A candid roundtable on Creative WorkHour: How do you avoid self-sabotage when your dreams start coming true? Insights on imposter syndrome, embracing success, and practical strategies from the crew.

Greg
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative WorkHour Podcast. Today is April 19th, 2025 and we're on episode 49. Today's discussion question for the crew is, when your dreams appear to be coming true, how do you avoid self-sabotage? Your dreams are coming true. Everything is going your way. But how do you avoid sabotaging yourself? Alessandro, we were talking about this just before the podcast. Great topic, right?

Alessandra
Well, I hope so because we have our habits, right? And one of my habits is when something good happens, because I'm a survivor of trauma, how my nervous system adapted is it kind of got some weird wiring. So when something really incredible happens, I don't jump up and down and go, yay. I kind of go, oh God, now what's going to happen? to write that thing that feels so foreign to me. I don't know if that makes any sense. The quick example is the most amazing Christmas day I ever had. I could not stop crying because I did not know what to do with the goodness.

Alessandra
And that's what I mean by wiring being kind of opposite of what you might think. So I have a dream coming true. after being away for decades from my music as a classical clarinetist. The things that I've dreamt of, a comeback. The things that I've dreamt of, having my own composer. Oh shit, now I'm crying. Having my own composer, Andy. Being able to play as a soloist on a piece that no one else got to play before me. Now, I'm the newest member of the British Clarinet Ensemble. Dream come true. Rochelle and I saw them perform in Dublin.

Alessandra
We were blown away. and that they would even talk to me, much less ask me to come on board. It's crazy. It's mind-blowing. And then, now, I was asked to play principal clarinet in the Sinfonietta Bordeaux, which is two concerts in the south of France and two historically significant places. My dream is coming true, and all I want to do is burn it down because it doesn't feel safe. So that's what brought the question to bear. And I'm going to hand it over to Greg to maybe elicit the kind of wisdom that comes out of the crew of Creative Work Hour to talk some sense into me.

Alessandra
Does that work for you, Greg? It

Greg
works for me, yeah. It touches all those buttons, doesn't it? You know, imposter syndrome, who am I? I'm not worthy. What if this goes wrong? What if I make a fool of myself? I know that when things seem to be going my way, I start to second guess myself. And, you know, some people sometimes can twist it into a bad thing. You know, why are things good? You know, someone's orchestrating this to set me up or all kinds of things that we say to ourselves, right? But I'd be interested to know what the crew thinks as well.

Greg
So everything seems to be going your way. You're winning. You're living the dream. But how do you avoid sabotaging that? Ellie, what are your thoughts on that?

Ellie
I love this question. I love this question. And I've got some counterintuitive views on it. I see it that we are deeply wired for familiarity. And as we start to step into things that are, they may be really good, but they're new. And our impulse to go back to familiarity is actually an impulse towards stability, and we need stability. So I see it as allowing ourselves to still have the stability of the old, like if we don't try to knock it out. but we also have space for practicing the new. Then the new can, as we start practicing the new, it can become the new thing that's familiar.

Ellie
But it actually starts with not trying to just eliminate the old. And often as things get better, we have a backlog of stuff to process. So sometimes that stuff that's coming up isn't self-sabotage, it's stuff that's coming up and getting released and moving through.

Greg
I like that. I like that a lot. Yeah. Some great insights. I'll go to shadows. How about you shadows? What are your thoughts?

Shadows Pub
I tend to not count chickens before they hatch. So when something looks like it's going in my direction, I kind of go, that's nice. Let's see what happens. So, you know, if you're not expecting it to happen, then if it doesn't happen, it's no big deal, but you're also not going to make it not happen.

Greg
Right. Devon, how about you? What are your thoughts?

Devin
My approach, and I do tend to do this, and so how I try and manage it is by getting very specific. I try not to make it a big picture, oh, everything's going to be great. And all the things are going to be perfect when I achieve this. Instead, I try and focus on one thing that will improve, or one thing I will do once it happens. Here's a specific thing that I will be able to do once I attain this, once this dream comes true, instead of trying to step back and go and everything's going to be great because that's what tends to trigger is the everything's going to be great instead of, oh, you know what?

Devin
This one thing will be improved. So let's focus on that.

Greg
Right. Yeah, it's like that old adage, isn't it? How do you eat an elephant one spoonful at a time? Andy, how about you? Your dreams are coming true. How do you avoid sabotaging?

Andy
Well, I have been experiencing that a lot, you know. It's so sabotaging because I've been moving ahead. One thing that's happened to me, you know, in my head, something is going on and far away, I'm really doing a success. But with age and everything, I have learned that if something happens, good happens, yeah, well, just hang on to it. Being in that moment, you know, like with my Curia, the performance of my Curia was such an amazing experience. And I just was living that together with Alessandra, of course, and a lot of other people. But also meeting Alessandra, and helping her interpret the first movement of my planet Constantino was an amazing experience.

Andy
And even if I kind of knew that would be a good one to you know, living that moment. The time stood still when we practiced. I don't know how long we practiced, but it was an amazing experience. So live the moment. You're worth it.

