Today's TRAINING: Anatomy of an Alpha Part 3 (Why We Fail)
When I said I would talk about the origins of an Alpha, I said I would talk about how Alphas are forged. Turns out that that was a pretty intuitive word choice, because we are in fact forged.
I often get the question, are Alphas made or born? You know what I'm going to say, we are not either or...we are both and. Based on the Alphas I have observed, coached and myself, I believe that Alphas are first made and then forged.
Both my sister and I are Alphas. My mother is an Alpha. And my grandmother is
an Alpha. (My grandmother, a black woman from the southern U.S in Mississippi, is super smart. Best avenue for her skills at that time was to become a teacher. We don't know what might've happened because marriage intervened…)
I was born of Alphas. If any of you look, you may find that your mother was also an Alpha. If that is true,
you likely fight with her. Uncoached Alphas do not play well with other Alphas - remember relationships are our Achilles' heel.
Then comes our forging and it is exactly like the metal process. Hot ore or molten steel is poured into a mold and cast into a shape. I think of our being born from an Alpha as our casting process.
Forging is where you deform metal into a different shape and it can be done with intense heat or cold. See it? Your formative years with your mother and your family and whatever else crazy happened to you FORGED you.
It is here where I believe Soft Alphas diverge from Alphas. When you are forging metal, if you get the
heat wrong, i.e. too much or too fast, the steel becomes brittle and can crack or break. I believe that someone or something cracked our Soft Alphas during the forging process, leaving our little sisters softer than us.
In response, our Soft Alphas begin to focus primarily on defense and avoiding antagonizing those who would ‘beat them down’
again.
If you have a daughter, you have cast her and she is in her forging process. How she comes out is completely dependent upon your ability to control the heat and cold you expose her to and the tools that you use to shape her. Forge your daughters with love Alpha. The biblical quote is iron sharpens iron and done well, it
does.
Alpha Self-Sabotage
Now we're onto the juicy stuff, the Alpha Self-Sabotage Pattern. I have detected three primary types of self-sabotage which most Alphas will experience. These types of sabotage serve to either
Demoralize, Distract or to Diminish your capacity and support.
Sabotage #1: Demoralization = Lazy
On the far left of the spectrum, demoralization is misidentified by Alphas with the concept of lazy. I have had many Alphas tell me,
when I asked why they aren't caring for themselves or doing something that they know they could or should be doing, that they're lazy. I even used to believe it about myself in past years. Not true. Alphas are not lazy.
If you think of Xena the Warrior Princess, does lazy pop into your mind? Nope. So where did this come from? If you look, you will find
that we are not lazy for others, we are lazy about things for ourselves. That "lazy "actually comes out of our lack of self-love or if I want to say it bluntly, self-loathing. We, simply put, do not like ourselves, until we are coached differently
Here's how this works, think back to the first car you ever owned. It does not matter what that car was. It could've
been a rustbucket held together by duct tape and Bondo. (Mine was a 1981 red Ford Mustang two door coupe, four-cylinder, way too many miles on the engine, with an oil leak).
And I loved that car! I think I stripped some of the fading red paint off by trying to wax it too frequently. I took such good care of it because it was so valuable to me. It represented my freedom. This was
back in the days before there was emergency roadside assistance. Fun Note: My emergency roadside assistance kit -not kidding- was a pair of red peep toe high heels. Always kept in the trunk. Put up hood, put on shoes, help arrives. Yes, it's a miracle I'm still alive...now back to our story.
What you value, you care for. If you had
babies, you know that you could’ve stretched your budget by changing her diaper less frequently. You didn't do that, because your baby was valuable to you. What you value, you take good care of.
Because you do not value yourself the way that you think you do (or want to), you are lazy about things that have to do with you. Delaying or avoiding taking good care of you is
the sabotage your ego calls “being lazy”. You own it and call YOURSELF lazy and that makes you feel even worse. So now you're beating yourself up and looking at yourself as if you are weak. And remember Alphas despise weak things. See it??
The trap to keep you not loving you is the Demoralization. Demoralization keeps you from accomplishing the goal of taking good care of
yourself, which demonstrates your self-love.
Sabotage #2: Productive Delay = Distraction
The second major sabotage is Productive Delay. I've already taught on productive delay - here. Productive Delay is actually about distraction. The purpose of the Productive Delay is to distract you from keeping your focus, time and energy on your real goal.
For example, Alphas are rescuers. (Read here why). Our little "missions" to save other people are to get everyone’s
praise. We look amazing and wonderful (get that approval drug that we like) but the cost of the rescue mission is always that we are distracted from our own stuff. What we're doing is being productive in a way that causes US to be delayed.
All
Alphas suffer from Productive Delay and I suspect Soft Alphas have a much harder time with it where it involves their family obligations. Soft Alphas will put every family member ahead of herself permanently. She will never look at this choice again. Big problem. The constant tending, nurturing, rescuing, fixing, preventing and juggling of every family members’ issues prevents this Alpha from ever attending to her own life, her own care or her own
dreams.
Productive delays are what I call a noble distraction. Because whatever you are doing sounds really good and seems worthwhile for you to be doing. But in the end, they are distractions from the time and effort you need to get where you say you want to go.
Sabotage #3: Superwoman =
Diminishment
The last primary form of Alpha Self-Sabotage I have named the Superwoman in honor of one of my favorite ex-boyfriend's (yes, that's a little tongue-in-cheek).
Superwoman-ing is a form of self-sabotage because in Superwoman mode you "over" everything. You over give,
you over do, you control, you overcompensate…you become Superwoman. This messes you up because being Superwoman diminishes your capacity to do anything for yourself because there’s no time or energy left for YOU. And it diminishes your support network and chances at
love.
How does being Superwoman diminish your support network? Easy. Number one, if you are always the know all and be-all, the only people who can stay in your support network are people who are lesser, weaker and victims in need of your
services rather than your love and friendship.
Secondly, it drives competent men away. A well-balanced Alpha male has no interest in being with an Alpha female who doesn't need him. Everybody wants to be needed! Superwomen don't leave any room for anybody else to do anything, so we appear to not need anything. I literally declared the word “Superwoman” a
red flag in dating. Not a compliment.
If I hear a man comment more than once that I'm a Superwoman, I know that we're on the way out. It means he has categorized me as a woman who can do anything and specifically much more than HE can do and who does NOT need him. It means that he feels inferior and unnecessary and men leave or punish you when they feel this
way.
******
These are the three primary types of self-sabotage. On a spectrum from left to right: The Lazy, The Productive Delay into The Superwoman. When you move from left to right, as the amount we do for others increases, the amount we have available to give to ourselves decreases. That is the
sabotage.
Alpha, I stand here in a place of love looking back at all the things that I've screwed up in my life. I can see opportunities that I missed and people that I failed while trying so hard to help them. But most importantly, I can see where I failed myself. Not knowingly, but my life was a giant merry-go-round of Alpha Self-Sabotage.
It makes sense. And it explains why an Alpha with my combination of skills and blessings DIDN’T have what I wanted earlier in life. It was because I was in my own damn way!
You can
stop struggling. You can get out of your own way. You can stop sabotaging your own dreams. I am proof and I will light the way for the rest of us.
I love you Alpha! Tanya
