Design Your Life - Because Life’s Too Short To Live Someone Else’s
Today I’m talking about subconscious patterns that can lead you to a life that no longer serves you, and how to disrupt these patterns.
I’m Sarah Norris, I’m a certified behaviour and habit change coach, and I work with people to support them to take charge of their life choices, navigate change, and design the life they want to lead.
Last week I stepped well outside my comfort zone and delivered my first public talk as a coach.
The title was Why Women Self-Sabotage and How to Back Your Own Vision, and I was invited to speak to the brilliant Euphoric community—a membership created by Karolina Rzadkowolska for successful women who are redefining their relationship with alcohol and creating lives they genuinely want to wake up to.
Although I've been coaching for several years, completing Karolina's 5x Coaching Certification earlier this year gave me the confidence to finally say yes to opportunities like this.
The talk was about self-sabotage. And, despite being a coach, I know self-sabotage intimately. And I suspect you might do too!
For years I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t sticking to decisions I had made, or working towards futures I professed I wanted. I started things enthusiastically, then found I had abandoned them.
Most people think self-sabotage means there’s a problem with them. They’re lazy, foolish, not ambitious enough. But in reality, self-sabotage is often protection. Our subconscious is trying to keep us safe. It acts as a protective mechanism, and it runs on auto-pilot.
For example, drinking after a stressful day. The behaviour: You've promised yourself you won't drink. Then evening arrives and you find yourself opening a bottle of wine... It looks like: A lack of willpower. BUT what your brain is trying to protect you from: Feeling difficult emotions. Your subconscious has learned: "Alcohol makes the discomfort go away."
It isn't trying to ruin your goals. It's trying to reduce emotional pain using the strategy it knows best. It's automated this behaviour to be the way your nervous system reacts to stress or discomfort.
Our brains receive roughly 11 million bits of information every second. We are constantly bombarded with huge amounts of sensory information. We can only consciously process about 40 of them. And the filter for this? It’s called the Reticular Activation System (RAS) and it connects the conscious part of our brain to the unconscious.
So your brain is constantly prioritising, and the RAS is the system doing prioritising and filtering information. It filters based on whatever it is trained to notice, most of which is formed and run on automated loops in the unconscious. It filters data, it determines focus, based on survival, repetition and our core beliefs. And it runs in the background, bypassing your conscious thoughts.
It might seem strange that we have a filter running in our subconscious that attempts to subvert our conscious mind, our choices and actions! Right?
And women experience this so often. Many of us grew up receiving subtle messages that being "good" mattered more than being bold. Be helpful; Don't make a fuss; Don't be too ambitious; Don't upset people; Don't show off.
By adulthood those messages have become invisible rules. Rules we rarely question. So we apologise before speaking; Wait until we're 100% qualified; Delay launching; Shrink our ideas; Call ourselves "not ready."
It’s our nervous system is trying to protect us from a threat that no longer exists.
So The next time you catch yourself procrastinating or talking yourself out of something, don't ask: "What's wrong with me? Why did I do that?" Instead ask: "What is my brain trying to protect me from?"
That single question shifts you from judgement to curiosity. And curiosity is where change begins. Designing your life instead of repeating it. Helping you uncover the unconscious stories that have been quietly directing your decisions for years—and replacing them with beliefs that actually support the life they want to create.
So: What's one belief you've realised has been quietly holding you back?
Please do share it in the comments—or send me a message if you'd rather keep it private. I'd love your feedback.
Sarah Norris / habitchange.co.uk / hello@habitchange.co.uk / work with me