THE ED MYLETT SHOW
The Hidden Pattern Destroying Your Success (Delete Your Old Self) | Ed Mylett
23 May 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Ed Miler Show. Hey everyone, welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow The Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Now on with the show. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. I'm so excited about today's topic.
It's probably the number one topic that I get asked about, which is the topic of self-sabotage. What do people do in their life subconsciously and unconsciously to sabotage their success or their happiness, their results in general? I'm gonna let you in on a secret.
I'm kind of an expert on this topic, and not because I'm so perfect, but because I spent so much of my life sabotaging particular areas that I was making progress in, whether that was in my financial success. I'd get some financial success or business success, and then I'd sabotage it. Frankly, even really in my own personal happiness and peace,
I'd feel like a little bit more bliss, a little bit more happiness, a little bit more peace in my life. Then I'd sabotage the results. Even some relationships that I've had, I've sabotaged them. So I'm kind of an expert on this self-sabotage thing. I also think I've probably become close to an expert on how to stop it. And why it happens in the first place.
So what I'm going to give you today is the gift of seven things people do to sabotage themselves. Their success, their happiness, their finances, their body, their relationships.
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Chapter 2: What is self-sabotage and how does it manifest in our lives?
I'm going to give you seven of them. But before I do that, because I think these seven things are symptoms. In other words, when I outline them for you, if you're doing any of them or more than one of them, you're currently sabotaging something. So they're symptoms. But the root cause, the disease, is something that's never discussed when it comes to sabotage. And I want to cover that today.
What's going on behind the scenes in our minds, subconsciously, unconsciously, that's causing us to sabotage things? Because if we can identify that... Man, we've got a chance of eliminating all of these seven symptoms I'm going to share with you. And so here's how I look at sabotage. See, our lives are dictated. The most powerful force in our life is our personal identity.
Our personal identity is like the thoughts, beliefs, and concepts that we hold to be the most true about who we believe we are or what we're worth. It's our worthiness, but it's even more than that. It's a combination of our experiences, what we're familiar with, what we believe we're worth, our self-confidence, all combined creates our identity or who we believe we are.
And our identity is very much like a thermostat setting on our lives. So like in this studio right now, it's set at 73 degrees. I checked it right before I started with you. And what's great about that is that thing's set at 73 degrees. Guess what's going on in this theater right now? 73 degrees is happening inside here. Here's why.
The external conditions do not control the conditions of this studio. Right now, it's about 85 degrees outside. Externally, it's really hot out there. But in here, 73 degrees. Because what happens externally does not control what happens internally in this theater. And here's the story. Same with your life. It's not the external things.
It's not how other people are treating you or events going on in the world or events going on in your life or circumstances outside of your control that dictate your life. What dictates your life is that thermostat setting, your identity. Let me give you an example, and you've probably seen this before with yourself or friends of yours. See, you have multiple thermostat settings, by the way.
You have an identity setting, a thermostat setting for your happiness, your finances, your success, your relationships, your physical body. You have multiple ones, your faith. Let's just take a few of them. Maybe you've had this happen before in your life, but if you have a 73 degrees success thermostat setting, right? And all of a sudden your business is growing, you're at 80, 90, 95 degrees.
Maybe you've got a promotion at work or you own your own business and it's growing. But somehow a year later, it comes right back down to what it was before. Was it all the external conditions? Like if you go, oh, it's supply chain, interest rates went up, the economy changed.
It always seems like those things, but it never is because even in those conditions, some people are winning, some people are losing. What's happened is your success started to get higher than your thermostat setting. And it becomes unfamiliar to you. You're not used to it. So what do you do?
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Chapter 3: What are the underlying causes of self-sabotage?
And you're like, my gosh, you dropped 20 pounds. You look incredible. And they're at 85, 90, 100 degrees of fitness. And then you don't see them for a while and you come back in a year and you notice, my gosh, they've gained all the weight back, maybe even plus three or four or five pounds. What happened?
