Here's How to Stop Self-Sabotaging Right Before the Breakthrough: A Practical Imposter Syndrome Fix

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It’s a podcast helping introverted leaders embrace your underrated, quiet strengths to get promoted and start earning what you deserve. I’m Greg Weinger. I have over 25 years of leadership experience. And yes, I am an introvert. Today I’m joined by Albert Bromonté. He’s a psychologist by training. He’s a talent agent for actors and he’s author of the book, Brise Above Descript. This conversation is for all introverts though. Because Albert breaks down what’s going on in your mind when your confidence collapses right at that moment you need it most. You’re going to learn in this episode one. Why self-sabotage is really a misguided self-protection mechanism. Number two, how to expose that I’m too busy excuse using a simple time audit. Number three, how to start rewriting that inner script using small language tweaks, small upgrades that you can start today. Here’s one quote from the episode I really enjoyed. Self-sabotage is not your enemy. It’s a signal. Here’s my conversation with Albert. Great, so Albert, I have to ask you the pressing question that I ask every person who comes on the podcast, are you an introvert or an extrovert? That’s a very interesting question and I actually almost will say it depends on the time of the day you asked me. Because I don’t consider the black or white response. I would say I may be leaning more towards introvert although I wouldn’t say I’m 100% introverted to have my extrovert tendencies but I also know my limits. I host like at the hours and meet ups with his groups of people. But I’m in control. I can say that now being older. Because I try to fit in and do everything that my peers were doing at the time. Yeah, it’s harder to admit when you’re younger and that’s supposedly the source of your social life and you’re supposed to love it. So Albert, you followed the very typical path of getting a doctorate in psychology to becoming a talent agent. Maybe you could just tell us a little bit about that career shift if I have that right. Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if I would consider traditional because this is not really a mix that you see and I can see where people get a little confused by that because it is too totally fulfilled. And I can kind of tell you that it was never really in the cards for me to be a talent agent that just happened. However, I always wanted to be a psychologist. But I was also very much involved. Even though it was an introvert, I was also very involved in the drama club. And then when I finished my master degree, this was a senior of that 11, you know, 20, 24 years ago. And I started meeting up with filmmakers and actors again. So somebody came up to me to say, wanting all this for my film, it’s a sure I did it. It was a lot of fun. And then another one auditioned for a play. I didn’t get it, but I had fun. And I was like, I’m in one of the acting couples of the world in New York City, which is a heavy theater hub. So I was like, let me give it a shot. I started a visit actor. And I realized into what it wasn’t for me, but what I enjoyed doing was have a conversation with actors on set looking out for jobs for them when they were on set. And I realized that my calling wasn’t an actor, but supporting actors. How can I support that? And so that started, we all started to turn. You know, I said, I’m a star business. I’m going to represent actors. So while I was starting this, I also had a higher to start teaching. I enjoyed teaching. That’s my blood. So I was like, okay, you know what? I’m going to go from a PhD. So I enrolled into a PhD program at Walden University, which is online school. I did that. And during my time when I was starting everything, the one issue that I kept running up against with actors was Chef Sabatash and and Pastor Syndrome. At that time, really in Pastor Syndrome wasn’t really a word. You know, our buzz word really until fairly recently. But that was what was going on. And the same thing with the students I was working with was a glasses. A lot of them were having issues themselves, doubt not believing in themselves. And so I said, you know what? This could be a great topic for my doctoral thesis. So I focused primarily on actors and that was self-defeating behavior and performing artists. So now here’s the opportunity to bridge both of my worlds together to make it where I’m both doing the agent side of things with the actors, but also combining the psychology elements to it. So I did that, received my PhD and then several years later, I said, you know what? I’m going to turn this into a book. And that happened in 2024. The book was published. Yeah. So what happened these things evolved in parallel is the majority of your work as a psychologist or as a talent agent. I would say 80, 20, 80% talent agents, 20% psychologists. Because right now I’d still teach part time at the college in New York. So I do three classes a semester easily and a lot of content that create psychology based, but also with a bend towards the acting side of things. I love actors and that’s something I really can do. You see myself doing this growing my life working with actors. I like to use my work more as insulting and performance mindset area of psychology. Oh, that’s great. Well, let’s get into that a little bit. You were really digging into self-defeating behaviors in your research and obviously been around actors enough. It’s not just actors, but all creative people, probably all people. We have self-defeating behaviors. So help us think about this a little bit. I always say in observations and research, it’s self-defeating behavior is a self-protective feature. And the intent, I always come to the belief, and Mr. Marvel, known with programming, that every behavior is a positive intent. Now the intent and the outcome are two different things, but the intent is self-protection, which