109: Stop Self Sabotaging with Coach Polly

Coach Polly solo this week telling you that your goals aren’t failing because you’re weak; they’re colliding with a brain designed for safety, comfort, and the familiar! We dig into the real engine of self-sabotage—how pain and pleasure drive every choice—and show how to flip those circuits so action becomes the easy path.

I break down why the brain, an energy-hungry survival machine, resists change even when the change is good for us. We explore Tony Robbins’ pain–pleasure framework, the role of limiting beliefs, and how motivation often appears when staying the same becomes unbearable. From the client who “checks the weather” instead of organizing, to my own rituals that moved from effort to identity, you’ll hear how our neuroassociations quietly steer our days.

Then we go deep on dopamine. It’s not the molecule of liking; it’s the molecule of wanting. Social feeds and slot machines use variable rewards to spike anticipation, then leave you in a trough that makes real life feel flat. I outline a practical dopamine reset—delete or wall off apps, set hard evening cutoffs, and commit to 30 days—to help subtle joys like deep work, prayer, movement, and connection feel rich again. You’ll also get a seven-day self-leadership plan: run a pain–pleasure audit, use the five-minute rule, emotionalize your future self, and design an environment where good choices are your default.

You’re not stuck with the wiring you inherited. With leverage, accountability, and a smarter context, you can reassign pain to inaction and pleasure to progress. If you’re ready to stop self-sabotage and start building momentum, hit play, subscribe, and share the one five-minute habit you’ll start today. Your future self is waiting—what’s your first move?

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Transcript

Why We Self-Sabotage

Polly Mertens 0:07

Hey superstars, welcome back. Polly here and no Samantha Pruitt. She will be back with us next week. I'm excited to share with you in the meantime this topic that very timely, something occurred yesterday that was like, I gotta share about this, right? So calling this stop self-sabotaging, right? Why your brain is wired to keep you average. Not necessarily a topic that we all want to hear, but we all do want to stop sabotaging ourselves and like what gets in the way of us having the things that we want, doing the things that we want, having the life that we want, right? And it's this damn mind of ours. So, you know, as a habit and success coach, you know, I really think that this is a timely topic, especially as this is coming out, you know, late January. And, you know, I had the honor of seeing, you know, lots of new faces in the gym in the beginning of the month. But sometimes that kind of

The Brain’s Energy Bias Explained

Polly Mertens 1:00

tapers off as we know there's that slump, you know, New Year's resolutions and things. It's like, why can't we get ourselves to do the things that we say that we want, right? So your brain is running a 53 50,000-year-old program. Okay. The way that we're wired is not necessarily what's going to keep us successful and happy and thriving. It's going to keep us in a cave, you know, it's going to keep us safe, it's going to keep us the same, right? Comfortable, survival. So we got to overcome some of this wiring, baby. We gotta, we gotta do it. So your brain is a two-pound energy miser. It's like conserve, conserve, conserve. So I don't know if you know this, but it consumes 20. So, you know, when people talk about like, oh, you know, fitness and stuff, I gotta eat to fuel and stuff. It's often like your brain that's consuming the most. So it consumes 20% of your metabolic calories, despite it's only two pound weight, right? So it's hardwired for what we call metabolic parasimony. I think that's how you say that, which is a fancy scientific term of avoiding any effort that doesn't immediately guarantee food, safety, or sex. Like this little nugget up here is quite the quite the gem, right? If it feels if growth feels hard for you, like if change and growth feel hard, it's because your brain thinks that growth and change is a threat to its survival. So that's where we gotta we gotta work on this. So I'm gonna teach you, I'm gonna share with you like some examples of stories and where I've been either self-sabotaging myself, I see, and by all means, this is not a, oh, I'm perfect at this, I've got it all figured out, life is running perfectly smooth, I'm doing everything that I want and avoiding everything that I don't want. No, but I can tell you from a lot of years of experience of what has worked or hasn't worked, and things that I have dropped from a 20-year eating disorder, and you know, things that I have gotten up to, like really hard physical challenges that I was like, oh my God, how am I gonna get there? Right. So I want to share with you what I know, what the science says, and give you some ways of stopping your self-sabotage if that's how your year is going, or whenever you're hearing this, you know, hopefully this is something that will serve you as well. So, um, you know, where this is going, and this uh ties in with the neuroscience. And what sparked this for me is I was rereading a wonderful book that I read many years ago by

