Hijacked by Your Saboteurs Insights from Coaching Experts Kiri, Francesca and Carol

0:00 Welcome to the next edition of Connect, inspire, create. I have something a little different for you this week. I am going to share the live recording that I have done with two fellow coaches, kiri and Francesca. This is something we do every month live on LinkedIn. So make sure that you're connected with us on LinkedIn so that you can catch the next episode and join us as we discuss being hijacked by your saboteurs. Well hi hello, kiri, francesca, lovely to see you both and welcome Welcome to everybody who is watching the recording live or watching the replay.

0:47 You are joining us for our monthly event here on LinkedIn, and that's part of our series called the Paths to Pleasant Places, and you will find us here once a month, usually around the end of the month and always on a Thursday. So, although some of us are in different time zones, I will say it's a Friday in somebody's part of the world today. So thank you for joining us. We plan to be with you for about 30 minutes and we are going to be talking today about the saboteurs that get in our way of building a positive mindset. So we welcome thoughts, comments, ideas, what you might want us to talk about on our next live.

1:29 So each month we do, we pick a topic that we are related to the journeys that our own clients have been navigating, and we plan to offer some actionable steps that you can try or maybe just relate to by listening to what we have to share today. So the topic today is hijacked by your saboteurs, and the three of us are each going to be mentioning one of our top saboteurs there are nine in total, along with the judge, but we've decided to just focus a highlight on three, and then one additional one, just to give you an idea of what we're talking about and what this is all about.

2:11 So let me introduce my co-hosts. We, the three of us, met together through our positive intelligence coaching community and we are we're coaches from different corners of the world, each with a different market segment that we serve and a different style of coaching, different talents, even different perspectives, and we include the methods and ideas from the Positive Intelligence Toolbox along with our own individual training and coaching frameworks, so giving you an opportunity to meet each of us. I am Carol, a progress and mindset business coach, supporting women business owners to overcome procrastination, cultivate a positive growth mindset and find balance and flourish with ease and flow.

2:57 So over to my co-hosts. Hi Kerry Kia, ora koutou. Hello to you all. I'm a big mihi from Aotearoa, New Zealand. I am a professional coach and I love working with professional women, particularly indigenous women, to build their confidence and therefore their impact in male-dominated industries. Thank you for that brilliant introduction. Cairo and Kiri. I am Francesca and I'm joining today from Vancouver, canada. I'm a certified business and organizational coach. I love working with non-profit leaders, as well as women and family-owned business leaders, supporting them to achieve business or sex personal mastery and community impact.

3:51 Well, I am excited Francesca is going to share with us as we jump in just kind of an overall view. When you hear us using this word saboteurs, I'm trying to think Kiri or Francesca. Is there another word that you would use to describe that, to sort of a word that would perhaps help people who are not familiar with our terminology? I think saboteur is kind of very self-explanatory. It means something that stops you from achieving your best outcome or from performing at your best, something that hinders you, something that limits you.

4:34 Yeah, very much. So. Well, I'm going to pop a slide up on the screen just for our viewers to watch. And then, Francesca, I'd just love to tell you about you, tell us about these saboteurs. So let's see if we can add that onto the screen. There we go. I hope everybody can see that. Yeah, here you go. Yeah, Picture speaks a million words. Yeah, saboteurs are a universal phenomenon. Every one of us are afflicted by these saboteurs. The question is not whether you have them, but which ones you have and how strong they are.

5:14 And you may be looking at that picture and wondering how can a hyper-achiever be a saboteur? But saboteurs don't initially show up as saboteurs. As they say, the devil wears Prada. So saboteurs may show up as behaviors or personality traits intended to produce good outcome. But when taken too far, these traits and behaviors start to generate chains of negative emotions and outcomes. Gradually, and sometimes unwittingly, embracing your saboteurs, you start to think, feel and react in patterns.

5:59 That becomes self-coded in your brain through neural pathways, self-coded in your brain through neural pathways. When these neural pathways are triggered, you can become easily hijacked by your saboteurs as you start to think, feel and act using the saboteur patterns. These saboteur patterns are often rooted in fear, in anger, regret, shame, guilt, and they sabotage your overall well-being, performance and relationship.

6:54 Take a second look at that image on the screen. Maybe you identify with the hyper-rational saboteur and you tend to intensely focus on the rational processing of everything, including relationships. When hijacked by your saboteurs, you will most likely come across as emotionally detached and intellectually arrogant. Attached and intellectually arrogant. Maybe you identify with the hyper-vigilant saboteur like myself which creates continuous, intense anxiety about all the dangers around you, always thinking about when the next shoe would drop or what could go wrong next.

