Thank you for reading And Also, a weekly newsletter featuring personal stories and lesson plans to help you navigate life ✨!
Once I finally took the leap to launch this newsletter — this idea that I'd thought about for so long — I started off pretty strong. I was committed. I had a structure, I had ideas, I had early encouragement from friends and everyone who opened my emails week after week.
(Thank you for that, by the way.)
But not long after I started last November, something shifted. There were the holidays, of course — Christmas, New Years, and personally, my birthday. I traveled home to LA for two weeks, and spent most of my spare time with friends and family (and books, so many books).
I had every intention of continuing to write and share the newsletter every Wednesday throughout that time though.
The week of my 39th birthday, I started an essay with my early thoughts on moving into my 40th year.
The week of Christmas, I started an essay on the significance of liminal spaces (like that nebulous time period between Christmas and New Years).
The first week of 2024, I started an essay on moving gently into the new year, prioritizing rest and presence over my usual focus on resolutions and goal-setting (which, let's be honest, I also did).
Obviously, none of these essays ever made their way to you. None of them ever got fully fleshed out or finished. Each of them started from a place of interest, but petered out as I tried to pull them into a cohesive narrative; something tangible and teachable I could share with you.
To be fair, I think I did need a bit of a break. I did need some time to slowly close out one year and enter the next. I think there was something to be said (and I tried to!) in each of those newsletter essay drafts about an easeful transition into a new year (both personally and collectively); the allowing of space for ourselves to be present with what is before we move on and share what we plan to do next.
I probably should've just proactively allowed myself that time off, but because I didn't — because I expected myself to produce something, and because I expected that you would expect me to produce something — I gave myself a really hard time about it all . . . which as you might guess, made it even harder to produce anything at all.
Before I went down to LA for the holidays, I celebrated my birthday with some friends here in Portland. One of them has been a long-time reader of my work, and has always been encouraging and thoughtful in his response to anything I write.
"You always give me something to think about," he told me at that birthday celebration. "And then I scroll, and there's even more!"
I laughed and joked about my inability to be concise, but as I found myself unable to write much of anything at all in the weeks that followed, I kept coming back to his comment.
Was I making things too hard on myself? Was I keeping a promise I'd never made; one you never expected me to fulfill? Was I working so hard to create “even more!” every week in a way that was not only more pressure for me, but also more than enough for you as the reader?
As I started this new year and eventually did start thinking about what I wanted to accomplish in 2024, I thought about this even more — about where I tend to overcomplicate things. Where I make things harder on myself (and sometimes others) — sure, because I have high expectations of myself, but also often because it gives me an out: If I make something too hard, I will inevitably flame out. I will eventually have to quit.
I can offer up an answer to the question "What am I capable of?" with what I worry is actually true — I am capable of a lot, certainly, but not everything I want. And not the things I actually want to do.
If I make something too hard, I will inevitably flame out. I will eventually have to quit. I can offer up an answer to the question "What am I capable of?" with what I worry is actually true — I am capable of a lot, certainly, but not everything I want. And not the things I actually want to do.
It's a subtle sort of sabotage, you see. Cutting myself off at the knees before anyone else can. I'm not doing it on purpose, obviously, but strangely, I suspect there’s a part of me that thinks it feels better than actually achieving whatever I set out to do.
It’s familiar, at least: The disappointment feels more familiar; the dreaming of something big but not actually having to do the work (internally and externally) to see it through feels familiar; the staying small so as not to lose social connection feels familiar. I am more unconsciously familiar with setting myself up to let myself down.
I can imagine a few people who know me well scoffing at the idea of this. I’m an ambitious person, and there’s a fair amount I do accomplish on a regular basis. But when I think about that list of accomplishments — writing a compelling story at work, fitting in a morning workout, ticking every item off my daily to-do list — it’s not really the stuff that challenges me, that scares me, that forces me to do something new or different or solidly out of my comfort zone.
And the stuff that does, the stuff I dream about — writing and publishing books, cultivating a career as an author and an educator, writing and publishing a newsletter that both deepens my own thinking and understanding of the world and yours? While I’m conscious of my desire for all of it, when I start to move toward any of these things — when I start to pay down debt more aggressively and contribute to my “FU Fund”, when I sit down to revise my first novel draft, when I try to write another essay to send to you — that resistance is immediate and strong.
This isn't the way of things, it says; this isn't what we do. Slow down, get stuck, give up before going too far disappoints you even further; before your inevitable failure hurts even worse than never having done these things at all.
A cursory Google search of "self-sabotage" defines the term as "intentional action (or inaction) that undermines people's progress and prevents them from accomplishing their goals." It seems ridiculous that any of us would do this consciously, but of course we don’t do it consciously; it only makes sense when you look under the hood.
Self-sabotage is a coping mechanism; it's a way of keeping ourselves safe. Like, procrastinating on a presentation you need to give to your boss’ boss so you can “prove” that you should stay in a role where you feel more comfortable. Or numbing out with alcohol or social media after a long day because the true definition of “self-care” would force you to face your feelings about a life you need to numb from.
Self-sabotage is a coping mechanism; it's a way of keeping ourselves safe.