Pain Versus Pleasure Framework

Polly Mertens 3:30

my one of my favorite people, Tony Robbins, in his book Awaken the Giant Within. And I was rereading this just recently, uh like two conversations with coaching clients. It was like, how does this happen when I start, you know, revisiting something or a topic, it shows up in my coaching. It's like never fails. So the general topic I will call it is pain and pleasure, right? So in general, and I love this work from Tony says that we do things to avoid pain and move towards pleasure. And the bad news is we do a lot more to avoid pain than to move towards pleasure. So we're highly motivated by pain, somewhat motivated by pleasure, right? That's like we're, you know, like the stick is more powerful than the carrot, you might say. So um, everything we do is either to avoid those two, avoid or move towards, right? The brain will always work hard to avoid pain or to gain pleasure. So we don't move towards our dreams, we move away from our fears. Move away from our fears or what's uncomfortable or what our brain thinks could be painful or hard or stressful or cause it to use a lot of energy, right? It's like, nope, don't need to do that. So if you aren't moving, if you're not motivated, it's because you're associating more pain to the work than to saying the same. I'll give you some examples of this, but that's just the general idea. So, um, you know, in a recent example, I had I was talking to a client who was like, Yeah, can you tell me how to motivate my husband? And I was like, first off, that ain't ever gonna work. Like, you can't motivate other people, right? If he wants to do the work, if he's in enough pain, right, that's when things will shift, right? And you see this all the time, all I mean, in really disastrous lives where people are doing intensely painful things to themselves and the people around them, like drug addiction, alcohol addiction, you know, any kind of addictive behavior that has a grip on somebody, and the pain of it, whether it's being caused around them or the pain in their own life, unfortunately, it's not severe enough to get them out of it, right? Like it's giving them more pleasure or more certainty, or the brain is just like, you know what, this is all I know. Let's just keep doing this, right? So it hasn't associated enough pain with getting out of it. So we don't move towards our dreams, we move away from our fears or pain, right? So in this case, I said, well, there's probably two things. Well, there's three, there's multiple things going on when you have uh a friend or a loved one. And what's ironic about this, and I'll tell you in a moment, is um her own story, but you know, is he either doesn't have a compelling vision that he doesn't really care about, he's probably got a limiting belief that's holding him back like back, like I'm not worthy, uh, I don't think good things don't work out for me, or I'm not good enough, or something like why bother, right? So there's a limiting belief that keeps him from having a compelling vision of his potential or something that he wants in life. He's like, whatever, I'll just stay, let's say, average or comfortable, and not even that comfortable,

You Can’t Motivate Others

Polly Mertens 6:30

right? Everybody's got a different definition of what comfort is, but his comfort zone is what he's he's trapped in, right? And so, unless you remove the limiting belief that allows him to see a compelling vision and you clear up, you know, whatever's in the way painfully and move him towards something that he wants, or you know, get the pain behind him so uncomfortable, right? Like he's comfortable, like, yeah, doing okay, you know, semi-retired, this person, you know, it's not painful enough, right? So here's the uh the the switch flip in that. So here's this client talking to me um about can you help me motivate my husband? And I was like, oh, okay, A, you can't do that, or whatever. And she's trying to like fix all the people around her. And then we got talking about, I was like, okay, so where are you on your, you know, I we did this process in return to the light. And it was like, look at your wheel of life and what areas of your life. And she says, Yeah. And I said, So which one or two are calling you? Like, what work do you really want to get up to this year? Or, you know, you want to put your focus and your energy towards. And it was like, oh, my spiritual devotion. So I'm not sure the religion, but there was something about prayers and practices and rituals and readings that she wanted to be doing, but wasn't. And she said about five minutes a day is all she does. I have a feeling that's suspect. I don't think that's even happening. Um, I think it's less than that. I think it's five minutes here and there. And then the other area was organizing her house, like her closets and her office, and um, you know, things were just like scattered and just disorganized, right? Um, and where she says that arose from is she had been a teacher and she was running, you know, businesses and you know, all this stuff. So there was no time for it. Well, come to find out, she retired two years ago and has no activities, like very little, you know, it's amazing what I can get, you know, find my find myself to get up to. And I was like, hmm. So not organizing her house instead. I was like, oh, so what else are you doing? Like, what are you, you know, what how do you occupy yourself now that you're retired and you don't have this, you know, job that she was driving. I forget it was quite a way, I want to say like 45 minutes away to work all day, come back 45 minutes, tired, la la la. Well, that, you know, left. They sold off a bunch of their property, so there's no more of that nonsense. And I'm just kind of trying to, you know, understand what what do you and and no like big hobbies, like going to the gym maybe three days a week, you know, this and that. And then you start to hear like all the amount of television watching and stuff. And I was not that, hey, that's up to you, right? I think television the boob tube um got its name for a reason, but just hearing there's lots of things, and it was all starting to come down to the phone, like, oh, I checked the weather and I, you know, these things on my phone, and I get into, and it was like started, I was like, oh, okay, this is this is where the dopamine is starting to bring pleasure of like, oh, I'll I'll distract, right? I'll distract and do this thing, instead of this, you know, the organizing and things like that. It's like sometimes it can look like a mountain depending on how big it is. And I had a client recently who, you know, hired a bunch of um organizers to come in and like take that burden off, right? Because it it can be if you if you aren't used to it, or if you don't have any help, it can be, you know, to your mind, this ginormous mountain, right? So we see the the bigness of it. So, you know, she checks the weather, looks at random stuff on her phone instead of having a house that

