The Safety of Success: Why Subconscious Self-Sabotage Kicks In When You’re Winning [ep. #213]
Hello lovely lady and welcome to The Subconscious Expert!
Do you find yourself subconsciously self-sabotaging your success when you're winning? You're not alone! In today's episode, I dive deep into why your subconscious mind holds you back from sustaining your wins.
I've seen it time and again—clients reaching incredible milestones, like hitting 100K months or landing dream high-calibre clients, but then they start feeling anxious, wondering how they're going to sustain that success and lose the momentum. Sounds familiar? That's your subconscious self-sabotaging. Join me to explore why your subconscious views success as unfamiliar and risky territory, triggering what I call the "success danger response." Discover my essential tools to help you feel safe in your success and prevent subconscious self-sabotage before it derails you.
Plus, I'll break down the concept of success fatigue and how to rewire your mind to welcome success without fear. Let's create safety in winning together!
Topics covered on Subconscious Self-Sabotage:
What are the biggest subconscious fears that hold female entrepreneurs back from success?
How can you rewire your subconscious mind to feel safe with success?
Why does your subconscious equate success with risk?
What mindset strategies can help you overcome subconscious self-sabotage?
How can you create emotional safety in sustaining your success?
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Quote:
“It’s not that you can't handle success. It's that your subconscious isn't sure it's safe to hold it.” - Rebecca Haydon
Transcription:
Our AI tried its best, but expect a few quirky typos in the transcript. Embrace the imperfections and enjoy the read!
[00:00:00] You are listening to The Subconscious Expert, the podcast where your subconscious becomes your one way ticket to the mind blowing results you desire in your life and business. I've said it before, and I will say it a hundred times again. Your business cannot outgrow your mindset, and if you want to grow your business, it always starts with growing your subconscious.
[00:00:26] So let's dive into the subconscious breakthrough you so deeply deserve. Hello, beautiful lady, and welcome back to The Subconscious Expert. Today, we are diving in around the safety of success and actually why your subconscious Will Sabotage When You Are Winning. Oh my gosh. I see this so often and I know it's going to resonate with so many of you, especially as very ambitious entrepreneurs, high achievers.
[00:01:00] Because this happens time and time again. And I have worked with clients who have hit a hundred K months and not been able to sustain it and not been back to hit it again. I've worked with clients who have really landed the most incredible clients and then never been able to land those clients again and go back to this safety and really understanding why this happens.
[00:01:25] Now, if you've ever reached a new level of success and suddenly felt freaking shit about it, like, if you've suddenly felt like off, maybe you've hit your biggest revenue month, maybe you landed that dream client and actually, instead of celebrating and being like, Oh my God, this is what I've always wanted.
[00:01:46] This is like literally what I have been waiting for. But instead you're feeling anxious. You're feeling stuck. You might even feel like you're about to lose everything that you've just created. If that feels familiar, this episode is for you because today we are breaking down why this happens on a subconscious level.
[00:02:09] We're going to have a little look into the tools that I really want you to have to feel safe in your success. And we're going to have a look at how to stop the patterns of self sabotage actually before they derail you. A lot of the time when I'm working with clients, we're looking for preventatives with the subconscious mind.
[00:02:26] I'm going to be talking about the subconscious and what we call success fatigue. Now on the surface, we know that success should feel freaking amazing, but the truth is, the subconscious truth is your mind isn't wired to thrive in success. It's literally wired to survive. So when you achieve something big, when something like this happens, your subconscious will often view it as that unfamiliar territory and the subconscious loves the familiar and it equates familiarity with safety.
[00:03:15] We know even if that safety is like a struggle, a hustle or playing small. So when you reach your next level. Your subconscious is kind of a little bit like, hang on, wait a second, this feels too risky. What if it falls apart? What if I can't keep this up? What if I lose what I've worked so hard for? These thoughts are going to trigger what I call the success danger response.
[00:03:45] Sounds powerful, doesn't it? Let's break it down further. Now, Your subconscious is essentially just trying to protect you, so it doesn't understand the difference between real physical danger and what you are right now, what your subconscious right now is perceiving emotional or social danger. To your subconscious, stepping into the unknown, even if it is so unbelievably positive, feels like it's stepping off a cliff.
[00:04:16] And this is why, even when you've stepped off that cliff and it's been frickin amazing, it will default back to behaviours to bring you back to the familiar safe zone, even if that's shrinking you back to your old self, even if that's self sabotaging. And actually, what I see is, That success fatigue is the emotional and energetic weight that comes from this subconscious fear.
