176: The Surprising Ways You’re Self Sabotaging Without Even Knowing It

Do you ever feel like you’re working so hard, but somehow still not making progress? What if the thing that's holding you back smaller than you think?

Self-sabotage is sneaky. It can show up in tiny, everyday choices that keep you stuck, frustrated, and wondering why your efforts aren’t paying off. In this episode of Inner Work with MaryAnn Walker, I share a real-life lesson that turned into a powerful reminder: sometimes it’s not about making massive changes—it’s about one small tweak that can make all the difference.

Whether you’re a recovering people pleaser, an empath, or a highly sensitive person, you may notice self-sabotage showing up in your relationships, your goals, and even in the way you talk to yourself. The good news? Once you learn how to stop self-sabotaging, you’ll see how one small mindset shift and tiny daily habits can create big and lasting results.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Common self-sabotage patterns and how to recognize them.
• Why people pleasers often minimize their accomplishments (and how to stop).
• How avoiding conflict in relationships can actually create more conflict.
• Practical mindset shifts to break the cycle of self-sabotage.
• Why making tiny changes every day can lead to massive transformation.

Challenge for the Week

Ask yourself: What’s one small tweak I could make today that would have the biggest impact on my life? Maybe it’s speaking up sooner, accepting help instead of refusing it, or finally celebrating your own accomplishments.

Work With Me

If you’re ready to stop sabotaging your goals and start creating the results you really want, I’d love to help. As a life coach for empaths, highly sensitive people, and recovering people pleasers, I specialize in spotting the small shifts that can lead to big breakthroughs. Book your free clarity call today: https://calendly.com/maryannwalkerlife/freeconsult

Don’t Forget to Subscribe

Be sure to follow Inner Work with MaryAnn Walker so you never miss an episode. And if you found this helpful, please leave a review—it helps more helpers, healers, and people pleasers discover tools to stop getting in their own way and live with more confidence, clarity, and ease.

Want to connect on other platforms?  I've got you!

Contact me: https://maryannwalker.life/contact-me
Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maryannwalker.life/
Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maryannwalker.life
Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maryannwalker.life