The Comfort Trap And Limiting Beliefs

Polly Mertens 10:00

feels good, living in a house that feels good to her, right? And why? It's because the immediate low-cost pleasure of picking up the phone and distracting with, you know, in this case, you know, social media or this or the weather, I was like, that's that's what you're doing instead of like having a home that feels good to you and for years, not just like, oh, you know, retired and now you know it's been 30 days or six months or a year, you know, you kind of decompress from that life. But now it's just like still not happening, right? And so that was interesting that looking externally at the motivations or the people in her life that weren't motivated, and yet right beneath her wings or right in front of her was an opportunity for her own lack of self-motivation or self-sabotaging, what she said she wanted to get up to. So, you know, um, you know, her brain, yeah, it's not to distract it, it's it's self-medicating, right? It's choosing the certain, those little tiny pleasures of screen time over the uncertain, like effort, right? The pleasure of a clean home, but ah, the road to get there, right? Or the pleasure of a connected soul from her devotions and the things that she says she wants, or the pain of like sitting down and actually doing it, right? Like to be in silence. And I think it's because we don't associate enough pleasure to what you can have, right? Like people who go to the gym for short term, they don't learn to associate enough pleasure with it. So I'll give you a couple examples. So, number one, I, you know, get up quite early in the morning and I do a morning ritual, and it includes meditation and um, you know, cards and and anyway, all this this little routine that I have that really feeds my soul, feeds my energy, gives me, you know, the the state, the energetic state, the emotional state that I want to go into my day. And yeah, there's a little sacrifices to that. I get up quite early, um, so I go to bed earlier, right? So I have been doing it long enough that I would not miss it, right? I I would miss it if I didn't do it. I would not miss it. I would not sacrifice, you know, going to bed late and miss that, right? Because I have felt and experienced over time. It's been years, probably like 10 years now or more, that I've been doing this, the beneficial effects of it, right? And it didn't happen like the first day or the second day, or even maybe the 30th, but you will get glimpses into why you're doing that thing, right? So if she wants that spiritual devotional, or for me, my morning rituals, you put aside the time, you you you sit in that space, you give yourself that time, you you know, have a date with yourself because it's feeding you. And over time it will grow and really serve you. In the beginning, it feels like effort because you have to carve out from other things, you're not doing the distractions, all these things that your brain is doing. And the other one is exercise, right? So, or movement in whatever form that looks like for you. Like Samantha and I talk about how like we can't not move. Like it's so I've been doing it for so many decades that too many days of not moving, it feels like, well, who is this, right? So there's an and there's all kinds of amazing days and highs and like great workouts and high fives, and like, ah, the the how proud you feel of taking good care of yourself, right? And nothing I would trade for that now. But it is like an arc of like getting into that space where instead of it feeling

