Saboteur Archetype

It can take a lifetime to build a reputation, but seemingly only seconds to destroy it.

History is littered with people who seemingly had it all. and then did something, (or a series of somethings) that caused them to plummet to the depths of disgrace, and oftentimes they never really got back to their glory days.

For example, men like Wayne Carey, or Shane Warne, or Bill Clinton, or Jack Welsh men who seemingly had it all, and yet they sabotaged their lives through affairs that the world had to find out about. Or think about Winona Ryder, who was arrested  for shoplifting when she was at the height of her fame and she never really recovered.

Or Katherine Heigel, who earned the  dreaded hard to work with reputation due to her inappropriate and disparaging comments about fellow cast members, producers, directors, et cetera. 

And of course, we have that laundry list of  celebs who fueled their hitting rock bottom through drugs and alcohol.  

Now, sometimes it may look like arrogance or narcissism gone mad, but oftentimes there could be something a little deeper going on.

Welcome to the Saboteur 

Self-sabotage is something we will all face at some point or another in our life. I know I've sabotaged myself plenty of times. What about you?

Helps you to examine your self-worth

Now, the saboteur helps you to examine your self worth and to be very clear, the purpose of this archetype is not to sabotage you, but to help you learn the many ways in which you sabotage and undermine yourself.

Do you remember my, there's the gate moment. That was my saboteur in action. It was me blocking my own success. You see, for many months I had felt under pressure to perform at a level I had never seen before, let alone attempted. I was working with a team of really well educated, smart, going places, leaders.

In fact, all of them men, except for me, creating a high performing culture, that to my knowledge, no other organization in Australia was even close to doing at the time. We were so at the leading edge of high performance that we had multiple companies coming to benchmark and learn from us.

Little old me, Shelley Holmes from Manurewa High had been hired to be one of the instrumental leaders in designing, creating, and leading this culture.

I was so far out of my depth.

Talk about pressure!

And when you're under pressure long enough, something has to give.

But let me give you a little bit of background. My school was in a very low socioeconomic neighborhood. We were pretty much fodder for low paying work.

It was kind like, if the girls were smart, they became secretaries, and if they weren't that smart, they went and worked in the clothing factories down the road or had babies.

If the boys were smart, they got an apprenticeship, and if they weren't, they ended up working either in the abattoirs or one of the metal yards or something like that.

Certainly, none of us were expected to go on to higher education or really to make anything of ourselves. Most of our teachers and the way the system was set up with the subjects we could take, it made that abundantly clear.

And the funny thing is, even though my parents encouraged me saying, "You can do anything you want," there just wasn't enough reference points in my community for me to believe Mum and Dad.

To believe that I could go on and get a degree and become a manager.

We didn't know any managers. I mean, for goodness sake, did they even poop the same way we did?

My parents were probably the closest to professional people in my circle of friends. They owned a very small corner store that barely broke even. So when I left school, I became a secretary.

Fast forward five years and one of my first great mentors (who happened at the time to be one of the youngest C-suite executives in Australia), he said to me, "Shelley, you're more than a secretary. Why don't you go and get a degree?"

And poof.  He was my Wizard of Oz. He had the  magical touch.

He believed I could ... so I did go on and get that degree. I did go on and start moving up that career ladder.

But you know something's gonna go wrong, right? .

Unfortunately, I hadn't successfully dealt with my self-esteem in this area.

So even though I was getting my degree and promotions, I have a litany of examples of where I was sabotaging myself. From going out all night to nightclubs and slumbering into work at 8:00 AM in a mini skirt, stripper heels and makeup smeared all over my face.

I mean, I was terrible in my twenties!

To bossing people around like I was the king of the world.

And when I got that ultimate job I'd ever desired at Colgate at the age of 31, I was so far out of my comfort zone and my self-esteem levels that something had to give. On the inside. I felt like a fake and a fraud.

Me from little town Auckland who had no right to think she could be a leader.

Now, of course, these weren't really conscious thoughts.

It was just that I constantly felt this urge to prove myself, to prove my capability, to justify the big bucks I was being paid.

And, because I was so afraid that I wasn't capable of making it happen, my short fuse at my team members constantly flared. Causing me to damage relationships and make some pretty poor decisions.

Now, thankfully, I don't feel that way anymore. But it has been a rigorous journey to shine that light on why I kept sabotaging my success. So the point is we do dumb things to get us out of situations where we don't feel worthy. And I certainly didn't feel worthy of that role.

Shouting at that brand new team, "if you don't like it, there's the gate you can ..." was absolutely me sabotaging my success.

I had placed unreal expectations on myself. Which meant I placed unrealistic expectations on the team. And boy did they feel my fury when they let me down or didn't do what I wanted, or challenged me in any way, because if they failed to perform, of course, that was all my fault!

And to be fair, most of that pressure came from me. It wasn't coming from my bosses.

The clue your saboteur is at work ...

So if you ever catch yourself asking this question, "Why did I do that? What was I thinking?" take that as a clue that your saboteur is at work and you'd best have a good long look at your self-esteem and sense of self-worth in that area.

Your saboteur archetype is an operation whenever you make choices that cause you to harm your own success. People don't mean to sabotage themselves, but as surely as you'll have have a hole in your foot if you point a loaded gun at it and pull the trigger, if your self-esteem isn't at the level of where you find your circumstance, you'll self correct.

For example, the salesperson whose income starts to outstrip his or her self-esteem levels   stops making the phone calls. They'll justify it with all sorts of rational and logical sounding excuses about why  they can't make the phone calls. But excuses and justification it is.

Because if you put that loaded gun to your head and said, "Make the sales calls."

All those excuses would surely disappear.

It all comes down to the choice you make in the moment. You will feel a fear or a pressure to perform. As I said, it's not as conscious thought, "Oooh, let me sabotage myself, so this pressure will go away because I'm not this good, I'm not this worthy." That doesn't happen like that.

When you're feeling uncomfortable watch out for the saboteur

Instead, somewhere on the inside, you feel uncomfortable.

For example, you might have a feeling of anxiety or doubt, or looking stupid, or lacking confidence, fearing failure. You often can experience it physically as feeling nervy, uptight, on edge, under pressure, and it's right there in those moments, in those types of moments where you'll need to make the choice.

To acknowledge the fear.

Acknowledge the messages your body's sending you, the tension,  the pressure, the gripped up tummy, the pounding head, the tight packed shoulders,  and then make the choice to be all you can be and move your life forward in a positive way.

Ignore your saboteur at your own peril

Or you could feel the fear, ignore it, ignore all those messages, and allow it to dictate that you do something that will ensure that you bring yourself back to the level of which your self-esteem feels you're worthy.

Certainly my self-esteem wasn't at the level of being a leader, particularly in the high performance company. And what better way to get away from the pressure of being 'this good' than to do dumb things?

So exactly how do we get our self-esteem? 

Well, psychology tells us that self-esteem is based in part on the values and opinions of others, your life experiences and the social comparisons you make.

So you either build or demolish your sense of self-worth through your reference groups. These are the groups or people that you compare yourself against and the groups and people with whom you associate.

And so you either perceive yourself as better than or worse than others, which is known as upward or downward social comparisons.

If you're overly concerned about what "they" will think, take this as a clue that you've got some work to do on your self-esteem.

Some of the hallmarks, or someone with low self-esteem is that they