Hi everyone,
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My name is Bhoomshakha and I welcome you to my channel.
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In this one,
I wanted to keep on going with my series about writing and the dilemmas and traumas that writers face on their journey of writing.
One of the things that I've noticed about myself particularly,
And I know that this is a term that has been used many times by writers,
Famous authors that have been speaking about their own journey,
And the term is self-sabotage.
I know in general,
Not only writers,
But most humans will self-sabotage or sabotage themselves in the journey towards perfection or in the journey towards creativity.
Whatever they're trying to do,
We have a tendency as human beings to sabotage ourselves on the particular journey that we're on.
I know that I've spoken about self-sabotage many times before,
But I wanted to speak to you guys about self-sabotage in terms of writing.
I'll share a quick story from one of the recent books that I was writing.
So I've just finished,
As I spoke,
I've spoken about this before,
But I've just finished writing a book on self-love.
Now of course,
When I first started thinking about writing this book,
My mind piped up,
My ego piped up,
My resistance piped up and said,
What?
You?
You want to write a book about self-love?
You,
This person that you're looking at right now?
Boom,
Check out,
You want to,
What?
What are you talking about?
You have no idea what self-love means.
You hated yourself for decades,
Like how can you even speak about self-love?
You're not an expert and you have no idea what you're talking about,
Right?
And so of course my resistance piped up,
It always does,
No matter what I'm writing about.
Right now I'm writing a book about healing the land or healing ourselves by healing the land and I love that subject and it's like,
I'm extremely passionate about it,
But as soon as I started writing the book,
Of course the same thing happened.
My resistance popped up and I started saying,
Uh yeah right,
You are gonna write a book about this.
What do you know about the land?
What do you know about anything to do with anything?
Like you know,
So our censor,
Our critic,
That voice in our head,
Perhaps it's the voice of your parent that used to be very critical,
Perhaps the voice of your sister or of a teacher or a caregiver,
Someone in your life that was particularly harsh towards you and whose voice to carry around in your head.
Well most probably it's an amalgamation of many different critical voices throughout your life,
Right?
So it might be an amalgamation of your grandparents' voice or and your mothers or fathers or both or your siblings,
Your partner,
Whoever it might be,
Your teachers.
So all of those voices kind of combine together and they form this voice in our head that is the critical voice,
It's the censoring voice,
It's the voice that tells us,
Protects us,
Pretends to protect us from doing anything new because you know it's dangerous to do anything new,
So it's protecting us but not really protecting us because it's really holding us back and we're not able to do the things you want to do because we're fearful or filled with fear because of this critical voice.
So of course my sense here was like no of course you have no idea what you're talking about,
Don't you don't even know the first thing about self-love,
What are you going to write 40,
000 words about it?
Are you insane?
You've lost your mind,
Don't do it,
You have no idea what you're doing and so of course my resistance resistance piped up and I know that it's going to pipe up,
It's one of those things that I'm kind of prepared for now.
In the beginning I would not have been prepared for it and I'll be like oh no yeah you're right actually I have no idea what I'm talking about,
I can't even believe I dare to think about this,
I'm glad that you protected me,
I'm glad that you saved me from this madness,
I'm not going to write the book,
Of course I'm not going to write the book right so I mean that's what I would have said previously when I did not realize that this was resistance speaking but now I know that it's resistance speaking so I'm like you know what you're right I don't know anything about self-love but I know a little bit about self-love because I have gone through the journey and I might not be able to write 40,
000 words on it,
I have no idea,
Maybe I will,
Maybe I won't but let's see you know I want to write the book and if it doesn't come out the way I want it to then we can just chuck it,
We can just throw it in the garbage bin and no worries at all but if it does come out properly then hooray like I've written a book on self-love and this is something that I wanted to do so I have ways of kind of placating my sensor and with this argument that you know we would just chuck it there is nothing that I can say it's like all right fine I guess I mean yeah write it and if it's terrible then you can just throw it out what else can it say there's nothing else left for the sensor or the critical voice to say and so it shuts up for a few seconds for a few days for a few weeks as I get closer to the end of the book though as I get closer to finishing up the book so I was around at I think at 36,
000 words and surprisingly the book was flowing very well it was actually it was as if I wasn't even writing it it was like my muse was writing it through me and it was perfect it was coming out exactly the way I wanted it to be and I was actually surprised at how easily the words were pouring out of me and so I was like oh you know what actually this is actually a good idea I should I'm glad I wrote this book I'm glad I didn't listen to my resistance I'm glad I'm writing the book as soon as I start having these thoughts about oh this is going so well I'm so excited resistance pipes up again and my self-sabotaging voice this time around pipes up and usually this happens to me now everyone has a different pattern right so some people it might happen at the midpoint some people it might happen at the end point which is usually me some people it just happens at the beginning and they sabotage themselves before they even start so different people have a different pattern for me my pattern is that I start sabotaging myself as as I get closer to the end so I might be like 95% there in a task whatever it might be it might be something very mundane or something