Because although they changed their workout and their diet, they didn't change the internal thermostat setting. And so at some point eventually, they subconsciously cooled it back down and they get the body they believe they deserve and they're worth. Maybe you've seen this in a relationship. You have a friend who's just their love thermostat is 73 degrees of love in their relationships.
or how much they're going to allow themselves to enjoy. And then they've got this new person, this guy or girl they're seeing. You go to dinner with them. They're so happy. They're all lovey-dovey. They're at 90, 100 degrees. He or she's perfect for me. They're my soulmate. They're amazing. You're like, oh my gosh, they finally found 100 degrees of love. But if inside there's still a 73-degreer,
You come back in a year, maybe you haven't seen them and you're like, hey, what happened to so-and-so? Oh, it didn't work out. We grew apart. We had different values. It just didn't click long-term. They cheated, whatever it might be. What happened was you turned the air conditioner on of your life and you cooled it back down to what you believe you're worth.
So this identity, this thermostat setting dictates everything. So if we can change that thermostat setting, and by the way, there's lots of ways we do it. In my book, The Power of One More, I have entire chapters on how do you elevate your thermostat setting. I recommend you go get The Power of One More, but I'll give you a few of them today.
You always hear, you're really the five people you hang around the most. Well, why that matters is because people that you hang around that have thermostat settings higher than yours will heat you up somewhere in between their setting and yours. Let me give you an example of what I mean. You can't possibly be, if you're a 73 degree fitness person,
You're a little bit out of shape, but you're hanging around and going to dinner and working out with people that are 100, 120 degrees of fitness and wellness and vitality. They will heat you up somewhere between where you're 73 and they're 120 is because you're eating with them. You're working out with them. See, progress is influence. Proximity is influence. So they heat you up.
Same thing in your success. If you start running around, you're 73 degree person of success. You're just kind of right down here. But all of a sudden, you start hanging around people that are at 90, 100, 120 degrees. You've got mentors and friends that are 120, 150. They heat you up by proximity.
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Chapter 4: How does our identity influence our success?
So there's faith, there's association, and there's intention. These are three things I call the trilogy of increasing one's identity. So association is a big one. So that's why it's important to evaluate who are you hanging around? Do they just make you feel good? Do they validate your thermostat settings or do they increase your thermostat settings?
So identity is a major, major root cause disease of self-sabotage. And again, we're gonna cover the seven symptoms in a minute. The other thing to evaluate is is in our life, remember this, we like to move towards what's familiar and we all want to have a sense of self-control in our life. So we move towards what's familiar and we don't like the feeling of being out of control.
So I'm going to submit to you something that maybe you've never heard before. You probably have never heard the thermostat analogy, but I'll give you another one. Maybe the reason you self-sabotage is because it allows you to predict the future. It allows you to predict what's going to happen, which is giving you the illusion of self-control. Think about that again.
Maybe the reason you're self-sabotaging is because it allows you to predict what's actually going to happen because it's going to become familiar. And it gives you this illusion of self-control. Maybe that's what's going on behind the scenes. This identity thing, will we cool it back down? Because we don't like to go to the unfamiliar. We don't like to move where we've never been before.
And so self-sabotage allows our lives to become predictable because they'll stay the way they've always been. Isn't that interesting? Now, what are seven symptoms of the two diseases I just described? Number one thing that people do that sabotage themselves, and this is in no order, but I'm going to give you seven of them. Number one thing they do, they focus on the past. They focus on the past.
They look backwards a lot. You know, there's this analogy that the rearview mirror is smaller than the windshield for a reason because you should be looking through the windshield. But the truth is the inside of the car that you're sitting in, the present place you're sitting is even bigger than the windshield.
And I can tell you that people that are growing, that aren't sabotaging themselves, spend very little time looking in the rearview mirror. They spend some time looking in the windshield forward, but they spend a lot of time fully present at where they are. And if you're looking in the past all the time, you're going to repeat it.
If you're looking in the past, the reason you look back there is it's familiar. The reason you can look back there is you can predict it. The reason you look back there is you've tied a story to it that you're very familiar with. And so people that self-sabotage keep looking to the past and wonder why they can't move into their future.
Or every time they step into a new future, they end up sabotaging it because you're bringing the past with you because you focus there. Stop focusing on the past or you're going to be sabotaging. And if you are focusing on the past, you're in the middle of sabotaging something right now. It could be your relationship, your success, your finances, your body, your faith, your emotions.
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Chapter 5: What are the seven symptoms of self-sabotage?
