Self-Sabotage Is Rampant- and entrepreneurs are often the arsonist and the firefighter in their own business.
In my experience, entrepreneurs are adrenaline junkies.
We love solving problems. It gives us energy, purpose, and validation. But what happens when we start creating the very fires we’re racing to put out?
That’s the paradox I see in so many high performers — and one I’ve lived myself. We light things up, then rush in heroically to fix them. It looks like leadership, but beneath the surface? It’s self-sabotage.
We’re not addicted to chaos — we’re addicted to the dopamine hit that comes from conquering it.
The Firefighter and the Arsonist
Neuroscientist Dr. Judson Brewer explains that our brains get hooked on habit loops: trigger → behavior → reward.
In our world, that might look like this:
- Things feel calm (trigger)
- We feel bored, irrelevant, or restless (behavior: create a new problem, start something big)
- We fix it (reward: dopamine, relief, validation)
- And boom — the brain learns, “Chaos = excitement. Fixing = worthiness.”
Stanford psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke, in Dopamine Nation, says it best:
“The same brain pathways that drive addiction to drugs or gambling also drive addiction to work, productivity, and success.”
As entrepreneurs, we self-dose on urgency. When the fires stop burning, we start missing the heat.
Three Ways Self-Sabotage Shows Up
Boredom: Confusing Calm with Complacency
When things are finally stable, many founders start looking for new excitement — not because they need to, but because they don’t know how to sit still.
Psychologist Dr. John Eastwood found that boredom is not laziness — it’s a signal that something in our life has lost meaning. But instead of getting curious about that signal, most entrepreneurs just start something new like another business or volunteer to join a board.
A side hustle, a new company, a “cool project.”
And before you know it, those side projects start draining the very business that’s funding your freedom.
We’re not scaling. We’re scratching an itch.
As Chip Conley likes to say, “Midlife reinvention is not about doing more — it’s about deepening what already matters.”
Ego: The Need to Prove It Again
There’s a voice in every founder that whispers, “Do it again — just to prove you can.”
We see people like Branson, Musk, or Oprah juggling multiple ventures and think we should do the same. But what we forget is that they’re not running those businesses — they’re leading the people who do.
When our ego drives, humility rides in the trunk.
Psychologist Dr. Gay Hendricks calls this the Upper Limit Problem: the moment when success feels too calm, so we unconsciously sabotage it to return to a familiar level of stress.
And leadership expert Jim Loehr warns, “Performance without purpose leads to plateau.”
When we chase motion instead of meaning, we start mistaking noise for growth.
Avoidance: Work as the New Addiction
This one’s personal. I lived it and it did not serve me well long term.
When we don’t want to feel something — pain in a marriage, loneliness, shame, grief — we do what we know: we work.
And we tell ourselves it’s noble.
But as psychologist Dr. Bryan Robinson says in Chained to the Desk, “Workaholism is the best-dressed addiction in America.”
The behaviors are identical to substance use — numbing, escaping, chasing relief.
And as Dr. Gabor Maté reminds us, “The question is not why the addiction, but why the pain.”
Workaholism is rarely about ambition. It’s about avoidance.
We wear burnout like a badge of honor because stillness feels unbearable.
And yet, stillness is the only place where healing starts.
1. The Illusion of Honor
Culturally, we glorify exhaustion.
We call overwork “grind.” We call disconnection “hustle.”
The sad truth for many entrepreneurs is:
Behind every 80-hour week is a person running from something they don’t want to feel.
Adam Grant wrote in Harvard Business Review that “Passion becomes pathology when it’s used to escape pain.”
Overcommitment isn’t always drive — sometimes it’s avoidance dressed up as achievement.
The bravest leaders I know aren’t the ones who keep sprinting — they’re the ones who finally stop.
2. Breaking the Cycle
Awareness is the first step — but not the last.
Here’s how to start shifting from firefighter to architect:
Name the pattern.
When things get quiet and you feel the urge to stir the pot, pause.
Ask yourself, “What am I trying to feel right now?”
Separate growth from distraction.
Before you start something new, ask, “Is this serving my mission — or my boredom?”
3. Practice stillness.
Neuroscience shows that when we slow down, our brain’s prefrontal cortex re-engages — restoring clarity and emotional regulation.
Stillness isn’t weakness. It’s leadership maintenance.
4. Respond, don’t react.
As Dr. Daniel Friedland taught, “The space between stimulus and response is where leadership is born.”
That’s where you regain choice — to lead from awareness, not adrenaline.
5. Seek reflection, not validation.
You don’t need more hustle. You need honest mirrors — coaches, therapists, and peers who won’t buy your highlight reel.
A Personal Truth
Several years ago, I found myself juggling a half-dozen “projects” — each one with its own noble story.
New partnerships, new ventures, new content.
But if I’m being real, they were all distractions.
I wasn’t chasing growth — I was avoiding grief of a key relationship ending.
The fires I lit gave me purpose; the act of putting them out made me feel needed.
It looked like progress.
It was really pain in disguise.
When I finally stopped lighting new fires and sat with the ashes of the old ones, something incredible happened — my brain stopped craving chaos.
The same dopamine that once fueled anxiety started reinforcing peace.
I looked inward, asked myself “what am I avoiding?” The answer was grieving and feeling the loss of that relationship.
That’s when the real transformation began. I leaned into the discomfort, no longer distracted, and begin to heal.
Final Reflection
This week, I’ll leave you with two questions to sit with — not solve:
What fire are you fighting right now that you secretly started?
And what might happen if, instead of rushing to fix it, you paused long enough to ask, “Why did I light it in the first place?”
Because the leaders who truly evolve don’t just grow their businesses — They stop burning down their own Peace.
With Gratitude,