is positive. And that’s sort of bringing this design to do. And our nervous system is designed to keep us alive, keep us protected at all times. And it does a great job of doing that. I’d say 80% of the time or 90% of the time does a wonderful job of doing that. Anything that’s a bit scary or stepping up to a cover, a change, a new identity even comes in and complete to a new identity is a bit scary. And our brain again is going to do everything to prevent any potential danger to happy happening. And then most of the time, they may not lead to dangerous situations. It’s self-procise to be that way. So the brain is doing its job by protecting us. And sometimes that can be an overdrive. Let’s say you grew up in a chaotic environment, you have some history of trauma in your life. And when I talk about trauma, it doesn’t necessarily have to be sensational events. It could be little micro events, your parents, favored, others sibling over you, or you had to compete a lot for your parents’ attention, or you were ridiculed a lot by teachers or by other family members. And these little things eventually will add up. So we’re constantly fighting a slide mode, which is why people have anxiety. So it’s a lot of times now. So with self-sabotage, you know, sometimes get so close to a goal and then take five steps back. And of course, everyone around you said, what did you do that for? What was that game? You weren’t. You were self-protected, self-protected mode. Because most people in their self-sabotage, you don’t realize it’s self-sabotage. Our brain is those sometimes conscious signals such as, oh, this does not work my time. I’m going to feel good today. I just have to use that really worth it. You start talking to yourself out of it. And it’s very easy to talk or self-sabotage things that make us a little uncomfortable. Yeah. You’re moving toward a positive goal or desired goal, something you want. But then there are some negative aspects or parts of you perceive as negative aspects that are threatening, change, that sort of thing. So that it’s a self-protective mechanism against those negative things that might be associated with the goal. Absolutely. I thought, I’m going to pull back now. Okay. Well, here I go now. Well, I’m going to pull back. And so the first step is realizing this is happening. When you get up and you don’t feel well, is that a fear signal? Are you generally going to feel well? Or is that just a fear signal that you’re reinit, protecting you from? Sometimes it’s having an honest conversation with myself of what’s really going on here. Because that’s the first step to start changing these patterns is to have that honest, successful yourself and to know that that’s a possibility that might be happening in the year. And I see there’s a lot with people that I’m too busy to make friends, I’m too busy to date. Really? You know? And sometimes the look is that through or you just care, a very easy cop out to say I’m too busy. And one of the ways you can see that is when somebody who’s always constantly in that blow out, we’re too busy and all they’re doing is the same thing every day. It’s like they’re living in the classic, they’re going to go out on a holiday with Bill Murray because they’re not really advancing them over it’s forward. But again, we crave routine and routine is comfortable. So that’s the issue that you see that people recognize or they don’t. How do you start to intervene in that? The first step again is the insight. This is why again, it’s great to have a coach, a great dad somebody who’s not your mother who’s not your spouse or sort of another that can point out to you like, okay, really? You know, this is what what are you doing? So again, it’s self protective. So understanding of its possibility is self protective. That’s the first step to really changing a situation. Great. And then let’s say you do have a coach or somebody with your background, you have worked where they have noces or an OP you’ve mentioned. Tell us a little bit about that. Yes. So I don’t necessarily consider myself a judicial head and test. I don’t build myself as that. I’m more of a coach. Integrate that because it’s all about your subconscious, your identity or to change it along with you. So again, most people when they describe themselves, you could almost automatically tell to some degree if they’re self-defeating behavior way before I even really get into them in detail. Because a lot of actors I work with will describe themselves as a sovereign artist or struggling artist or struggling at this episode is brought to you by Intuit QuickBooks Bill Pay. You didn’t start a business to spend your Sundays chasing invoices and manual data entry. But as you grow, accounts payables starts to feel like a full time job you never applied for. You know what, approvals get lost in email and your vendors are constantly asking where’s my check. It’s distracting, it’s stressful and it’s keeping you from the work that actually moves the needle. Intuit QuickBooks Bill Pay is the exoram. QuickBooks Bill Pay automates the busy work that eats your calendar by bringing every bill, every vendor and every payment into one organized dashboard. Stop chasing details and start seeing the big picture. Know exactly what’s due, who needs to sign off and how it impacts your cash flow before the money leaves your bank. 