The Sabotage Response

There is a moment between recognition and rejection that holds everything

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While doing homework with my Human Design coach, Jacques, researching my life's purpose, I came across words that stopped me in my tracks: "natural trailblazers and inspirational figures... powerful agents of change and inspiration in the world."

The recognition hits first. Pure, visceral YES. A knowing so deep it feels like coming home.

Then comes the sabotage.

Who am I to be that? That's arrogant. You can't be that.

The speed is breathtaking. Recognition to rejection in under three seconds.

The Architecture of Self-Sabotage

We have trained ourselves to be allergic to our own magnificence.

The mechanism is elegant in its efficiency: the moment we glimpse our true potential, our conditioning kicks in to protect us from the terror of actually claiming it. We have learned that being too much is dangerous. That visibility invites criticism. That power requires perfection.

So we develop an internal immune system that attacks anything that might make us too big, too bright, too undeniably ourselves.

The sabotage response isn't random. It's precise. It targets exactly the recognition we most need to hear.

The Pattern Recognition

I notice this response everywhere now. In the pause after someone compliments my work. In the way I deflect praise with self-deprecation. In how quickly I add "but" after acknowledging any success.

The pattern is always the same: Moment of expansion. Immediate contraction. Return to familiar smallness.

We have become experts at talking ourselves out of our own truth.

The more accurate the recognition, the stronger the sabotage response. Our internal critic doesn't waste energy on vague compliments. It reserves its full force for the moments when someone sees us exactly as we are meant to be seen.

The Cost of Protection

This mechanism we've developed to keep us safe is actually keeping us stuck.

Every time we reject recognition of our gifts, we reinforce the belief that we are not worthy of them.

Every time we talk ourselves out of our own potential, we make that potential a little less accessible.

We think we're being humble. We think we're protecting ourselves from disappointment or judgment.

But we're actually participating in our own diminishment.

The Interruption

The work isn't to eliminate the sabotage response. It's too deeply wired, too automatic.

The work is to recognize it. To name it. To create space between the recognition and the rejection.

When someone reflects your power back to you, notice what happens in your body. Feel the expansion. Then feel the contraction that follows.

In that space between expansion and contraction lies your choice.

You can choose the familiar path of rejection. Or you can choose to stay with the expansion for just one breath longer.

The Practice

I am learning to interrupt my own sabotage.

When the voice says "Who am I to be that?" I am learning to ask "Who am I NOT to be that?"

When the contraction comes, I am learning to breathe into the expansion instead.

When recognition arrives, I am learning to say "thank you" instead of "but."

This is not comfortable work. Every cell in my body has been trained to keep me small and safe.

But I am beginning to understand: my comfort zone is not actually comfortable. It's just familiar.

The Invitation

Your recognition of your own purpose is not arrogance. It's responsibility.

The world doesn't need you to be smaller. It needs you to be exactly as magnificent as you were designed to be.

The sabotage response will come. It always does. But you don't have to listen.

You can choose recognition over rejection. Expansion over contraction. Truth over safety.

Your purpose is not something you have to earn or prove. It's something you have to remember and claim.

The mechanism that sabotages your recognition is the same mechanism that keeps you from living your fullest expression.

But awareness is the beginning of choice.

And choice is the beginning of everything.