’t want to go through that again. And this can look like traumas, even micro traumas, this could even just look like I had a parent who was especially critical and nothing was ever good enough.
And so if I’m in a situation where I’m feeling judged, I’m going to put myself out there and They’re going to critique me, my nervous system, my brain might be anticipating this feels a lot like my parenting that I had, right? So even though it’s old pain and it can look very different, the nervous system is sensing there’s something similar here.
We might not totally be aware of that. Our brain can also perceive these coaches or teachers or judges or other people in the same way as those parents. And so it’ll feel like a similar threat. This pain could be like old pain I’ve had or it could be new pain and new pain is something I haven’t done before There’s lots of unknowns.
There’s lots of reasons to be afraid and we’ve talked about this kind of a lot lately is What our nervous system does when we’re doing new things but the devil, you know is better than the devil you don’t as far as the brain is concerned, which means What is familiar is safe, safer to me than something new, because at least I can predict what’s familiar.
I can predict what I know. So even if I think danger is coming, at least I am familiar with that danger. And new danger Is even worse. Okay, so new experiences are sometimes too scary, even if it might be good for me or better for me. The mystery around it. My brain does not like something that you might not have considered also is that even when you up level your life and it’s new, you get a new job, you get a promotion.
You’re dating somebody who’s like the best person you’ve ever dated. And so we’re up leveling our life. Your subconscious or your non conscious brain can influence you to act in ways to sabotage that because it feels too different, even if it’s good. Even if you get that promotion and we’re making more money, your nervous system can be like, I don’t know, I don’t know how to handle this, this money.
Like this feels, it feels too different. We’ll do something to get ourselves fired or we’re in this relationship and it feels too good and I’m not accustomed to feeling good like the good feeling can feel painful. And so I might cheat on that person that I’m dating with or do things to sabotage it so that they’ll break up with me because this just feels too different.
Often we don’t have a tolerance built up for feeling good and so your brain is like, let me take you down a notch to get back to that homeostasis. There’s a whole book about this called The Big Leap and it’s by Gay Hendricks and it’s, he talks about the upper limit problem. Okay. And that’s what this is.
It’s that our brain prefers homeostasis. It prefers what we’re used to. And that book is all about, um, building a tolerance for feeling good so that we can push ourselves forward and have these moments where we uplevel in life and we don’t sabotage ourselves. So if you’re dealing with some self sabotage, that might be a good book for you, because we have to work on letting that better place, that better feeling place be your new normal.
Okay. So we have new pain. Or old pain that the brain is going to try to avoid. Now, what I want you to know is that when you have a desire pushing you forward, and this is why we want to push forward. There’s something that we want that’s generating enough energy that we want to move. We want to move towards it.
And if that thing that I want to move towards has some potential to feel pain and it’s likely, then my nervous system is always going to lag behind. And it’s kind of like you have a scared little kid that lives inside of you. And whenever we want to do something new or big or different, that little kid pipes up.
It’s like, that’s scary. I don’t think we should do that. I don’t know if I can do it. And it pipes up and it wants us to stop. This goes along with podcast 64 that was shifting into new gears. That’s a good one that goes along with this, but your nervous system is going to lag behind. So what that means is your desire is going to have to propel you forward.
And you’re going to have to let your nervous system show up late to the party. And like, you need to let that be okay. If you’re going to wait until I feel really good, if you’re really confident, I don’t have fear. I don’t know if that day will come when you’re scratching the surface of like the edge of what you’re capable of.
And we’re going to do some new things. I don’t know that that’s going to happen. We’re always going to go into it with a little bit of doubt, a little bit of fear, a little bit of resistance. So we got to let that be there. So the important point is to know that when you move forward, you’re going to feel some resistance and you’re going to feel held back instead of going, Oh no, why am I doing this?
Why am I holding myself back? I just want you to let it be okay. I know what that’s about. I know why that’s happening. This is new, different, big, important. And so I’m going to feel that resistance. That’s okay, but we’re going to move forward anyway. So you’re going to let yourself feel the discomfort.
It’s like that, that scared little kid’s just going to ride in the back seat instead of driving the car. We can’t let them be in charge of making the decisions. Here’s where I want to remind you that the worst thing that can happen to you. You are holding back. You are getting in your own way because you don’t want to feel something.
