How to Break the Pattern of Self-Sabotage

So imagine for a moment that you're looking at your life five years down the road and ask yourself this question, is my life what I want it to be, or am I living into the expectations of other people? This is one of the questions that if you ask yourself will change your life forever. And today, what I'm going to do is tell you a little bit more about the framework for how I have changed my life through looking at future planning.

Now, what do I mean by that? So often in life, especially if we come from chaotic backgrounds, we don't really pay attention to not only being present, but to frameworking the life that we want to have and that we want to create. More often than not, we're letting life happen to us. And what happens in letting life happen to you, it's effectively being on a ship with no compass and you'll land on any island. And people will look at their lives in five years, seven years, 10, years on their deathbed. And they'll ask themselves, how did I get here? Dude, you know how you got here. I'm telling you, you just got to be honest with yourself, if you get to this place in your life where you're like, I don't know how I got here, it's because you allowed yourself to arrive at a destination. That was not of your choosing. Now, look, that's not uncommon. If you think about this, retrace back, go look at childhood. Where in your upbringing did anyone ever, ever teach you to strategically plan to create the life that you want to have? My guess is they didn't. And if you're like me, you probably watch your parents be drug addicts or alcoholics, or they don't live up to their own expectations, their own dreams, their own goals. And you watch people failing around you all of the time. Teachers telling you, you're never gonna be that, your friends telling you, don't dream so big. Society telling you, that's for other people. And then you're sitting here in this life today, and you're like, why is my life not what I want? And we blame people. We blame our family, our community, our friends, the government, social media, society, the job, and that blaming is the ultimate victimhood. Because here's the truth about it. If you're out here blaming the world every single day for your problems, you need to take a deep, hard look at your life and ask yourself, why is it that you believe that it's other people's fault? Because in five years, if you look back at your life in six years, in seven, eight, nine, ten years from now, if you look back at this moment, this could be a moment that everything changes for you, because when you take unbelievable, radical responsibility for your life, everything becomes different. Now, I know what you're thinking.

Michael, you don't know my life, I don't know your life, but I can tell you I know a lot about people's lives, having coached thousands of people over the years, including myself. And when I was 26, you guys know the story, 350 pounds, 2 packs a day, 50 grand in debt, nobody would talk to me, life was a disaster. That was a making of my own doing. And it was within the space of radical honesty that things started to change, because I really just started to ask myself this question, what could my life look like? And I'm at this rock bottom, life is not good. I promise you life is not good. It's like the opposite of good. It's like everything you don't want in life, but I was looking at it. I was like, okay what do I want? And I decided that the thing that I want, the thing that I wanted, the man that I wanted to become the man that I desired to be was the opposite of everything that I was. And this is what's so interesting.

Because in life, we are often either moving towards things like pleasure, like joy, like happiness, or moving away from things like pain and hurt and suffering and chaos. But most of the time we're doing it simultaneously and we don't even notice that we're doing it because we're not asking ourself, where do we want to go? And so when I was 26 and I'm having this moment and I'm like, okay, I have to change my life. I just knew that I wanted to move towards being a better man. I knew that in order to do that, I had to implement things like therapy and coaching, and I had to start eating right, and not smoke, and not drink, and stay away from people who were bad for me, and stay away from people who didn't serve my higher interests, and ultimately, because I knew the direction I wanted to go, it put me in a position to move towards success.