Phone Dopamine Versus A Calm Home

Polly Mertens 13:30

like a cost or a pain or an expense or a challenge, I move it into it's it's pleasure. It gives me energy, it makes me feel good about myself. I feel strong, I feel capable, I can do the things that I want to do in life. I have great immunity, you know, all sorts of things, right? So in the neuroscience world, they would call it neuroassociation, we wire pain to the very things that could save us, that would save us, right? So if you think organizing your office is painful, your amygdala will literally trigger a stress response to keep you away from it. All right. So you aren't procrastinating, you're experiencing like a biological bypass of your goals. It's like the brain's like, nope, nope. So it's like this, you know, thing you've gotta, you've gotta be aware of. And I'll give you some advice here and some ideas um on how to rewire that brain. Like, what are we basically what you've linked up in your brain, if you think of neuroassociation as like these um, they're like receptors in the brain that tie things together. They I say they sort of like find our memories, if you will. So if I have 10 memories of going to the gym and feeling fantastic and and like it really, like there's community there, there's like a good sweat I get on, there's you know, I feel good afterward. Like so many memories in my brain have these little uh dials turned, tuned into and turned on for exercise. If I think about going exercise, bing, I like hit all of those neuroassociations. Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, good, good, good. Pain sometimes, yeah, but more pleasure than pain. So what I've associated with working out by this time is is pleasure. And so what we associate in our mind, what we link up in our mind to pain or pleasure drives us emotionally, right? And we're very motivated. We're very um like the force within us of our emotions gets us to do things. The force of avoiding that pain will motivate us to self-sabotage if you know it's painful to, you know, you know, pick up all the stuff and organize it or go to the gym if we haven't done it before. It's like, why bother? It's cold out. It's now I gotta get out of bed and you know, all these things, right? So, what we're gonna talk about next is dopamine, the dopamine arena and what I'm calling a dopamine fast, right? So let's do a little dive into if you know what dopamine is or what you think it is. A lot of people think it's like this reward, like Pavlotus dog is like, Bing, I got the reward for, you know, um uh in Pavlotus Dog, it was like ringing the bell, right? And you get a treat, you get a treat. Well, it's it's actually the it's people think it's the molecule of pleasure, right? So like this hormone or this molecule of pleasure, but it's not. It's a molecule of anticipation and reward prediction, which is a little bit complicated, but it's the I want it molecule. It's like I want that, oh, uh, oh, right. Like it's anticipation. It's not the I like it or I like I feel good about it. It's like I it's the itch, it's not the scratch. So it's what gets us to do those things. It's like, mmm. Now, here's where this goes like insanely not good. The not good news is uh, you know, in you probably know in casinos, you know, slot machines are those little diabolical motherfuckers, man. Tech companies, um, in, you know, whether it's a slot machine or it's in your phone or these algorithms and stuff, they use something called variable ratio reinforcement. Fat fancy word to say it's the same logic logic in um, you know, the algorithms that they're doing these days as a Vegas slot machine, right? And your brain releases more dopamine when the reward is uncertain. Like scrolling for a good post, like pink,

Building Positive Neuroassociations

Polly Mertens 17:30

pink, pink, you know, like TikTok, great example, slot machine, basically a slot machine. So if you are in that rut, just know um that's what's what's going on here. You aren't checking your phone for information, right? You're not like, oh, I'm here to see what's going on in the world. You're pulling the liver on a neurotical, neurochemical slot machine. Mic drop. Like, oh my goodness. If more people realize that's what's going on, right? The days of Instagram and Facebook, originally like connecting with friends and community and stuff like that, you're now trapped in, you know, reward dopamine um slot machine. And it's and it sucks because here's why. So for every high of cheap dopamine, scrolling or you know, whatever you're doing, most likely people these days, scrolling is like the number one, your brain creates a proportional dopamine trough. Okay, so the dip below your baseline where you feel restless, anxious, and bored, like this is why you feel worse after an hour of Instagram than before you started or TikTok, whatever. Choose your poison, right? So this dopamine trough is like, man, you know, like you do it for an hour and then you you need more, right? It's kind of like an addictive um heroin, right? Like you need more just to get to the baseline of what it brought you as a high, right? So you now spend more time or you just feel worse and worse, right? So one way, if that's something that's invaded your life and and and is you know running and how you're self-sabotaging, and this could apply in other areas, but it's a really big one right now in our culture. So I wanted to touch upon it. So a dopamine fast, and I know some people may have not a great association with the word fast or fasting, but it's like a cleansing, right? So you need to cleanse the body's, you know, it's like cleansing or detoxing after heroin or, you know, this addiction, right? This dopamine addiction. So it's to reset that threshold. So you do a dopamine fast, trying to reset the threshold of what your body needs to feel good and be, you know, excited or motivated, if you will. And when you flood your system with high intensity cheap dopamine, the deep dopamine uh, you know, of a of a sunset or a prayer or a focused hour of work or connecting with loved ones, it's like boring in comparison.