Greg
And your work is important. Thank you, Andy. Bobbie, how about you? What are your

Bobbie W
thoughts? I tend to be very focused and then take things in steps. So that's what helps me. I also have a habit of self-sabotaging, or I used to. So I've tried to correct that. And that's kind of what I do. It's work to stay so focused. That's really what I have to say.

Greg
Thank you, Bobbie. It can be work, can't it? Melanie, how about yourself? What are your thoughts on this?

Dr Melonie
I've just been thinking, well, the neuro bio that Ellie said, I think explains it. If things going badly is what's familiar, you want your brain, your limbic brain wants to return things to what's familiar. So that's really tricky because it's your own brain. I think when I'm working with other people on something, it's pretty much, I pretty much don't have to worry about the self-sabotage. That pretty much undoes it. But if I'm not, I found sometimes I'll do the, like a couple months ago, I went up to the head of psychiatry and I said, listen, I failed.

Dr Melonie
I'm unable to, you know, get this team running decently. I've completely failed. Four years. I've tried everything I know. And you know what he said to me, probably, well, this is why he's head of psychiatry. He said, oh, this is a dysfunctional place, Melanie. So when we were done, I was just like, oh. Sort of like going to a priest, I guess. So one of the things I found I do, which isn't exactly a good thing, but it is something I notice I do, is Be the good girl or confess. And I think that that needs a little, that's some of what Ellie was talking about with processing, you know, like that should be process as opposed, I mean, I'm not upset that I said that to him, but as a cope, as a way of dealing with things, the good little girl or the confessing stuff, I don't think it's a step away from sabotaging yourself, but it's not steps far enough.

Greg
Thanks Melanie. Gretchen how about you? Things are going your way, your dreams are coming true, how do you not sabotage it?

Gretchen
Well, I think one of the things that, the first thing is that you have to practice saying yes a lot more than you say no. If you even say the word yes, it creates a smile on your face. The word no doesn't. It creates more of a frown. And you actually have to practice saying yes. And then you think of it when you're saying yes, think of saying yes to your child self. None of us would tell a child that they're not worthy. None of us would. That's abhorrent to us. That's just absolutely wrong. You always tell a child they're worthy.

Gretchen
And it's more fun with a group of kids to say yes to them, to see what happens when you say yes to a child than to say no. It's just amazing. And I think as adults, we forget to honor the request that we made to ourselves. And when that comes through, you need to say, yes, thank you, rather than slap that young child in the face. And so by saying no, and don't do that, say yes.

Greg
Some great points brought up. I like the idea of saying yes and giving permission. Sometimes we've got to know when to say yes and when to say not right now. Or let me think about it. Because I think sometimes we can say yes to everything as well. How do you balance it? How do you even, you know, like you want to say yes but you should say no. You want to say no but you should say yes. everything in between. Alessandra I know this it's you know pretty close home for you but some great some great feedback what are your feelings on that?

Alessandra
Oh there's a lot of feelings I got all the feels I got all the feels but what I what I jotted down is what what Ellie and and Melanie said about the familiarity is that is I'm taking it to heart that I'm building the new familiarity and practice saying yes I can take that from Gretchen. Bobby said go with the small steps just keep moving take the small steps and How I'm rewording what Devin said was, I don't have to go off crazier. I don't have to, I don't have to build, there's no need for the delusion of grandeur.

Alessandra
Although I like those things and I'm good at picking them out, but there's no need for that. And what Shadow said is, whatever the dream is that's coming near, tell it, that's nice. Let's see what happens. And I'm pretty sure that she's actually said that to me before or left that message for me before. Like, that's really nice. Let's see what happens. And every time she has said that to me, I feel an ease of, let's just ease up a little bit. I don't have to, I don't have to run the rocket myself. Just eat, just ease up and watch and see what happens.

Alessandra
But Greg, you know me as well as anybody here. What do you say?

Greg
Well, I say what I always say at this time. But, you know, listening this, this for me as well, you know, I can do things when it's for other people. But when it's for me, I struggle with it. And it's that whole world being, you know, thinking about it, why not? Why not me? Why not me? Why not?

Alessandra
Let me just say so that there's something that's accountability. Here's my call to action for myself. There's a possibility that when I, when I go to France and we have one day that we're not going to be in rehearsals and we're going to go out and do some things in nature. And when we come back, whoever is up for it is going to just play a mini chamber piece of music in front of the other either highly highly competitive amateur musicians or professional musicians. And so I'm just kind of wondering what that lot would think of if I played the first movement of Andy's piece right there in front of God and everybody.

Alessandra
So maybe that's my call to action. We'll see what happens. So it's not time for that yet. It's another time. What time is it, Greg?

Greg
It's that time again. It's happened again. You've wasted some perfectly good time listening to the Creative Work Hour podcast when you could have been doing something else. But what about you? Your dreams are coming true and everything is going the way you want them to. How do you stay out of your own way? How do you not sabotage your dream that's coming true? Let us know. Visit us on creativeworkhour.com. but come back next week and if you've got a question you want to hear the team discuss, let us know that too. Be safe and we'll talk again.