Now, we're a few months into the year and if you're looking at your life and you're trying to figure out why everything feels like it felt last year, I would ask you if you know exactly what your goals are, do you know the person that you want to be by the end of this year? Have you identified multiple areas of your life in your health, wealth and relationships that will help you become that person? If you have, Amazing. Then you're probably already on the right track, but I would ask you, can you name those without looking at them? Are they so embedded in your mind that you know exactly where you're going? And if not, the challenge is to get there because where attention goes, energy follows. And if you have no idea, you haven't started to identify the life that you want to have, then the thing that you need to do is take a pen and a piece of paper and write down in three columns, health, wealth and relationships, and then just start with one goal in each one of these columns in this goal should be something that you can accomplish this year, even with the time remaining and in that goal, it should be something that is a difficulty level of at least an eight, 10 is damn near impossible. You're going to need a lot of help and a lot of support, you have no idea how to get there, you're probably going to have to invest a lot of time, effort, energy, and money. One is you could have it done by this afternoon, you don't want a 10 and you don't want to have a 1. A 5 is mediocre and what will happen is it won't pull you further enough into the future for you to be disciplined. And so you want to get to about an eight and eight is okay, I need some help, I need some support, I can definitely get there. If I add discipline to my life, if I execute, if I have people in my corner who have my back, I can get to the eight, right? Because here's the reality. When you're looking at your life at the end of this year, the one thing that can be the differentiating factor of success versus failure is your willingness to show up for yourself. And that's really difficult if you have a victim mentality because if you're out here, you're just blaming the world all the time. Let me tell you, first off, nobody really cares. And you see a lot of this content on social media where people are being a victim and it doesn't help you. And I know you don't want to hear this because it feels unfair and trust me, maybe it is, I don't know. I was homeless as a kid, a drug addict when I was 12 years old. I don't know what fair is, but I know what I don't want. I know I don't want a life that is what everyone told me it should be. So at 26 years old, I'm 350 pounds, two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep, I just knew if I changed direction and I moved towards something different, despite what people were telling me that on a long enough timeline, my life could be different. And sure enough, obviously that happened fast forward, 30, almost 39 years old. Now my life is entirely different because I made a decision to be disciplined, but what's really uncomfortable about the decision to be disciplined is like without having clarity, it's not going to matter. Because without the clarity and having an identifiable goal, something that you can think about and move towards every single day, you're just going to be floundering. Nothing is ever going to come to pass and you're going to look at your life and it's going to be the exact same. And the hard part about that is that's probably been your life up until this moment where you're like half assing opportunities, you're half assing effort, you're half assing the ability that you have. A lot of that is tied into trauma, a lot of that is tied into the mindset that is given to you in childhood and adolescence that tells you're not good enough, you're not strong enough, you're not capable enough, you don't matter, you're not important, you suck, you're dumb, you're stupid, you're fat, you're a loser, whatever, right?

And so you start to play into it because you hear it all the time, and then eventually what happens, you've played into it so many fucking times that is now your life. And you're like, why am I fat, lazy, dumb, uneducated, poor, broke no relationship, kids don't like me, partner can't stand me, never have sex, never have commitment, no intimacy, the job's on my back all the time. I got fired again, you might need to take a fucking look in the mirror. And I'm telling you this out of love for you because I know what happens to someone's life when they take a look in the mirror, it all becomes different. And so you're sitting here and you're looking, you're like, what does this have to do with goals? What does this have to do with getting out of this pattern of stuckness? What does this have to do with everything that my life is today? If I'm not satisfied with myself? And the answer is everything. You are the cause and the solution to all your problems. Yo, it is so crazy when I go look back at my life at 25 years old and I'm like drinking and smoking and I'm overweight and the blood test is coming back and my liver enzymes are bad and I can't breathe when I walk upstairs and my sex life was horrible and I'm on. Things I won't get into right now and my money's bad and my relationships with all of my friends and family is bad. And the only thing keeping me afloat every day is just, I don't know what else to do. And that leads me down the path of putting a gun in my mouth, and that is not where I want you to end up. But I can't want it for you, and this is what's so difficult about it. Like every Monday night I coach amazing group of people in unbroken coaching. And if you want to learn more about that, go to thinkunbroken.com. We can have a free coaching call and I'll help teach you about what's in front of you and how I might be able to help you.

And I watch these people's lives change, it's unbelievable. Like I don't share what happens in that group cause that's our private space, but I will share this. Every single person that has come into that group within a matter of weeks, their life is different. Why? Because I lay out the framework and the game plan for them. I help them identify things like what we're talking about right now. ‘Cause a lot of people don't even know how to get to the goal. A lot of people sit here and they go health, wealth relationship, I don't understand. And then they just want to listen to the podcast and they don't want to go to the next level, and then their life is the same. And I'm like, actually what you need to do is get in this group. You like want your life to be different, you need accountability. You need support, you need a coach. You need a group of people who are heading in the same direction as you working on the same problems, coming up with different solutions and cheering each other on.

