1 Mindset Challenge That’s Devastating Your Manifesting Practice

If you’ve ever told yourself you’re “self-sabotaging,” this episode is your wake-up call.

In this episode of Manifest SHE, we’re talking about the self-sabotage mindset challenge that’s quietly devastating your manifesting practice.

It’s not self-sabotage. It’s self-protection.

Your nervous system isn’t blocking your manifestations; it’s trying to keep you safe while you build new pathways that match your next level.

And when you stop trying to “heal” or “fix” yourself, and start understanding how your mind and body actually create together, manifestation stops feeling like a fight and starts feeling natural.

We’ll explore what safety mode looks like in real life, how your body learned those patterns, and how to rewire your system with love instead of judgment so your manifestations can finally land with ease.

💫 Inside this episode:

• The #1 mindset challenge keeping your manifestations stuck
• How your nervous system’s safety patterns show up day-to-day
• Why resistance isn’t failure
• How to shift from self-judgment to self-trust
• A simple grounding practice to regulate your energy and realign your mind

✨ Want to take this to the next level: Grab Coaching On Demand
 

Chapters

• 0:00 Reframing Manifestation Myths
• 1:05 Self-Sabotage Versus Self-Protection
• 2:30 How Safety Mode Works
• 4:10 Change, Danger, And Biology
• 6:00 Treat Resistance As Information
• 8:20 Subtle Patterns That Block Receiving
• 10:20 Aligning Pathways With Desired Reality
• 12:00 Awareness, Curiosity, Compassion
• 13:15 Gentle Rewiring Through Calm Action
• 14:30 Grounding Practice For Safe Expansion

