Today's TRAINING: The Bad Habit of Bottoming
- What is The Bad Habit of Bottoming
- 7 Ways Bottoming Messes You Up
- How to Break Free
What is the Bad Habit of Bottoming?
Put simply the Bad Habit of Bottoming is the natural Alpha tendency to wait until our situation hits critical to
act. We avoid it until we hit bottom.
We wait to take action on our most important things because these are also our scariest things. Remember, an Alphas primary motivation is to rescue. Waiting for a crisis to act creates a reason for us to BE rescued. If you watch any movies where a rescue was necessary, have you ever seen it done before the 11th
hour?
Every good disaster film you've ever seen has the rescue happen mere seconds before the bomb blows, the asteroid hits or the toxic gas reaches a lethal level. And we generate that in our own lives.
You've also seen it very clearly with anyone who has an addiction. Most alcoholics
have to… hit rock bottom before they are ready to admit they have a problem with drinking right? Remember, Alphas have an addiction to approval and a need for someone else to love us before we love ourselves.
Those addictions make us even more likely to bottom.
Just so we're
clear, we are capable of heading off these crises sooner than we do. We're smart enough to realize when our businesses are beginning to fail long before we can't pay the bills and have to lay off all of the employees.
We're smart enough to notice when our marriage starts being in big trouble but still we tend to wait until the idea of setting most of his clothes on fire isn’t just a
scene from a movie.
As a coach, most people hire me after they have bottomed. When I catch you before you've bottomed, this is what you'll
tell me… “I'm going to give it another try, I think I know what to do now, I just need to focus. This time I’ll make it work.” In other words, you aren’t ready for help because you don’t ask for help until you are OUT OF HOPE.
The one glorious beauty of a bottoming Alpha is that bottoming breaks your pride and in that state, you are willing to accept help and more willing to be led. A
bottoming Alpha can admit she's wrong more quickly then Alpha who hasn't hit it yet.
Now here's the funny part, the Universe will HELP you in your race to the bottom. Why? Because it realizes that for most of you, that is the first moment you’ll open your heart, ask for help and get on the path that you were born to
live.
Several of my Alphas have gone through a process I call “Job-ing” (like the guy in the bible). Job-ing is where the Universe accelerates your bottoming to help break you, so that you agree to start the hell over and do better this time.
(If you’ve ever played video games where
there was no reset button, when you KNEW you were screwed, sometimes you just ran up to the dragon and let it eat you three times in a row really fast so you could start over sooner!)
Now you know what bottoming is, let's take a look at how bottoming messes you up.
7 Ways Bottoming Messes You Up
- You develop the habit of delay until explosion
- You miss opportunities when they are ripe and ready
- You beat yourself up for “doing IT” again
- You teach your children to Bottom
- You use crisis as your “Swing Into Action” cue
- You lose more than you win, especially in
relationships
- Bottoming interferes with being “purse ready” which is proactive
#1 You Develop the Habit Of Delay
Bottoming reinforces procrastination and delay. Unfortunately because you
don't act until you have to, it reinforces the entire spectrum of Alpha Self-Sabotage.
#2 You Miss Opportunities When They Are Ripe and Ready
Bottoming has you waiting too long for everything-meaning when there's a chance for you to go and you should take the risk-you don't. You wait. And eventually you hit the bottom. Then you regret that you didn't go.
#3 You Beat Yourself Up For "Doing It Again"
How many times of you told yourself that you will never wait this long to take care of things, except that you just did it again?!
Do you know it would be impossible to ever become significantly overweight
if you always course correct each time you got 3 pounds over your goal weight?
Beating yourself up not only wastes energy but it screws up your self-confidence for your future.
#4 You Teach Your Children To
Bottom
Your children learn what you do and what you are, not what you say and what you want. If you're looking at your children and they only ever take action about 15 seconds before things blow up-see if they're getting that from someone… like… You.
#5
Crisis Becomes Your “Swing Into Action” Cue
After a while you begin to associate taking massive action only in the face of imminent danger and at the edge of disaster. You are a training yourself to "turn on "only after things have gone nuclear.
#6 You Lose More Than You
Win Because of When You Began
Especially in relationships, which are an Alphas Achilles' heel, you may find you've waited TOO LONG to save your friendship, company or marriage.
#7 Bottoming Interferes With Being "Purse Ready" Which Requires Being
Proactive
The most reliable way to draw into your life what you want is to become "Purse Ready" for it. That means you become ready for your good before your good arrives. That is the opposite of waiting until it is almost too late and everything is falling apart to act.
In short, bottoming is a nasty habit that we ALL have to some degree. You want to get aggressive and nearly hostile about removing this from your life. The people who have lives that you admire have broken the cycle of Bottoming.
Stop learning from touching a hot stove! The Bad Habit of Bottoming describes the state of an uncoached Alpha.
It can and should be changed.
How Do I Break Free of Bottoming?
One fail safe way – you accelerate the crisis. You do what it takes to bring
the urgency into the situation NOW before the bomb is armed and ticking.
The urgency and “ohmygoodness” of the situation are what get you to move, eventually. Use them to get yourself to move…now. How? Project the consequences of things going sideways, look at what it will cost you and better yet what it COULD cost you.
Use the wiring you already have! We are pre-wired to do more to avoid PAIN than to gain PLEASURE. For Alphas, we have a strong pull to build something better, so bundle the two together like an ice cream sandwich.
One layer of what bad thing will happen if I don’t change, plus a cool yummy layer of the awesome
goodies I can get when I do my work and a final layer of what COULD happen if I do nothing and things go sideways. That is a no fail Motivation Bar!
Tell yourself the truth about how big a problem this is for you and get help getting into motion before you hit bottom and need to act out of fear and panic.