Like what are you doing by yourself right now? And you're talking about on a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, you want to have these amazing lives. And you're stuck on the internet all day, just streaming shit, watching YouTubes, you're not doing it, YouTube's you're not doing anything. And it's you have to understand one unbelievably important aspect of the journey of healing and learning to love yourself. It is discipline that will set you free and that discipline only works if you have a goal big enough to move towards. Now, you may be moving away from pain. I don't want to be 350 pounds, I don't want to smoke, I don't want to cheat, I don't want to lie, I don't want all of these things over here. You may be moving towards pleasure, I want to have a great body, I want to have a lot of money, I want to impact my community, I want to have a better relationship with my husband or wife, I want to let go of trauma, I want to not be codependent, I want to be able to look in the mirror and love myself, I want all of these things over here. And so you're moving towards pleasure. The problem is what happens is you see people do this all the time where they're like, I'm going to change my life today and it's Monday morning and they wake up at 5:30 AM and they do all the things and on Tuesday. They're right back to where they were and then Wednesdays the same and Thursday the same and then they're beating themselves up and nothing's different. And a big part of that is because the thing that drives us as humans is the challenge. And you are not challenging yourself big enough. And that's why I said, when you write these goals and you look at the health, wealth, and relationship, you break down these three pivotal areas of the triad of life. And you understand that if you make it an eight out of 10, your life will change. That is where the victories begin to happen because if you make it a five, you're not going to care enough. And if you make it a 10, you're going to put too much pressure on yourself and you're going to fall. I've seen it happen a thousand times, but when you make it an eight and it really drives you and it's pulling you into the future, it's something that you're passionate about, something you care about, something that is so important to you that you're willing to invest your time, effort, energy, and money. And in a year, your life will be different. Most of the big things that happen in our life that really transform us don't happen in a week or 10 days or a month or six months, right? It's a year plus we're talking about my journey. Now, looking at this, we're 14 years into this game and I just now feel like I'm figuring it out. And that's why I have a coach, that's why I have a mentor, that's why I do this for other people. So when I teach you, I learn too. But ultimately the thing like I look at this today and I'm like, okay, I know what my goals are in my health, I know what my goals are in my wealth, I know my goals are in my relationship, I think about them all day. So they drive me forward and it's really about understanding that you are allowed to have this life. It's that simple, yo, you're allowed to have this life. You are, I'm telling you, I know it sounds crazy if you let go of the victim mentality and you stop being a fucking child and you raise your standard for yourself. And I know this feels like a very intensive thing that I'm saying to you, but it is the thing that will set you free. You have to raise your standards. You have to get on a path. You have to do what you said you were going to do and teach yourself that you deserve to be that person. Cause ultimately you do. And when I look at my life and I'm like, okay, every day I go work out every day, I get up every day. I study every day. I'm working on my own mentorship. I'm growing the business. I'm growing my health. I'm working on relationships every day. I'm putting into the energy and the effort into the things that fill me up. And if those things fill you up, move towards them. And if they don't move them away from you, the problem most people face when they're going to come, when they, when you come and look back on your life. In a year from today and your shit is still the same, it's because you didn't get clarity because you didn't have discipline and because you didn't have the support that you actually need to create the life that you want to have.

So that said, if you need help, you need support. This sounded amazing to you guys. Go to thinkunbroken.com. Come and join a coaching program. It will change your life forever. There's dozens and dozens of testimonials of the men and women who have been through these programs. I created them. They're low cost of entry and they work, but they only work if you work them.

So that said your key takeaway, the number one thing that I want you to do as your coach today is I want you to write down the three most important goals that are eight out of 10 that you can focus on for the rest of 2024 in your health, your wealth, and your relationships.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends,

Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.