You don’t want to feel disappointed. You don’t want to feel embarrassed or insecure. You don’t want to feel shame. Even good feelings that you’re not used to feeling. We kind of don’t want to feel them. Many of us feel unsafe feeling good because a low that follows a high. Seems worse just because it had the high first.
So it’s like, let’s not feel too good because then the disappointments won’t feel as bad. And so we’re trying to keep ourselves kind of in this mid zone instead of just like letting ourselves feel good. And then letting the disappointments be the disappointments. Now a feeling or an emotion is just a vibration that moves through your body.
It’s a sensation. It, it doesn’t always feel good granted, but it is just a vibration or a sensation and it is always temporary. Remember that. It’s always temporary. It’s never permanent. And when I asked this, this group, um, if feelings last a long time, they were like, sometimes, and I was like, that’s true, actually, because When we think thoughts that generate those emotions and we rehearse those thoughts and we think about them a lot, then every time we think those thoughts that create that feeling, it floods us again.
And often, we’re not actually feeling our feelings, we’re resisting our feelings. And when we resist our feelings, they last much longer, and they usually feel stronger, higher in intensity. So that’s probably true, but the research shows, the science shows that an actual feeling, an actual release, Is about 90 seconds that it takes to pass through your body.
If you just allow it, it’s kind of like, if I had a syringe that was full of fear and I said, I’m going to inject this fear into your arm and you’re going to feel fear and it’s going to last 90 seconds, or it’s going to last, even if I was like, it’s going to last a half an hour, let’s say, and you knew that was happening.
And I said, but you know what, it’s going to pass. And. And then it’ll be over and you were like, okay, and I injected into, you would just allow it. You would know what was happening. You would understand what was happening and you would understand that it was temporary. It would be way less scary and intense than if we were resisting the whole thing.
So it is just a vibration. It is just a sensation. It’s temporary. We make it last longer than necessary and it makes uncomfortable emotions, even less tolerable when we resist them. But if we remove the resistance. It just leaves the sensation. So, let’s get better at feeling an uncomfortable emotion, an uncomfortable feeling or sensation.
And when you do that, they get more tolerable. You move into a new normal where what used to be painful just becomes uncomfortable. And then, and then it just becomes like a blip on your radar. And like many other things in your life, you get used to things. You get better at what you face. The better that you get at it, You have to put yourself in more difficult situations or more challenging situations to elicit the same kind of nervous system reaction.
But if at the first blush of discomfort, we back off, we give up, we make it mean we’re doing something that we shouldn’t. Then you’re never going to scratch the surface of what you’re capable of. So you have to be willing to feel that discomfort, feel that resistance, feel the discomfort of whatever emotion we’re going to feel on the other side.
So think about it. What if you didn’t fear the feelings that could come up? What if you didn’t fear embarrassment? What if you didn’t fear disappointment? What if you didn’t fear feeling some shame? We’re not going to love it, but we don’t have to hate it. We don’t have to be afraid of it. We can just go, Oh, well, we’re going to do some embarrassment today.
Cause I’m not super proud of my performance. So I’m going to just be processing some embarrassment. I had a client this week who I can’t remember what the emotion was we were talking about, but she said she felt it for about six hours on and off. She’s like, but then I got over it. I’m like, yep. So let’s do some shame for about six hours on and off.
And when you allow it, it gets over in six hours instead of six days. Okay. That’s what I’m trying to tell you is that when we don’t resist it and we allow it, we don’t shame it, shame ourselves for it. then it lasts much, much less time. So how do you get better at feeling uncomfortable emotions so that you can stop holding yourself back?
I think the magic ingredient is courage. It’s the willingness to feel the hard things. It’s the willingness to experience some pain in the name of growth, knowing that the only way over this is through knowing that it will get better as you go through it. And it does, it doesn’t get easier so much as you get stronger.
This is why we lift weights. We ask too much of our muscles. We, we do more than actually what they’re capable of doing right now. And so they literally. They literally experience micro tears in the muscle. Like we’ve asked too much, we’ve pushed them. And so they break down and then this tells our body we got to be stronger.
And so they build the muscles back stronger, more capable of lifting that same amount of weight. So if 20 pounds used to feel heavy, used to feel like too much, I couldn’t even do one curl with a 20. As I get stronger, all of a sudden, 20 pounds becomes a lot easier. It becomes like a warmup weight. But the 20 pounds still weighs 20 pounds, but now we are stronger.
