Self Sabotage Happens When You’re Used To A Chaotic Life

Why people self sabotage when things are good to make a mess of their lives on purpose.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email update from a viewer who I recently answered an email of his in a video. Despite his friend telling him not to send the video to his girlfriend, he did it anyway. She got upset with him as expected.

He wonders why he always does things to sabotage himself when things are going good. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

In other words, what that means is people that tend to sabotage their success. In other words, when things are going really well, whether it’s a man or a woman and they’re used to things being screwed up, fucked up, not going well, being full of drama and chaos. Then they start dating somebody and things are going well, it’s easy-going, easy to get along with, and there are no problems. That doesn’t feel normal to them because normal is chaos, because that’s what they expect. That’s what they’re used to. That’s what they were raised in. So when they get into a relationship or start seeing somebody and it’s going pretty well, they’ll actually screw it up on purpose because screwing it up is what feels normal to them.

So you have to understand, if you grow up in a chaotic environment, you’re going to be emotionally anchored to chaos, and you’ll seek it out, you’ll seek out that drama because again, that feels normal to you, because that’s what was modeled for you day in and day out. So to transcend that and get beyond that, you have to be aware of it, you have to be aware of how your childhood and your upbringing affected you because again, like attracts like. People that like the same things tend to like each other. People that grew up in calm environments tend to attract other people who grew up in calm environments. People that grew up in chaotic, drama-filled environments tend to attract other people who are in drama-filled, chaotic environments.

In this particular email, this viewer, I answered a video newsletter of his a week or so ago How To Have Effortless Relationships, and I guess he sent that in and his girlfriend’s not watching the videos or anything like that. Sometimes I have couples where they both watch and they’re avid fans. I just did one a couple weeks ago. The couple sent it in. The girlfriend reads the book. She watches the videos. They watch them together. They try to figure out, “OK, what do you think Coach is going to say here?” Because they’re trying to learn this stuff and master it because it helps them. It betters their relationship. If they have a family together, they’ll be better parents, because then they can teach this stuff to their kids and then teach their kids what to look for. They can teach their daughters what kind of men have their shit together so they recognize that archetype when they come across it, and which type of guys may stir their emotions, but are the type of guys they need to avoid. That’s a huge benefit that parents can teach this stuff to their sons and their daughters. The sons can seek out and recognize a pattern of women that have their shit together, are healthy, good to date, are good, loyal girlfriends and which ones to avoid.

So this guy, he was talking to one of his friends who I guess also watches my videos. He’s like, “Hey, you think I should send this to my girlfriend?” Because what it looks like, he’s just kind of being lazy and there’s some behavior that he wants to correct of her. So he’s like, “Hey, let me just send this video,” and his buddy was like, “Yeah, some things are just for the lads, dude. Corey was talking to you directly and not you and your girl. What was in the video was for you and not to send it.” Well, he didn’t listen. He sent it anyways and she got upset. So now he writes in and he’s like, “Why do I always sabotage my success?” It’s like, because chaos feels normal. So if things were going good, women do this too, things are going good and they’re used to chaos, they’ll just screw things up because that feels normal. The chaos feels normal.

Viewer Email:

Hi Coach Corey,

I have been a follower of your work for several years and have read your book three times and have been in several relationships with me ending things.

I am doing a lot of self-analyzing the past year as my actions have been very poor from breaking up all of my relationships and engagements over the years and I find myself self sabotaging a a lot.

Through my friend noticing this and mentioned it to me I definitely agree and ponder the question as to why I self sabotage? 

Well again, if things are going well, things are relatively calm, you have peace in your life and you’re not used to that, especially if you grew up in a chaotic environment, well you’re going to recreate that chaotic environment because that feels natural and normal to you. So when things are going along great, you’ll torpedo your success and then cause yourself a lot of problems, because having the problems that feels normal gives you something to fix, something to work on.

In a recent video you done How To Have Effortless Relationships, I thought it would be a good idea to share this with my girlfriend because it was about our relationship and her of course, my good friend Bob stated: “Do not share that with her as some things are solely for the lads.” Also he said, “That is self sabotaging your relationship and getting a bath with a toaster in your hands.”

Yeah, probably not a good idea to sit in the bathtub while holding a toaster that’s plugged in. Bad things can happen.

“Do not send her that video as it will hurt her feelings.”

So the video is meant for the guy. He should have taken those things on board. Then, in his own words, if there was something that applied to her that he needed to discuss, he should have discussed it. Instead, he was lazy. He just sends it on over. Maybe because things were going well for a while, I don’t know, and he screwed it up. Now he’s like, “Oh no, my life is such a mess. Why does this always happen to me?”

