I’ll self-sabotage. Even for a plate of spoiled bbq chicken.
Self-sabotage is the corrupted gassy SOB that stalks happiness. Here’s why.
My ex/babydaddy and I were camping in Germany, in the most perfect campground right on the Rhine. They do that shit right over there. Immaculate, lovely pitches. They even had a massive draft beer garden.
And the best bit — the owners of the campground had a Golden Retriever called Yoshi von der haus Graffenbach. We actually spent so much time with him that they gave us a framed photo of Yoshi when we left.
Anyway, that’s not the point! The point is that one day Yoshi distracted me so much I drank about a million pints of beer in the insanely hot July sun.
Yes, I am blaming the dog.
It was a perfect day. PERFECT. Life doesn’t get any better than that, right? Sparkling river. Ice cold beer. And HEAT. SO MUCH HEAT. I felt so relaxed. And got very drunk.
Anyway, when we staggered back into the stuffy boiling hot camper van which must have been at least 120 degrees.…there it was on the table, just minding it’s own business.
Leftover. BBQ. Chicken. Kebabs.
That plate had been sitting there in the stifling summer heat ALL DAY.
I got one of my famous Genius Drunk Ideas©. You can see where this is going, right? I eyed that plate of kebabs up. And it eyed me right back. And winked.
Ex/babydaddy had the AUDACITY to try and separate me from my destiny of chickeny goodness. “Don’t do it!” he said. He even tried to bring “science” and “E. Coli” into it.
Ridiculous.
Of course I ate them. I shoved them right down my stupid mouth. After I put extra hot sauce on them.
But. Then.
You know what I’m going to say, so I’m not going to go into any details. Just imagine the worst food poisoning you’ve ever had in your life took steroids and isolated itself into a group of fellow food poisonings that were hellbent on self-empowerment and ruling the world.
Now imagine that your food poisoning was so…prolific…that you had to live in the campground toilet block for two days (because I could not bring the Stupidity Plague into our tiny personal camper van facilities. Gross).
“Life is hard. But it’s harder if you’re stupid.”
So I lived on a public toilet stall floor, with blanket, for TWO DAYS AND NIGHTS, shivering, wishing my psychotic Pastor from childhood was right and God would actually rain fire and brimstone down onto me personally because I was a special kind of rebellious, jean-jacket-wearing 13-year-old.
Anyway, while I was trading all my internal organs for the last shred of dignity I had, I pondered life and had a few thoughts.
Deep down I am a chaos monster.
Why did I ruin such a perfect day with an obvious plate of death?
And then I completely forgot about it because my memory is terrible (I lived in Amsterdam for a year before then so you do the math).
BUT THEN, a couple of years ago, I read an amazing book called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. And in it, he talks about self-sabotage.
And OH MY GOD.
Okay, here it is. It’s called the Upper Limit Problem. Happens a lot in people who had tough childhoods.
Gay says to think of a thermostat. It’s set to a certain degree, so when the temperature in the air starts to go too high, the A/C kicks in to bring the temperature back down.
Happiness, joy, and abundance are like a thermostat. It’s set at a certain level — the level of happiness that we think we deserve to enjoy.
And the moment something really good happens to us (like a job or promotion or we fall in love or whatever the good thing is) this kicks in the thermostat to bring the happiness level back down to the level we’ve set for ourselves.
And that’s why we self-sabotage. It puts the temperature back where it “should” be. It’s subconscious. We don’t even realise that we do it.
This was an absolute revelation. So yes, those chicken kebabs were a drunk decision, but I don’t generally eat plates of death even when I’m drunk.
But I did it after I had a perfect day. Hmmm.
Thoughts were racing. Cogs were turning. I do this upper limit! I totally do this!
There are 1 JILLION examples in my past, here are three random ones.
When I got a new job I loved, a week later at the Christmas Party I joined everyone in so much Christmas cheer that I decided to walk back to the house in December in the dark and got lost at 4am.
(Before I moved back to England) We were visiting when I was 19, on the first day I was so freaking happy that I climbed up this playground ride, fell off and ended up in the hospital with a cast and crutches.
When I was about 11 I got a mega pack of kind-of-stale-Twizzlers I ate one after the next, until the disk in my jaw popped out and locked my jaw closed.
Lordy. There were so many examples of me sabotaging myself in one way or another. Some little things, some WOW sized.
My happiness thermostat needed to get gone.
But just knowing that it existed was so helpful. Because now I could recognise when my brain was getting a little fucky with me. I could now stop it in its tracks.
I’m much, much better with it now. The thermostat is set to higher too so I actually allow myself a lot more happiness when it comes. I’m not saying that it’s totally solved.
It isn’t.
But it’s getting there. No more spoiled bbq chicken for me.
