Quell the saboteur voice with two words
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto
Picture this.
You just finished the latest interview for your dream job, and the moment you walked away, you were sure you smashed it. The barrage of questions that initially came dried up to a trickle as you answered them, and then they stopped. You stared down the faces of the interviewers when they asked whether you had any questions for them, and you could feel the confidence exuding from your being as you grinned and said, “no. I’m ready to start as soon as you are.” You interpreted the early end of the interview as a sign that you did such a good job that the interviewers had already made their decision in your favor. You could scarcely contain your delight as you clicked the leave Zoom call button, and not a second later you executed a celebration jig from your bedroom office to your kitchen and back again.
A day goes by. Then another, and then one more. With no word yet, you try to shrug it off and enjoy your weekend, but a voice inside your mind starts up, stoking fears and anxiety. “There’s so much riding on getting this. What if you didn’t get it? Wouldn’t that be a litmus test for your career overall?” The voice throws log after log on the bonfire of your anxiety, and gradually, your confidence melts. By Sunday evening, you’re a nervous wreck. You spend a restless Sunday night tossing and turning, imagining the rejection that the voice has convinced you is not only inevitable, but indicative of the direction of your career overall.
On Monday, you see an email in your inbox.
You feel crushed, and the voice now crows that you’re officially an abject failure.
The ego’s power: reality distortion in search of comfort & control
In that moment of confirmation, the voice in your head begins booming, berating you into feeling like an incapable imbecile that not only will be doomed to fail any other interviews you attempt, but will also be found out at your current job as an imposter at any point and laid off. Instantly, you feel transported from the edge of an imagined, lush paradise to the middle of the perceived, harsh desert of reality.
Did you notice the key word in the last sentence of the paragraph above?
Take another look for it. Hint: it starts with a “p” and ends with “erceived.”
There’s a big difference between the real-ness of our reality, and the perceived-ness of our reality. In this case, the only thing that happened was that this person didn’t get the job. Nothing more, nothing less. They are still the same person before and after. So how did this person’s perceived inner-reality transform into them being so stupid that they’ll never get another job, and may even lose the job they have?
This perception problem was caused by the manipulations of the ego, through the handiwork of the voice of the saboteur
The ego’s underling: the saboteur voice
In short, the voice of the saboteur is a thought pattern that works to convince us that we are not capable of change, that we should fear change, and that we are complete failures when we attempt any change and end up failing.
In a twisted way, the ego and the saboteur voice are trying to protect us (after all, change used to be much scarier and more consequential for humans long ago), but like overzealous, contemporary helicopter parents, they go too far and end up inflicting far more collateral damage than aid.
From the ego’s perspective, if we didn’t deserve the job, then it’s only right (i.e. under control, according to plan) that we didn’t get it. The ego’s job is to motivate us to keep surviving. Therefore, the idea of being diminished in any way is anathema to the ego. So, the ego deals with demotivating outcomes by constantly inventing new perceptions of reality, where the rejection/failure is actually perceived as a rational, expected outcome. The problem is: as a control-freak, the ego always goes overboard.
Instead of simply accepting that it bumped into something that it couldn’t control and accepting this outcome (which would mean deflating a little, which runs the risk of causing demotivation) the ego chooses instead to send its saboteur henchman to savage us, so that the failure can be seen as in our control. The saboteur voice then tries — often persuasively — to convince us that not only did we not deserve that job, but we don’t deserve our entire career. This enables the ego to feel comfortable again and back in control, because anything bad that happens from here on out was to be predicted.
Ironically, this leads to the saboteur voice to continue operating for a while with only a negative charge. When something happens that falls outside of the negative narrative (e.g. an unexpected raise), the saboteur continues savaging us, telling us that it was a fluke and that we didn’t deserve that, either.
How appealing does all of this sound?
Are you ready to fight back against the saboteur voice?
Two words that can quell the voice of the saboteur
Hopefully by now you’re ready to stand up for yourself and fight back.
There are many things that you can do to quell the voice of the saboteur. Yoga, meditation, breathwork, affirmations, practicing self-acceptance and love, journaling, leaving yourself visual reminders, and countless other ideas are all good options.
You can also talk to a personal development coach, like me. If you’re curious about that, you can book a free, 60-minute exploratory coaching session with me here.
Yet, there is an even easier place to start. It takes just two words.
When you start to hear the voice of the saboteur talking you down in the face of failure, repeat the following words:
So what?
That’s it. That’s all it takes to start defending yourself from the voice of the saboteur.
So what if you didn’t get that job? That job interview doesn’t have to be some end of course litmus test for the entire semester that is your career, unless you let it.
You can even pre-empt events in the future that your saboteur starts lashing you over before they pan out.
“So what if I don’t get that job?”
Saying so what is like inserting a chisel into the wall face of the saboteur’s crushing mountain self-rejection that you can cling to. It challenges the end-all nature of the saboteur’s narrative. Every time you repeat the words “so what” into the face of the negative thoughts, you will insert another anchor to hold you steadier instead of falling, and when you start to believe it you will start actually climbing.
You can start practicing this at any time, anywhere, with anything.
So what if I didn’t get any likes on that post?
So what if I didn’t get praise for my presentation?
So what if I didn’t know what to say and there was a moment of silence?
When saying so what, it’s very, very important to just say “so what,” and then stop. Use “so what” to stop the saboteur’s train of thought, or at most stick to the facts, but refrain from adding any embellishments, a justification, or a label.
You can say:
“So what if I didn’t get the job?”
“So what if I didn’t get the job? At least they gave me an answer within a week.”
“So what if I didn’t get the job? I thought I had it, so it sure surprised me that I didn’t get it!”
But don’t say:
“So what if I didn’t get the job. I thought I had it, and now I’ll never have another shot at my dream job.”
“So what if I didn’t get the job? It was out of my league anyway.”
“So what if I didn’t get the job? I guess I really messed up the interview pretty bad.”
Or better yet, start envisioning what you might do to move forward now that you aren’t crushed by the rejection.
“So what if I didn’t get the job? I can always apply to more jobs, and also if I ask them, maybe they’ll give me some feedback on why they didn’t pick me that can help with future interviews.”
If you give your ego and saboteur a dose of reality with “so what,” you’ll dilute the power of the stories they tell, giving you a more sober view of what the process of change (that is: the prospects and action of change doesn’t have to be scary). The more you build your “so what” habit, the less ground you’ll lose to setbacks and failures.
The best thing about so what is that it doesn’t take more than saying those two words to begin, and you don’t have to know what to do next. When you bring your mind back into the present by saying and believing “so what” in response to a setback, your mind will automatically move towards the “now what,” by tapping into the energy that would have been wasted in lamenting and obsessing over the setback.
Give it a try for yourself!
That’s all for today – thanks for reading! Learn more about how working with a personal development coach can help you to live a more fulfilling life, sign up for my newsletter, and stay tuned for more self-discovery essays!