How Do I Start Working on Self-Sabotage Patterns? First Steps
The first article on this question gave a five-step sequence: get specific, build a historical map, identify the function, identify the level, begin one level-appropriate practice. This article addresses a more common starting scenario: someone who suspects the pattern but is confused about where to begin because everything seems connected.
Q: I know I have self-sabotage patterns but I’m overwhelmed by how connected everything is. My pricing affects my visibility affects my positioning affects my confidence. Where do I actually start when it all seems related?
The Interconnection Is Real
Everything feeling connected is accurate. Self-sabotage patterns in one territory often interact with and reinforce patterns in adjacent territories. The pricing pattern affects the client relationship dynamics, which affects the positioning, which affects the visibility, which affects the income, which reinforces the pricing pattern.
Attempting to address everything simultaneously is the common mistake. The system is too interconnected to work on all at once. Working on all at once produces low-quality work in multiple territories without traction in any.
The Single Point of Entry
The starting principle: find one specific territory — one behavior, in one context — and begin there. Let everything else go for now.
The territory to begin with is not the most important or the most consequential. It is the most accessible: the territory where you have the most clarity about the pattern’s expression, where the discomfort is manageable, and where you can take a concrete action in the next week.
For many people, this is pricing. The pricing conversation is specific, recurring, and measurable. The pattern’s expression is clearly visible: did the rate hold, or didn’t it? This specificity makes it a tractable starting point.
For others, visibility is clearer: did the content go out consistently, or did it not? The behavior is trackable.
Start where the behavior is most concrete and most trackable.
The Four-Week Initial Commitment
Pick one behavior in the starting territory and commit to tracking it for four weeks. Not changing it — tracking it.
- For pricing: track every pricing conversation in four weeks. For each: what was the somatic state before stating the rate? What was the narrative that appeared? Did the rate hold? What was the actual outcome?
- For visibility: track every content decision in four weeks. For each: what was the somatic state when preparing to publish? What narrative appeared? Did the content go out? What was the response?
The tracking produces a clear picture of the pattern in the specific territory — which is the foundation for level-appropriate work.
Why One Territory First
Working in one territory for four weeks before expanding:
Produces actual data. Abstract pattern awareness doesn’t produce the specific data that tracking does. The data is what guides the level-appropriate work.
Builds the skill of working with the pattern. The skills — body tracking, narrative recognition, outcome recording — are transferable. Building them in one territory makes working in other territories easier.
Avoids the overwhelm of simultaneous work. The interconnection that feels overwhelming when trying to address everything is much more navigable when one territory is stabilizing. Progress in one territory often produces secondary effects in adjacent territories without direct work.
When to Expand
After four weeks of tracking in the starting territory, you have data and beginning skill. At that point:
- Continue level-appropriate work in the starting territory (don’t abandon it)
- Identify the second territory — the one most strongly connected to the first
- Begin four weeks of tracking in the second territory
The expansion is gradual. The interconnection becomes an asset rather than an obstacle: work in one territory informs the work in the next.
The Invitation
The Abundance GPS community provides the structured support for beginning this work in one territory and expanding it progressively — with community witness and the monthly GPS+I cycle to organize the arc.
Seven-day free trial.