And that massive forest is filled with all different shapes and sizes of trees. And in between the green trees, you've got these little black trees and maybe there's a big clump and maybe there's a little one and some trees are little and some little black trees from a recent experience and some very big ones from long established experience. So something like racism would be a very strong
very dominant cluster of dark black trees using the warning signal of all the anxiety and the stress and the terrible things that come from something as evil as racism, which is pervasive and affecting ability to actually how you see yourself. And so every bit of nurturing is built into your brain. Every experience is built into your brain.
So this forest is influencing in the middle of the forest, just to give a visual example, we have this wide field of optimism bias. So I always explain it like a strip of trees that are perfect. In the middle of the forest, there's this untouched area that's just perfect. And that's where we want to really access that.
So if you're flying your helicopter, which is you in life, you're flying your helicopter and you kind of, as you develop self-regulation, you don't just fly your helicopter and bash into a tree and crash, which is what we do a lot of. That's messy. We want to know how to not do that. So self-regulation teaches us how to fly with a pilot and co-pilot. So we're flying over this forest
and we're looking at whatever smoke signals are coming up, where are the signals? And if you see there that there's so much of that particular type of black cluster of trees, and that's influencing how you see yourself, your identity has been affected. But if you really dig deep and you'll see the middle part of the forest, which is you, it's Ed, who can do something else that no one else can do.
But there's these traumatic experiences that are affecting identity. So they can block and they can become so big that they can actually build like a black wall against the green forest. So it's almost hard to see who you really are because you're so busy being involved in that you're stuck in that cluster.
So that's why I say you've got self-regulation is not sitting and walking amongst those trees and getting lost, which is what we do. But it is actually getting in the helicopter and flying above and saying, okay, self-regulate. What am I doing? And the only way you can get to the trees and the forest and all that stuff is by looking at the warning signals. So these we track.
And then so then you would pay attention, gather awareness of four basic signals. The first is the emotional. So let's say that you're feeling a high state of anxiety. That could be all depression. Now, depression and anxiety are not it's. They're not illnesses.
To say you have clinical depression or clinical anxiety is one of the most unscientific statements of our age and has created a huge problem where people are now backing way more with mental health, not because mental health is on the rise. but because the mismanagement of mental health is on the rise. We're not allowing people to talk about the story in the forest.
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Chapter 6: How do we confront our fears and self-doubt?
What if you hurt your knee? I rehab it and I become a hockey player. And I burned the boats. I got rid of this is what I want. And I didn't know how. But when I was 14, I didn't know how I was going to make the NHL. But the NHL was already in my hands. I owned it. I owned it. It was mine.
Chapter 7: What role does vulnerability play in personal growth?
My friends that would try and get me to drink or go to parties or smoke. Still some of my best friends in my life. They were my groomsmen. But they tried to get me off that path. But I was like, you guys don't even know what I'm... I'm five years away from this in the NHL. I'm 14, but I'm 19 in the NHL already. I knew what I wanted.
Didn't know how, but I knew what I wanted and I knew why, because it was how I was going to express it. It was what I needed to do with my life.
Chapter 8: How can we challenge limiting beliefs about ourselves?
So I would try and get that out of a person. And everything else is a distraction.
100%. I posted today, today I made a post. I said, the extraordinary are fueled by why, and the average are always stuck with how. And what I find when I ask people that question, it's why I don't do it on the show anymore. I've had too many, even of my own guests, when I go, what do you want? It's very vague. It's very vague.
And so the rarest thing is to ask somebody that question, they can give you a specific, clear, compelling answer.
The other thing, you posted that today. I posted yesterday, if you're going to have one thing in your life, you're going to have one thing, have a magnificent obsession with getting better.
Bingo.
Whatever it is, whatever's your, like you wake up, and that's what I'm doing now. If I'm not in hockey, I'm following the flow of my life. What do I gravitate towards? Because I'm not getting paid for it, but what's my thing that I love? That's telling me where I should be. That's correct. And then have a magnificent obsession with improving that.
Yes.
And it will find a way to monetize itself. You'll be successful. It really does, by the way.
It really does. Move towards your curiosities and your obsessions. Your obsessions become your possessions. You're going to possess what you're obsessed with. And here's the issue for most people. They're obsessed with their fears. They're obsessed with what they're worried about. They're obsessed with what other people think about them. They're obsessed with all of these things.
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