Why You’re Not Sabotaging Yourself

Why you’re not sabotaging yourself is simpler than a willpower problem. You’re living what you really value, and it already shows in how you fill your space, where your time and money go, where you’re organized and disciplined, and what you think and talk about most. Dr. John Demartini calls these value determinants. Once you can see your real values, you have two choices. Set goals that match them, or change your values to match your goals.

A couple of nights before we recorded this episode, I went to one of John’s events. It was about a two-hour session and I could see people all over the room having breakthroughs. So when he sat down with me for the podcast (it went up in August 2016), I had a list of questions I didn’t get to ask that night.

The answer that stuck with me most came near the end. I asked him about people who keep sabotaging themselves with money. He told me he doesn’t even like the word. More on that below, because it’s the most useful reframe in the whole conversation.

Why what you say you value isn’t what you really value

John has written over a hundred books, including The Values Factor, and in my intro I said he’d read close to 30,000 books. His whole body of work comes back to one idea. Everybody lives by a set of priorities, from most important to least important, and your life already demonstrates them.

The problem is that if you ask people what their values are, they hand you what he called “social idealisms.” Family. Health. Kindness. Wealth. The stuff that sounds right.

He brought up the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg here. As John put it, most people are either avoiding pain and seeking pleasure, subordinating to mothers, fathers, preachers and teachers, or following the herd of whatever their society says is normal. Very few are living by what they actually value.

Then he said the line I want you to remember:

“I’m not interested in what people say. I’m interested in what they’re living.”

He also warned about injecting other people’s values into your life. Learning from mentors is smart. Trying to be somebody you’re not, in his words, is “almost guaranteed to be self-defeating.”

How to tell what you really value: the value determinants

When I asked how we become more conscious of our values, John listed the questions he uses. Answer them honestly, based on what you actually do and not what you wish you did:

• How do you fill your space? What’s sitting around you right now?
• What do you spend your time on?
• What energizes you?
• What do you spend your money on most?
• Where are you most organized?
• Where are you most disciplined?
• What do you think about, visualize and affirm to yourself most, and is it already coming true?
• What do you love talking to other people about?
• What inspires you, and what do the people who inspire you have in common?
• What’s a goal that’s persisted in your life and keeps getting achieved?
• What do you love learning about?

Look for the answers that repeat. That’s your real hierarchy, not the one you’d put on a vision board. John has a free version of this on his site, the Demartini Value Determination process. He said it takes about 30 minutes, and you can come back every three months to see how your values are shifting.

Here’s the one that hit me personally. I said to the audience, look at your library. What books are in it right now? It’ll show you what you value most. Then I had to admit something on air. I know for sure I don’t have enough books on finance. I wasn’t struggling, but I felt like I could be doing a lot better. John said he’d read about 1,400 books on finance and economics. That’s the difference in one shelf.

Why you’re not sabotaging yourself

This is the part I mentioned at the top. I asked John whether people who can’t get ahead financially are sabotaging themselves because they can’t hold the money in their container.

He pushed back straight away. He said he doesn’t find sabotage a productive word, because when someone says they’re sabotaging themselves, it means they don’t know what their real values are. They keep expecting to live by somebody else’s values. When their actions keep following their own, they call it sabotage.

Once they see their real values, he said, the story changes. They stop seeing sabotage and start seeing decisions that make perfect sense. “No wonder I keep doing that.”

I think that’s more useful than any amount of beating yourself up. You’re not broken. You’re doing exactly what your real values tell you to do. If you don’t like the results, the fix is the values or the goal, not more willpower.

Your spending already shows what you really value

I told John that so many people live in the fantasy of being wealthy. They see the glitz and the glamour, and it ends up being more of a nightmare than a fantasy.

He said he’s asked millions of people worldwide if they want to be financially independent. They all put their hands up. But in their minds they’re picturing the lifestyles of the rich and famous. They’re spending on depreciables and consumables that won’t build an asset base. In his experience, 1% or less actually want to study the numbers, study investments and patiently build assets over time.

His line was blunt: “Tell me what you value most, I’m going to show you where your money is going to go.”

Think of the person who says they can’t get ahead, then keeps spending on clothes, trips and instant gratification. In his view, they don’t really want to be wealthy. They want to live the things they keep doing. He said he’s interviewed billionaires and people who are broke, and the ones who are committed to building wealth have it in their top four values. The others don’t.

That’s not investment advice, and it isn’t a judgment on anyone’s spending. It’s a mirror. If you want the mindset side of money, read how to change your money blueprint before it caps your income. Here, the question is simpler. Does your bank statement agree with what you say you want?

The only two ways to fulfillment

John said there are only two ways to have fulfillment. Set goals that match your values, or change your values to match your goals. They have to be congruent.

To change a value, you stack up associations. List the benefits of something you want to rise on your value list and it goes up, because now you have more reasons to do it. List the drawbacks of something you want to drop and it goes down.