What Dopamine Really Does

Polly Mertens 20:00

Like why life starts to look a little dull, a little gray. You're like, I'll go back to my phone, right? Cheap, instant high. You think so, but it's actually doing the opposite. It's like fast food instead of, you know, no nourishment there. No nourishment there. Out in the real world, yes, with people and beauty and nature and connecting with your loved ones. That's where, you know, mineral-rich, you know, nutrient-rich, consciousness-rich, emotionally rich value is going to come from. So honestly, you know, a dopamine fast, it's not about avoiding pleasure. Like, I don't want to give you the idea of like, you know, that's not it. Like, it's just to reset it. It's like to bring you back out of this trough where your levels of what you need to feel good reset. It's about starving that craving, yes, right? So that your brain can actually feel the subtle joys of life again, right? It takes about 30 days, right? So depending on how long you've been doing it, right? So I remember when TikTok came out and I was like, oh, this looks fun, you know. So I went on it, and in two weeks, I could already see, like I was thinking about TikTok. I was like, oh, hold up, this thing needs to come off my phone. This is not, no, you don't control me. You don't, you know, I'm not gonna be like this Pavlov dog to this phone or this app. Heck no. So, you know, it was easy for me because I you know two weeks and I hadn't seen, I haven't looked at it very much. But depending on how consistent you are about it, if you have a little routine, whether it's before bed or you wake up in the morning or anywhere you're waiting in line and that's what you do, you're you're falling into that trap, right? You're falling into that trough of dopamine. So really just like I know some people like deleting that from your phone, you would never do it. Okay, well, just like make it off limits, right? Or set a you know, three-minute limit. Yeah, I would just say it's easier to not do it than to try and limit. Oh, I'll just do it for three minutes, right? Um, and I have set mine so like five minutes, like I'll be posting something, and then it comes on, it's like, oh, you've reached your five-minute daily limit. And then I'm like, oh shoot, I gotta get this post up. Um, but you can do that also, right? And just be like, oh shoot, there I go, down the roller coaster, the slot machine of social media. So just wanted to share that with you. So let's talk about like how to, how to move out of this like low-value pleasure into high vibe fulfillment, my friends. Like like doing something that actually is fulfilling, like good, like you working with your body, working with your mind, working with your soul to feed it what it needs, not this cheap ass, you know, fast food of you know, pleasure out there. So let's call it a pain-pleasure audit, right? So depending on where you are. So this was, you know, in conversation, you know, I'm a coach, and so in conversation with a client, just pokey around and seeing what she's doing, not doing, wants to be doing, isn't doing, or is doing, wants to cut back on, right? Like you want to do this with yourself, basically.

Variable Rewards And Social Media

Polly Mertens 23:00

So, like, what what is not, what are you not getting up to? Where are you already self-sabotaging in your life? Where are you already um avoiding something or not changing something that's becoming more painful, but maybe isn't painful enough? But you know, you're just like, hmm. So the question is, is what pain have I associated with my goals, the things that I say that I want? Studying, you know, devotionals or um uh getting up to something in life, starting your business, creating something newly, going out and looking for a new relationship, new friends, um, or in her case, organizing your house, right? Like, I want to have an organized house. Okay, so what pain have you associated with that, right? And what pleasure am I getting from distractions? Or what else, what else am I prioritizing? Where, where, where, what am I making more important? I'm getting pleasure from somewhere else that's pulling me away from having this thing that I say that I want, right? So there's an imbalance there. There's pain associated with what you want, your goal, or the thing that you say that you want, or your intent. So first, you might even just evaluate do you really want that thing? And second, if if there is, you know, not everything comes to us for free. So there's a little bit of cost or energy, you know, for it, right? So to have that clean house, you do some things, right? For for example, maybe more in the beginning because you've been avoiding it, but then you can maintain it. And the same with lifestyle, right? Like if you have uh an unhealthy body, it's harder to get it back to health than to maintain it, you know, at health. So what pain are you associating with your goals? That's the first question. And what pleasure are you associating to something else, the distractions? And so, likely, um, yeah, if you're you know, if you're associating pain with having an organized house, like what is it you really want for that? Like, do you like do you just say that you want this or do you really want this? Like sometimes not having a clear enough vision or why of why you want this. Like for me, like having an organized house is like a must. Like my brain in a disorganized house is like not a happy place for Polly to live in. So, yes, we have an organized house and all those things. Good old Virgo. Um, my brain likes it when things are put away and and I like, you know, organization. So I I somewhat naturally, but also I've trained myself to see the pleasure in or you know, the pain of my mind seeing all the distraction and all that. It's like, oh, nope. You know, my threshold for that is is at a different level, right? Our tolerances for what where that pain is, right? And I spoke about in the beginning. Well, I'll say one thing. So I, you know, had to share with this client, like, put it in her face. I was like, your husband's not in enough pain to like have things change, very comfortable, and you're not in enough pain to do anything about this, right? So you've either got to create pain, you've got to associate higher levels of pain with not doing it to get yourself to do it. So

