Self-Sabotage and Creative Resistance: Getting Out of My Own Way

Short answer: I now think self-sabotage is the main reason my YouTube career looks smaller than the work behind it, and creative resistance is what keeps you from doing the work at all. After 14 years on YouTube, my problem was never a lack of videos. I had a habit of getting in my own way: quitting channels, deleting finished videos, and walking away right when things started to work. The fix I've found is not a new algorithm trick. It is naming the pattern and showing up anyway.

If you searched for this, you're probably a creator who keeps stopping, or you read Steven Pressfield's book and wondered how to apply it. Here is how my thinking moved, from January 2025 to June 2026.

My first clear take came from my post on Steven Pressfield's The War of Art, recorded on January 28, 2025, on my 4,992nd day on YouTube. The book gave me language for resistance: the empty head, the sudden urge to go to Home Depot instead of going live, the thought that my videos are crap. My answer was simple. You show up, you go live, you write, you play, whatever your mind says. I still believe that. I said I felt I was winning the war of art because I had broken through resistance over and over.

What I missed then was that some of my resistance was not resistance at all. It was a need I was trying to meet. In my June 2026 post on self-sabotage and The Mountain Is You, I named the form I kept repeating, which the book calls uprooting. I grew up as a military brat, and every three years or so my family packed up and started over somewhere new. That habit followed me into business. I became a top 10 Udemy instructor out of tens of thousands, and then Udemy banned me. After that I went heavy into crypto and quit. I went into music for a year and quit. I went into gaming and quit. Each time, I started over.

The most expensive version was deleting. In my frustration post I laid out numbers I'm not proud of. I've uploaded somewhere north of 5,000 videos and recorded more than 10,000. My original channel now shows 287 videos, because I deleted several thousand, around 500 toxic videos about other coins, and hundreds of crypto videos that lacked disclaimers about how much ICP I hold. Out of more than 3,000 videos on that original channel, exactly one was ever flagged by community guidelines. I deleted most of them out of anger, and because I kept chasing more views that never felt like enough.

Under that anger was a feeling I still work on: watching other creators hurt. I've filmed over 5,000 videos, done over 1,000 live streams, and deleted videos with 30-plus million views on them. The first 30 million are the hardest to get. When I made a video thanking BusyWorksBeats, who has around 200 million views and about 6,000 uploads, it was hard to film, because I could see the version of me that did not self-sabotage.

The lesson I took from all of that is about control. I can't control views. I can control what I upload and which channel I put it on. For two or three years I did my crypto videos on a separate channel, and I should have kept everything on one. My current intent, which I wrote down in the self-sabotage post, is to never delete another video I make on YouTube, and to make each one worth watching 50 years from now.

Rest is different from quitting. I used to be so rigid that I believed videos had to go up even while I was away, and that rigidity was its own kind of resistance. Now if I take a week off, I publish nothing that week, and my audience does not disappear overnight. Burnout is also what drove me to sell more than $10,000 of equipment in 2020 for about half its value. I later bought it back and started live streaming again on a $600 computer from Facebook Marketplace.

So here is where I've landed. Resistance tells you not to start. Self-sabotage tells you to start over, delete it, or quit once it starts working. You beat both by doing the least you can, doing it consistently, keeping it simple, and not checking analytics as if the platform owes you something. How I define success as a creator without views or money goes further on what I measure now, and why I keep tearing it down covers the deletion side in its own post.

Self-Sabotage, The Mountain Is You, and Uprooting

From my video published June 17, 2026.

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.

Everything I'm Frustrated About as a YouTuber and Streamer

From my video published June 17, 2026.

This is a memorable one for me, because I want to talk about everything I'm frustrated with right now as a YouTuber and a Twitch live streamer. The whole purpose of doing this is so that I can take an honest inventory of myself. If you've ever struggled with self-sabotage the way I have, you know what I mean. Self-sabotage is when you screw yourself over. As Superman watching on Twitch put it, it's like every time you're hitting it big time, Jerry, you just quit, or you get banned, or something like that. In my experience, that pattern is almost always an indication of self-sabotage.

5,000 videos uploaded, 287 left

So here's what I'm not happy with right now. I'm frustrated that I've uploaded somewhere north of five thousand videos to YouTube. I've recorded over ten thousand videos. And right now, if you go look at my YouTube channel, there are 287 videos. That's because I've made at least ten different YouTube channels and I've deleted all of them except this original one and a live one that I'm also going to delete.

