How to Overcome Self-Sabotage for Women Entrepreneurs

Imposter syndrome is real. We've all felt it. It's that feeling when you're in a room full of people and you think, "They are WAY more qualified than I will ever be". Or "They won't ever want to know what I think".

For women in business and women entrepreneurs, these thoughts or more common than for others because of the double standards we face. The extra pressures on our expected lack of performance create more possible thoughts like these. Subtle snubs, micro-aggressions, and energetic disregarding contribute to imposter syndrome. It's like instead of simply paddling upstream, we are paddling up a waterfall!

This happened to me just the other week. After launching my rebranded business, I received a consultation request from an old friend. I immediately sent a chunk of qualifying questions over messenger. It was like an energetic block. I was anxious about trying to serve someone who I used to know from my previous career in corporate high tech.

Queue: holding head in hands and shaking it miserably.

Thankfully, I have some tools to overcome self-sabotage, that I'd like to share with you.

• Awareness - I knew exactly what I had done as soon as I did it. This comes from several things: being well-rested, being present, knowing myself, and reflecting on my day every evening.

Getting good rest is essential to become aware of my actions and words. In fact, that day I was not as well-rested as I would have liked, so it caused me to respond with fear instead of feeling my fear first, then responding with more calmness.

Being present for me means being aware of what I am doing. As soon as I sent that message, I realized my mistake. I stopped right there, paused, and reflected on what I was feeling so I didn't have to repeat that mistake.

Knowing myself has been a lifelong learning adventure! Today, I know I am an anxious person with a lot of fear when trying new things. I've learned this by doing a quick mental or written reflection at the end of each day. It's easy, fast, and quite powerful. My self-awareness helps me to know when there are situations that might occur where I will sabotage myself. Then, I can plan ahead, coach my own self with positive self-talk, and take extra self-care steps to make sure I feel great before getting into those situations.

• Support Community - after sending that blocking message, I sat down, paused, felt my feelings, and reached out to a fellow female coach for support. I explained what I had done and what I felt, and she guided me through some possible next steps. She also suggested journaling about my perceived lack of worth to explore more my fear-based response.

Pausing before taking any further actions after a self-sabotage episode is essential. If I don't stop and reflect, then I will continue to sabotage myself and wonder why I'm not gaining the business I know I'm capable of.

Feeling the feels is really hard to do when we are rushing around, balancing family life with running a business. Yet, even in just 30 seconds feeling what I feel can make all the difference in the world. Again, if I push these feelings away, then I perpetuate my sabotaging behaviors and compound the misery.

Reaching out for help is probably the most important tool out of all these. That means, actively cultivating a community of supportive women entrepreneurs to help combat self-sabotage. I do this through both my spiritual community and through networking groups. Making sure I offer support to others is a way to keep these relationships healthy and balanced.

Finally, processing through the event through things like writing or mindful reflection is what I do to make sure I don't repeat it, I learn from it, and also I don't put myself down for the mistake. I recently read a quote from Arianna Huffington that said failure is part of success. Making sure I learn from the situation is essential to not repeating it. Also, it only takes a few minutes to process through what happened, as I've already primed myself by being present and reflecting. With practice, processing through events like these takes a short while.

When I use tools such as these, several things happen. Firstly, the self-sabotage event does not seem so gigantic. Secondly, I learn what not to do, AND ALSO, I learn how to fix the situation. In this case, I re-engaged with my friend over messenger and just posed one question at at time. We had a nice chat, and we scheduled the booking for the next day. Yay!

Lastly, I made sure not to spiral emotionally into a self-hating place. I keep my spirits high, chalk the situation up to a learning experience, and move on with my head held up. Using tools like I listed eliminates shame, which is a huge contributor to self-sabotage in the first place!

I hope you found these tools for overcoming self-sabotage useful. We women entrepreneurs need to support one another all we can. With awareness and by practicing tools like I listed here, we can become emotionally safe within ourselves and the make decisions for our business based on this safety. People we interact with for our businesses will like being around us, and our business goals will suddenly become achievable.

If you'd like to explore more how to use these tools in your business life, get in touch to book a consultation. I'd love to speak with you!

No setback is all that bad - you got this!

With love and empowerment,

Marissa