Ep #18: How to Stop Self-Sabotaging Your Success As a Performer

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Well hello all you confident performers and welcome to episode 18 of The Confident Performer. I today want to talk about self-sabotage. Super huge. And before I get into that I want to talk about just the amazing week that I’ve had. This is the culmination comedown of my grant project that I was working on for about a year. And I did reference it before, but we had our performance on Monday, and it was truly magical and breathtaking. And I hope we get to continue to do the work that we are doing because it is just so, I want to say brilliant because obviously I’m not just talking about myself.

So it’s a team of people who came together to mentor children through the arts in places that are actually serving the lowest quartile. And it’s actually where I grew up. And it’s so important, the project, the work is so important to me. And to be able to do that, it’s kind of a promise that I made to myself when I was a kid, that if I did have the opportunities and was able to live a really good life, I would come back and pour into the people who are from where I’m from.

And that to me was very important because I made that deal and I honored that deal, so really cool. And then we had that culmination work. And it was just really, really impressive to see all these young artists stepping into things that are really hard to do publicly and very hard to kind of take on. And they’re not really used to kind of stepping up and into their greatness for themselves on a typical practice.

They are, don’t get me wrong, they are absolutely gifted to have the teachers that they have working with them in the schools that they are in. But it’s certainly more a practiced thing that they really have to get into on the regular and see adults in their life operate in the same way, same fashion. Also, my young artists, I have a group of singers called the Rising Stars. They are adorable and they perform all throughout the community. We get so many community requests, and we do special events through the year. And these young brilliant artists show up and enrich the quality of an event.

Our mayor, Karen Goh here in Bakersfield, we get to kind of be at her events and my partnership with Garden Pathways for the past 15 years, let’s that happen. So we’re going to jump into another really exciting thing for me. I am headed to a women’s retreat from my coach, Kym Showers. I literally woke up like it was Christmas. And that Christmas where I guess Christmas as an adult and probably even a better feeling because Christmas when you are a kid and you’re not even doing any work, that’s wonderful, I would imagine. I was in a religion that didn’t celebrate Christmas.

But I’m imagining that that’s how it would feel but waking up and just being an adult and then not having to go and do a bunch of work. But you get to go and pour into yourself and be in a place where you are with other people who are doing the same thing and are wanting the goodness that is Kym Showers just pouring into you all weekend. It is going to be literally magical, off the charts magical.

So getting into business, self-sabotage. I know so many of my beautiful performers out there, have a problem with self-sabotage. I know this because I learned this the hard way. And I not only learned it for myself when I was younger, but I learned it the hard way throughout my career and watching myself, watching other artists and then really in coaching. I fall so in love with the journey of the performers that I get to work with. And I can watch them, and I can see this one has that ability to overcome. And then this one will be troubled greatly and sabotage themselves.

Now, I sabotaged myself very, very early on. I had a very low self-esteem, and I didn’t even know. I felt like I’m an attractive person, I can walk into rooms and not feel physically uncomfortable being in the room. But I really did not have a high self-esteem. I had a lower self-concept, a lower self-esteem, a lower self-image. And I did not honor myself in the way to really nurture that until I was aware of it and then I thought, why am I doing these things?

Why am I making these choices to potentially hold myself back or perpetuate negative thinking or let potential negative thoughts overwhelm me to where I would actually freeze and kind of be paralyzed from action that I just wouldn’t go and follow my dreams. And I did that for so long. And I did this kind of series of buffering for so long. And really just did not step into that bravery until I was about almost 25 years old. That was around that same time, that American Idol time. But as I’m doing this I am really kind of, of course, having my own former old memories.

But I want to walk through a video that summarized this, I think pretty greatly, a Creative Minds video. And it took three different concepts and different artists were kind of speaking to the point of what self-sabotage looks like to them. And I think really kind of put everything out there and then what I’m going to recommend to do about it.

So this Kid Cudi kind of summarized this guilt and shame being one of them. So it’s kind of feeling less than and really kind of allowing ourselves to live in that limiting capacity. And limiting ourself and our mind, limiting ourself by our actual ability and what we’re capable of doing and allowing ourselves to be truly limited. And that kind of lid on our success is associated with that guilt and shame. He referenced having that feeling that he had money and he had success, and he had all these things that people around him that had worked really hard didn’t necessarily have so he felt a lot of guilt in that.

And then also coming into some of the choices that he was making and things like that. Then ended up kind of shaping the shame even greater where he said, “I would never smoke.” And then he ends up smoking cigarettes. And, he says, “I would never put anything up my nose.” And then he starts doing coke. And then he kind of goes and explains more and more about his life and the challenges that he begins to face just by, of course, now starting these things. But living in that kind of shame and guilt loop. So I really just found it very fascinating to kind of watch him talk and speak so candidly.

One of the next artists, Sevdaliza, referenced that self-sabotage is associated and affiliated with all these blindfolds. And it’s the blindfolds that come along with it, really limit your own perception and perspective of what you are doing to allow it. Now, when you read anything, she referenced it, if you’re reading into any of these negative thoughts or negative comments that anybody writes about you when you’re in this creative process, you end up allowing yourself through self-sabotage, allowing yourself to lean into their potential negative perspective of you.

And then kind of create this confirmation bias that wow, these people must be right, instead of saying, “This is me, I’m an artist. I’m on a creative journey and this is just where I am on my process and in my process of that creative journey.” Not judging it, not letting it be a negative or a positive, but just being aware that that’s where you are at the present moment on your journey. So I want to kind of summarize that final thought that they shared in that Creative Minds video.

