I hear this from clients and potential clients all the time:

“I know I’m self-sabotaging.”
“I always shoot myself in the foot.”
“I don’t know why I do these things.”
“It’s just the way I am.”
“I can’t get ahead.”

It’s true. Most people don’t know why they get in their own way. See, while your subconscious is doing all of its insidious, underground work of keeping you just where you are (because it’s afraid of change), it’s also distracting you with crazy things like fatigue, avoidance, distraction, illness, feigned ineptitude, anger, chaos, and procrastination.

When you’re about to do something different with your life or business, to move to the next level, your subconscious will start to throw all kinds of roadblocks in your way — and it’s your job to learn to identify them.

My red flag is fatigue. I find myself feeling tired when I have to do something I should do but don’t necessarily want to do — for example, bookkeeping. (Most of the entrepreneurs I know do not like bookkeeping but know how important it is to keep good financial records.) My body will start to drag. I begin yearning for sleep and can even distract myself with food. All of this is my scoundrel of a subconscious trying to disguise that familiar red flag so my conscious mind won’t recognize it.  I think I’m hungry so I don’t feel the fatigue that’s really my red flag. It’s crazy!

Your red flag might show up as feeling slightly nauseated, anxious, or headachy. Your subconscious might be creating a little bit of chaos around you so that you can’t find the time to do the lower priority item (i.e., you have to put out the fires rather than proactively do your books or billing. Those can wait.) You might also play with the dog, get mad at your partner, tell yourself you suck at bookkeeping, or do anything but what you need to do to move forward in your life and business.

It takes a fair amount of awareness and focus to identify what your red flags are. But, once you do, when you notice them in the future, you can pause and ask yourself one question: “What am I avoiding?”

Another way to approach this pattern might be to look for what’s not getting done in your life and business that would make it better, more productive, or financially abundant.  When you reflect back on what this missing piece is, look honestly at what got in the way of accomplishing what you wanted to do. Perhaps you need more time in your week to network to grow your business. Instead, you find you are putting out one fire after another. There’s no time to get to that networking group or you feel too tired. That’s your excuse. Your red flag is the chaos–in other words, the fires.

A lot of women have the red flag of fatigue. When I ask what they think causes this fatigue that comes over them, they understandably look for all kinds of explanations: their diet, lack of sleep, lack of exercise, when really these things are not the big problem. So what is it? Invariably we realize it’s that they don’t want to look at the real problem— they’re scared to move forward.

When something recurs, like fatigue, (and there’s no physiological cause) it’s because it has become a coping mechanism to avoid doing the very thing that will expand you and/or your business. What do you complain about the most (even if in your own mind)? Is it that you’re too tired, too busy, or don’t have the resources? These, while understandably annoying, are all fixable. We just don’t want to see the solutions, because we misidentify the red flag as something real.

Let’s identify your red flags and work toward solutions, rather than complaints and distractions. To summarize:

• Spend some time contemplating what you complain about most. Is it lack of time, money, resources, good assistance? This is often a red flag deflecting your attention from taking action. (By the way, I get that we are all stretched a little thin, but when you use it to stop you, then you are in red flag territory.)
• Identify your red flag behavior: do you complain, cry, feel ill, create chaos, get tired, or get a headache when you’re going to do specifically something growth-oriented?
• If so, ask the deeper question: what am I avoiding looking at?
• Go deeper— you might quickly identify that you don’t want to do your books, but really, WHY don’t you want to do your books? Are you afraid of what you’ll see? Afraid you might have to face the fact that you’re treating your business as a hobby? Contrarily, are you afraid you might actually be in charge and not be able to make excuses for not succeeding?
• Have I mentioned to go deeper? Why why why— it helps to identify the red flag for what it is. You don’t need to go into psychoanalysis over it. It just helps to figure out what you’re avoiding so that you can identify those red flags, and decide to move past them.

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