STEP 2 OF 4
Step 2, Meet your saboteurs.
Now that you know what you carry, we can look at what's carrying you, usually somewhere you didn't choose.
Here's what nobody told me for forty years: the patterns running your life aren't character flaws. They're employees. Every single one of them was hired by a much younger you, for a job that made perfect sense at the time. Control. Achieve. Perfect. Please. Analyze. They kept a kid safe. They built an adult's empire. Somewhere along the way, they stopped taking orders.
Psychology has a name for this, protective parts, strategies formed in childhood that outlive their usefulness. I have a simpler one: saboteurs. Not because they're evil. They're loyal to a version of your life that's over.
Take the diagnostic below. About twenty minutes, at your own pace.
The Diagnostic
Take the Saboteur Assessment.
Roughly 20 minutes. Answer honestly, not aspirationally.
Then read your results the way I'm about to show you how to read mine. A list of traits changes nothing. A mirror changes everything.
My Mirror
What happened when I looked in the mirror?
When I ran my own diagnostic, five distinct patterns came back high. What I received wasn't just a list of traits, it was an explanation for decisions I had been making since I was four years old. A tightly packed cluster like this usually means they were all recruited young, for the same job.
The Controller
The need to take charge and bend situations and people to your will. It shows up as "I'll be okay if I can control everything." Born in your house the day you realized you couldn't predict when the storm was coming. A kid who can't control the danger learns to control everything else within reach. It gave you reliability and an empire. It costs you trust, delegation, and ease… and it's the one that turns your own team into another thing to grip instead of something that frees you.
The Hyper-Achiever
Worth fused to performance and accomplishment. The voice that says you're only as good as your last win, so rest feels like risk and the next thing is pulling at you before this one lands. In a chaotic house that couldn't give a kid a stable sense of worth, you went out and earned one. Achievement became proof you were good, proof you mattered, proof you were safe. It built everything you have. It costs you the ability to ever feel finished.
The Hyper-Rational
Living in your head, processing life through analysis instead of feeling it. This is the tender one. When emotions aren't safe to have, a smart kid moves upstairs where it's calmer. You may have learned very early that thinking your way through a thing hurt less than feeling your way through it. It gives you a clear head when everyone else loses theirs. It costs you intimacy… the people closest to you sometimes meet the strategist when they were reaching for the woman.
The Stickler
Perfectionism and a need for order and correctness that's hard on you and on everyone around you. If stepping out of line is what brought the belt, then never putting a foot wrong becomes survival. Be perfect and maybe you stay safe. It gave you excellence. It costs you a finish line that keeps moving, so good is never quite good.
The Pleaser
Earning acceptance by helping, pleasing, rescuing, reading the room. This was the lowest of my five, and it's the most honest part of my profile. Execution is actually a frustration for me naturally, the pleasing was never really about service. It was a lookout's job. Reading the room, managing the temperature, keeping the peace so the peace would keep me. It cost me myself… saying yes when my body said no.
The Truth Underneath It All
The thing all five share: every one of them is a strategy for "I'll be okay IF." The Controller says if I control it. The Stickler says if I'm perfect. The Pleaser says if no one's upset. The Hyper-Achiever says if I produce. The Hyper-Rational says if I don't have to feel it. They're all the same four-year-old, betting that safety has to be earned.
Now it's your turn to read yours the same way.
Take your top pattern and finish this sentence honestly:
"I'll be okay if ______."
If I control it. If I'm perfect. If no one's upset. If I produce. If I don't have to feel it.
Write it down. That sentence is your mirror. That sentence is the lid.
Bring it with you, at the end of this path I'll show you where people bring their sentences every week and we work on them together, live, for free.