Gold Nugget Coaching

I was leading one of my regular group coaching calls recently in a conversation about how we sabotage ourselves without even realizing it. Self sabotage can undermine any or all of the things that are most important to you, such as relationships, jobs, careers, financial well being, physical health, and more. It can definitely worsen middlesence doldrums.

And it often happens without your even being aware of it. It can just feel like life sucks and you don’t know why. You just wish it would be different. Well things can be different if you just stop sabotaging yourself. And one way to do this is through language.

Through language? Yes, the language associated with “ungrounded assessments.”

Assessments are judgments or opinions that we make all the time without even realizing it. They’re not necessarily bad, in fact, many of them help us to make our way through life. Like assessing if something or someone might by a threat to our safety or well being.

But sometimes our assessments don’t serve us, especially when they’re not “grounded,” that is, they’re not backed up by evidence that supports them. And sometimes our assessments can almost seem to take on a life of their own and lead us down paths that aren’t at all useful—or valid.

For example, you see a guy walking down the street and he stumbles and knocks into a couple of people. You may automatically make the assessment “Wow, he’s clumsy.” And further, since he knocked into others, you may broaden the assessment to “and he causes accidents due to his clumsiness.” From there you might jump to “He’s dangerous because he can’t be trusted not to cause an accident.” And then to “I have to be careful around him because he can’t be trusted not to stumble into me. And that’s annoying; I don’t think I like him.” Then finally, “I’ll bet nobody likes him.” 

In the blink of an eye, the assessment “. . . nobody likes him” was arrived at with little or no evidence (or “grounding”). Seem far fetched? Well, think again. Frankly, we do this all the time. We take an assessment with little or no grounding and hold it like it’s true, a fact, and often keep embellishing it in an effort to try to make sense of the world and, as I said, make our way through it. 

But there are other ungrounded assessments that are not only not useful but can actually be harmful to us. What about the assessment “I’m not worthy.” I’ve heard people say that about themselves. And they never for a moment stop to consider “What does it mean to be ‘worthy’?”

Or what about these assessments: I’m not smart. I’m not good at making friends. I’m shy. I’m an easy mark, I’m not trustworthy. And on and on. These are the kind of assessments (practically always ungrounded) that can wreak havoc in your life.

Obviously I don’t know the soul-searing “core” assessment that drags you down, but I can almost guarantee you have at least one. Just look closely enough and you’ll find it.

One way is to think of the thing that you immediately say about yourself when things don’t work out. That’s one of your core assessments. And it’s probably negative. When things don’t work out do you ever say “I’m so smart and talented!” No, you say something about yourself that’s negative or missing.

Not that there’s anything wrong with saying whatever you say. It’s just that, with ultra high probability, it’s ungrounded. That is, you will have great difficulty finding evidence that what you say about yourself is true always, in all situations, and with all people. It’s simply never that way.

But here’s the really big kicker in all this. Like it or not, we are wired so that our language, body, and emotions are all linked together like coil springs in a mattress. Think of these three aspects of yourself as three springs linked together in a triangle. When one spring gets activated and vibrates it sets the others to vibrating.

So it is with our language, body, and emotions. Have a negative assessment about yourself (in language), and chances are your emotion follows into a negative state. And it’s likely that sensations start to show up in your body. Perhaps tension in your neck, perhaps a bit of nausea, maybe shallow breathing.

But the opposite is true too: Shift the assessment (that is, activate the language coil spring differently) and you can shift your mood and how you physically feel. And thus be on your way to stopping your self sabotaging. Next time I’ll tell you more about how.

But for now, I suggest you do an experiment: begin to observe the assessments you make all through your day.

© 2006 Gold Nugget Coaching