I asked if that’s just putting pen to pad. He said no. Writing it is an inventory, but you have to actually feel those benefits and drawbacks until they change your perception. He gave the example of an eight-year-old girl singing in front of 400 people at school. If they give her a standing ovation, she’ll want to sing again. If she forgets her words and people walk out, she probably won’t. We already move through our values based on pains and pleasures. You can let the world do that to you, or you can take command of it.

For wealth specifically, his process went like this:

1. Find out where wealth building actually sits on your value list.
2. Raise it, using that stacking process.
3. Link what you need to learn to the values you already have.
4. Learn the way you learn best. Visual, auditory or kinesthetic. YouTube, mentors and small chunks of reading all count.

He said you don’t have to read books to become financially savvy. He’s had mentors in almost every area of finance, and one hour with them is sometimes better than the book. Everybody loves learning what’s important to them.

Inspiration vs motivation

I asked John the difference, and his answer is the simplest I’ve heard. When you live by your highest value, you’re inspired from within. Nobody has to remind you. As you go down the list, things get more extrinsic, and you need outside motivation to do them.

His highest value is researching and teaching. He said he does it every day and doesn’t miss one. Domestic stuff? He said he’s about as domestic as a cockroach. He made a list of what he loves (research, writing, traveling and teaching) and delegated everything else.

I jumped in with “high income generating activities.” He added one word: meaning. You want income because it means you’re serving others, and meaning because it’s serving you. Put the two together and you’ve got your niche.

If you’re still doing every low-priority task in your business yourself, that’s often the real reason you’re burned out. And John didn’t think burnout comes from hours. He said people doing what they love can go 18 hours a day without feeling stressed, while someone forcing themselves through uninspiring work for that long is heading for a heart attack. He also said that whenever you’re not fulfilling your highest values, you increase the odds of addictive, compulsive behavior to compensate.

I told him about a mate of mine who’s worth hundreds of millions and is happy and grateful all the time. I was standing there when somebody asked if he ever burns out. He laughed and said he wasn’t a candle. John’s take: he’s doing something meaningful and serving a lot of people.

John went further on the brain side, too. He believes that when you work toward your highest values, the brain remodels itself to support it, and the executive center lights up. He also said the brain is about 10% neurons and 90% glia, and that the study of glial cells will matter as much as neurology in the decades ahead. Take that as John’s view, not settled science. He also recalled Deepak Chopra’s Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: live on purpose and you age differently.

Where entrepreneurs get their values wrong

I asked if there’s anything apart from values that holds people back. He said one of the most unwise things an entrepreneur does is assume what’s important to them is important to everybody. They come out with a cool idea and spend years fighting uphill.

He described two overlapping circles, like a vesica piscis. One is what you’re inspired to do. The other is what people are inspired to receive. The center is where the power is. If you can’t wait to get up in the morning and deliver it, and they can’t wait to get it, you’ve found your niche.

Can everybody be an entrepreneur? He said the capacity is in everyone, though not everyone will use it. He’s seen people who worked for security their whole lives find that overlap and take off.

What self-love has to do with your values

I get emails about this all the time, so I asked: how do we love ourselves more?

John said the only time we don’t appreciate ourselves is when we compare our daily actions to other people’s values that we’ve injected into our lives. Live by your own and you can look in the mirror and say thank you. He told me a Vogue magazine interviewer once asked who he’d be if he could be anyone in the world. His answer: “I have no desire to be anybody but me.”

His last 30-second speech was the same idea. Look in the mirror and know that no matter what you’ve done or not done, you’re worthy of love. And give yourself permission to do something extraordinary.

Here’s my take. Most people already know what they really value. They just don’t like the answer. So pull up your calendar, your bank statement and your bookshelf this week, write down what they say, and decide which way you’re going. Change the goal or change the value. Knowing this and doing nothing with it is the same as not knowing.

FAQ

How do you know what you really value?

Look at your actions, not your words. Dr. John Demartini’s value determinants ask how you fill your space, spend your time and money, where you’re organized and disciplined, and what you think, talk and love learning about. The answers that repeat are your real values.

What is the difference between inspiration and motivation?

Inspiration comes from your highest values, so you act without reminders or rewards. Motivation is the outside push you need for things lower on your value list. Demartini says the further down the list a task sits, the more motivation it takes.

Is self-sabotage really a values mismatch?

Demartini says what people call sabotage usually means they’re judging themselves by someone else’s values while acting on their own. Once you see your real values, the pattern looks like a decision, not a failure, and you can change the goal or the value.

Can you change your values?

Yes. Demartini’s method is to stack associations. Link many real benefits to a value you want to rise and drawbacks to one you want to drop, and actually feel them. The alternative is setting goals that match the values you already have.

Why can’t I get ahead financially if I want to be wealthy?

Demartini’s view is that your spending follows your values. If money keeps going to consumables instead of building assets, wealth building probably isn’t high on your value list yet. That’s a values question first, not a willpower one. Speak to a licensed advisor for financial advice.