7:41 Imagine living in that heightened state of anxiety. What would that do to you and to your constituency? Continue to look at the images you see on the screen. Reflect on the saboteurs you identify with and, as you reflect, just think, reflect, just think what happens when you feel hijacked by these saboteurs. As we continue with the conversation, I am curious to know can these saboteurs do some good? Kiri, can you share with us some of the ways these saboteurs might actually bring about positive outcomes if we strategically and consciously use them?

8:30 Thank you so much, francesca. And we all have saboteurs, and I relate to the saboteurs as that negative inner voice that impacts how I feel inside me. So does that have a feeling of positivity or negativity? And I'm here to share today positivity in some of our saboteurs. So we are born with our greatest strengths and we nurture those throughout our life. Sometimes those strengths are overused, like using one hand over the other hand, so the muscles on one hand are stronger and more dexterous than on the other.

9:19 There are some amazing strengths in each of us and in all of you and, listening to what we are all sharing today, look for what resonates with you and see if you can recognize what shows up with positive emotion, when it shows up with that pain, that feeling that it's hard, that you don't want to do it or that you're missing something. That's when you're overusing your strength. And we can share how to recognise these and how to build the muscles to let them go and go back to more balance and using your strength in a neutral, positive way, and we label this our sage.

10:09 So one of my saboteurs is my pleaser. I am empathetic, I am loving and giving, I'm tuned into others' feelings and needs and I'm really self-aware emotionally and I'd like to introduce one of Carol and mine that we share, which is the avoider. So we're both looking at ways to pursue peace and harmony within ourselves and within others. We're both easygoing and have even keeled temperaments. Easygoing and have even-keeled temperaments.

10:54 We are flexible and adaptable and are often looking for the positive in others and in situations, and I know you're about to hear from Carol on her restless saboteur. See if there's any traits that you recognize, you can see the strengths in Carol. With high energy and vitality. Carol is open, so curious, and I know from experience that her enthusiasm and appreciation of life is contagious. I also really appreciate Carol's great productivity and creativity. Most of what's happening here on this stage is because of Carol's creativity and Carol is so able to have a lot on her plate with the breadth of her activities and pursuits.

11:53 Francesca is going to share about her hypervigilance saboteurs. Her vigilance is amazing. Francesca is sensitive and aware of true risks and dangers to herself, to businesses, and it is clear that this is put to good use in the work that Francesca does for small businesses, non-profit and in the banking industry. Francesca is loyal, reliable, dependable and very hardworking With perseverance, francesca works tirelessly towards what she wants to achieve, and those businesses are able to implement systems and structures required to enable order and stability.

12:38 Well, that was such an honour to read out loud to the world and to honour you both around the positives and the strengths that you have. That was wonderful, Kerry. Thank you, because it is so easy for our clients to run down the rabbit hole when you first meet the identification of the saboteurs that are yours and just wonder well, my goodness me, they're always going to be so strong and they're always going to be with us. And that is not the case, and I just love the contrast of bringing out the strength of that.

13:18 There are strengths to these saboteurs, so I'm going to dig into my one and before I do that, the rest is. It is interesting because all three of us cross over and share some of these saboteurs, because all three of us cross over and share some of these saboteurs. And then we also can be amused when we look at the contrast of I'll take mine, for example the avoider, the restless and the controller. How does the controller control the avoider? But we're not going to go there right now. Let's go with the restless Next time, Carol. That's all I love Right, yes, absolutely, but strengthen all of them.

13:59 But when I think of the restless, I specifically think from a business point of view and how this does not serve me, because the restless likes to chase after whatever is the next shiny object. And of course, for myself, I love marketing I'm not finding out anything new about marketing but when I see what somebody else is doing off, I go wanting to chase the next shiny object. How could I implement that? How could I try that? How could I? You know, instead of saying, carol, you have a task in front of you, let's focus on that, let's get that finished, and then you can allow yourself to move over and consider and explore an alternative.

14:41 But I think some of the other things you know with the rest list is you want to start all these things and you think you can do them all and realistically you cannot and it just burns you out. And I find, especially when there's an overwhelm of negative emotions, I want to get busy, I want to get out and I need to do things. And, as opposed, you know, the advice for a restless is to just stop, be mindful we call them doing PQ reps but to switch from the analytical side of your brain to the other side of your brain and to stop using busyness as a distraction, to stop for a moment and acknowledge these feelings, feel them in your body and acknowledge these emotions.

15:28 But what I have really found helpful for me is planning my workday, having my calendar very visual for me to be able to follow that and then theming the days of my week. So there certainly are ways to counteract the negative talk of our saboteur. So with that, kiri, tell us about the pleaser. Thank you so much, carol. And what that brings to mind is when there's something that I am avoiding in terms of my restless, how I actually start doing housework, which is not my favorite thing, but sometimes it's more favorite than what I am avoiding. Yeah, appreciate your rest list.