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey love, welcome back. I'm so glad you're here. If you are new, I'm Shannon, and this space is about manifesting from the inside out. So that means no forcing, no pretending, no skipping the deep stuff, just real conversations to help you live the life your soul already knows is yours. And you know what frustrates me the most about the way people talk about mindset because it has everything to do with manifestation. It's this idea that if you can't stay consistent, if you're not high vibe all the time, or if your manifestations aren't showing up instantly, then you must be self-sabotaging. And like, no, babe, you're not broken. You don't need to heal yourself into worthiness or fix yourself up. This whole belief that you need to be fixed to manifest is one of the biggest mindset traps out there because the truth is there is nothing wrong with you. You're not fighting against the universe or trying to prove something or be worthy of it because you are the universe. What's actually happening is that your nervous system, the very thing that is keeping you alive, is trying to keep you safe. And the way that your mind interprets safety can be the exact thing that is keeping your manifestations from landing. So today we're talking about the mindset challenge that is quietly devastating your manifestation. And that's mistaking self-protection for self-sabotage. By the end of the episode, you will see why your nervous system isn't blocking your manifestation as far as sabotaging you or keeping you away from something, but it's just protecting you while you build the pathways for your next level of expansion. So I want you to grab your favorite drink, cozy up, and let's get into it. I really want to switch the narrative because narratives are very important, that I'm sabotaging myself. And that narrative leads to self-judgment, putting yourself down, feeling bad, all of the things. If we switch it to understanding what it truly is, which is self-protection, it takes that judgment off you. It takes that feeling of being unworthy off of you. It switches that mindset. Because if you have the mindset that your blocks are because of self-sabotage that you're not aware of, and I'm sabotaging myself, it brings in this negative connotation that makes the blocks even worse. But if you understand it for what it is, self-protection, then you have more grace with yourself. Because your mind and your body, they're always working together. So this is how this all plays out, right? Your thoughts send signals, your emotions anchor the signals into your body, your nervous system decides if those signals are safe or if they're dangerous. So when something feels unsafe, your body's gonna go into what I call safety mode. It's that freeze, the overthink, the scroll your life away kind of mode. You want to take a step towards something new, more peace, more love, the financial flow that you're trying to call in. But your mind says, hold up. The last time we tried something unfamiliar, it didn't go well. Or it's simply just saying, hold up, I don't know anything about that. Uh that that could be dangerous. We need to, we need to double, you know, we need to think about this a little bit more and probably not do it. So instead of expanding, your brain keeps rerouting you back to what's known. And that's not sabotage. That is literally your biology trying to protect you from physical and emotional danger. Think embarrassment, rejection, disappointment, loss. It just was to protect you. So when your nervous system is in that state, it really can't differentiate between being chased by a tiger or starting a new habit. Like to your brain, both feel like an imminent threat, whether it's physical or emotional, in this state. So we know that manifestation happens through repetition, through new thought patterns, emotional responses, and actions that rewire our subconscious to see the reality that we want as normal. But your nervous system equates change with danger. So it's gonna keep trying to reroute your energy back to what it already knows to survive. That's protection. It's not self-sabotage. And I know you can say, well, Shannon, am I not sabotaging myself from not moving forward? No, you're protecting yourself. So you're gonna feel a resistance or a procrastination or maybe low energies around your desire. And that's not because you don't believe enough, because you don't want it enough, because you're not good enough at manifestation. That's just telling you, hey, look, your current pathways haven't caught up to what you're trying to create. Okay. That's all it's telling you. It's just giving you that information. And I want you to really think about this. If you're a mom or if you've had a friend or any kind of deep relationship, don't you want to protect the people that you love from embarrassment or rejection, disappointment, or loss? We innately want to do that even for the people we love. And so internally, you're doing that for yourself. And that's where this love and grace can come in and not more pressure. Because you can't bully your nervous system into expansion. You have to teach it that that expansion is safe. And so when you say, you know what, when you feel that resistance, when you see those things, right? When you see those signals of resistance and the low energy and all of that stuff, then you can lovingly and gracefully say, you know what? I truly appreciate myself for trying to protect myself. Instead of trying to put more pressure to just like barrel through it. Like stop and take a moment to recognize, oh my gosh, you know, most of the time we're out here talking about just push through and move past your comfort zone and you end up in fight, flight, or freeze, and that doesn't work for manifesting. Like, let's take a moment and we can just appreciate that ourself is trying to protect ourselves, just like we would try to protect the ones that we love. And then we can address it with some grace and we can say it's okay. Cause I want you to think about as well. Did you ever, or were you ever in something where you were like, no, it's okay, you can do it. I believe in you. And you encourage somebody, like that person's scared and you encourage them. Have you ever told a friend, girl, what's the worst that can happen? They tell you no when you ask for the promotion. Oh well, but they could tell you yes. Like, think about those kind of conversations that you have with people to help them expand. So when we're doing manifestation, instead of saying, gosh, I just keep doing self-sabotaging things, you can come in with grace and love and you can tell that nervous system of yours, hey, this is okay. Like, no, we can do it. What's the worst that can happen? Like talking to yourself the same way you would if you pause in that moment instead of putting more pressure on yourself. Because when you do that, you're treating resistance as a signal instead of a setback. And that's when your manifestation can start accelerating because your energy stops fighting itself. That's the mindset shift I really want to get into because this mindset of self-sabotage is what's hurting our