Monkey wrench or inner wisdom?
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Monkey wrench or inner wisdom?
When is it self sabotage and when is it good to have some inner conflict?
On the tv show Billions, aggressive Wall Street traders compete to haul in the biggest profits (and evade the law). They have a secret weapon: their in-house performance coach, Dr. Wendy Rhoades. Her job is to quickly and incisively reveal and vanquish their inner conflicts so they can go after what they want with single-minded determination and truly pathological levels of confidence. The first episode of the newest season, though, raises a question: What if a little inner conflict is a good thing?
This episode happened to air in a week when I was planning to write about self sabotage. Self sabotage is understood as all the ways we “hinder our own success and well-being by undermining personal goals and values.” It can be conscious or unconscious. It boils down to an inner conflict: a dissonance between what we say or think we want, and the thoughts and actions we actually engage in.
We sabotage ourselves in small, daily ways all the time. Dropping a habit we know is good for us. Letting nice texts from friends sit unanswered. Breaking our budgets. On some level, we know we’re letting ourselves down, but we do what feels easiest or safest or helps us cover up feelings we don’t want to deal with.
On a larger scale, we self sabotage relationships, careers, and ambitions out of (often unconscious) fears: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of intimacy, fear of being known. This could look like ending a good relationship right before it gets serious. Abandoning a major life or career goal right before you reach it. Not applying for jobs, grants, or other opportunities that you’re qualified for.
Our inner critic (also sometimes called the inner saboteur) is driving the bus when we engage in self sabotage. This is the voice warning us that we don’t deserve that accolade, we’re going to fail before we hit the finish line, our true selves aren’t lovable, or that we can’t afford to get a single thing wrong. The inner critic (or at least mine, anyways) is really good at comparing ourselves to others and claiming we don’t measure up.
When we start to notice that we might be throwing wrenches into our own gears, we experience cognitive dissonance: a realization that we’re acting against our own needs, values, and dreams. Often the reasons remain opaque. This is where self help, self discovery, therapy, and coaching come in.
It often takes a change of perspective or an outsider’s insight to show us how we’re getting in our own way or inventing problems for ourselves. A skilled therapist or coach (or a few solid weeks of journalling) can spot excuses, the ways we blame others or external circumstances, and the ways we hide our true fears.
Self sabotage shouldn’t be a blanket label that leads to victim blaming or rampant individualization of wider problems. Circumstances and systems do set people up to fail. What’s tricky sometimes is discerning which of those are real, and which are part of a reality in our heads.
In the fictional Billions universe, Wendy often mimics the bold and in-your-face antics of the traders and their CEOs to cut to the heart of their fears and expose what they really want in minutes. It all has to fit into one snappy scene of premium tv, after all. We get a lot of character development, but more importantly for the show, these sessions establish the idea that in order to succeed—no, to WIN—you have to clear out the inner conflicts and act in alignment with your true goals (and your true nature).
The first few scenes of the season 7 premiere (no spoilers, this is all established very quickly), show us Wendy probing the supposedly clean and ethical CEO Mike Prince to find any pesky inner saboteurs that could jeopardize his plan to run for president. Luckily for Prince, but no-so-luckily for the rest of the country, his ambitions are quite well-aligned with his megalomaniac tendencies and belief in his own superiority.
Wendy quickly realizes the threat he poses and assembles allies who’ll try to stop him, thus providing the arc for the current season. Sign me up! Pondering all of this from my couch, though, Mike Prince’s evolution into his fascistic final form made me wonder whether the so-called inner saboteur might sometimes be the voice of reason.
As most self-help writers (and of course, your therapist and coach) will point out, the inner critic isn’t trying to derail all your plans just for kicks. She’s trying to protect us from those things that we fear by keeping us in our comfort zone (even when that comfort zone is uncomfortable!). But what if she’s also—sometimes—trying to tell us that there’s a good reason for our inner conflict? One that we should actually pay attention to?
Most of us aren’t planning to take over the world through a violent power-grab, but many of our decisions affect other people and may have ripple effects out into the world and into the future. The voice of pause might be saying, “Have you thought about the repercussions?” Or, “Maybe there’s a good reason why this feels uncomfortable, like a clash with one of your values?”
It would be dangerous to dismiss our conscience or our inner wisdom as a saboteur. Sometimes they sound pretty similar though! If you feel a tinge of guilt, for example, is it a false guilt over not living up to some kind of societal expectation, or a genuine guilt because your actions might be harmful? It might take a lot of reflection to parse the difference.
Inner conflict also seems like a pretty normal state of affairs for a human being. Daily life brings with it a barrage of competing interests, wants, and needs. Our brains (mine, at least) throw up contradictory thoughts faster than we can even count them. Saving money is good/hoarding wealth is unethical! Being alone is lovely/friends are the best!
Feeling no sense of inner conflict would seem to require a vast oversimplification of life. In fact, it might be pretty boring.
Experiencing inner conflict is one way we get to know ourselves. If you take the time to examine it, it’ll show you what your values are and how they sometimes don’t sit comfortably alongside your deeper beliefs or the stories you inherited from childhood. Rushing to resolve these conflicts might be a shortcut through a more profound path to self development. And perhaps it’s a vain effort to resolve everything. Sometimes we might just have to acknowledge that two things can be true at once.
I wouldn’t want to suggest that we don’t try to avoid self sabotage. Only that what we call self sabotage might have a message for us. Sometimes it may be trying to keep us from crushing democracy (listen up, Mike Prince!). Sometimes it’s an invitation to take a closer look at what motivates us, where our fears lie, and how we navigate the complexities of life under systems that sometimes don’t want us to succeed.
Happy Labour Day to those who celebrate standing up to evil billionaires! Proud to be a union member myself.
What I’m reading: Tara Schuster’s Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies: And Other Rituals to Fix Your Life, from Someone Who's Been There. I can’t help but get caught up in Schuster’s enthusiasm for learning how to take care of herself. Not a fan of the section on food; recommend skimming right over that one!
What I’m watching: Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip Hop on Netflix. A documentary about hip hop? I am always 100% in, 150% when it’s about women.