"You are not what you think you are, but what you think, you are." - Anonymous
We carry around a belief system that informs us on the world; what it's like, and what we can expect from it. It also informs us on what we can expect from ourselves. And very often, when we try to defy those expectations, it draws us unconsciously back to our comfort zone.
Today I partnered up with life coach Ellen Smith, while we tackled the problem of self-sabotage - what it is, what causes it, and how we can gradually remove it from our life. We had some great insights, which we'll share below.
(By the way, very sorry for the poor audio quality in this video. We were rained out of our expected interview place and had to do it in Ellen's lobby. I've included the transcript below in case you missed anything.)
Transcript
IAN: Hi guys! My name is Ian Crewe, I’m an instructor at the joy of dance centre in Toronto Ontario, and the creator of Social Ballroom Dance, where you can learn your dance, at your place, on your schedule.
I’m joined today by Ellen Smith, a life coach and a managing director of iMedia Matters, a marketing PR company, and Ellen also has considerable dance background, including ballroom dancing and a number of other styles,
And we’re here today to talk to you a little bit about self-sabotage in ballroom dancing: What keeps us from achieving our full potential. So really glad to have you hear with us Ellen.
ELLEN: Thank you,
IAN: So when we talk about self sabotage, what do we mean by that?
ELLEN: That’s a very big question indeed. To me what it means is what we do that gets in our own way. It’s those things that we tell ourselves and those things that we do that prevent us from moving forward and feeling successful.
IAN: Right, So if I want to reach a particular level of ballroom dancing, maybe I want to win a competition, but for some reason I am getting in my own way, what are some examples of things that might get in my way?
ELLEN: Oh my. You could start telling yourself how wonderful everyone else is but you, so create a state of fear and nervousness that has you not approach things with confidence. In fact, you might even get to the point where you might even get to the point where you want to back out of the competition because you feel you are not up to the same standards as you feel everybody else is. When you asked me this question a little while ago, the first thing that came to my mind is, I have a thousand excuses not to do something, but I don’t have one good reason not to do them. I think what happens is, you call them rationalizations, its all those things that can stop you dead in your tracks and you believe them with all your heart and soul at the time, and that’s usually because you’re afraid. Ad so you stop. So whether that is saying no I’m not going to take that dance class or I’m not going to do that particular exercise or I’m afraid of of trying that particular move because I might fall or I might look stupid. Whatever it is, you stop yourself.
IAN: Right. Is there a way you can recognize that its an excuse, versus an authentic thought?
ELLEN: I think it takes practice but I think yes. The answer to that is yes. And it comes with being really aware of yourself, and when you feel yourself resisting
IAN: Yeah.
ELLEN: When you feel yourself resisting, stop and ask yourself, Is this because I’m afraid, or is it because I really cant?
And its one of those times where you get to be really honest with yourself. And people are sometimes afraid of that but its an important question. So if its because you’re afraid of looking foolish or something like that, the question I ask is, what would I do if I were not afraid? And if I weren’t afraid, I’d usually do it. I may do it cautiously but I’d do it. The other thing that I find is that there is something inside of you, there is a voice that says this is an excuse, there really is and if you listen to it it’s your opportunity to say what’s behind that? How do I get at that? And does it make sense? Is it rational or is it irrational? And you can start to say well maybe I will start by doing this little bit and this little bit more but the point is that you keep on doing that little bit more so that you feel like you are making progress and you start to gain that confidence. The other thing I do is I turn the question on its head SO if I’m telling myself I can’t do this, then again I will go back and say “What if I can” what does the world look like if I can” what does that dance movement look like if I can?
IAN: That’s great. One of the people I used to work for at another studio, he had this great line: You can come up with tons of excuses why you can’t do something, come up with some reasons why you can.” Its just this simple idea of switching the energy and thinking, what if this is possible? What if I CAN do this? Because I agree - it’s easy for us to believe these rationalizations with our heart and soul as you put it, but at the same time maybe part of that is that we’re feeding it. We keep repeating it to ourselves.
ELLEN: Yes. So there’s a saying that says, what do you feed? Do you feed the hungry dog or do you feed the happy one? And sliding into something that parallels that, or doesn’t parallel it but moves in to it, is that when we’re staring to envision things for ourselves, we can go to the worst case scenario or we can go to the possibility. And you start to talk to the possibility and name the different things you see in it, like I can be a wonderful ballroom dancer or I can be very confident or whatever, it’s literally taking those traits and speaking to them like they are a human. And you can do it to yourself, you don’t have to look goofy out in public talking to yourself.
IAN: Preferably in a quiet room.
ELLEN: But it’s speaking to the possibility, there is something inside of you that starts to feel happy.
IAN: Its kind of like journaling.
ELLEN: Yes.
IAN: Like when we write, in a way we can be talking to ourselves. Or its getting that information out there so we can see things in perspective.
ELLEN: And what’s also true Ian, and you’ve heard me say this many times, I have borrowed this from Michael Beckwith, who is a very famous leader, is that the words that follow “I am” are what you invite into your life, and its very very true. So if you start saying to yourself, I’m not good enough, then that’s what you start to live. So if you start to speak to that possibility by saying I am strong enough, I am a dancer I am… something positive. Your subconscious doesn’t know it’s not true, it starts to behave as if it is true.
IAN: So we talk about these different beliefs and how some of them are, shall we say, self-limiting vs self-loving. Where can our self-limiting beliefs come from?
ELLEN: They are usually entrenched in us before the age of five. For example. Say you’re a very expressive kid.