Another thing to consider is we have our six human needs, which are certainty, variety, significance, love and connection, spiritual growth and contribution. So what’s interesting about our need for love and connection? Oftentimes that’s how we bond and connect with other people. If you grew up in an environment where complaining is the way to get attention, when you grow up, you’ll complain about your problems to other people so they feel sympathetic towards you and say, “Oh, you poor thing. Oh, life is so hard.” That’s how they bond and connect. They cause problems and then they go tell everybody about their problems and go like, “See, this always happens to me.”

My old business partner used to always be like, “Man, you’re not gonna believe what happened to me,” and I’m like, “Oh, here we go again.” So I would just sit back, sometimes we pop a beer, and because I knew about a 45-minute to an hour long story was about to entail of how he got into it with a contractor of his, somebody sold the house to, somebody he let rent one of his houses and was also going to work on it. Things that I was like, “Man, I would not do it. I would not let that guy move in my house,” just because he says he’s going to give you a discount in the rehab, he would do it anyways. All these problems and chaos would happen and I was like, “Man, I told you. It’s like you didn’t listen.” He’s like, “I know, but I just want to help people,” but he grew up in a chaotic environment, so mom and dad would get drunk and they would brawl and beat each other bloody until the police would come take dad to jail. It was a small town. Dad would sober up in the morning, and then the police would bring him back and drop him off at home. Then the cycle would repeat itself. So he grew up in a chaotic environment where there was always fighting, yelling, screaming, drama, alcoholism and things like that.

So his whole life, things would be going good for a while, he’d make a bunch of money and he wouldn’t keep that money. He’d be like trying to light it on fire and spend it as quick as it came in. “Oh, there’s some jet skis to buy. Oh, I bought another car. Oh, I bought another house. Oh, I bought a new deck to record on,” because he was like he was into music. So as soon as money came in, he was trying to get rid of it as quickly as possible because he’s used to being broke. His whole life he was like that. He had several times in his life where he was making a lot of money, never saved any of it, and as much as fast as it came in, he was spending it because he was used to being broke. That was normal. It didn’t feel normal to have a bunch of money in the bank, because for him, having the money in the bank was like, “I got to get rid of it. I got to spend it, I got to buy stuff,” and that was his pattern.

After we went our separate ways business wise, within about two years, he completely gone through all of his life savings, every single penny that he had saved and made when we were together, and he basically died broke and owing the IRS close to half $1 million, over half $1 million. It may have been a million with all the penalties by the time he died, and that was a point of pride with him, was that he did everything he could to avoid paying the IRS because he would take too much out and he would never put enough away. Then he would end up owing money on taxes, and he just kept doing it until the amount of money that he owed got so big, but he was used to always being broke. So anytime he had money, he spent it. When things were going well, he would do something that would cause a fight with his wife, myself, our other business partner and or somebody that was working for him or he was involved business wise. The guy went through life looking for reasons to get pissed off and upset, and then he would come to me and go, “Man, you’re not going to believe what happened.” I’m like, in my mind, I’d be thinking, “You happened again. That’s what happened. It’s like you created another situation so you can come in here and tell me about it, you can tell your wife about it, your kids, your friends and your family and be like, ‘I can’t believe this shit always happens to me. Can you believe it?'” But that was how he fulfilled his need for love and connection. He created problems. Then he’d go tell everybody about his problems. So keep that in mind, because he grew up in a chaotic environment.

So he was constantly recreating the chaos day in and day out. Especially when things were going good, he couldn’t stay good for a while. He couldn’t keep $50,000 in the bank or $100,000 the bank for very long. It’d just itch at him. He’d be like, “I gotta spend it on something. Gotta buy a house, buy another car, loan it to somebody,” that doesn’t pay him back, and then he gets pissed off about the person not paying him back and I’d be like, “I told you not to lend the guy money. You don’t fucking listen.” “I know, man. I know. I always do that. I’m just soft. I care about people.” It’s like, “Well you like getting screwed over because then you can go around complaining to all of us about it,” and I would even tell them these things and we would have a laugh about it. I was like, “You’re doing it on purpose, so you have a reason to come and tell me about it, and we’ll sit and have a few beers, smoke a blunt, order some pizza, shoot the shit and have a good laugh,” and in the coming weeks, things would get resolved. Then a few weeks after that, when things are going good again, he’d find something else to screw up and then come and tell me about it and we’d always have a laugh, but that was his pattern and it never changed. He rode off into the sunset and he died broke and basically hiding from the IRS, stalling them until he croaked. Then he basically left his widow to deal with all that, which I wasn’t a fan of, but that was how he lived and that was how he died.