Skepta referenced that having that internal story, that is through a negative lens, so those internalized negative stories that you allow yourself to believe about yourself and then deciding when, you know what? This is not serving me. I am going to straight up shut this down and focus on that greatness only. Really walking into your truest capacity but being again truly aware of what you are doing. Being truly aware of what your negative thought process is culminating and what it’s perpetuating.

So in a kind of overall summary of what I really loved about the video for one, but these collective artists, they featured on there, Dave Grohl as well. And he referenced that oftentimes negating or kind of avoiding that self-sabotage is to focus on the creative work for fulfilment and deciding that if I go out and I show up for myself. And he said, “I play the S out of those drums.” He really references that that is his fulfilment. He gets to look back. He gets to say, “The only goal I had for myself was to get out there, play the S out of my drums.” And that’s exactly what he did.

So he allows himself to really kind of lean into that level of fulfillment based upon he went to do the thing, he acknowledged he did the thing, and now he is fulfilled. So I love that kind of smooth, easy explanation of just focus on the thing, just be in the same realm and then go for it.

Now, I want to say one of the things I recommend from myself. I remember when I was younger, my entertainment attorney, you’ve heard me talk about him before, Jesse Mercado, said, “I need you to be aware that you are self-sabotaging yourself. I need you to be aware that you are not doing the things that you are supposed to do just based upon the fear of success and fear of failure.” And I thought, okay, if it’s fear of success and failure, how do you operate actually out of both? And in truth, that’s when I really started to try and investigate what does this fear of success actually even mean?

And as I was doing that, I did realize, oh, sweet heavens to Betsy, I’m not doing the things that I could be doing. I’m not actively showing up. I’m allowing myself to be disorganized or to procrastinate or to be extremely hard on myself or self-deprecating. Any of those things that would allow me to be in that lack of preparation or overwhelm, any of the things that really, truly ended up holding me back. That has been the ultimate challenge when I was early in my career. And I knew that as an artist, I had to get those things just out of my way so I could divide and conquer.

So then once I started practicing that dividing and conquering, then once I began to practice it completely, then it was just conquering. So with that, if you’re in that kind of loop where you end up feeling, your friend will call you and say, “Hey, you have an audition or, hey, I can get you an audition for this.” And your brain says, “Well, I don’t really, I don’t have my headshot, and I haven’t updated my resumé since my last job.” And you find yourself in that cycle or that pattern of just not being ready or not being prepared. That is a great, great sign of self-sabotage.

And that is what holds you back from thinking you should be somewhere else other than you are. And you’re not really taking the steps to actively get there. So of course that leads to a lot of lower vibration and lower brain thinking where if you don’t pull yourself out of that by action, then you can get really drawn down and drawn into that place of depression and just overall just negative thoughts that just kind of take over your entire being which I actively want to avoid.

First and foremost I want to create clarity. Get very, very clear on where you want to be, what your goals are and how worth it they are to you. So many people say, “Describe this as your why. Describe this, why are you doing this? Why are you showing up? Why are you consistently in this space?” After you’ve gotten really clear on what it is that you want for your life and for your success and what you want your life to look like, so what would you walk into? What would you become and what would you be if you knew there were no limitations, truly none, how would your life look?

Then I want you to think about commitment and the commitment to creating the habits that sustain and revitalize that mind and that mindset and that vision. What do you want to be? Who do you want to be? How do you want to feel? How do you want to show up? And most of the time, we are really caught up in the feelings component of life. We are so all about, does this make me feel happy? Does this make me feel energized? Does this make me feel, feel, feel, feel feelings?

And if we remember from episode 15, we remember what my sexy man Teddy says about feelings. He said it, but he didn’t say it. He really puts that emphasis on sometimes your feelings are not set to be the focus. And especially when you have a commitment to reach goals, but then your lower brain operates by way of trying to help you stay comfortable, stay safe and avoid pain and always seeking that constant pleasure. If you step outside of your comfort zone, you are going to be uncomfortable. You are going to feel uncomfortable. So if you begin to actively embrace what it feels like to feel uncomfortable, that’s so necessary.

Third, consistency. Consistency for me is probably the hardest because my day looks different pretty much every single day. And I have so many different projects and so many different companies and partnerships that I have, that consistency looks different every day. But one of the things that is absolutely constant and consistent is the love that I have for myself and the practice in that love and those affirmations for myself. I’m not talking the, you are a beautiful unicorn, and no one is like you and you are going to seize the day and be full of stars.

It is true awareness of being grateful for the things that I focused on and that it began to practice to where they are true habits. Knowing I’m fully capable of taking care of all the things I need to prepare and take care of on my own. I am strong. I am resilient. I know that I have a large capacity and a great bandwidth for dealing with challenging things and challenging circumstances. I know that I’m a problem solver. And not focus on solving problems is an absolute benefit to me and to my psyche and to my life and to my family.

And I walk straight into things, none of that is going to be a consistent or constant problem, because I’m going to solve it. And so I love knowing those things. Those are the affirmations I’m talking about. So that consistency in showing up and being very clear on what your goals are, being very clear on that kind of scope of what you want your life to look like. And really, really practicing that clarity, that commitment and that consistency. If you do not actively do that and you have struggles doing that, get a coach.

My last episode talked about, do you need a vocal teacher? Do you need a vocal coach? Do you need a performance coach? Who is it that you need to help you reach the goals that are living inside of you? Because as I always say, your dreams are 100% worth living. Show up for yourself, show up for your greatness, step into your greatness, step into the life that you’ve always dreamed of. Step into the life that you want to have, and you want to wake up and you want to feel every single day. In the meantime, take care and be well.

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Thank you for listening to today’s episode of The Confident Performer. If you want to learn more about living your truth and showing up as your most authentic, beautiful self, visit www.amyadamscoaching.com. See you next week!