Stop Doing That Sh*t

Picture this: You've just landed your dream job, finally started that fitness routine, or taken the first steps toward financial freedom. Everything feels aligned, and for once, life seems to be moving in the right direction. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, you find yourself making choices that undermine your progress. You skip the gym, overspend on unnecessary items, or create conflict in your relationships. Sound familiar? This pattern of self-sabotage isn't a character flaw or lack of willpower—it's a deeply embedded system running in the background of your mind.

This phenomenon affects millions of people who find themselves trapped in cycles of progress and setback, victory and defeat. The truth is, you're not broken, and you don't need fixing. What you need is awareness of the invisible forces that have been steering your life from behind the scenes. This book reveals the three hidden saboteurs that have been keeping you stuck and shows you how to redirect your energy toward creating the future you actually want. It's time to stop fighting against yourself and start building the life that lights you up.

Every day, you wake up and step into a world that feels familiar, predictable, and safe. What you don't realize is that you're not experiencing the world as it actually is—you're experiencing it through the lens of three fundamental conclusions you made early in life. These conclusions, or saboteurs, operate like an invisible filter, shaping how you see yourself, other people, and life itself.

The first saboteur is your personal conclusion—the deeply held belief about yourself that always begins with "I." It might be "I'm not smart enough," "I don't matter," or "I'm incapable." This isn't something you consciously think about while buying groceries or watching television, but it hums in the background of your thoughts, especially when you're under pressure. Consider Sarah, a successful lawyer who consistently undermined her partnerships because she fundamentally believed "I'm not worthy." Despite her professional achievements, this conclusion drove her to sabotage relationships just as they were becoming meaningful, proving to herself over and over that she was indeed unworthy of love.

The second saboteur is your social conclusion about other people. Perhaps you've concluded that "People can't be trusted" or "People are selfish." These beliefs act as a constant scanner, testing everyone you meet to see if they confirm your suspicions. When someone shows up late to dinner, your internal system immediately files it as evidence supporting your conclusion about people's reliability. You end up writing off potential friends, romantic partners, and opportunities because they fail your subconscious test.

The third and often heaviest saboteur is your life conclusion—your fundamental belief about existence itself. Maybe you've determined that "Life is hard" or "Life is unfair." This conclusion becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, causing you to unconsciously create the very struggles that confirm your belief. You'll sabotage success when it comes too easily because it contradicts your core assumption about how life works. These three saboteurs work together to keep you locked in familiar patterns, even when those patterns prevent you from getting what you say you want.

Most people live their entire lives as prisoners of their past, using yesterday's experiences to explain today's choices and predict tomorrow's possibilities. You justify your current limitations by pointing to childhood experiences, failed relationships, or past disappointments. This backward-looking approach keeps you trapped in what philosopher Alan Watts described as being "driven by the past"—constantly reacting to what has already happened instead of creating what could be.

The magic little sponge you were born as absorbed everything from your early environment—your parents' financial struggles, their relationship dynamics, the cultural conversations about success and failure. These experiences hardened into rigid conclusions that now operate automatically. When faced with new opportunities, your subconscious immediately refers back to this database of past experiences to determine what's possible or safe. This is why you might find yourself avoiding certain career moves because they remind you of a time when your family faced financial instability, or why you might sabotage intimate relationships because you witnessed your parents' messy divorce.

Take Michael, who grew up watching his entrepreneur father lose everything in a business failure. Despite having innovative ideas and business acumen, Michael consistently found ways to undermine his own ventures just before they became profitable. His saboteur whispered that "Success is dangerous," and his subconscious mind would rather keep him safe in mediocrity than risk the devastation he witnessed as a child. Every time his business showed signs of real growth, he would make impulsive decisions that brought him back to struggle—the familiar territory where his conclusions felt validated.

Breaking this cycle requires recognizing that your past experiences are not predictions of your future capabilities. Your established truths are simply perspectives you formed from limited information during your formative years. The same childhood events that led you to conclude "I'm not enough" could have led someone else to conclude "I must prove myself." Neither conclusion is the objective truth—they're both interpretations based on individual experience. The key is accepting these conclusions without letting them dictate your choices. You don't need to eliminate your past; you need to stop letting it drive your future.

Instead of being driven by your past, imagine being pulled by your future. This isn't about positive thinking or visualization—it's about becoming the architect of your own life by starting with the end in mind. Major corporations do this constantly, designing bold visions for products that don't yet exist, then working backward to make them reality. You can apply this same principle to create a life that inspires rather than imprisons you.

Future-focused living means filling your present with the problems and challenges that someone living your desired life would have. If you want to be a writer, you don't wait until you feel qualified—you start solving the problems a writer faces: developing ideas, creating deadlines, finding your voice, building an audience. If you want a deeply connected marriage, you begin taking the actions that create love and intimacy today, not waiting until your relationship improves. This approach transforms your daily experience from struggle against limitations to creative expression of possibilities.

