Self Realized, Shatter Your Limits

Why We Fail: The Hidden Triggers of Sabotage, Success & Change

• Linton Bergsen • Episode 116

Share episode

What if the moment you “failed” was actually your mind trying to keep you safe? In this episode of the Self Realized, Shatter Your Limits Podcast Why We Fail: The Hidden Triggers of Sabotage, Success and Change, join me, Linton Bergsen, as you delve into the hidden triggers that push smart people to pull back right before a breakthrough, how the nervous system prefers familiarity, how old memories shape present choices, and why success can feel dangerous when it threatens identity and belonging. Instead of self-sabotage, I offer an approach to practical exercises, real stories, and daily practices that turn fear into forward motion, giving you honest solutions on how to stop self-sabotaging success.

I start by re-framing failure as a protective reflex, then trace it to early lessons about attention, visibility, and rejection. You’ll learn the Recalling the Pattern exercise to link current self- sabotage to past experiences, the Naming the Comfort prompt to uncover what your old habit won't supply you, and a simple way to replace that function with healthier behaviors. 

You’ll explore identity clashes—why abundance feels alien if your story is struggle—and how to script the “you who succeeds” with clear values, language, and decisions by rewiring your brain for success. Along the way, I share a candid case study on emotional eating solutions and a personal turning point that transformed a failure into purpose and success.

To make change prevail, you can lean on the Micro Victory Practice: one small stretch each day giving you daily micro-victories for growth that builds self-trust and momentum. Being self-aware opens the door, choice walks the path, and repetition rewires safety so growth no longer feels like danger. By the end of this episode, you’ll see failure as purification, not punishment, clarity, not condemnation. 

If you’re ready to stop repeating old sabotaging habits and start evolving, hit play, and subscribe for more thoughtful episodes. Leave a rating and review, and visit selfrealized.com for more resources including my five-star Amazon reviewed book "Purposeful Vision. What’s the one small risk you’ll take today? 

Let me know your thoughts on this episode. Text me your feedback! 🙂

https://www.selfrealized.com

Linton Bergsen:

Welcome to the self-realized podcast with Linton Bergsen, where you will shatter your limits. I'm not much into the self-help industry, as much as I'm into the self-realized individual, which is you, what matters most to you, how you get there, and the obstacles that may be in your way. If you would like to be part of this podcast and part of that discussion, I welcome you here with an open heart, open mind, and open arms. So without further ado let's get on with the podcast. Today I would like to ask you something very simple, yet profound. Why do we fail even when we want nothing more than to succeed? We set goals, we make promises, chase visions, and yet, somewhere between the starting line and the finish line, we sabotage our own progress. Not because we don't care, not because we are weak, but because something deep inside us resists the very change that we crave. In today's episode number 116, Why We Fail: The Hidden Triggers of Sabotage, Success, and Change, we are going to explore that resistance, the hidden triggers that quietly shape our behavior, undermine our confidence, and reroute our destiny. Because failure isn't the end of your story, it's an invitation to rewrite it. Let's start by accepting that invitation and acknowledging that failure is not a lack of ability. Often, it's a conflict between who you are and who you actually believe you can be. Our subconscious wants safety. It is programmed that way. It is part of the hidden triggers of the subconscious mind, which the title suggests. Hidden triggers that we are not always aware of. Creating our own self-sabotage. Such as safety, familiarity, predictability, but success demands risk, change, and exposure. Between those two is the battlefield where self-sabotage actually lives. Think about the last time you got close to something big, a brand new opportunity, a great relationship, a major breakthrough. Maybe things started to work, then somehow you pulled back. You told yourself the timing wasn't right, or you distracted yourself with something else. That moment of retreat wasn't weakness, it was self-protection. Your mind decided that staying where you were was safer than becoming someone new. Reinventing yourself so you can be all that you were actually born to be. You were born to be great. It is your divine birthright, your unique authenticity. Grab it, don't let go of it, and don't be deterred by anyone or anything that will try and convince you that you are less than you actually are. Let your light shine brightly and be all that you can be. Why do we fail? Because we choose to. It's an option that we have in life. But you are not going to pick the option to fail. The self realized individual understands that. A man I once coached dreamed of starting his own business. He had the skill, the plan, the passion. But every time he took a step forward, he found a reason to step back— the logo wasn’t perfect, the market wasn’t ready, the risk was to high. The