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The important thing in order to help somebody really through the app that would want to be helped and they have to know that there’s a problem. And they really have to start taking accountability. I don’t need blame. I need accountability. Where it’s like, okay, I may be really the calm denominator here. And so therefore, now I have to figure out what I need to do. And that might be, do things differently. Start rearranging your schedule. Because one of the traits I talk about in my book is consciousnessness. And that’s so important. Not just for actors, but for anybody to really do more discipline and more focus. What are you doing in your day? You’re doing all the time. And in addition, once we do that, then the next step is to start building an activity that require you to do something a bit different or step outside of your comfort zone. Which might mean, okay, you may need to go that and everything event. Maybe you need to go live until to meeting. Maybe you need to go give an representation at a local club organization and stretch that out a bit. And we’ll do small steps. So I’m going to ask someone to go out front of a, you know, 10,000 a person’s stadium at the other speech. But maybe give 10 or 20 people that are coming, you know, to hear you speak. So it’s like a, well already a welcoming environment or going to a meetup of that where people are really there to meet other people. So there’s less likely a social rejection because once you get into the moment of doing something different, it’s really helpful. One of the things I used to do, I haven’t done it. That much since the pandemic, but I used to host karaoke events with my, awesome friends. And never want to find, I enjoyed hosting them. I enjoyed participating them because I feel like the art of just you and karaoke and I’ve heard it’s an other business presentation. If you really want to loosen up, that’s the best way to do that because you’re really are making in a fun way, but a full lot of yourself on stage. And that’s all purpose up. But once you get that moment and going, it’ll keep going. And so I think that’s the board is stepping outside your comfort zone and loosening up and just trying out new things because a lot of people walk around expecting their lives to change, but they’re not making the change first. I used to watch a lot of social media where people would have had the end of every year. Why help next year is a better year? And I think saying people saying that, that’s great you expect that, but what are you doing to improve that? How are you improving and making sure that that happens? What actions are you taking? So the important thing, the key word here is taking actions, not some day I’ll do this, but actually taking actions. Either you’re going to commit to it or you’re not because if you do some day, I can automatically tell that that’s going to never happen. And this is going to get a bit heavy for a moment, but usually with people at the end of their life, they regret to some day moments because it never happens. And it’s not the mistakes you make. It’s not foolish when I was 21 or 22. The biggest sorts of torture or regret at despeds are the things that you didn’t do, or for comfort. So I think the important thing here is to take action. What really are you afraid of? Because some people are afraid of losing relationships in their life. And relationships are vital to us, no matter whether we’re antivirative or extroverted, brave and desire and need social relationships and companionship. That’s been sometimes happened. What people are threatened in your life by your success. And we need to have a conversation, you’re released with money because I think that’s some board. And a lot of people look at me like, we’re say, well, I love money. Consciously do. Yes. But what about subconsciously? That’s where the tricky part comes in. Because a lot of times you make growing up being families or societies where you are told the message that money is bad or money is brutal or evil. And you’re giving that message over and over again, or that rich people are greedy and powerful people. Yeah. So therefore you start to give that money is bad. Some people get so closely making a lot of money. And then of course, that fear comes in and they pull back. Or they get rid of the money as soon as they get it. Now they’re more debt than they were when they started. Yeah. So it’s really about uncovering and dealing with these subconscious behaviors that really kind of take the wheel in these situations. So how does LLP play into that? NLP, normal and graphic progress. Yeah. Please expand on that for definition. Because a lot of people get confused in the computer work because there’s that’s only its processing and everything that are normal and graphic programming. So what that really refers to is kind of like reprogramming a mind like the computer program in a sense. And we’re using language and chain in programming neurology. So again, by using imagery by using language patterns, just using the power of your imagination to change your brain and the wiring in your brain. So that you make better decisions that founded in the early 1970s. And it’s really just a system designed to help people model excellence. So for example, let’s say I want to teach them whether they’d be more confident. So the first thing I might have to do would be to model somebody who’s confident. How do they walk? How do they present themselves? What gestures do they use? Put your head up high and smile. Power pose is the beginning of the day. It’s like a system designed to model excellence. You model excellence and then your body and brain start catching up to what your model. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to come back to your book, arise above the script. Could you explain the title and what’s the script in this? So the title will describe a rise of a script, even though it’s geared towards actors, and I’m one of the users that’s stripped as a metaphor, every one of us that’s stripped, you know, voice in our head, that’s a script. In the critic, that’s a script. Or the internal memories that we have of our parents talking to us, that’s a script. And so what I want to do is say, okay, how can we transcend that and go above that? Because the script inside of us is what’s causing us, itself out and self sabotage. Let’s go above that and let’s find out ways to challenge those internal strips that we’re facing, whether it’s that I’m not good enough to, I am good enough for a lot of times people say, I’ll try my best. No, you’ll do your best. Right. It’s a mindset shift there. It’s rewriting your script a little bit. Yeah. And rewriting the language he used to. I always say limited to work try for new book as much as possible. Mm-hmm. And for the thing, I’ll try my best, I will do my best. Or even if you can’t commit to something, don’t say I’ll try it if there is no. Because you’ll see, yeah, I’m going to try to get there this weekend. Another powerful word that we can use is the word yet. So I shoot this a lot with actors. I haven’t booked anything yet. And so you’re saying you haven’t booked anything. You haven’t booked anything yet. Because when you say the word yet, you’re opening your mind up to that possibility rather than stopping short, it’s a possibility. Yeah. It’s almost like opening the possibility, opening the door on things. It’s like yes and so instead of replying with no or yeah or but it’s and. Yeah. And that’s another word too to try to get in the car to do that. Even myself’s included to get the word but out. Because most people say I really want that latest product, but I can’t afford it. But what if you say it this way, I really want that product and I can’t afford it yet. Okay. Well, then you’re giving yourself maybe that moment saying, okay, we’ll start turning. But what do I need to do to be able to afford that now? And instead of saying like that in the dorm, because what kind of sets a door on whatever it is you’re about to say that that’s what is the rules of improv, of course, as you know, is to always be on a yes framework, no matter how silly the idea is. That’s right. Did you do much improv? A little bit. That was one of the rules too, was that yes and principle. And that’s all made it fun because it could be something totally, who I learned this idea. But the idea is to just go with it and just continue with that story. I love these. These are really practical tools yet. Try the yes and eliminate the butts. I want to give listeners a little bit more practical advice. You have been giving people advice about using AI. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure. I don’t consider myself a techie. So there’s a lot of people that are more advanced in the coding side of things. I’m more an degenerative AI side, like Jackie VT, Claude, Canada and all that. So I like to use it for the content creation and ideas. And so what I talk about that is how can you leverage it to be a business partner and your partner? Not necessarily taking a role for you, not doing the work for you, but helping you out. I got as a tool to maybe cut down some time or I made something to come up with better ideas. But the one thing that’s important with any type of AI, you don’t want to lose your voice. And you always want to create M type of content. If you use it for content creation, use it only to amplify your message, not to replace your message or not to replace your voice. One way to do that is to feed it content that you’ve already created. I’m your own without any assistance from AI. But there’s some of the tastes. I mean, they said AI is great, but there are only tastes to it. So the one thing that I will say is you should always periphery what you write, but say, I always check for actors and sometimes we don’t. And so I definitely encourage them when they use AI and use it a lot, but at the same time, check your responses, check the work. Yeah. Alba, we’re running short on time. This has been really great. I wanted to ask you just two more things. One is if you had a message for introverted people out there and how they can improve their lives, what would it be? Well, I would say the deep thing, small scale, do things that you’re comfortable with. Don’t live your life in accordance with somebody else knows you do. Whatever works for you, under your neurology, under your comfort zone. But at the same time, I would challenge you something to go talk to people at least. Again, you don’t have to go to the large venues. Know your own names, but definitely go out and challenge your talk to people. Give it a two more on one basis. Oh, that’s great advice. And where can people learn more about your work? So you can find me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of the platforms I use. I’ve also got my website, AlbaPromonti.com, which is under construction, but you can definitely find me there. Yeah. I love that conversation. Well, it’s been great having a conversation with you here today. So thanks for joining the show. And thank you for having me. All right. Let’s take a moment to recap what Albert gave us, because these practices really could change the way you see yourself in real time, starting today. First, remember, if you’re self-sabotaging, it doesn’t mean you’re broken or you’re lazy. Notice with some appreciation, the way your mind is trying to protect you. It’s trying to keep you safe from change, exposure, or even losing people in your life. These are real risks of stepping into a larger identity. Acknowledge its concerns are real. And assure it you’ll be there and support it through these changes. Second, start noticing more of the stories you’re telling yourself, especially that I’m too busy. How did your time for a day or two ask yourself honestly, is this really overload or is fear just using calendar as a disguise? Third, start rewriting your inner script. Using micro-shifts to generate momentum, add that I haven’t done it yet. Practice the improv, yes, and, and drop your butt. Replace that with I will. And as a bonus suggestion, take one small action today that takes you outside of your comfort zone. No big leaps, just one tiny step. If this episode helped you, the single best thing you can do right now is subscribe, so you don’t miss what’s coming next. Every week we’re building quite confidence with practical tools just like these. I’m Greg Weinger, keep leading with quiet strength, and I’ll see you next time. 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