Consider Maria, who had concluded that "Life is a struggle" and found herself exhausted by constant financial pressure despite working long hours. Instead of trying to overcome her belief about struggle, she designed a future where she ran a successful consulting practice from home, focusing on work that energized rather than drained her. She began taking actions aligned with this future—networking with potential clients, developing her expertise, creating systems for remote work. Each action chipped away at the old reality while building the new one. When her saboteur tried to convince her that success meant struggle, she had concrete evidence of a different possibility taking shape.

The beauty of this approach is that it makes your conclusions irrelevant rather than trying to fight them. When you're actively creating a compelling future, your attention naturally shifts from what's wrong to what's possible. Your past becomes background noise rather than the dominant soundtrack of your life. You stop asking "Can I do this?" and start asking "What does my future require of me today?" This fundamental shift in orientation changes everything about how you show up in the world.

Creating a compelling future vision is only the beginning—the real transformation happens through consistent action aligned with that future. Every day, multiple times per day, you face choices that either move you toward your created future or pull you back toward your familiar past. The question becomes: "What is my future telling me to do right now?" Whatever the answer is, big or small, you must act on it immediately.

This requires a new relationship with discomfort and uncertainty. Your saboteurs will resist actions that threaten their familiar territory, creating fear, doubt, and compelling reasons to postpone or avoid. When you're revealing the future of financial freedom, your conclusions about struggle will generate thoughts about why it's too risky to invest or start that business. When you're building the future of authentic love, your beliefs about people being untrustworthy will whisper warnings about vulnerability. These moments of resistance are actually signals that you're on the right track.

The key is learning to recognize your saboteurs in action without being controlled by them. Like Michelangelo revealing David from marble, you chip away at everything that isn't your future vision. When fear arises, you acknowledge it and take the action anyway. When doubt surfaces, you let it be there while moving forward with your commitment. This isn't about eliminating negative emotions—it's about not letting them determine your choices. You become someone who feels fear and acts courageously, who experiences doubt and chooses faith in your vision.

James had concluded that "I'm not capable" and had spent years in jobs that underutilized his talents. When he designed a future as a respected team leader, his saboteur immediately generated evidence of past failures and reasons why promotion was impossible. Instead of fighting these thoughts, James focused on taking leadership actions in his current role—mentoring colleagues, proposing innovative solutions, volunteering for challenging projects. Each action was a chip off the old block, revealing the leader he was becoming. When his manager noticed his initiative and offered him a promotion, James was ready because he had already been practicing leadership for months.

The ultimate goal isn't to eliminate your saboteurs but to become conscious of them while choosing to live from your created future. This requires ongoing vigilance and commitment, because your subconscious patterns have years or decades of momentum behind them. You'll have days when you blow it, when old patterns reassert themselves and you find yourself back in familiar struggle. The difference is that you now have a framework for understanding what's happening and tools for getting back on track.

Living as the architect of change means taking full ownership of your life experience without blame or excuse. Your past shaped you, but it doesn't define you. Your conclusions exist, but they don't control you. Your circumstances present challenges, but they don't determine your possibilities. This level of responsibility is both liberating and demanding—liberating because you're no longer victim to forces outside your control, demanding because you can no longer blame those forces for your results.

The most powerful shift happens when you stop trying to fix yourself and start expressing yourself. You're not broken furniture that needs repair—you're a creative force capable of bringing new realities into existence. Every day becomes an opportunity to sculpt your life, removing what doesn't serve your vision while revealing what does. Problems become projects, obstacles become opportunities for innovation, and setbacks become information for course correction.

Remember that this is a body of work, not a quick fix. There's no magical moment when you arrive at permanent happiness or success. Instead, there's the ongoing satisfaction of creating a life that matches your deepest values and highest aspirations. You'll face new challenges at every level of growth, but they'll be the kinds of challenges that energize rather than drain you—the problems that someone living your desired life would gladly tackle. This is what it means to stop doing the shit that sabotages your life and start doing the work that reveals your potential.

The journey from self-sabotage to self-creation begins with a fundamental shift in perspective. Instead of being driven by past conclusions about yourself, others, and life, you can choose to be pulled by a future of your own design. Your three saboteurs—those deeply embedded beliefs that have been running your life from the shadows—don't need to be eliminated, but they do need to be recognized and rendered irrelevant through committed action toward your created future. As the book powerfully states: "You're not broken, there's nothing to fix. You're not a fucking chair, you're an expression, so get out there and express your future."

The path forward is both simple and demanding: design a future that lights you up, then take daily action to reveal it, chipping away everything that isn't aligned with your vision. When fear, doubt, or old patterns arise, acknowledge them without being controlled by them. Choose actions that serve your future rather than confirm your past. This isn't about perfection—it's about direction, commitment, and the willingness to live as the architect of your own experience. Starting today, ask yourself: "What is my future telling me to do right now?" Then do it, no matter how small the step, no matter how loud your saboteurs protest. Your life is waiting to be sculpted into something magnificent.