What uprooting self-sabotage looks like
Do you struggle with self-sabotage? I certainly do. Let me define what it is, because I've been reading a book called The Mountain Is You, and it talks about different forms of self-sabotage. Today I want to talk about the form called uprooting.
Uprooting is best described through my childhood as a military brat. My mother was in the military from the time I was one year old all the way through when I was in college. Every few years, about three years or so on average, we would pack up and move and go somewhere completely new. So every three years, for all of my childhood, I was used to leaving everything I knew behind except my family. All my friends, all my, my house, everywhere I would go to eat and go to play. Every three years, you just start over. Total annihilation.
The surprising thing I've found in my business as a full-time YouTuber and content creator is that I seem to play that out in my business too. It's even faster sometimes. There are a few years where I build, I start something new, and then either through the way I'm handling it or otherwise, it all comes apart. I started teaching online courses in 2014. On Udemy, I got to be a top 10 instructor. I was absolutely insane about it. I was creating 70 some online courses. I was partnering with everybody. I was just creating crazy levels of online courses. And I was a top 10 instructor, and then they banned me.
After that, I went heavy into crypto for a couple of years and then I quit. Then I went into music for a year and I quit. Then I went into gaming and I quit. Repeat that out. The most recent thing really drives it home, where multiple times I've actually deleted all the videos off of my YouTube channels. A couple of years ago I got a community guidelines strike on YouTube, my first one ever after creating content for over a decade on YouTube, thousands of videos, tons of different subjects. And I deleted all the videos on my whole channel because I wanted to niche down and do music. Then most recently, I deleted all the videos on my crypto channel because I was afraid of getting caught out legally. I didn't use any disclaimers on my videos. I just hyped price and didn't pay any attention to potential legal consequences.
Seeing it for what it really is
I realize now, looking at The Mountain Is You book, that was a form of self-sabotage. That was the uprooting self-sabotage, where I'm getting rid of everything and forcing myself to restart. And it was driven by fear of being caught. Realistically, most people I don't think would have figured I should have done that. When I explain it, most people say: you didn't need to do that, you didn't have anything to worry about, you're way overcompensating, way over the top, totally unnecessary.
But for me, what I identify with in The Mountain Is You is the idea that self-sabotage is meeting a need for you. What I've noticed is that as a content creator, I've boxed myself into doing certain forms of content, and the self-sabotage is actually a way of meeting my needs. I've been miserably bored with creating crypto content for a long time now. I've quit multiple times. And you ask, why is it that hard? Well, the only content I've done lately that's made good money is the crypto content too. There are days when I enjoy making crypto content. I filmed a bunch of videos with Blockchain Pill today, and I absolutely enjoyed making that content with him, for sure. At the same time, most days I don't want to just film a video about crypto or do a live stream about crypto. I don't want to every day be researching and obsessing about crypto. There's so much more to life than crypto.
So the self-sabotage is meeting my need: you want freedom, you're bored. I found this with gaming too. I used to be really frustrated, and sometimes still am, that after I've made 10,000 plus videos, I've gotten tens and tens of millions of views, hundreds of millions of impressions on my videos, billions of impressions if you count all the online ads, and yet I end up asking my wife for money because she has a full-time job and because I don't want to sell my crypto that I've made while everything's down.
From victim to ownership
I used to be very confused as to why everything kept happening the way it did. I felt like a victim before. Udemy banned me; they treated me unfairly. Facebook demonetized me; they treated me unfairly. Maybe those narratives have some validity to them, but I can't do anything about people treating me unfairly. That's an external thing. People are going to treat you unfairly. That's life. At the same time, I recognize I did stuff to put myself in a position to be treated unfairly. Prior to being treated unfairly, I was bored. I was desperate for some more expansion.
What I intend to do going forward is to never delete another video again that I make on YouTube. I intend to make every video I upload one that's worth watching 50 years from now, and that I never need to delete again. I intend to be free of the uprooting self-sabotage. I used to move consistently even when I had my freedom. After I moved out of my parents' house, I moved and constantly changed jobs and girlfriends. So this is the most stable my life has ever been, and the desire for the uprooting self-sabotage has been really hardcore a lot of times.
Letting success arrive and stay
I intend to allow the success that's coming to me on YouTube to come, and to stop stopping it. I look at BusyWorksBeats. He and I have done similar levels of work on our content, and he's got 200 million views and 6,000 some videos uploaded. If I hadn't self-sabotaged, that's what I'd look like. I'm proud of him and what he's done, and that's where I intend to go from here. I want to upload 6,000 videos on YouTube and get the views. I don't have to worry about the views, because if I upload 6,000 videos, I guarantee you there will be enough views. I really want to have a thousand videos back on my YouTube channel as soon as possible.
A lot of times when I've been creating in the past, I've thought: why even bother creating, because I'm just going to delete it all one day? Now it's like, yes, I realize one day it'll all be gone, but you know what? Maybe I won't delete it, and maybe I won't get banned the next time. Maybe. It's a different mindset. Creating with a short-term view means I'm going to just crank out as much as I can and get what I can now because it's all going to be over soon. Versus: I want to make videos on YouTube that will still be here 10 years from now, that people will still be watching 10 years from now, that I'll be interested to look back at 10 years from now.
It takes identifying in yourself the various things you're doing. In my experience, naming my uprooting self-sabotage is what keeps me from repeating it, and I've found there's a lot of self-sabotage I used to do that I don't anymore. If this resonates with you and you want to dig deeper into the mindset side of building something that lasts, you can explore my YouTube Coaching playlist, where I share more of what's worked for me along the way.