And I think it takes courage to be willing to participate in that process. My husband has a dental practice, and before he bought it, he worked in corporate dentistry for 10 years. And that just means that he worked as a dentist for other people, as an employee dentist. And he kind of always wanted to have his own practice, but it took a long time for him to build up some courage, to be willing to do something that he knew would be really hard for him.
And so he held back, he had his doubts. He was scared of his business being solely responsible for our family’s welfare. It doesn’t make so much sense, right? It’s like, it’s all on me. And the other day he told me, he said, I know why I was able to do that. And I said, he’s like, I’m going to send you this.
It’s real. It was on Instagram, a little video. And I thought it was going to be like a jokey and kind of funny real, because that’s usually what he sends me. And it was not, it was actually really touching. And it was this video of Simon Sinek, who is kind of a motivational, like self help person that I really like.
And he was on Instagram. And what he said was, all you need is one person in your life who says you got this. I believe in you and you will find courage and energy to do things that you would not have had before. But then he goes on to say this, but more importantly, that person needs to also say, and if everything goes wrong, I will be there for you.
And I will be there with you. And I will be in the mud with you. And when my husband sent me this, he was communicating to me that the only reason he felt like he could buy that dental practice is because he knew he had me. in his corner. I want you to know that person needs to be you. I hope you have people in your life that do that for you, but you have to go first.
Now ask yourself if, if you’re going to put yourself out there and you’re going to do something challenging for yourself, how have you handled yourself afterwards? Be honest. Have you been hard on yourself? Have you been especially critical, judgmental, shamed yourself? I know we do this. You do the performance, something goes wrong and you’re like, Oh, why am I doing this?
Why am I messing up this way? Why did I forget what’s wrong with me? And we kind of beat ourselves up. I mean, that’s embarrassing. I can’t believe you did that. This is what our brain might say to ourselves. Not all of us, but a lot of us were hard on ourselves. In the moments that we need to be the most encouraging and supportive.
And if you’re going to take a risk, if you’re going to do something challenging, you need courage. And courage comes from support. It comes from encouragement. It comes from compassion. It comes from love. It comes from understanding. It comes from knowing you’re going to be okay no matter what happens.
Okay. I asked one of my clients this week why she felt that she could like really let go and really go for it at a recent competition. And she listed a bunch of things that I think are kind of a given like preparing, knowing your stuff, having previous experience. But then she said, but I really think it also just comes down to my teacher and my studio mates.
They cheer for me. They support me. We’re there for one another. And no matter what the outcome is. It feels like the culture is really supportive and that they’re going to be there for me. It’s supportive and it’s positive. Now listen, there is a time and place for critical review, for learning, for examination, for holding oneself accountable to what you’re capable of.
And I am in no way saying that we should just be self indulgent and let ourselves go out of kindness and love. No, love, encouragement, and support for myself also includes Amber. You know you can apply yourself more. You know, you’re being complacent, you know, you’re backing off and I get it and it might be a little bit out of self protection, but we have more to give.
So let’s see what we can really do. Let’s really go for it. That’s holding yourself accountable. That’s also love. Let me tell you just some steps to how to push forward when you want to hold back. I think step one is Awareness. It’s just awareness. First of all, that you’re doing that because you can be sabotaging yourself or holding yourself back and not really be aware of it or why.
But I want you to catch yourself in those moments where you are holding back so you’re aware. That’s number one. Two. We’re just going to pick one area at a time. So at the top of this podcast, I listed a bunch of examples. You might have others of your own, but let’s just pick one right now. It’s like, maybe I’m afraid to express my emotions.
And so I’m holding myself back or I’m avoiding memorizing my own choreography, or I’m avoiding dancing on my own without a partner. Cause I don’t want to, you know, be out of balance or whatever. Maybe I’m making excuses. Maybe I’m putting things off. Maybe I’m blaming others. So we’re just going to pick one of those.
I’m going to pick the one where I’m making excuses. Step three is expect resistance. As I start to work on not making excuses anymore, not using that to hold myself back, my brain is going to resist. The little kid that’s a little bit afraid, it’s going to pipe up and it’s all out of self protection. So I’m just going to expect.