[00:04:45] It's not that you can't handle the success. It's that your subconscious isn't sure it's safe to hold it. And that's why you might feel anxious. It's my, it's why you might feel overwhelmed. And it's why I see a lot of my clients downplaying their wins. In fact, some of them don't even share them with me because they're too scared to share them with me just in case they lose it.
[00:05:12] This success fatigue. So it's the emotional and energetic weight that comes from the subconscious fear. Your subconscious isn't sure it's safe to hold it. Now, why does success feel unsafe? It makes no logical sense, right? It makes no conscious sense. And these are a couple of things that I see. So a lot of the time your subconscious sees success as the fear of loss.
[00:05:39] So your subconscious often associates having more with the potential of losing more. So if you've grown up with beliefs or people saying to you, nothing good lasts forever, or it's lonely at the top, success might feel to you right now like a ticking time bomb. And actually this belief creates a narrative that the more you have, the more you will stand to lose.
[00:06:11] And then that feels really risky for your subconscious mind. The second thing I see that feels unsafe is actually the identity shift of what success will bring. Because inevitably, success challenges your old identity. If you've always identified of like with someone who hustles or someone who struggles, if you're in the, like, the, the kind of addiction to the struggle, I've got a podcast episode on that.
[00:06:40] I'll link it in the show notes. When you step into ease, when you step into the abundance, when you step into the success, it can almost feel like a betrayal of who you have been. And your subconscious may want to cling onto that old identity. Okay. Because it fears that letting it go means that you're going to have to lose a part of yourself.
[00:07:05] The next thing I see a lot is the big ones, visibility and judgment, because the more successful you are, the more visible you become, the more your subconscious will fear the judgment or the criticism or getting it wrong. The launch not going right, all of those things in front of a much larger audience.
[00:07:26] And actually this often, often, often stems, especially judgment will stem from childhood experiences where being seen or being noticed or speaking out felt really unsafe. And that's usually where we go back to, if I'm working with that, with clients. The last thing I see is these kind of new standards.
[00:07:47] Success raises the bar. And when. You have raised the bar in your life. Your subconscious might panic, wondering if you can actually maintain the bar you've raised. Can you maintain this new level? Or are you gonna burn out from bloody trying? And those kind of phrases that we hear, what if I can't keep this up?
[00:08:13] What's going to happen now? It creates the pressure that actually feels heavier than the success itself. Now, every single one of these that I've just kind of told you is operating below the surface. And each of them are going to be subtly influencing your actions and your emotions. But actually when we can start to identify them and literally even just listening to this podcast episode might do that too, we can start to rewire them.
[00:08:48] We can literally start to rewire them. The good news here, the good news for you is that we can train your subconscious to feel safe holding success. So how are we going to do that? The first thing I want you to do, this is one that I did in the membership, the subconscious membership. We did a whole subconscious classroom on Creating safety in your next level.
[00:09:11] And one of the things that I got them to do was anchor safety throughout your visualizations. So when you are visualizing, it isn't just about seeing your next level, being in your next level, feeling your next level. What we want to do is actually making it feel safe and familiar. This is why the more you visualize, the more safe and familiar it will be to your subconscious mind.
[00:09:39] So yes, imagine yourself at your next level, but here's the key. I want you to really focus on how calm, how grounded, how supported, how safe you actually feel. So when you're visualizing, don't just see the external success, I want you to feel the emotional ease that comes with it. The more your subconscious experiences success in a safe, controlled way, the more it will embrace it as your new normal.
[00:10:17] And literally, if you can repeat that daily, if you can repeat that safety daily in your visualization of where you want to be, you will rewire your subconscious to associate your success with safety. The next thing, which no one bloody does, is actually celebrating incrementally. Now, big success. Can feel overwhelming, but if we break it down into smaller milestones and we keep celebrating it along the way, it's actually going to train your subconscious to normalize success in bite sized pieces.
[00:10:56] For example, if you've landed that higher caliber client, I want you to celebrate the steps that led to that, the content that you were posting, the call to action that you put out, the energy work that you did to tap into that, the way that they'd been following you, the way that they'd been noticing you when they reached out.
[00:11:19] The follow up, maybe the discovery call that you had if you had one, the conversation in the DMs, the moment that they sign the contract and put the payment in. I want you to incrementally celebrate each of those steps, rather than just celebrating the whole, the whole concept, like, Oh my God, this client has just signed.