As Tony Robbins says, “The past does not equal the future. You have the chance and the choice to change it going forward,” because if you become aware that you sabotage on purpose and why you sabotage, because sabotage and chaos feels normal to you, well the next time you’re inclined to piss all your money away, be broke, and then stress about paying your bills, or to cause a problem in your relationship when things are going good, think about what you’re about to do before you do it. Just like in this case, when your buddy’s like, “Dude, don’t send that video to her. It’s going to upset her because the video was meant for you. It was meant for you to take corrective action.” If there’s things from the video you need to discuss with her, it needs to come through your mouth in your own words, without any evidence that that’s where it came from, but he didn’t listen because he needed the chaos. He needed the chaos so he could go to his buddy and go, “Man, you were right. I should have listened to you.” Then his friend would be like, “What happened?” “OK well, I sent her the email and this is what she said. This is what she did.” They’ll talk about it, his buddy will give him advice, he’ll go, “Yeah, you’re right,” and then he’ll go and he’ll do the opposite because he’s addicted to the chaos.

I went against his advice and sent it anyways and, of course, her reaction was bad. My girlfriend said: “Bob, I am not going to lie I am pissed off, very hurt and annoyed that you sent this to me and wrote that email to a man who isn’t in our relationship. I chose to tell you this information because I trusted you…”

Women like a guy that can keep their mouth shut.

“…And now it proves to me that you can’t trust your own judgement about me and think this relationship will also fail and not work out.”

Well, if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got. If your expectations are that the relationship is going to fail and not work out because that’s what you’re used to, that’s what you expect. That’s what you’re looking towards. You’ll make it happen, which you’re doing it. You’re making it happen. You can interrupt that pattern and decide to stop it, or you can say, “You know what? I really enjoy living this chaotic way because then I can go and cry to my friends and family about my problems. Go, ‘Oh, poor me! See, this always happens to me.'” Like my old business partner. He was always like victim mentality. I was like, “Bro, you’re not a victim. You did this to yourself. You came to me and you told me what you were thinking about doing.” I said, “Don’t do it. Here’s why,” and he would do it anyways. I was like, “I fucking told you, dude.” So enjoy the suck.

We always would laugh about it and he’d be like, “You’re right,” but then he would do it anyways. I mean, at that point he was in his 50s, 60s. He’s like that dude. He wasn’t going to change, and he never did. The day he died, he was still the same fucking way, still causing the same problems. He died broke, penniless and in debt, owing the IRS a bunch of money and left all that for his widow to deal with, which wasn’t very nice, but what else was he going to do? “That’s just the way I am.”

She also said, “If you wanted to send Coach Corey an email, it should have been about your failed relationships and your past but not mine!” She continued and said, “Weren’t you the one that told me that the only two people that know the value of a relationship are the only two people in it?” She then said I will not be replying to your voice notes and will be having a drink at the music event she works at abroad and that she would talk to me tomorrow.

So that’s kind of passive aggressive. “I’m just not going to talk to you. I’m going to have a cocktail and potentially talk to somebody else, talk to another dude,” or who knows?

I, at this point, already apologized and realized it was not a good idea to share the video with her and then got to a point and said, “I am not going to beg you for a phone call or conversation so you do you. Enjoy your night!”

Coach, I realize I have always been too open about everything in my relationships about what I do and what I have done without thinking about the aftermath of consequences. I spill everything bad about myself and self sabotage relationships and through my good friend bringing this to my attention, I realize this and have tried to self-analyze and ponder as to why I am super open and share things that will negatively impact the relationship.

Coach, I am sure you think I am mad stupid for sharing this with her and, as a matter of fact, I am my own worst enemy right now.

Kind Regards,

Bob

Because again, you’re addicted to it. What is it? Tony said, “If you do something continuously,” and it meets like three of your human needs, I think, or half of your human needs, “It’s an addiction.” So definitely if we look at love and connection, it definitely fulfills his need for love and connection because he can go talk to everybody about his problems, his girlfriend, me, his friends. So that fulfills the need for love and connection. It also fulfills his need for certainty because he always knows what he’s going to get when he sabotages. He’s going to cause a lot of drama, a lot of problems, a lot of heartache and a lot of unpleasantness. It also fulfills his need for variety, because there’s always some other scenario or situation that is different they can bring up and cause an absolute shit show in his life. So it fulfills his need for love and connection, fills his need for certainty, variety, even significance. Significance meaning, “My life matters. My life is important. I’m important.” So it’s a way to for him to make him feel like his life matters. It’s important because then he can go around everybody and talk about his problems. So he feels significant because he’s got all these people involved in his problem now. So that’s for the need. So it definitely qualifies as an addiction.