IAN: Yes, absolutely.
ELLEN: And somebody is always telling you, “be quiet, nobody wants to see that.”
IAN: Right. That becomes a belief.
ELLEN: That becomes a belief. So you’re going to start to play small. And you grow up playing small. Or the other thing is you act in a whole opposite extreme and get yourself into a whole lot of trouble.
IAN: As a reaction, a rebellious response to that.
ELLEN: Yeah. But its usually, you come to these beliefs because of a situation or experience that is your first experience and it becomes a point of disappointment, a point of fear, whatever it is. You take it in and you start to believe it, so every decision you make is coming from that place of frustration fear or doubt.
IAN: Right, right. It sounds like a part of us almost gets stuck in that period, and its still there until we can resolve it in some way, or replace it with something.
ELLEN: Exactly right. I know for myself, is that our family wasn’t wealthy growing up, so we were always making sure there was enough to go around and so that comes from a place of scarcity.
IAN: Right.
ELLEN: And so, right through my entire life that was my mindset until I started to realize I was getting in my own way. That I was preventing my ability to move forward and it’s the same with dance. I remember the first dance I was kicked out of. I was kicked out of my first ballet class at 5 ½ years old. And at that time, cus I’m old, I was told that I was too big, too tall and that I had bad feet, and I do have bad feet, so they said there is no point in me continuing it anymore. Well I was heartbroken. All I wanted to do was to dance. And I remember my mom, to make me feel better, decided to take me to my first ballet down at the O’Keefe Centre, to see Swan Lake, and along the way, we stopped at this restaurant where there were Flamenco dances, well my God I had never seen anything so spectacular in my entire life. This woman had power and the skirts and the ta’ tah and all that.
IAN: “Forget about Ballet, I want to learn Flamenco. Give me one of them skirts!”
ELLEN: But you know something, I never forgot that. And when I started to get old enough to make my own decisions, it was, whether it was going to a high school dance or not is that the drive to dance was stronger than the excuse not to. And when I realized that I could dance, and nobody could tell me that I couldn’t then it was “Ok then, I’m going to dance, now I’m going to take a dance class, and I’m going to take another dance class and another dance class. And how do I feel when I finish those dances? I feel fantastic. Was it my best class? No. Was it my best class? Yes. It depends on the day. But the point is that it was in me and I couldn’t let it go. It was stronger than any fear that I may have had or what anybody told me about what I could or couldn’t do.
IAN: So it feels like we are kind of getting now into how we can start to replace those limiting beliefs.
ELLEN: It sometimes helps to talk it out with somebody who can look at it from a different point of view, and often that is not a really good friend or a relative because they are too involved with you. But somebody who can step back and can listen to you get out your fears and frustrations. So that there is this vomiting all over a table, I know that’s a disgusting thing, but once it’s out, then you are clean and you can start over. I think the other thing, is look for somebody that can be a bit of a mentor. And even in dance there is this one person who you can go to and say, “you know, I’m afraid I won’t be able to do that well”, and that mentor can say, “well, let’s see if you can.” Those self-affirmations that you give yourself, like yes I can, are important because that yes I can, can be the one yes I can, to get you to a class.
IAN: Barack Obama had it right all along?
ELLEN: He had it right all along. So instead of going for the level four class, why don’t you start at a level one? And get the feel that you can. And then you start to graduate, the more you learn and the stronger that you feel. The point is to DO. Like working with my trainer, Noel Miller, when I first started working with him, I was coming out of a bad situation physically, and it was very difficult for me, and what we did is that we started with balance. And balance was really interesting, because all he had me do was stand there with my eyes open, and then stand there with my eyes closed. And it was so that my brain wouldn’t rely on the visual trigger to keep me balanced.
IAN: But it was such a small step.
ELLEN: It was such a small step, but it was such a HUGE step. So it’s looking at the pathway is there, you don’t have to walk the whole thing at once. Break it in to small bits that you can handle. Try it on for size. Realize that you can. Get that solid in your body. Then go to the next one. Get that one solid in your body.
Its like dancing with you. It’s coming back after all that time away, is that we are going to start ‘here’, and we just stayed there until you said it and I felt it, “we can try this next one”. Ok, now I’ve got that one, we can try the next one.
IAN: So I only have one more question. When people say “Oh I don’t have time for this. I have enough on my plate, I can’t add on meditation, or mantras or seeing a life coach or whatever” How do you respond to that?
ELLEN: The way I respond is the way I respond to myself, because I’ve had to ask myself the same question. And that is “do I have time not to?”
IAN: It’s flipping it on the head again.
ELLEN: It’s flipping it on the head again. I think that what a lot of us don’t realize is that we don’t make the time to invest in ourselves and all those things that have to be done are usually for other people. And then you burn out. If you’re always giving, giving, giving and you’re not taking in to take to replace that energy, you’ve got nothing left. So the first person that you have to take care of, and this is not selfish, it is absolutely being kind to yourself and taking that moment to inhale and to breathe in and to centre yourself and to be the best you can be in any given moment.
IAN: Because if you don’t take care of yourself then you can’t help anyone else.
ELLEN: Exactly right.
IAN: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you very much.
ELLEN: You’re very welcome.
IAN: It was great having you.
ELLEN: Thank you.
IAN: You can get in touch with Ellen Smith at 416-312-7446. I hope you guys enjoyed this. I hope it gave you some interesting food for thought. And I look forward to seeing you next time. Until next time. Happy Dancing!
ELLEN: Happy Dancing.