[00:11:39] Celebrate the small steps that you took in order for that to happen. Because each small win is going to reinforce the safety of the progress that you took to get there. And then lastly, I want you to actually start creating emotional safety in your body. Your body and your mind are so connected.
[00:12:02] Physiology and psychology is so connected. And your subconscious needs your body to feel safe too. This is where, literally, Like being a little bit slower and breathing and placing your hand on your heart and literally affirming like, it's safe for me to have this success. Tapping, anything like that, where you can get your body to feel calm, your emotions to feel regulated.
[00:12:30] I've done a podcast episode on emotional regulation. I'll tag it in the show notes. Your subconscious Registers that success does not have to equal stress. Really important that we get that in place. So if you're doing your visualization, remember, bring in safety as you're doing your visualization. Go back on some of the big success moments you've had, and I want you to celebrate each increment of what happened in order for you to get that.
[00:12:59] And then we want to create emotional safety in your body, in the feelings, in the beings. Really, really important. So Now we've got all of that in place, I just want you to become aware of the fact that you can break the patterns of this subconscious sabotage. So if it is procrastination or avoidance that you've gone back to after the success that you've had, if you've suddenly stopped showing up for the very thing that created your bloody success, I want you to just recognize this as a subconscious fear.
[00:13:38] It's a subconscious fear of sustaining the growth and just gently redirect yourself back to the aligned action. Create that simple non negotiable action plan. You know what's worked. Create safety in what's worked. We do not need to overwhelm yourself. If you're overworking, if you've hit a new level, you're Subconscious might think that you need to work even harder.
[00:14:03] So I want you to ask, how can I make this success feel easy, feel safe, leaning into the systems, leaning into the support, leaning into the trust, eliminating the tasks that aren't essential to maintaining your growth. If you are overthinking. We know that this can lead to paralysis, like absolute paralysis, but when you catch yourself spiraling, I just want you to remind yourself, I don't need to have all the answers.
[00:14:38] I, it's safe for me to keep moving forwards. It's safe for me to keep moving forwards. Almost take the overthinking and replace it with those small intentional actions. We want to build the confidence. We want to build the momentum with this. And then lastly, if you are. Getting addicted to going back to the struggle, if you've been conditioned to associate struggle with worthiness, you might unconsciously create challenges to prove that you have, quote unquote, earned your success.
[00:15:13] Just remind yourself. That you are worthy no matter what. And that's probably some subconscious work that you need to do. You know where I am, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, but really allow yourself to see the safety without the struggle. I, you know, you don't have to have the struggle for you to succeed. And I really want you to train your subconscious mind that that is your reality.
[00:15:40] So when your subconscious kicks in. With the sabotage, it's not because you are failing. It's not because you are unworthy of success. It's because your subconscious is trying to protect you from perceived danger. The key. Lovingly direct it. Redirect it in a different way. Show it that success is safe.
[00:16:05] Show it that success is sustainable. Show it that it's yours to hold. Really create the safety. And if you need work on this, you know where I am. I would either join a subconscious membership or apply for one to one. We need to create safety in that next level. It's the only way forwards. I hope you've taken something from today's episode.
[00:16:29] I love you lots. I'm so grateful that you're here and let's make sure that we create safety in the winning. I love to see you plugging in and listening to the podcast every week. So, whilst you're here, I would love for you to spend a moment sharing your favourite episode, reviewing the podcast, and of course, that juicy 5 star rating.
[00:16:54] These little acts of kindness really help the podcast reach more incredible powerhouses just like you. Now, if we're not connected on Instagram, add me at underscore Rebecca Haydon underscore, and for the full show notes and more resources, head over to RebeccaHaydon. com. I'll see you there.
More about The Subconscious Expert:
Welcome to The Subconscious Expert, the podcast where your subconscious becomes your one-way ticket to the mind-blowing results you desire in your life and business! I’m your host, Rebecca Haydon, The Subconscious Expert who went from being stuck in victim mode to a multi 6 figure business owner. Each week, I will be giving you the subconscious tools and techniques so you can become the woman who is living out her vision with a life and business that she is truly OBSESSED with. I have said it before, and I will say it 100 times again: "Your business can't outgrow your mindset, and if you want to grow your business, it always starts with growing your subconscious." So let's dive into the subconscious breakthrough you so deeply deserve!