A Little Secret About Sabotage (Compliments of Cutthroat Kitchen)

I remember one of my fave guilty pleasures a handful of years back—Cutthroat Kitchen.

In case you’re not aware of the show (What?!?! That can’t possibly be?!?!), it’s a competition cooking show in which four chefs bid to earn ways to sabotage one another’s dishes. The last one standing the winner.

What’s fascinating to me is how much it’s taught me about sabotage.

You see, there are actually two forms of sabotage:

* What the chefs do to each other (in other words, what someone else does to you).

This type is obvious—a chef gets to force another chef to somehow make two completely opposite ingredients work together.

* What you do to yourself (in other words, how you sabotage yourself).

How do the chefs sabotage themselves? Well, they do things like forget to grab sugar when making a dessert, or decide to do THEIR take on a dish (which is nothing like what the dish is SUPPOSED to be. The reality is, they get a little too cute for their own good).

Here’s what’s interesting about the different sabotages:

In my rough, very unscientific analysis, I would say the chef loses because of someone else’s sabotage only about 30% of the time. (And it may even be less.)

But when they sabotage themselves? They lose nearly 100% of the time.

So, what does that tell you? Despite the seduction of blaming someone or something else (the weather, the economy, your family situation, your past, your finances, your health, etc.), outside forces are not nearly as effective at sabotaging you as you are.

Now, with a cooking show, it’s a lot easier to see what you’re doing to yourself. You’re supposed to make lobsters rolls and you forget to grab your lobster? Yeah, that’s a problem. It’s not nearly so obvious in our own lives or business.

So, the next time you’re upset or frustrated because you haven’t gotten the results you want, rather than blame something “outside” yourself, I invite you to take a moment to check out what’s going on “inside.” You may be surprised at what you find.

If you’d like to dig into this a little bit more, you may want to pick up a copy of my Love-Based Money and Mindset book.