Again, this is something Tony Robbins taught me, and it’s like when you think about it, you’re like, “Wow, it really does make sense.” If you do something over and over and it fulfills at least three of your six human needs, it’s an addiction. So this is the thing he always does. This is his pattern. So he’s addicted to things being fucked up because again, he can go and cry about it to the world. Just like my old business partner was always crying about some issue, always being broke. “Hey man, can I borrow some money? Can I borrow $20,000? I’ll pay you back next week. I’ve got a bunch of closings.” When we were building our business, I was taking what I needed, paying my bills and putting money away for retirement, but most of the cash I was putting back into the company, because I wanted to grow it fast and my other two partners were taking the max out that they could, and I was like, man, because I was taking out maybe a couple hundred grand a year, and they’re each taking out $500,000 a year, and he’d come to me and I was like, “You’re making half a million a year, and I’m taking less than a third of that out, basically. Yet you’re coming to me asking to borrow money from me. It’s like, come on, dude,” but he was just that way until the day he died. He was always broke. He was used to it. We had a lot of laughs about it, too.

I remember one time I was stressing about about something and I was like, “Man, I’m just tired.” It was like we were having problems, like getting our closing on our office building done and it was a big monthly payment and none of us really had any income anymore. At that point, I had started a new business. So we had like a $20,000 a month nut just to pay the mortgage on this property that we had that we were trying to get close. So it was an expense every month, I was like, “Man, I hate living like this.” It’s like fucking being broke, I got all this money tied up in this property and he’s like, “Oh man, I’m used to it.” We had a good laugh about it because it was true. No matter how much money he was making, he was always paycheck to paycheck, he was always broke as fast as it came in. It was going out the front door. He would just buy more houses. He’d buy more cars. He’d spend money on things. He would lend it to people, and then they wouldn’t pay him back and he’d be upset about that. Again, that was his pattern. He was addicted to that. He was addicted until the day he died. At least this way now, the guy that wrote the email, you can be aware of how you’re sabotaging your success and you have the choice to say, “You know what? I’m not going to live like this anymore.”

I’ve told this story before. I had a situation where I was in my early 20s. A good friend of mine was tending bar, and my mom tended to complain about things. That was her way of fulfilling her need for love and connection, was to complain about something, complain about her sisters, her family, us, something she saw on TV or that she read about, and I didn’t realize that affected me. So when I was young, I tended to complain about things. Usually one of the things I was always bitching about was my contacts, this was before I started juicing vegetables and I always had dry eyes. I had a lot of problems back then, health wise. So I blink, my eyes would get dry and then the contact would fold up and I’m like, “God damn my contacts! Shit!”

I remember we were sitting at Chuck’s Steak house, of all places, with my myself, my friend, and a couple of our other friends, and I was bitching and I remember sitting there thinking, “I gotta find something to talk about. Oh, let me bitch about this,” and after I said what I said, he looked at me and he’s like, “Corey, all you do is fucking bitch, man. You always bitching about your contacts. You’re bitching about this, that,” and I just listened to him, because I thought of myself as kind of a positive, optimistic person at that point, because I’d already been through Tony Robbins stuff and I was already making huge progress towards finishing my degree and graduating college, and for him to tell me that, I was like, “Oh shit.” I felt horrible. I felt inadequate, I felt bad. I felt I was embarrassed. I was like, here I am thinking I’m a high achiever. I’m going places in life, and one of my closest friends and roommates is going, “Yeah, all you do is bitch dude,” and I really realized that I was fulfilling my need for love and connection, just like my mom did, which was complaining and finding things to complain about. I would literally look around and go, “Oh, look at that. Look how that sucks,” or “Look at that person there. Look at what just happened there. Look at that grass. It’s all fucking dead over there.” Just stuff like that because again, that was what was modeled for me at home with my mother. So I did it without even realizing it, and it took a good friend calling me out on it, and I never did it again after that. I was like, “I’m only going to be focused on things that are positive and optimistic.”

So whatever you focus on is going to expand. If you focus on good things, that’s going to expand. If you focus on reasons why to make your relationship easy-going, easy to get along with and focus on reasons why you don’t share videos like the one he shared and you don’t have certain discussions that you normally have that always cause chaos, he can exercise self-control and he can stop himself from doing it if he wants to, but the first thing is you got to have awareness of it. So his friend obviously is a good friend who’s calling him out and helping him. Obviously, this video can be another way of helping him because again, now he understands that he’s fulfilling at least three of his six human needs dysfunctionally. Well, at least four of them actually, if you think about it. Certainty, variety, significance, love and connection are all fulfilled by this guy causing problems in his life. So that’s definitely something to think about.

At least now that you’re aware of it. You can choose to bite your tongue like I did, and when you do that enough, repetition being the mother of skill, enough time, enough repetition, enough months and years doing it, you can get away from self sabotaging because there’s enough reasons and bad things that are going to happen in life anyways that are going to cause chaos and problems. The last thing you need to be doing is causing more chaos and problems yourself, because you’re always seeing the glass is half empty instead of half full. Definitely something to think about.

So, if you’ve got a question or a challenge and you’d like to get my help, go to UnderstandingRelationships.com, click the Products tab at the top of your screen on any page, and book a coaching session with yours truly. Until next time, I will talk to you soon.