manifestations. But if we can flip the script on that and say it's not, it's just protection, then we're gonna approach it in a completely different way. Let's really think about this and pausing and having the awareness of this because safety mode is not always dramatic. Sometimes it really does look like talking yourself out of doing the thing you know would move you closer to your desire. But maybe you're like, now's not the right time, or I'll do it tomorrow. Guys, I do this sometimes still and I have to catch myself, but that's where the awareness comes in. It's not because, oh, well, shouldn't you be a perfect person who does manifestation because you're a mentor and a teacher and a coach. Anytime you expand into something new, your subconscious is going to do the same thing no matter how long you've been doing this. But if you have that awareness, then you can move past it more easily and faster, not from pressure, but from grace and love, once again, to yourself. But I want you to think about how many times you talk yourself out of things. It's not super dramatic. It can be very, very subtle. Sometimes it's constantly researching how to manifest instead of actually manifesting, putting the things into action because learning feels safer than doing. Sometimes it's emotionally checking out the moment things start to get good because maybe your brain doesn't know how to handle sustained happiness yet. I had a client and she would go through this where great things would happen, and she'd be like, Well, something bad's gonna happen. That was her default, and we had to work through that. But she became aware, oh, that's my default, right? Maybe you're craving a new relationship, but with someone who genuinely shows interest in you, but then you suddenly feel overwhelmed. Oh my gosh, I had this conversation with a client just yesterday where she had some friends who were going out of town and they were like, I'm we're gonna miss you so much. And she's like, Yeah, okay, whatever, nobody's gonna miss me. And we had to catch that. I'm like, no, can you receive that? Because she genuinely couldn't understand it. It kind of overwhelmed her. And she wanted to brace herself for something different because that is what she was accustomed to. Because she associated that vulnerability with danger, with being hurt. That's just your nervous system saying, Are we sure it's safe? It's not wrong for doing that. But here's where it affects manifestation, because every time your body labels some new experiences unsafe, your energy pulls back. So you can visualize and affirm all you want, but the moment your body is tense and your subconscious goes, nope, not safe, you disconnect from that frequency of having. You disconnect from creating those new pathways in your mind that would allow you to manifest in your outer world. Because we do manifest from our minds. Your subconscious creates by repetition and emotional familiarity. So until your body feels safe in the energy of receiving, it will keep that manifestation experiences that matches the patterns it already understands. Once again, to keep you safe, to protect you, not because you're self-sabotaging. You're just built to protect yourself. And that is important. And that's why we gently guide through it with love and grace and not pressure. Your work really isn't to align with the universe. We're not aligning with the universe. We're aligning pathways in our brains with the reality that we're choosing. We're choosing that to rewire safety around joy and ease and abundance instead of chaos and stress and scarcity. You're not waiting for anything outside of you. You're building the internal structure that allows what you desire to exist here in your mind, in your emotions, in your body. So, how are we going to change this pattern? Once again, the first thing is just awareness. The moment you notice yourself pulling back instead of labeling it as self-sabotage or oh my gosh, I always mess this up, or saying any of those negative things, you just gently say, This is my body trying to protect me. And then get curious. Ask what part of me doesn't feel safe right now. Just being curious, not judgmental, once again, that self-judgment, guys, we gotta let that go. And that brings us right to compassion because you don't need to push through it, you need to soothe it and to remind your body that this new level isn't a threat. That's how you rewire gently, consistently, and through new evidence. So every time you take one aligned action while staying calm, your brain learns, oh, this is safe now. We're teaching it. And that's how you build the neural pathways that become your manifestations. Manifestation is literally your brain learning a new language, the language of the life you're creating. And you can't learn that by yelling at yourself for not being healed enough or fixed enough. And nope, no, I gotta go back and do some more healing work before I can move forward. That's not it. You learn by practicing safety in new experiences until it becomes second nature. So I want to do a quick grounding practice together that you can do once you have this awareness and you have your compassion towards yourself to really ground yourself in before you're moving forward with your manifestation practices. And it's super simple. You just place a hand on your heart, maybe you cross both hands and holding your heart, take a deep breath in, hold it, and gently exhale. And then repeat my body is protecting me, and I can still move forward. I can feel safe while I expand. You don't have to fight your nervous system. Bring it with you. That is where your power is. Because manifestation isn't about force, it's about regulation, it's about creating internal conditions where expansion feels safe enough to sustain. And so you can do that quick grounding practice. And there's other grounding practices we can do, but that one is a really good starting point. What I want you to take with you this week is that you are not a project that needs fixing. You're a powerful creator learning to reprogram your own operating system. So the next time that resistance shows up, do not fall for the I'm doing it wrong, I suck trap. Pause, breathe, recognize it as your body doing what it's supposed to do, and then teach your body and your mind something new. And that's how you build consistency without force. That's how manifestation becomes a lifestyle, because you've trained your mind and body to work with your desires and against them. We're gonna keep going deeper into this over the next few weeks to explore how our bodies, emotions, and thoughts all work together to manifest the life that we want. Because remember, we manifest from the inside out. So if this episode hit home, I want you to make sure you come back next week because we are gonna continue this series and we're gonna get even more hands-on on how to actually regulate our energy for manifestation. Once again, I want you to remember you do not need fixing, my love. You are becoming the version of you who knows how to make safety and expansion exist in the same breath. And that is where your power and your magic lives. I will chat with you next week.