The Dopamine Trough Problem

Polly Mertens 26:00

um with the next thing I want to share with you is neuroassociative conditioning. Um, I don't know if you've heard this before. We talked about those little um receptors in our brain, like these memories, the things that you've linked pain and pleasure to. You you you've gotta, you must make staying the same unbearable, like massive pain or enough pain to overcome the brain's resistance to the hurdle to getting to doing something about it, right? So make the inaction hurt more than the action. Like, oh man, you know, and you can do this in different ways. You can talk about it, journal about it. Just like you can um, you know, like get leverage on yourself. That's one of these that I've done before, you know, it's like ah, get myself like the the the impetus, right? So like it wasn't painful enough. So I like, for example, I had this one time I was this phone call I uh was intending to make, but it was it felt painful. It was like, oh, it's gonna be awkward, uncomfortable. I was putting it off. And then the leverage I got on myself is I said, okay, told my friends, my mastermind group, if I if I don't make this phone call, I'm gonna write a hundred dollar check to an opposing political party. And I hate, like, that was that was painful. That was some pain, you know. Like, how else was I gonna get to it? Like, oh, I'll just keep not doing it, right? But I got leverage on myself to fix like the inaction of not doing that thing was more painful. Like having to write that check was like, wow, this is so against my values. That's what worked for me, right? But what works for you could be different. But you've got to get that leverage, gotta get that. Um, staying the same is unbearable to you, or you know, or at least motivating enough to get it started. And then you've got to, you know, keep the rewards depending on how big of a mountain you're up to. So I just want to say one more thing uh about the dopamine. So there's this thing in theory with, you know, the the I think you should do like a full detox, full fast of social media, you know, for 30 days to reset the dopamine, but at least, you know, to help you with your baseline is like no high intensity dopamine, you know, after a certain hour at night. I would say like by sunset, right? So like, and I don't mean that sunset in summer, I mean like 7 p.m., let's say, right? 6 p.m., 7 p.m. So that your body has an opportunity to not be wired by that. I'm I'm a big fan though on the full detox. So just so just saying, like

How To Dopamine Fast

Polly Mertens 28:30

I love like cut it off. There's no questioning it. There's no like, oh, can I do five more minutes? You know, it's like, nope, just don't do that thing, right? All right, so let's talk about some you know concrete actionable steps that you can get up to. So these are some like being a leader in your life, self-leadership for the next seven days. So one, you know, this client was like checking the weather, you know, the loophole. So, like, what is your specific random ass distraction? Like, identify it. Like, what are you doing instead of that thing that you say that you want? And you got you might have to like put it all out there in front of yourself. You might be hiding it, hiding it from yourself. You know, like I had to make it clear to her. I go, oh, so you're you don't have an organized house because you're checking the weather. Okay. Like, you know, like having someone reflect it back to her was like, yeah, wow. You know, like shit, I say I want this thing. Like, sounds kind of dumb, you know, at at the time, right? It's like, hmm, okay. So you're aware of it, right? So that's 50% of it. It's just being aware of like what else are you giving your attention to, giving your energy to, prioritizing over that thing that you say that you want. And then, you know, lowering your pain threshold, right? So a five-minute rule. Tell your brain we are only cleaning for five minutes, you know, like if or doing your devotional for five minutes, like get it started, right? So in habits, don't go for the one hour meditating or I'm gonna tackle this whole cleaning project today, you know, eight hours of cleaning. Your amygdala will be like, uh, that's danger. Uh no, prefrontal cortex. You know, like they will be at odds. So your prefrontal cortex needs to take the lead. The captain needs to be, you know, self-leadership here is like just start with, okay, you know what? We're gonna do it for five minutes a day, just so that you start feeding that. And then those little small wins will stack and build up. Next, future self-visualization. So, like, and I'm a big fan of adding not only visualizing it, but emotionalizing it, right? So, like getting pleasure from that thing happening in your life, or you having that outcome. So, you know, every morning, maybe morning and night, if you want to like speed this up, two minutes of feeling the pleasure of the completed task. Like, how does it feel when you walk in your office and like things are nice and organized? Like I can tell you from having a client who did this with, you know, organizing her housing cleanup. Like I said, so how does it feel to be in your house? And it was like, oh my