Linton Bergsen:

truth? He wasn't afraid of failing. He was afraid of succeeding because success meant being visible, responsible, and accountable. And deep inside he didn't yet see himself as worthy of that version of greatness. Let me share something with you and contemplate on this for a moment. Self-sabotage is never born in the present moment. It is a child of the past. Our earliest experiences taught us when it's safe to shine and when it's dangerous to stand out. If, as children, we learned that attention led to criticism or rejection, we will unconsciously dim our light as adults. It's like an echo that lives in our habits. You can't see it, but it directs your choices subconsciously, which is where all habits live and breed. Here's the reality: no one consciously chooses to fail. You don't, I don't. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. But when failure equals safety, the mind will choose safety every time. It is simply the way we are programmed. You have to consciously be aware, self-aware, of reprogramming the safety into some element of risk and learn to become comfortable with being uncomfortable for a moment of time, because that is where all true success lies. The ability to become uncomfortable and work through that uncomfortability to gain the success that you are striving for. I am going to introduce you to an exercise when you are not listening to the podcast that you can use and you have a moment. It's called Recalling the Pattern. Because essentially, our life is a series of repeated patterns of behavior. As Aristotle said, the famous ancient Greek philosopher, excellence is not an act but a habit. We are what we repeatedly do. That is the quote. This exercise will help you change what you repeatedly do. And what I'd like you to do is close your eyes, take a deep breath, think of a goal or a dream you've wanted, one that keeps resurfacing. Now ask yourself, what emotion shows up right before I quit? Or procrastinate? Anxiety, fear, doubt. Trace that emotion not to the goal, but to its memory. Maybe it's the voice of a parent who said, don't get your hopes up. Maybe it's a friend who mocked your ambition. That emotion didn't come from this very moment. It's an echo from yesterday. Deep seated in your past and now living in your subconscious. That just keeps replaying as a habit over and over until you choose to reprogram that response by something else, new behaviors and new habits that you can cultivate. I am going to make a suggestion to you now that, if you acknowledge and accept, can help you move forward in a very positive way. We live in a constant loop of comfort and fear. Our brain is designed to conserve energy and minimize threat. That means every time we step outside of our comfort zone, it activates alarm bells. The body tightens up, I'm sure you felt it, the mind races, and before you know it, excuses start forming. But those excuses aren't lies, they're protection mechanisms in disguise. Breaking that loop starts with awareness, self-awareness, which I talk about a lot in each episode. You can't change what you're not self-aware of, and the self-realized individual is always working on their self-awareness. They are aware of what they want to change, how they want to change it, why they want to change it, and how they are going to go about doing that. You can't change what you don't first see and what you are not aware of. Let me give you an example of that. A woman I worked with wanted to lose weight. She followed every plan for a few weeks, I'm sure you can relate. Then life happened. Stress, work, social events, and she drifted off course, which we all do. She believed she lacked discipline. But when we looked deeper, we discovered that food had always been a reward for her surviving hard times. Losing that pattern meant losing comfort. We are aware that sometimes food fulfills needs more than just nutrition. There is nervous eating, there's emotional eating, there's binge eating. For various reasons, people eat and have eating patterns to fulfill different needs other than just nutrition. What was happening was she wasn't failing at fitness. She was using food for emotional stability when she was stressed out and when life happened. When she addressed that, she was able to get more consistent results with her workouts and her weight. She wasn't failing at fitness, she was defending her emotional stability. She addressed, as today's title suggests, the hidden triggers of her own self-sabotage and created the change that was required for her own success. When you're free and you have time, I would like to suggest to you that you do an exercise that I call Naming the Comfort. Write down one area where you say you would like to change but never sustain it. Next to it, write down what comfort that old pattern provides you. Security, control, relief. Understand this, you are not weak for holding on to what comforts you. You're human. But once you name it, you understand it, and the role that it is playing in your life, you can begin to start reclaiming your power as you begin addressing the old patterns that you no longer need to move you forward to the goals that you're trying to achieve. As I mentioned earlier, a little discomfort is critical to you moving your life forward in the direction that you would like it to grow, develop, and transition. And as you begin to move into this new development in your life, you may have a clash with your own identity that you're used to having. Change always threatens identity. If you have built your story around struggle, abundance will feel alien. If your narrative is about rejection, acceptance can feel undeserved. Our success isn't defined by what we gain, it is limited by what we are unwilling to release. So here's the truth. To rise above failure, you must outgrow the identity