It really frustrates me that I'll tell you I'm a full-time YouTuber, and then you go back and look at my videos and think, how are you a full-time YouTuber? It doesn't look like it, because I deleted the vast majority of what I uploaded. I quit this channel a bunch of times. I got so frustrated with the views I was getting that I tried harder and harder. I made all these channels and tried to niche down. And then I put myself in a position where, if I didn't create crypto content on my crypto channel, hardly anybody watched my videos. Same with gaming. I was a professional gamer for a couple of years. I made over $100,000 in 2021 to play video games. But then I got tired of playing video games every day, and at least in my own mind, nobody cared if I did anything besides video games.

I'm frustrated that I've now been on YouTube for 14 years. If you go to my channel and click "more," you can see I joined May 31st, 2011. And the reason it doesn't look like 14 years of work is that I've self-sabotaged the whole way through.

Why I deleted hundreds of videos

So why did I delete all those videos from YouTube? A lot of the more recent ones were crypto videos that didn't have disclaimers, where I wasn't fully transparent about how much Internet Computer Protocol I'm holding. So I deleted hundreds and hundreds of crypto videos. I also deleted a lot of videos where I was really toxic, overly toxic toward other coins, saying they were going to zero. I deleted around 500 of those. And I deleted several thousand videos off my original channel because I didn't used to pay much attention to the terms and conditions, and I was overly afraid of getting caught.

Here's the thing, though. Out of the 3,000-plus videos I uploaded to my original channel, I had exactly one video that got flagged on the community guidelines. One. And I deleted everything for two reasons. First, I was pissed and angry. I was getting thousands of views a day on that channel, but I was disgusted by how few views most of my videos were getting. I was disgusted that YouTube had gone back and flagged a video I'd uploaded more than a year earlier. Second, I was pissed at myself, because I'd gone through updating the description, trying to maximize and squeeze out more views. No matter how many views I've been getting, I've consistently felt that it wasn't enough. Going forward, I intend to change that. However many views I'm getting is enough.

And yes, when people come through my channel and say, "oh, you must have used bots," that annoys me, because these were built organically. Technically, in the first couple of years of my channel, around 2011 and 2012, I tried using a tiny amount of bots on videos that have since been deleted, and it didn't work very well, so I didn't do it again. I did use YouTube ads to push videos, which then earned a lot of organic views, but I deleted all of those as well.

Watching other creators hurts

So on Twitch, do I think I deserve more than seven people watching? Am I frustrated that after all these videos there are five people watching on YouTube and seven on Twitch? Honestly, it's hard for me to even look at other creators sometimes. I did a video about BusyWorksBeats. I love BusyWorksBeats. I made a video saying how much I love what he does, and he was kind enough to share it to my channel. But it was hard to film that video. Because if I hadn't screwed myself over so many times, if I had just stuck with creating videos on my channel, if I had just focused, this is where I'd be too. I'd have a couple hundred million views. I'd have 6,000 videos up on YouTube. It was hard to even thank BusyWorksBeats for inspiring me, because I felt so miserable by comparison.

I've done the work he's done. He grinds incredibly hard, and he might have done a little bit more, but I've filmed over 5,000 videos. I've done over 1,000 live streams. I've deleted videos with 30-plus million views on them. And the first 30 million are the hardest to get. It's often much easier to keep getting views once you're rolling. So it's been hard for me to even thank and say nice things to other creators, because I feel so bad when I do. The voice in my head says, look how you've screwed up one thing after another. All you've done is make channels, get some traction, then delete them.

Hitting bottom on purpose

So I'm trying to hit bottom with this, to really feel how pissed off I am that I've put all this work into YouTube and 90-plus percent of it is gone. When I deleted thousands of videos off my original channel, probably 99-plus percent of them had no realistic potential of a policy violation. I was just mad. I could easily have gone in and tried to find the 1% that might be a problem under a worst-case scenario, but even that's ridiculous.

I also deleted those videos because I wanted a fresh start, and I was trying to niche my original channel down to music. It did not work. And I'm so grateful that YouTube has actually been putting the videos I've done on other subjects out to people, like my crypto videos. But yes, I'm furious that my crypto videos get far fewer views on this original channel than they did on the dedicated crypto channel I made. For two or three years I did all my crypto videos on a separate channel. I should have just done them all on one channel.

The same pattern, over and over

The benefit of all this is that I intend to make some real change, because I have been very successful online. I've made millions of dollars in sales and was a top 10 instructor out of tens of thousands on Udemy. And they banned me. Why? Because I ran my mouth and constantly criticized them. But I was also so obsessed with competition and getting above everybody else that I couldn't see much beyond Udemy. If I could go back and do it again, I'd relax on Udemy, pay more attention to YouTube, and experiment and play around a lot more. Instead, I got sucked into the identity of being a Udemy instructor who teaches courses, rather than being a content creator focused on free help. I was obsessed with making money and dominating Udemy. And then it all came down.