And it’s easy enough to recognize the behavior in ourselves; it’s a common culprit when we don’t do the things we say we want to do*. Whenever we miss a deadline because we procrastinated, instead of chunking a project into smaller parts and getting an early start. Whenever we burn ourselves out without actually accomplishing our goals — because we were productive, but not toward any of the things that actually matter.
And instead of berating ourselves (as I am wont to do), we can be curious: That’s interesting — what am I trying to protect myself from? We can thank this part of us for doing its job, and assure it that we’ve got it from here.
Recently I've tried "letting it be easy" because my own personal brand of sabotage insists that anything I actually want to do is hard. Of course, “letting it be easy” is - in itself - easier said than done, especially if you've historically displayed perfectionist or people-pleasing tendencies like me. But essentially whenever I feel that resistance rising, I'll say out loud to myself, "What if this were easy? What would I do first?"
What if writing this newsletter were easy? Just let whatever words want to come flow out onto the page.
What if editing this book were easy? Just read a few pages of the draft and note my thoughts.
What if giving this presentation were easy? Just speak as if I’m sharing with friends.
Of course, not everything actually is easy, but I've found that a lot more is than I've often thought. It's me who is making a lot of it hard; it is me who is convinced that I have to struggle, that I'm guaranteed to be disappointed, that I should give up because there is no way I can accomplish this seemingly gargantuan task.
But I do myself no favors that way — by trying to disappoint myself first; to foretell my own future failure by guaranteeing it from the outset.
But I do myself no favors that way — by trying to disappoint myself first; to foretell my own future failure by guaranteeing it from the outset.
I don't expect that I'll never self-sabotage again, but I feel good about being more aware of when it's happening and examining the root of it. Asking myself:
What am I afraid will happen here?
Do I actually believe that or is it based on something someone else told me?
Am I afraid of failure, or conversely, am I afraid of success?
Is any of this rooted in my current reality — and, even if it is, are there better ways I can care for myself while still moving toward my goals?
That's how I wrote this essay. I felt resistance to doing it, of course, especially after a few weeks of letting that very same resistance keep me from writing anything at all. But I sat on the couch and wrote anyway. I just let the words flow without concern for whether they were good enough, valuable enough, worth sharing with you. Of course, I want them to be, but I don't want my concern for that to be so overwhelming that I limit myself by never writing anything at all.
Let it be easy, I told myself instead. Because if anyone or anything is going to disappoint me, to hold me back, to force my failure — let it not be me.
*NOTE: Self-sabotage is not the only reason we don’t do the things we want to do. We don’t do the things we want to do sometimes because we’re in a season where we don’t have the time or energy (perhaps as parents, caretakers, or those who have to work longer hours to provide for themselves and/or others) or because we’re neurodivergent and trying to keep up in a system not designed for our neurological processing style or because we’re legitimately burnt out trying to keep up in a society that prioritizes hustle no matter how many books about “rest” I keep reading. Self-sabotage is just one of many reasons our own priorities often fall by the wayside — but one of the few we have the opportunity to mostly manage on our own.
Idea: Is there something you’ve really been wanting to do that you just . . . haven’t? (Might a New Years resolution or two fall into this category?) Maybe it’s self-sabotage, maybe it isn’t, but it couldn’t hurt to dig in with yourself a little bit. What are you afraid might happen if you do it? Is that fear rooted in reality? And if doing this thing were actually pretty easy, what would you do first? (Now, go! Go do it!)
Anecdote: Jordan spotted the Sklar brothers, a twin brother comedy duo, at the Burbank airport when we were headed back to Portland after the holidays. “What if they’re on our flight?!” I said excitedly. (One of my most prominent “You don’t seem like you’re from LA” qualities is that I love a celebrity sighting!) “Check to see if they’re performing there soon.” So he did, and sure enough, they were at Helium Comedy Club here in the Rose City the following night! Jordan bought tickets when we got on the plane, and we went to see their show which they kicked off by gently (and rightfully) roasting our city. They were hilarious!
Inspiration: The other day I was reviewing everything I did in 2015, because that was the last time I was in a Personal Year 2 according to numerology and I’m back in the 2 energy again this year. Anyway, a lot of things stood out to me about that point in time — namely that I was feeling pretty lost and desperately seeking guidance, and I often found it in the words of Cheryl Strayed, who I went to see at two different Southern California events that year. Cheryl’s words never fail to offer me exactly what I need, and she’s done that again in this recent interview with incredibly thoughtful interviewer,
:
"But what I've learned is just as trusting pleasure or openness and relaxation in the body means you're in the right place at the right time, when it comes to writing, trusting my dread and anxiety and fear means that I'm about to do something hard and important. Something that matters a lot to me. The way I've reconciled those negative feelings as a writer, is I've learned to say, you’re part of my success because without you, dread and fear and anxiety, I probably couldn't write. So you go from wonder, excitement, almost a sense of joy to dread, anxiety, and fear. Then you get to work and, if you’re lucky, you get to that wonderful place of losing a sense of the self and time. You reach a kind of transcendence.”Jane Ratcliffe.
Have you read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield? You touched on the Villain in his book, Resistance. You'd love it. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Thank you for your kind words, Jenna! And for the shoutout! ❤️