The Mountain Is You is a book about self-sabotage and how to overcome it. At our core, we have two conflicting desires: A conscious desire in the form of wants and goals and an unconscious desire trying to protect us and fulfill needs we aren’t aware of. By understanding and addressing our unconscious needs, we can finally achieve our goals in harmony with our subconscious mind.
Paradoxically, self-sabotage doesn’t exist. At least not in the form most people think it does. What we think are behaviors that are holding us back are really just behaviors that are protecting us and fulfilling our unconscious needs.
So what is self-sabotage, then? What we call self-sabotage is a conflict between our conscious desires and unconscious desires. Consciously, we want to go in one direction. But our subconscious mind has other plans.
Let’s say you want to make more money. This is a conscious desire. But unconsciously, you might have limiting beliefs about money. Maybe you believe that having a lot of money means being greedy. So, your subconscious mind is protecting you from feeling greedy by preventing you from earning more money.
Self-sabotage can take on many forms: Perfectionism, feeling guilty for success, and fear of what others think are just a few examples. But at the core of all self-sabotaging behavior is our subconscious mind trying to protect us. The problem is that many of our unconscious needs stem from past wounds or even trauma from our childhood.
Spending more time thinking about what you don’t want rather than what you want is a key indicator of self-sabotaging behavior. If you find yourself worrying about the future or brooding about the past rather than focusing on your vision and the life you want, you are self-sabotaging.
Human beings aren’t hard-wired for success. Above everything, your mind and body are trying to keep you safe. If your subconscious mind perceives that you are not safe, it will pull you in the opposite direction of your goals.
This is why many people need to hit rock bottom before they can overcome self-sabotaging behavior. We are only compelled to take action when our current situation becomes more uncomfortable than changing it. This requires getting out of denial and finally listening to and addressing our subconscious mind.
This is also often the case with addicts. Many addicts live in denial until something happens that forces them to change. Once they hit rock bottom and the unbearable consequences of their addiction become crystal clear, they are more likely to seek the help of a twelve-step program.
Another interesting observation is that our subconscious mind doesn’t want us to be happy. It wants us to be comfortable and safe. This is why there is an upper limit to how much happiness we can accept in our lives. As soon as we surpass a certain threshold, our subconscious mind begins to self-sabotage, ensuring no more happiness is let into our lives than we are comfortable with.
Adjustment shock is when we get something we really want and then fear losing it. This is why we sometimes feel depressed, more anxious, and hopeless despite becoming more successful.
For example, when you make more money, you have more responsibility. There is more at stake. What if you lose your money? How can you preserve your wealth? What if your income drops? Every new situation can be uncomfortable at first, causing us to worry until we have adjusted.
Most people try to push through their self-sabotaging behavior: When they feel resistance towards a new project, they force themselves to work on it anyway. But this won’t get you very far. To actually overcome self-sabotaging behavior, you have to listen to and address your unconscious desire.
Your self-sabotaging behavior is trying to tell you something. If you listen closely, you can hear your unconscious needs, attachments, and wants that are conflicting with your conscious desires. By reflecting on your self-sabotaging behavior, you can discover the hidden need they are fulfilling.
View your self-sabotaging behavior as a teacher. If you are acting irrationally, in the opposite direction of what you want, there is a lesson to be learned. Once you learn this lesson, you’re free.
One powerful way to overcome self-sabotage is to take better care of yourself. Simple self-care routines can address many unconscious needs beyond safety. Sleeping enough, journaling, and making space for your feelings are big steps toward overcoming self-sabotage.
If you don’t take care of your needs, your subconscious mind will find indirect ways to do it. When you actually fulfill an unmet need, the need to find a substitute goes away.
Since most self-sabotaging behaviors are the result of childhood wounds or trauma, doing inner child work, healing, or trauma work is a powerful way to meet the needs that weren’t met in your childhood. Once you have released this baggage from the past and worked through your limiting beliefs, your unconscious desires can be brought in line with your conscious desires.
Self-mastery is the opposite of self-sabotage. We can achieve self-mastery in multiple ways, but it always involves increasing our emotional intelligence. When we can respond to our feelings and emotions in a healthy way, past wounds and insecurities won’t hold us back from becoming the person we want to be.
Apart from becoming aware of our unconscious needs and dealing with them appropriately, we can focus on the person we want to become. By connecting ourselves to our vision and imagining our ideal future self, we can focus on growth rather than comfort.
Throughout the journey, we realize that the big obstacle we had to overcome was not our goal. We are the mountain. We can only reach the other end of the mountain where our conscious desires reside by surpassing our limiting beliefs, past baggage, and unmet needs.
Create a vivid and detailed picture of your ideal future self. Take a journal or blank paper and write down who your ideal future self is. What do you do? What do you wear? How do you feel? Then read what you wrote down on a daily basis to connect with your ideal, future self. You can even ask your future self for advice and imagine what answers you would receive.
Make it a habit to look at a vision board of your ideal future self every day. To create a vision board, find images that capture the lifestyle of your ideal self. Next, place them in a document or print them out and attach them to a board. Arrange them in a way that inspires and empowers you.
The Mountain Is You is an intriguing book. The notion that self-sabotaging behavior doesn’t truly exist but is rather a means for our subconscious mind to protect us is profound. The message is clear: our self-sabotaging actions reflect our unconscious needs, attachments, and desires. We must become aware of these unconscious processes to understand why we aren’t making progress toward our goals.
But what if our goals are expressions of unconscious desires? A multi-millionaire isn’t necessarily someone who has overcome self-sabotaging behavior and achieved their goals. What if the drive to accumulate wealth is, in itself, an unconscious desire rooted in unmet childhood needs?
Perhaps the real need of a multi-millionaire is to feel loved. However, since they never received this kind of attention as a child, they overcompensated for it by accumulating wealth. Identifying an authentic need can be challenging, and even conscious goals may be driven by unconscious desires.
In some ways, the line between conscious and unconscious desires is blurry. Nevertheless, The Maintain Is You reminds us that the baggage from our past influences us in the present and affects our future. If we want to live more harmonious lives, we must become aware of our unconscious beliefs and behavioral patterns that conflict with what we truly want. The tricky part is identifying what we really want in the first place. This is likely best explored in therapy rather than through a book.
This summary of The Mountain Is You explored some of the book’s key ideas. The main idea is that self-sabotaging behavior stems from a conflict between conscious and unconscious desires. However, the book contains many examples of self-sabotaging behaviors, such as uprooting and overworking, which were left out of the summary.
The book is divided into several smaller chapters. Each chapter addresses a specific self-sabotaging behavior or provides detailed explanations to help readers identify their own self-sabotage style.
If you want to identify exactly what behaviors you are engaging in, we recommend reading the book. The detailed explanations and examples will help you better understand your limiting beliefs and identify how unmet needs from the past may unknowingly influence your actions today.
The same is true for people who want to lose weight but can’t. Maybe your conscious mind wants to lose weight. But as a child, you weren’t nurtured enough by your parents, resulting in the unconscious need to eat in an attempt to compensate for it.