I had a similar experience in crypto with Dash and Steemit right afterward. Then I had a year or two of just self-sabotaging into oblivion, ruining the finances it had taken me five years to get into the best position of my whole life. I destroyed it within a year, because I felt like I didn't deserve anything. On YouTube, without putting a label on it, I was obsessed with trying to sell courses and make money instead of doing a good job for my viewers, instead of just helping however I could that day.

I'm really pissed that I didn't see how important YouTube was to all of this, that I just kept using YouTube as a platform to push people somewhere else. I didn't see that YouTube was treating me better than anywhere else. Then I got into Facebook gaming, and I boxed myself in just as hard there, because I was endlessly trying to optimize the algorithm. I posted other videos about other subjects on Facebook, but the algorithm did poorly on them, and I got so upset about that. Instead of thinking, hey, if a thousand people watch me do a live stream talking about aliens, that's great, it was never enough. I got so frustrated and so desperate for ideas to go viral on Facebook that I changed my race, and it worked, and then I got canceled. Then I deleted my whole Facebook page. I'm so disgusted with that. Then I started a new crypto channel and built it all up, and right when it was going great, I quit. Then I got it all up and going again, and then I deleted all the videos.

What I can and can't control

I don't want to do this again. I see exactly where I want to go, and BusyWorksBeats is exactly where I want to go. I want to have 6,000 videos on one single channel. The views I don't control. Where I've consistently gone wrong is focusing on things I can't control. I can't control the views I get. I can control the videos I upload, and I can control which channel I put them on. I can be considerate of my viewers and ask myself: is it easy for you if I scatter videos across eight different channels and tell you to buy a course on Udemy, follow on Facebook, follow on X, join my open chat, my Discord, my Telegram, and follow on Twitch? Or is it easier for you to find everything in one spot?

I'm frustrated that I've been so poor at collaborating with others that I've hogged all the attention I've gotten for myself. I've gotten so much attention, and I've just taken all of it. I've been frustrated with the money I've been making. Somebody hurt my feelings the other day by saying I should be ashamed of screwing around and doing nothing while taking money from my wife. And you know what? Yeah. I'm pissed that I told my wife just a couple of weeks ago that I wanted her to give me $22,000 she'd saved in our emergency fund from a loan she was being responsible with.

I'll be honest about where my head was at. I just wanted something that would let me stop living in fear every day, because my bank account was damn near zero. I didn't want to sell any of my crypto at the bottom, and at the same time I had things I wanted to buy: a new iPhone, a laptop, a new microphone. I should be self-sustaining by now. I've made videos for so long, and there are so many people who love my videos. It feels absolutely stupid that I'm out here in any given month not making enough money to avoid having to ask my wife for money. That's a hard thing to admit, but it's the truth.

You know what, though? It's a valuable lesson. I need to have a system set up that does two things at once. First, it lets you get on here with me. If you want to come on and share your opinion, I've made that easier than ever. It's $99, you get a 10-minute video, we hop on Zoom and talk, and I put the video up for you. In my experience that's an amazing deal, and I can realistically do 20 of those a week. That's 20 videos with other people every week.

Giving Credit to the People Who Inspired Me

The second thing is that I've been frustrated with myself for not shouting out the people who have helped me so much. Take Busyworks Beats, for example. Who knows how long he's followed me, but up until this last week he had no idea that he was an inspiration to me. He had no idea, because I'd never actually said anything. So I made a video for him. I've come to believe that telling people what they mean to you matters, and I'd been sitting on that for far too long.

I am really frustrated with where I've gotten to today. And you know what, though? At the same time, I'm really happy for where I'm at. Both of those things are true at once.

Returning to What Was Actually Fun

Superman left me a comment that stuck with me. He said these videos are gold, the exact unique type of videos that only come from Jerry, and that he felt the most enjoyment from my videos back in 2021 with the retro gaming. He said that was the best area and the best format, in his opinion. Looking back, one of the things that was working really well in 2021 was that there were a lot of days where I was simply having a lot of fun.

To me, that's incredibly important. Having fun is the whole point, and I know the key to me having fun. I need to keep it simple: just YouTube and Twitch, go live, record videos, and put them on one single YouTube channel and one single X profile. And don't pay attention to the views. That, to me, is the big takeaway. Stop sitting there in your analytics complaining that YouTube isn't doing enough for you. You do your part, and YouTube will do its part. It's done its part for me. Facebook did its part for me. All these platforms did enough for me.

So going forward, I'm choosing to focus on having fun and creating things that are meaningful, not just generic junk like so much of what I see on YouTube, but something heartfelt that's good for me to create, fun for me to make, or meaningful for me to put out into the world. That's my plan, and if you want to see more of how I think about coaching and creating, you can dig into my YouTube Coaching playlist. That's where I'm at, and I'll keep answering the questions as they come.