519. 6 Self-Sabotage Habits That Kill Your Progress (And How to Break Them)

The ONE Thing

NOVA Media

Entrepreneurship, Business, Careers

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 August 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if the biggest thing standing between you and your goals isn’t the economy, the competition, or even your circumstances—it’s you? In this solo episode, Jay Papasan shares six common patterns of self-sabotage uncovered from hundreds of coaching participants and offers simple, actionable ways to break them. From procrastination and avoidance to people-pleasing, poor boundaries, and constant distractions, Jay reveals how these habits show up and how to replace them with strategies that move you forward. You’ll learn to stop over-planning, quiet self-doubt, design an environment that supports focus, and protect your time so you can do your most important work. Self-sabotage isn’t a character flaw—it’s a habit you can change. Small, intentional adjustments can set you up for greater focus, productivity, and progress toward your goals. Challenge of the Week: Pick one area of your environment—your workspace, your phone settings, or your daily routine—and make one change to help you be more successful and prevent self-sabotage. *** To learn more, and for the complete show notes, visit: the1thing.com/pods. We talk about: The six main ways people get in their own way Why perfectionism is just disguised procrastination How to design your environment to reduce distractions and protect your focus Links & Tools from This Episode: Read The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins Read Give and Take by Adam Grant Listen to Episode 509. The ADHD Advantage: How Neurodivergent Entrepreneurs Outperform with Tyler Elstrom - The ONE Thing Free Resources Want to be a guest or share feedback? Email podcast@the1thing.com or send us an audio note at Speakpipe.com/the1thing. Produced by NOVA

Transcript

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0:00.0	So what if I told you that the biggest obstacle between you and the success that you seek
0:05.3	isn't the economy, it's not the competition, it's not even your circumstances, it's you.
0:11.9	Self-sabotage. We all do it to ourselves in our own unique ways, and it shows up all of the time.
0:18.1	Let me tell you why we're going to focus on the six ways that
0:21.1	people self-sabotized this week. We teach a group coaching class called the first domino. It happens
0:26.8	over about seven weeks. We teach people how to claw back their time about four hours a week,
0:33.0	identify the one thing they need to do in order to be hitting their goals this year, that first domino,
0:38.5	that daily activity or weekly activity, that if they can just do it, they are making meaningful
0:43.4	progress, small bites that add up to a lot over time. That's the first domino. So this is taught to
0:49.5	hundreds of people over webinar, and I'm just sitting there trying to get some engagement.
0:53.2	Let's get warmed up, right? So I just randomly asked the question, what's the number one way you self-sabotage?
1:00.0	And I thought I would get four or five answers, and we'd get a nice little learning moment to kick
1:04.6	off the class. And what happens is the comment section exploded. Everybody, when you ask that
1:10.6	question, what's the number one way
1:12.7	you self-sabotage? They tend to know the answer. They know that thing that they habitually do
1:18.7	that gets in their way, gets between them and their daily success. Well, here's the thing.
1:24.3	In this episode, we took all of those answers. We grouped them into six categories.
1:29.9	And we'll tackle each of those six ways that people generally self-sabotage and try to give you some examples of how people have conquered it and some strategies to do it.
1:39.4	So that's our promise that you will hopefully find one of those six ways that you go, that sounds like me
1:45.4	and will give you something to meaningfully do to make progress and change that habit.
1:51.6	Because here's the thing. It's not like you are broken. Everybody deals with this.
1:56.7	The ways we self-sabotage because everybody knows it and can articulate it so quickly,
	...

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