very important to me but I'll be 95% there 98% there I'll almost be finished with it and then I'll sabotage myself and I do it every single time I know this is a pattern of mine and I've done it in my creative work I've done it in my fitness regimes I've done it in my meditation routines I've done it at anything and everything that I do in my life I do this to myself so at 95 98 I'm almost finished I'm almost I can see the finish line I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and then I'll stop walking I'll stop writing I'll stop doing things I'll I'll sabotage myself I'll get pretend to get sick or I'll be like oh I'm so tired I just want to rest or I'll think oh my god this is useless I'm not doing a good job of it anyway so why bother and so of course this happened this time around as well and so you know I'm at 36 000 words I have 4 000 words left so literally I'm at the end point I'm close to the end I can see the end goal and of course I sabotage myself so I'm sitting there thinking you know what this is absolute garbage I can't even believe I'm writing this stuff I can't even believe that I thought I could write this book yeah I've written 36 000 words but they're all really horrible words I can't even believe that I'm putting them together in this manner I'm terrible I'm a terrible writer I have no idea what I'm talking about when just previously a few days ago I was like oh this is brilliant stuff I would read myself and be like wow this is great stuff so of course it was just sabotage talking and so in my head I'm like no I should just stop I should just stop I don't need to write anymore there's no point 4 000 words left what's the point those are going to be really crappy words anyway so why should I bother I'm wasting my time here I'm wasting everyone else's time who might even deen to read this book I should just let go right and so you know again as I know this about myself I know that I sabotage myself so I know that it's just the voice of resistance speaking so I just don't listen to it and I just keep on going and I'm like you're you're you might be right but I'm going to finish the book and then we can see if it's good or not but for now I only have 4 000 words left so let's freaking finish those 4 000 words so I just went through it I just kind of pushed through it I ignored the sabotage voice and I just kept on it and I finished the book and you know I'm leaving it for a bit to congeal and then I'm going to edit it soon but again I wanted to share this with you because even though I've written like 23 books already or something like that I still get this voice of reason if you want to call it or the voice of resistance or the voice that tells me that I'm not good enough it still pipes up every single time yeah and I know the pattern that it has it always has the same pattern which is fascinating to me that it thinks that I'm not going to notice it but of course I didn't notice it for the longest time so of course it's like well she didn't notice it for the longest time so I'm sure she's not going to notice it again but as time went on I noticed that the same old pattern repeated itself over and over again so I would you know start a new project and I would try to sabotage myself and then I would be at the at the closing point of a project like almost there almost finished and then sabotage myself or I try to now of course as I said I know that about myself so I don't let that happen but I wanted to share this with you because perhaps you are in the same boat perhaps you have a tendency perhaps not exactly the same as me but you probably have a tendency to sabotage yourself as well in certain manners yeah perhaps you do it in the midpoint of a journey of the creative journey or whatever you're doing or perhaps you do it even before you start the project or perhaps you do it like me close to the end when you're 98% finished or perhaps you do it after you're finished you know you finish writing the book and you're like no this isn't good and you throw it out so you know everyone has a different pattern to it but what my recommendation to you is that notice what your pattern is really try to be cognizant and conscious of how do you do these creative journeys how do you live your life and this isn't just not creative journeys it is in general in our life you know I'm the kind of person who if I'm doing a meditation routine or if I'm doing a fitness regime or if I'm trying to build a habit and I'm like all right I'm gonna do this for 21 days for the next 21 days I notice that I'll do 19 days and then I'll sabotage myself yeah and so it isn't just about the creative journey we kind of do it if you do it one way if you do one thing one way you probably do everything else the same way as well right and so I really implore you to kind of observe yourself and notice you know how do I play out my resistance routines how do I play out my self-sabotage routines what are my patterns and as soon as you know your patterns you know when resistance pipes up ah it's just a pattern you know that it's just nonsense you know that's not true you know to just keep on pushing through it keep on going keep on trudging forward and eventually you're gonna get over and the same thing happened to me as well you know I finished the 40,
000 words of the self-love book and I look back upon it I was like you know what this is actually pretty good all right so I'm going to edit it and I'm going to publish it I'm not saying it's the best seller I'm not saying that it's the best book written on self-love but it is my book and I like it and this is my pattern again you know I finished something and I'm like oh yeah that was actually really good I want to do it again so notice your patterns notice how you behave in your creative journey and then kind of make sure that you realize this is going to be your pattern not only with your creative journey but everything else you do so now you can just keep on moving forward and keep on noticing that and then when it does pipe up you just ignore it or you just kind of push it away or you talk to it and say you're crazy and I know what I'm doing because you do all right I hope this makes sense I hope I was able to explain myself to you if you have any questions about this comment below and I shall do a follow-up video again thank you so much for your support and I shall see you the next time around bye for now