that created it. And here's a simple truth. Once you outgrow an old identity and create a new one, your life will change and the people around you will change. Let me give you an example of that. Years ago, I met a man who was finally achieving the success he had chased all of his life. But as his business grew, he became uncomfortable. Old friends distanced themselves, his family said he was changing, which is nothing unusual. He began missing meetings, delaying responses, isolating, self-sabotaging. He wasn't afraid of failure. He was afraid of no longer belonging. He was afraid of letting go his old identity and adopting a new one. When your new self disrupts the world you built around your old one, you'll face a choice. Shrink back or expand beyond where you are now. When you have a moment, write this down. My identity I have when I fail is not the one I choose when I succeed. Write that down and say it aloud. Now describe who succeeds. The you that succeeds. What values guide you? How do you think? How do you speak? How do you decide? Because there is a different language from the person, an identity that fails to the one that succeeds. You cannot step into new results until you step into a new identity. I strongly suggest you own that as an inner subconscious programming, as any self-realized individual does when they're in transition. They change affirmations and the way they think and speak about themselves in order to create the change that they would like to have in their life. Change your identity, change your life. In order for you to change your identity, you have to have a conscious shift in the way you think. Your consciousness has to change. Your self-awareness has to change. Awareness is the doorway, choice is the path. Every time you choose awareness over reaction, you stop repeating the old script that you have been telling yourself. That's the transformation moment by moment. The triggers that once pulled you into fear can now signal your growth. The doubt that once stopped you can now remind you that you're moving into unknown territory, and that's where your life truly begins. Contemplate on this for a moment. You cannot change your life by staying in the known. You'll get the same results. You can only change your life and transform it by stepping into the unknown. And you can do that by adopting the micro victory practice technique. Every day, do one small thing that challenges your comfort. Speak up when you would normally stay silent. Finish what you usually delay. Take action before you overthink it. Small victories, build trust with yourself, and that trust becomes unstoppable momentum and builds faith in yourself. Contemplate on this for a moment. Transformation can occur through failure. Every great transformation demands a collapse first, the collapse of illusion, limits, and old identities. When things fall apart, it's not a punishment. It's not the end of the world. It's a point of purification if you choose to see it that way. Failure teaches clarity, it strips away all the pretense. It reveals to you what truly matters. What are you willing to fight for and what you must finally let go of. The truth is you can't lose anything essential. What's real in you doesn't fail, it evolves, which is your own self-realization that you are always enough, and any and everything that you ever need in life is already inside of you. All you have to do is constantly improve that knowing and trust it. There is a still small voice in you, it is your intuition, and it is guiding you to the pathway that you need to express yourself in the most unique way possible. And in that realization lies your true transformation in understanding that failure is never your enemy, it is always your friend, giving you the opportunity to reinvent yourself from a different perspective with greater power than you ever had before. Let me give you an example of that from my own life. When I hit one of the lowest points in my life, I felt like everything was breaking. I thought I was losing direction until I realized I was losing the version of myself that had outgrown its purpose. Something new was born, clarity, purpose, and a commitment to help others find their own, which helped me develop and start the company, Leadership Management, which allowed me to help many organizations and many people reinvent and activate deeper potentials than they ever thought possible before. So why do we fail? Which is the title of today's episode: The Hidden Triggers of Sabotage, Success and Change. Failure is simply a deeper core for a deepening awakening within you. Failure, sabotage, resistance, they are not enemies. They're mirrors reflecting what we still need to heal, release, and realize. You are not broken, you're always in a state of becoming more than you ever thought possible. If today's episode stirred something in you, don't run from it. Sit with it. Whatever has been aroused within you, ask it what it's trying to show you. Because beyond that discomfort lies your unshakable power. I invite you to take one step today, one choice that says, I'm ready to stop repeating and start evolving. I would like to celebrate your own evolution and thank you for joining me on this episode today. Until next time, keep rising, keep growing, and always be the creator of your own extraordinary life. I sincerely appreciate you listening to the podcast. Please subscribe so you do not miss any upcoming episodes. Whatever platform you're on, please leave a rating and review. I would greatly appreciate it. Any additional information on me, Linton Bergsen, and my five star reviewed book, Purposeful Vision, is available at selfrealized.com, which is all one word. You can also leave any comments or suggestions on the website. I look forward to connecting with you very soon. Take good care of yourself.