Follow on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@maryannwalkerlife

Transcript

0:18

Well, hello and welcome back. My name is Marianne Walker. I'm the life coach for the helpers, the healers, the recovering people pleasers, and this is a very spontaneous episode because I really was learning a lesson today on life. Okay, so today we're gonna be talking about self-sabotage. What little things might be getting in your way, but this is how it was showing up for me. Okay. So at the time of this recording, we're having house guests arrive this weekend we're gonna have a new friend come over, an old friend come over, and so I'm working really hard to get the house looking good. So as part of getting the house to look really good, I pulled out our old, um, shampoo, our carpet shampoo. I was like, okay, this is looking awful. The house that we live in, we haven't remodeled the kitchen yet. There is carpet in the dining room. I know. Why did anyone ever think that was a good idea? But the carpet was looking awful, so I was gonna shampoo the carpet before all the guests arrived, right? So I start shampooing, and it was so frustrating because as I was pushing it forward and pulling it back, like usually you can see exactly where the machine cleaned, but for some reason it was only cleaning a about a three quarter inch stripe, half inch to three quarter inch stripe down the center. That was the only part that was getting cleaned. I thought, well, this is strange, so I shampooed the carpet in this direction. In that direction. I shampooed it diagonal, I shampooed it in all of the directions. And so basically it just went from being striped to plaid to a diagonal plaid. It still had all these spots of dirt all over it. It just wasn't looking good. And I thought, okay, well maybe it's a problem with the machine. We probably need a whole new machine. We've had this one for years. And then I looked up how much would be for a new machine and it was about 550 bucks, and I thought, no, we don't need a new machine that bad. I need to figure this out. So, okay, so maybe it's the part that's sucking. It's the sucking. So it's doing a good job scrubbing, but we just need it to suck better. So I laid it down and I got a little scrubby straw thingy, you know those little scrub brushes that you clean straws with? And I was cleaning it out in there, and I got a bunch of gunk out and I thought, okay, now it's going to work. I start cleaning it again. And same thing, it just was not working. I was still just making stripes in the carpet and I was just really feeling frustrated, thinking, okay, well something's wrong with this machine. This is just getting ridiculous. And then I thought, okay, well maybe it's the sprayer. Maybe it's not the sucking that's wrong, it's the sprayer. So, laid it down, helped to find the teeny tiny sprayer you guys, it was the smallest sprayer in the world, but I think it was the teeny tiny little fan sprayer. That was only spraying in the center. The rest of it was blocked. So I took a little toothbrush and scrubbed it for about five seconds, and then I turned the machine on. And you guys, it was amazing. It was like a brand new machine. My carpet looks amazing. It's all the same color. It doesn't have stripes, it doesn't have plaid. It looks amazing. But as the carpet was getting cleaned, I couldn't help but think, oh my goodness, how many times do we blame other things when something's getting in our way, when really there's not anything wrong with the machine. It's just you're gonna require like a tiny little tweak, like brushing the sprayer for five seconds with a toothbrush. So I want you to think today about what ways you might be getting in your own way, and I have a few examples here for you. I will start with a personal example. I am currently wanting to lose weight, get super fit. I wanna be super strong, and as part of that, I'm tracking my weight. And admittedly, when I got on the scale last time and saw that I was down two pounds, do you wanna know what my first thought was? Hooray. I can go and get those cookies. That was me getting in my own way. That was me self-sabotaging. And so I want you to think about, okay, where am I expecting a result, but I am the one getting in my own way. Um, I also remember growing up, and I love my mom for this, but this was very entertaining in hindsight thinking on this very subject, so. In the early morning hours, she really wanted us to all be fit when we were kids. And so she'd say, Hey, if you wake up early and go with me to the rec center, after we go to the rec center, I'll take you out to breakfast at McDonald's. And it was the best thing. But that was also probably sabotaging a bit of health, right? That yes, we were developing the habit of waking up and going to work out. But anyway, it was just really interesting thinking about the ways that we sabotage ourselves. So I wanted to throw out a few ideas for you since I know you, I know what your struggles are, and just kind of point out a few of the ways that you might, in fact be getting in your own way when it comes to creating the result that you want. So, for example, maybe you don't want conflict in your relationship and so you really don't wanna have a big fight, but because you don't wanna fight about it, you don't bring up anything. So instead of bringing up something when it's just a mild annoyance, you wait until it is just this huge and heavy event, and then you're probably exploding with your partner and it creates the very conflict that you've been wanting to avoid. Whereas if you would just make that tiny tweak of noticing in the moment. Oh, you know what? I kind of wish that this would be happening in that way and have a discussion before emotions are high. It would be significantly more likely that you could get that end result that you're looking for, of not having conflict in a relationship. Or maybe you really want to have your own efforts acknowledged by other people. You do a lot. You do a lot for other people. You do a lot for the community. You work really hard at life, and you want your hard work to be acknowledged. Everybody wants that right? But at the same time, whenever anybody praises you, maybe you get an award at work, or maybe somebody notices how much weight you've lost, or maybe you know, somebody's starting to notice all of the amazing work that you've been doing, and you start to minimize it."Well, it's not that big of a deal," or, well,"you know, I mean, I'm not losing as much as I would've liked.' You are now minimizing your own efforts and your own accomplishment. So while you're hoping desperately that other people will praise you. You are unwilling to celebrate yourself, so of course they're not going to be celebrating you. So how might that shift if you would just allow yourself to be celebrated and if you looked for ways to celebrate yourself? Maybe you really do want your needs to be met in relationship. You in a friendship, in a romantic relationship, wherever it is, you're looking to have your needs met, but at the same time, you're unwilling to make requests. You want everybody around you to be a mind reader, so you aren't actually initiating making that request. You're not actually saying, well,"hey, actually, I was wondering if you could help me with this please?" You're not making any requests, so of course your needs aren't going to be met because you're not willing to acknowledge that you even have needs. And how might things really open up for you if you practice not only expressing a need, but if you practiced allowing other people to help you out? Because maybe you're not even just not making requests, but when somebody offers to help you, you don't wanna be in their debt. So you're saying,"oh no, it's okay. I can do it myself.' You are minimizing your own needs, but you're also making it significantly less likely that you can have that balanced reciprocation that you're looking for, that you can also get your needs in relationship. Maybe you're even also like quitting before you even see the result. You just haven't stuck with it for long enough. That's kind of like me when I want to eat a cookie after I see I'm two pounds down and I'm, I'll admit it's not just one cookie. I want to eat the whole package of cookies. It's really kind of a bad thing that they've made all of the, uh, girl Scout cookies, just generic store brand ones now.'cause now you don't have to wait until, uh, girl Scout cookie season to get your Girl Scout cookies. But anyway, so maybe you aren't quite finishing out what it is that you set out to do. You are not making it to the finish line all the way you're quitting before you've got there. So you're eating the cookie, you're, you're self-sabotaging. You're making it so that you can't actually achieve your goal. I wanna remind you, it only takes one degree of difference before an ice cube will melt. So you might see an ice cube in a freezer, and it's so cold, right? It's cold, it's gonna stay frozen. Nothing is going to change. But once it is just one degree above freezing, that ice cube is going to melt. And so sometimes we quit Before we see that, we think, well, I should have had this experience by now. The carpet should be cleaned by now. You guys, I cannot tell you how many passes I went over that carpet trying to get it in every direction. I was hitting it from every single direction, and it was. Oh, it was so annoying, so aggravating to see how many things I needed to tweak a little bit before I got that machine to work. But once I powered through and found out that one thing that only honestly required five seconds, yeah, it took me several times of going over the carpet before I figured out the problem. But now I can use that machine through the rest of the house and it's going to work beautifully. I have now solved the problem. And it wasn't a problem with the machine. It wasn't a problem with the carpet. It wasn't that the carpet was too old and that the stains weren't going to come out. It wasn't that the machine was too old and not going to work. It wasn't that the machine wasn't sucking. It wasn't that the machine wasn't spraying. It wasn't that it wasn't scrubbing, it's just that it was a little bit covered up on that spray nozzle. And that is so often the case with our own personal development as well. We think I need to make these huge grand changes. But really it's just one small tweak and working on that one small tweak consistently is going to give you that huge payout. It's going to be like that ice cube melting, and you're going to see significant results. So I'm gonna get jump off now so I can go and continue to get ready for tomorrow's house guests. But I want you to really think about what is one small thing that I could do that would have the biggest impact right now? And if you're not quite sure, if you need somebody to come and look at your carpet shampooer, right, or look at your life and say, you know what? Have you tried this tiny little tweak, come and work with me? Because more than likely, change is easier than you think. And once you figure out what tiny little change is going to create the most significant impact for you, then you're going to be amazed at the results that you can get. All right, well, if you're having fun here, would you please leave me a review? It really does help other people to find me. It helps me to grow the podcast, and I would really like to have more people on here that I could help. So leave me a review. Make sure that you're subscribed. It will not only help you out because then you'll know when the next episode drops, but it will also help the algorithms to know that, hey, this is something that people want to listen to, so make sure that you're subscribed and please leave me a review. I would really appreciate it. All right, well, I hope you have a great one, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye now.