16:10 So for me, my pleaser is more of a personal story that I'd like to share, and it comes from being from a single parent family with little money, and I believe that people would not like me because I was different, I didn't have what they had and because I was seen as poor poor in my eyes. So I went out of my way to please people, to make up for something that I felt as if I didn't have and something I could offer to help people find something in me to like, and that's a habit that has continued.

16:52 I look for ways to make make people like me about what I can do for people, and what I realize is I find it hard for people to do anything for me, and those times when I did want to feel special, that I did want someone to do something for me, and it didn't happen because I assumed that people would read my mind, that yucky feeling and feeling resentful and that feeling of hurt came up. And that actually happened to me on my last birthday, as an example, when I wanted to be made special and that didn't happen from the person that I really wanted it to my partner but I didn't actually say to him or organize anything with him.

17:42 So I realized that when I do not give unconditionally, that I actually have conditions. There is a feeling of resentment, a feeling I need to do it as compared to want to do it, and that's now clear. And so that feeling of not giving unconditional love, that something else there is a priority, that actually sometimes the answer doesn't have to be yes, it can be no. When I get that feeling of resentfulness, I can simply stop, spend a few seconds deliberately wiggling my toes, counting how many toes I feel, and then reset.

18:32 And now I recognize that I don't have to drop everything. If someone wants something, I can be clear about when I'm able to, and sometimes that's a no, and that no comes what I call sage, what we call sage, because a no is a good answer and I don't have to please everybody else all the time. Sometimes I need to put my oxygen mask on and please myself, to give myself the energy I need to then give to others.

19:26 Such an important reminder for those that are listening. The analogy of the oxygen mask yeah, definitely, you have to take care of you and then you can pour out into others. So thank you for sharing that story, kerry. It's walking the road and understanding it and I think certainly as women, we tend to have a pleasing element in all of us. And even with that on the saboteurs, when one does do the assessment, you will find you have predominant ones up at the top and certain numbers that relate to them, but we all certain circumstances will bring in, you'll get hijacked by other saboteurs that you thought weren't yours.

20:08 I think we all have an element of each of them and I know that Francesca is going to share with us on the hypervigilant and how that plays out for her and how you've managed with that, francesca. Thank you so much for sharing Kiri and Carol. The hypervigilant saboteur, of course, has been my predominant saboteur and I think primarily because, as a mother and maybe most of you out there who have young kids you suddenly feel this need to be protective of everyone around you.

20:48 Suddenly you become the defender of the universe and the guardian of the galaxy, or what would you call it and you know, start to feel this intense sense of worry and fear that something might go wrong with the family, something might go wrong with travel, something might go wrong. I mean the endless feeling of anxiety about what could possibly go wrong, and it's a very nerve-wracking place to be actually. But gracefully I have been able to make a strategic use of the saboteur.

21:31 So what was intended to be a saboteur, I've kind of turned it out for good. A saboteur, I've kind of turned it out for good, just like it sounds like the song that stays the grace that taught my heart to fear. The same grace relieved my fears, and so that's how I have been able to manage my hypervigilant saboteur. So, instead of staying in the state of intense fear and anxiety, I shift to a place of prayer and meditation and gradually that helps me to overcome whatever fear I'm having, whatever worries might be, you know, encumbering my thoughts, and I emerge with a sense of renewal and hope.

22:19 And the truth is that I'm able to also transfer this hope from myself to people around me, so I kind of spread it around and so from being fearful, from fearful to being faithful, to being fierce and to being fearless. So that's how it's been for me. And within the business arena, where you know I show up every day, my hypervigilance has helped me to be a better risk manager, because I can predict, analyze and mitigate risk as effectively as possible. And also it helps me with problem solving.

23:01 You know, when I'm vigilant about any problem, I first of all try to identify what really is the problem right and how can I solve this problem, what are the options available to me. You know what are the risks associated with these options. You know what would be the optimal with these options. You know what would be the optimal decision that I need to make in this regard. So in one sense, the hypervigilant saboteur has caused some havoc, but overall I have been able to move from the place of fear to the place of faith and to, you know, the perspective of the sage that helps me to turn what is expected to be a bad outcome into a good outcome.

23:49 I love that, francesca, and I really appreciate that move to fearless. And then it's a journey, just like our paths to pleasant places, that journey of understanding your strengths and how that is supporting others in their businesses by avoiding risk. Um, you are supporting their journey and their pathway to the present place. So a beautiful share from everybody and sort of shining the spotlight on the different areas and creating awareness, which was important. So you know, going back if you wished you to have a look at that slide of all the different saboteurs and then just realising there are strengths that are associated with them.