From Cheap Pleasure To Fulfillment

Polly Mertens 31:00

God. It was like she wanted to move out of her house. She was so, you know, just overwhelmed by it. And it was like, you know, taking her, taking over her house. And now she's like, oh my God, it's like a thing. She's like, oh, I feel so good sitting, and then I have a new space, and then this and this. And it was like, like all those real experiences of fulfillment in her body instead of the, you know, the pain of looking at all that stuff. So visualizing your future self, your outcome that you want, and raise the level of the pleasure, right? So we're trying to make it more painful to not take or more painful to stay in action and more pleasurable to take action. And fourth, create an environment of inevitability, right? So habits, love, low traction, right? Like low resistance. So if you want to, you know, have a devotion every day, put the book on your pillow, right? Put the phone in another room. Stop testing your willpower and start designing your success. Start winning in your life, start setting yourself up for success against this little noggin in your head that's gonna, you know, want to take you out. That self-sabotaging, it's avoiding, it's avoiding pain and going towards pleasure. So you've got to rewire that. So just know that you aren't a victim of your biology, like all this stuff, like you don't have to be at a fact of your brain, right? You are the architect of your neurochemistry. Some people don't quite realize, like you can get in there and rewire it. Like your beliefs are not fixed, they're only as strong as you allow them to be and allow them to have you know continued um say dominion over you, right? Take back dominion of your bul what's going on in your mind, reprogram the stuff that's up there, clean house, get it pristine, you know, you know, put pleasure in the pleasure towards the things that you want and increase the pain of the things, the inaction or the things that you don't want. That pain pleasure, it's so damn motivating. Like if you increase the pleasure of something that you want and and and simultaneously like increase the pleasure of avoiding, you know, like moving away from, you will get yourself in freaking act, you will be unstoppable, right? So, as I said in the beginning, pain, avoiding pain is way more motivating than going towards pleasure, surprise. Um, yeah, I know that one surprised me too. But look at it in your own life. Tell me if these things, you know, really resonate for you. Is that is that true for you? So, and I would say the one thing takeaway from this is you are not, you do not have to be the mercy of your mind. You are choosing things. First step is that awareness, like what in your life are like how this might be running you behind the scenes and what you can do about it. So take back dominion, self-leadership, self-coaching, like adjust things, like get after this. If you matter, those things that you want, those things like

Run A Pain–Pleasure Audit

Polly Mertens 34:00

self-sabotage does not have to be, you do not have to continue self-sabotaging yourself. You know enough now from hearing this to do something about it. So, not that it won't ever happen again, but at least you know what it takes to get yourself out of it. So if you are self-sabotaging yourself, that ratio of pain and pleasure is out of whack. So get awareness on how it's running your life and do something about it. You may need some external support, a coaching accountability. That's one of the things I gave to this client is I was like, Well, can you have an accountability buddy to, you know, that's in your prayer group to like tell them that you're gonna do this thing so that you can hold hold you to account while you're putting the training wheels on your new habit, your new direction that you say you're going into. Because that brain, it likes the you know, it's going for energy efficiency, it will go back. So I hope this has been helpful to you. Please uh share with us, you know, on social media or like, subscribe, tell us what you thought of this. I really appreciate you guys tuning in. Hope this uh episode on self-tappage self sabotage. And we are not here to be average, we are here to be awesome. So I want to remind you how your life feels is more important than how it looks. And every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.