That that feeling is going to come, that resistance is going to come, remember, avoiding pain. Remember, next step, step four is to gather courage and we’re going to do this intentionally. We’re going to have a can do mindset. We’re going to think about our capability. We’re going to, in the name of growth and capability and accountability for oneself, we’re going to.
Ask a little bit more of ourselves. We’re going to take courage. Courage implies that we’re a little bit afraid. If we weren’t a little bit afraid, we wouldn’t need courage. So it’s totally fine that we have resistance and we feel that, but let’s just gather some courage and then the next step, step five is to take baby steps.
We’re just going to find moments where we’re making an excuse. Moments where we’re focusing on the negative moments where we’re letting other people hold us back because we’re thinking about them too much. We’re just going to find a moment. You don’t have to do this in 100 percent of the moments that you’re making excuses.
We’re just going to take baby steps, find a moment where I can tell I’m making an excuse that I’m too tired after my gym to stay and practice my dancing a little bit. I’m just making an excuse and I’m going to take the baby step and I’m going to next step is step six, regulate your nervous system. So this means we’re going to understand that our nervous system is having an issue with it.
We’re going to understand the resistance and then we’re going to regulate it. We’re going to help ourselves move forward. We’re going to do the things that we need to do if we’re feeling triggered. So that as we’re moving forward and our nervous system is lagging behind, that we’re helping it along. And mostly that requires step seven, which is repeat it several times.
This is exposure therapy. We just get used to things and we get used to the way things feel. The first several times you rode a bike, you were afraid of falling. I guarantee it. Unless you’re like my brother who just like hops on a bike and just rides away and everybody can’t understand why he’s such a natural at everything.
But a lot of us, when we try new things. It’s scary for a little while. Okay. When I danced my first competition, I don’t know if I’ve told you that guy’s a story, I think I have, but I was so self conscious about wearing a dress that was exposing so much of my skin because I’m such a conservative person actually, and I don’t normally show my body and I don’t even have really a lot of body shame.
It was just like, this feels weird. And my first competition, all I could think about was that as I twirled around, my fringe was going to flip up and everybody was going to see like my button, like. And that’s all I could think about for that whole competition. Every time I danced, every time I turned, every time he was leading me along and I would turn, I was thinking about the cameras.
I was thinking about if they were taking pictures and if I, if I looked through the pictures, was I going to have to see pictures of my butt showing? And it’s like kind of this irrational thing, but, but notice I’m holding back. I’m not dancing to the level that I can. Because I’m thinking about my body showing and it took several competitions for that to settle down.
And right now, so I’m going really into my fifth year, I have a newer dress that I’m wearing that again, just feels like I’m kind of exposed in the dress and I’m feeling it a little bit, but it’s a blip. It’s a blip, like I’m totally able to shelf it. I’m totally able to, like that little kid in the backseat pipes up about how your body’s showing and we’re conditioned to some, for some reason, be afraid of that, be embarrassed about something.
I don’t know. Cause we can’t love our bodies for some reason. And so that pipes up and then I’m like, thank you. Like to the backseat. I’m like, thank you. I know. My skin’s showing, but we’re fine. We’ve got this. Nobody cares that much. And if we see pictures that we don’t like, that we think are unflattering, we’ll handle it.
We’ll feel a little bit of like, maybe a little bit of shame, but we can do shame. We can do shame. It’ll probably be shame for about five minutes after I watch that video or see that picture and then I’ll get over it because I’ve conditioned, I’m conditioning myself all the time. This is just normal now.
So whatever it is that you’re trying to overcome, you’re going to have to repeat it several times. So don’t be surprised because you’re working on whatever it is that’s holding you back. It takes a little bit, but we’re going to have courage and we’re going to keep moving forward and you guys are going to get so good.
at overcoming these things. And once you’ve done a few of these things, you are going to Be like, Oh my gosh, look at me, look at me being the kind of person who sees how I’m holding myself back and works through it and finds courage and grows. And on the other side of that, I’m such a different person.
You guys, I have done this so many times in my life, not even counting dance. So many times I’m a completely different, completely different person than I was five years ago. And even like 10, 12 years ago, like completely different. Like my personality has changed in a lot of ways. My. My confidence has changed in a lot of ways, what I believe I’m capable of, who I believe I am, the people that I allow to be in my life now has completely changed because I see myself differently because I take these kinds of steps.
Look for the ways that you’re holding yourself back and don’t be stuck there. Okay?