24:37 And I know earlier we mentioned that we share some saboteurs. So Kiri and I, we both share the avoider, so we thought we'd have a little bit of fun and just show you what this could look like if you were in a coaching scenario. So Kiri, let's do a quick recap on that. Avoider saboteur what is it? What comes? up. So the avoid a saboteur has a tendency to avoid difficult tasks or conflicts. We prefer comfort and harmony over facing challenging situations, and it often results in procrastination and avoidance of our responsibilities.

25:23 Absolutely so. I totally relate to what you're sharing and I just think of this example of tending to put off difficult conversations, and those could be at work. Personal, I have a situation right now where there's a conversation that I should be having and I'm not having, but one does that because of the fear of conflict that we're wanting to keep the peace Right. Kerry, absolutely so. Recapping on some of the negative impacts of our avoider is that sometimes we miss the opportunities for growth. It can also increase our stress and anxiety because we're putting off something that would release some of that tension, and sometimes our relationships can be strained due to the unresolved issues.

26:19 That particularly happens when there's something I'm not sharing with my partner, but he knows that there's something wrong with me. So I'm wondering, carol, what about you and the example that you provided? What comes up for you. Absolutely, the stress levels increase, the knowledge and awareness of more vulnerability is required in the avoider situation. And then, as you mentioned, the missed opportunities for growth. Because if you step into this conversation that you're avoiding because of the conflict, but you approach it with a sage aspect, as opposed to an attacking, and lay the ground for an open conversation, you know just to stop from just the fact that you've also then taken care of it and to release that tension.

27:12 So I know that we can apply these different sage powers. So, kiri, is there any that stand out to you to counter this? Avoid a saboteur? There's some sage powers that we can use. Absolutely so. What I encourage with the example that you provided is that empathy that we have for ourselves. And really, when we think about our energy levels like where are our energy levels, as to what we can handle at this point in time, sometimes our energy levels aren't able to to handle the really hard stuff and that's hey, be kind to ourselves.

27:53 And right here, right now, carol, based on the things that you have shared on your avoider, what are you doing to be kind to yourself? Absolutely. It just takes you know, as you say that empathy and to realize that sometimes the timing is not right and that to create the situation. I love the other point that one of the tools that we were given is when we procrastinate, whether it be from a conversation that you want to have or things that you need to do. I'm very guilty of this, especially the washing up.

28:34 I think we all spoke about things in the household. It's like, ah, I'm going to leave that washing up. But one of the recommendations, if you find that you're an avoider, is to make a long list of all the things you're procrastinating on. And now you're not going to beat yourself up. You're going to do as Kiri shared finding her toes and maybe counting them and moving them. Perhaps it's rubbing fingers together, the touch sensation to move your brain away from being analytical again and then look through the list. Okay, what am I willing to tackle right now? And don't let the judge tell you that it has to be the item on the top of the list.

29:15 You go down that list until you find something that's ease and flow and that you're willing to tackle and move into that and, to me, getting that wheel moving, taking those baby steps will help. All of us avoiders celebrate as we accomplish one little thing and the next little thing. So I think that that's just my piece of action advice for those that are listening that might find themselves avoiding lists or conversations. I love that sharing and I love that idea of doing something that actually takes you away from that logical brain and allows you the permission to choose one thing on the list, not the biggest thing, but just one.

30:04 Francesca, how does that relate to anything that sort of resonates with you on the avoider, or is that not very high for you on your list of saboteurs? You'll probably tackle it all. Not really. I think I pretty much share some of the avoider traits as well. You know, the insight that you provided is really very helpful. You know, I think the thing to do to overcome procrastination is to find one little thing to do one day, one step at a time. Just keep taking one step forward and, as Kiri also mentioned, be aware of your energy level, because your energy grows where it goes, you know.

30:48 Absolutely Wonderful. Well, we hope that everybody has enjoyed listening to our conversation this month and we'd love to have you join us next month. We will be back. If you would like to take the complimentary saboteur assessment that will identify which of these are your top saboteurs. It's provided by the company Positive Intelligence. Feel free to reach out to one of us right here on linkedin and we can share the link with you. We're also each one of us happy to walk you through your results so you can book a discovery session and we can explore not only what holds you back, but the positive elements of these saboteurs as well.

31:29 So, francesca, the best place to find you it's on LinkedIn. Wonderful, all right. So you can private message Francesca. Make sure you connect with her. Reach out and connect Kiri, best place to connect with you. It is for LinkedIn. I love moving people from survive to thrive. With a three-month program to develop your mental muscle and let go of panic. Wonderful, that sounds fantastic. Say me on, let go of panic. You can find me at carolclinkcom or here on LinkedIn as well, and I will be starting a new pod in June.

32:11 So if you want to kick off with the foundation program from positive intelligence, send me a message and I'd love to walk with you through the tools that can stay with you for a lifetime. So thank you, kiri, thank you, francesca, for being here with me.