Sabotage as Safety: The Hidden Way We Block Our Own Breakthroughs
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Carl Jung
That single quote captures so much truth.
It explains why we keep hitting the same wall, repeating the same story, and wondering why change feels so hard.
It’s not that we’re lazy or unmotivated. It’s that our unconscious mind is quietly running the show.
What You Want and Why It Matters
Let’s start with two assumptions.
First: you already know what you want, what it looks like, how it feels, and the outcome you’re moving toward.
Second: you know its purpose, its impact on the world, and why it matters that you are the one to bring it to life.
The path from where you are now, Point A, to where you’re going, Point B, isn’t just about strategy.
It’s about alignment. Making sure your thoughts, feelings, actions, and behaviours match the future you want to create.
And it’s also about noticing what’s invisible: the unconscious patterns, beliefs, and old programming that quietly get in the way.
The 80,000 Thought Reality
Before we can change, we need to understand what’s really going on inside the mind.
The average person has around 80,000 thoughts a day.
About 80% of them are negative.
And 95% are the same as yesterday.
Imagine a transparent barrel filled with small balls. Red for negative thoughts like worry, self doubt, and judgement. White for positive ones like focus, gratitude, and belief.
When you look inside, which colour dominates?
Here’s the truth: what you focus on fills your mind, and what fills your mind fills your life.
Creating change isn’t about forcing positivity. It’s about interrupting repetition and moving from automatic, unconscious thinking into conscious, intentional thinking.
The Cycle That Runs Your Life
Those thoughts don’t just sit there. They create a chain reaction.
Thought → Belief → Perspective → Behaviour → Action → Outcome
And then the outcome loops back into the next thought.
If the starting thought is negative, the whole cycle gets tinted red.
The biggest trap is that we mistake thoughts for facts. They’re not. They’re patterns, and most of them are old, unexamined, and untrue.
The Sophisticated Face of Sabotage
There’s one behaviour that sneaks in right as you’re nearing a breakthrough. A silent dream killer called sabotage.
It rarely looks reckless. In fact, it often sounds perfectly reasonable.
It says things like:
“You’re not ready yet.”
“It’s not the right time.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
What’s really happening?
A protective part of your brain equates success with risk.
It scans for danger, not opportunity, and would rather keep you safe in the familiar than let you step into the unknown.
Sabotage isn’t failure. It’s fear in disguise.
The Psychology Behind It
Every act of sabotage starts with a thought.
“What if I’m not good enough?”
“What if they find out I can’t do it?”
“What if this doesn’t last?”
On its own, a thought is harmless. But when you repeat it, especially with emotion, it takes root.
That’s how beliefs are born.
Beliefs are just thoughts you’ve practised until they feel true.
Once a belief forms, your mind filters everything through it.
You start seeing life through the lens of your fear, and your actions begin to match the story.
It’s a perfect internal loop.
Thought → Belief → Perspective → Behaviour → Action → Outcome → New Thought
Sabotage is simply that loop running on autopilot, powered by old wiring that says, “Don’t risk it, safety first.”
What Lies Beneath
Let’s pull a few threads.
Finish these sentences in your head or write them down. Don’t overthink, just answer honestly.
Money is …
People are …
If I am successful, people will …
If I achieve my dreams, I will lose …
I worry about …
Your answers reveal the hidden rules your unconscious mind lives by.
That’s where sabotage hides, in the quiet contracts you’ve made with fear.
Five Ways to Stop Sabotaging Yourself
1 | Catch the Thought Before It Catches You
Sabotage doesn’t start with action. It starts with a whisper.
That quiet thought that says, “You’re not ready,” or “Who do you think you are?”
The moment you hear it, pause. Don’t fight it. Notice it.
Awareness breaks the trance. It’s the moment you stop the spiral before it gathers speed.
2 | Ask Yourself: “Is This Safety or Self Sabotage?”
Safety feels grounded and peaceful. Sabotage feels heavy, tense, full of excuses dressed as logic.
Before you say no, wait, or not yet, check which one is driving you.
If it’s fear wearing a sensible outfit, call it out.
Clarity gives you choice, and choice is freedom.
3 | Practise Better Thoughts: The “What If I Succeed?” Shift
You don’t need to jump from “I can’t” to “I’m unstoppable.”
That’s too big a leap for your mind to believe.
Instead, start asking powerful questions that open possibility.
What if I succeed?
What if this actually works?
What if growth feels easier than I imagined?
Questions like these stretch your thinking without snapping it.
They retrain your brain to look for potential instead of problems.
Because every time you ask, “What if I grow?” your mind begins searching for evidence that you already are.
4 | Move Before You Feel Ready
You’ll never feel ready for the next level of your life because it’s new territory.
Readiness isn’t emotional, it’s behavioural.
So act first.
Make the call. Post the video. Say yes before your brain finds reasons to say no.
Confidence doesn’t create action. Action creates confidence.
5 | Turn Fear Into Fuel
Fear isn’t the enemy. It’s energy with nowhere to go.
Instead of trying to silence it, give it direction.
When it rises, ask, “What if this isn’t a warning, what if it’s my energy asking for purpose?”
That’s the moment fear transforms into focus.
And that’s when resistance becomes momentum.
From Mind to Body
Insight alone isn’t transformation. Experience is.
When focus meets intention, even the impossible bends.
You see it in every firewalk, every arrow break, every rebar bend. Moments when belief, not logic, leads.
That’s what happens when you stop pulling the emergency cord and start trusting your own fire.
From Protection to Permission
Your brain’s first job was to keep you alive, not fulfilled.
The patterns that kept you safe back then are suffocating you now.
You don’t need more protection. You need permission.
Permission to rise.
Permission to take up space.
Permission to let good things stay good.
The moment you stop spoiling what you’ve built and stop pulling the emergency cord on your own success, you move from reaction to intention.
Sabotage isn’t failure. It’s fear asking for focus.
And when focus meets intention, the impossible bends.
You don’t have to survive your dreams.
You get to live them.
I captured this fox … and couldn’t resist creating a human story around it’s behaviour.
Lisa Clifford
Book me to speak to your group, team and conference … audiences are fascinated in this subject.
