Are you self-sabotaging your marketing career?

Here’s the situation: You’ve put pen to paper and set your goals for the year. You may even have written them down in a shiny new notebook… but three months later when you check in on your goals, you find that you’re not where you want to be.

Then you start to justify it: well, things got really busy at work, I was tired, it was winter and motivation was a struggle, I decided to pursue another (easier) goal first, I’ve decided to start in the summer, I can’t start mid-month… etc

This, my friends, is called self-sabotage and while you’re conscious of what’s going on, you find it difficult to change your behaviour and the excuses just come easy. Welcome to the Knowing-Doing gap.

Firstly, don’t beat yourself up. You can’t help it – it’s in our subconscious programming to keep us safe and warm with the thought of changing course and stepping outside of our current ‘comfort zone’ (even if that comfort zone is not supporting you) seemingly alien.

Firstly, you need to understand that what’s keeping you stuck is your Paradigm. Your Paradigm is what will talk you out of doing something. For example, is your goal to be better at networking and increase your social circle? Your paradigm will convince you that you’re too busy at work to go to that social event and besides there’s another one next month. Want to increase your profile and speak up at meetings. Yep, your paradigm will convince you that today’s meeting isn’t the right one but there’s always next week…

Your paradigm is that habitual behaviour which is embedded in your subconscious. Your paradigm is your safe space – it’s comfortable because it’s what you know BUT it might not be in your continued best interests. Hence the self-sabotage even though you may have consciously decided your goal was to change, your subconscious is programmed to stay in its comfort area. It’s very, very powerful!

When you focus on your paradigm (habitual behaviour), you can help yourself by understanding what you are doing, why you’re doing what you’re doing, and this then puts you in a position to incite positive change. It’s about understanding what is holding you back, where you are making excuses and once you have awareness of this, you can start to challenge and change your behaviour towards your new goals. What I referred to earlier as the Knowing-Doing Gap.

You may need to do things a different way if you want to achieve your goals – stop showing up as the current version of you. What does Successful You look like? How do they behave and show up? For example, we end up producing the same results, the results we don’t want – because of our paradigms - a paradigm which keeps people operating at 40 miles an hour even though there is infinite potential within you to do more.

Here’s a little EXERCISE for you to: Think of a situation where you are not getting the results you want and write it down in full detail. Then, on a separate piece of paper describe the same situation in a way you want it to be based on your goals. Compare the results and identify the specific areas that are the sticking points to your preferred situation and what productive actions you need to take to change that situation – these are your focus points.

So here’s your PSA to fully believe in your goals, get emotionally involved, challenge any paradigms (habitual behaviour) that keeps you getting in your own way and improve your performance!

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