Maybe You're a Self Saboteur
Say what? Yes, that's what you may unknowingly be doing, to your detriment.
Sometimes people’s perceptions and judgments about us, as I have written about, are not rooted in fact, reality and truth. The judgments and behavior that comes from those people can be hurtful because it’s not deserved. There are also people who benefit greatly for being seeing differently than they really are in totality.
Other times, however, people’s perceptions and judgments have a higher degree of accuracy. A memory recently reminded me of this fact.
Years ago I had conversations with a female friend about our interactions with the opposite sex, both platonic and romantic. That context is not what this reputation brief is about though. It’s bigger than that, much bitter.
Two of our talks stand out. I’ll mention them briefly before getting to the main points.
Being Expected to Solve What You Don’t Know
Making myself vulnerable here: I mentioned to my friend that “I always seem to upset women” and while “always” wasn’t factually true and was far from what reality showed, it felt like it was true at that time.
Her response wasn’t what I expected. “So stop it,” she told me.
That will, figuratively speaking, sober you up quickly. That was some icy water she threw on me. I responded that I didn’t even know what I was doing wrong and that whatever it was, “it certainly wasn’t intentional.”
To her, it was the simple fix to stop doing whatever I was doing when the problem wasn’t something or different things about which I was self aware and socially aware.
It’s difficult to solve a problem or challenge if and when we can’t crystalize the root cause and driver of outcomes.
This is just one reason, although it’s a big one, why people, including me, don’t improve particular situations and how well they move through life. It’s an important point to remember.
Unintentionally Blocking Good Things for Ourselves
The second conversation was a respectful disagreement we were having. We reached the point of our exchange where, without anger, she told me, “You’re a self saboteur.”
After I processed it for a moment, I thought “Ow!”
Her words completely caught me off guard.
I politely stated that wasn’t accurate and I briefly tried to explain. She was persistent in her claim. As is the norm with me, the longer an idea works its way around my mind after ending a conversation, I go deeper with it in an analytical manner. Then I dissect it extensively in the pursuit of objective clarity and understanding.
I didn’t initially see what she told me and even during and after focused time thinking about it over time, I wasn’t sure I completely agreed. Yet I eventually came to see that I was making some decisions that aligned with her conclusion about what me.
The inarguable truth: I was clearly giving off the impressions she had and there were facts and evidence that seemed to support her judgment.
There was enough there for me to learn and accept that what she determined and communicated, while shocking to me, was truth.
Wow. Yes. “I’m a self saboteur.” Damn. It was a blind spot. I never knew.
I’m sure if she saw and read this article, she’d shake her head, laugh and make a joke about it, funny but pointed.
Life didn’t get better after this experience though.
Very Important Points
The new problem? I learned and accepted what my friend taught me yet I didn’t then create safeguards in my life to prevent myself from repeating what I had been doing and was doing.
That meant my life and the lives of others had to endure and suffer for it.
This type of problem, probably not to your surprise, occurs in our personal lives and professional lives. We don’t see what we’re doing that is costing us what we’re pursuing and would enjoy having. Even if people communicate our errors to us, we likely dismiss or deny them for different reasons.
Or if we do come to see that what they’re saying is accurate and we can emotionally and psychologically tolerate it, we don’t take immediate, reliable steps to replace our current thinking, decisions, impulses and behavior to move away from what we’re doing, to start living in a way that is more helpful and likely to produce the life we’d much prefer to live.
Notice that my friend didn’t say that other people were disconnecting from me because of my behavior. She said that I was the one ruining good things in my life (by deciding to end connections or relationship and the interactions with people that I deemed weren’t working or were broken).
Yes, sometimes, red flags (or blaring sirens) present themselves and we should heed them and disconnect for our safety. I did that yet I was also going way beyond it.
This is an important distinction to make and I’ll tell you why: whether it be in our personal or professional lives, we can become overly reactive due to what we don’t know or aren’t recognizing about our emotions, psychology, trauma, habits and triggers.
That can cause problems, small and significant and blind spots about it.
Not only is that not helpful, it can be hurtful, harmful and destructive to other people and ourselves and leave us wondering, “what happened” and “what is happening” and “why can’t I get to where I want to get?”
In brief, learning that this happens, examining our lives for it and then implementing a workable, intelligent, moral strategy to work past it, allows us to be more at peace and happy.
Ignoring that this does take place can result in us dealing with a lot more disappointment, discouragement, possibly anger and maybe, depression of lost opportunities, accomplishments, success and rewards.
Michael Toebe is a reputation and communications specialist at Reputation Intelligence and writes the Reputation Intelligence newsletter here on Substack and on LinkedIn. He helps individuals and organizations proactively and responsively with matters of trust, stakeholder relationships and reputation.
He has been a reporter for newspapers and radio, hosted a radio talk show, written for online business magazines, been a media source, helped people work through disputes, conflicts and crises and assisted clients with communications to further build, protect, restore and reconstruct reputation.