The 9 Saboteurs
How To Overcome Your 9 Saboteurs
Understanding the nine saboteurs
How can you beat your nine saboteurs to have greater fulfillment and success in your life?
These nine saboteurs, from Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Shamin, are strengths that we have overused and that now hold us back. They include the avoider, restless, high achiever, perfectionist, pleaser, hyper-rational, hyper-vigilant, controller, and victim.
For example:
The avoider avoids tough conversations, business challenges, or personal issues, creating paralysis and lack of progress.
The restless can’t sit still, always chasing new tasks, which limits reflection and strategy.
The high achiever ties self-worth to results, creating the “arrival fallacy” and chronic dissatisfaction. The perfectionist demands faultless quality, leading to harsh self-criticism and rigidity.
Recognizing Your Patterns
Each saboteur started as a way to protect yourself:
The avoider believes ignoring discomfort keeps you safe.
The restless thinks constant action is security.
The high achiever chases self-worth through results.
The perfectionist assumes that perfection guarantees acceptance.
The pleaser believes love depends on keeping others happy.
The hyper-rational trusts only logic.
The hyper-vigilant expects danger.
The controller feels safety in control.
The victim avoids ownership by blaming circumstances.
1. Avoider
Avoider is linked to anything that you're avoiding in your life. Whether it's avoiding a tough conversation or a business situation, a challenge, something you're just not addressing and not looking at.
When the avoider is in overdrive and you're overdoing the Avoider, this can cause many issues. Whether it's in your relationships because some things aren't being said, whether it's in your health because you're not addressing certain checkups, or in your business because you're not being honest with yourself.
The simplest place to begin is to be totally transparent and honest with yourself first and ask yourself, What am I avoiding? What am I not confronting? What am I not addressing right now that is holding me back? From this place of honesty, you can start to shift the dynamic.
2. Restless
Restless is when you simply can't sit in place. You always want to be in movement. You always want to do a million things at the same time and you struggle with just sitting, being in silence, being calm. Now, obviously being in action and movement is fantastic, but overdone it leads to this restless saboteur. This can prevent you from having more introspection, more reflection in your life. The best way to deal with the restless saboteur is by practicing a little at a time, being a little less restless, a little more calm.
3. High Achiever
High achievers often correlate their own self-worth with external results. They're always chasing accomplishments, achievements, rewards, awards because they think, Now I’m worthy. This leads to the arrival fallacy where you never feel you’re quite there yet and you always need to achieve more, which makes you feel like you’re not enough. To counter this, pivot from being so result-oriented to being more present, enjoying the process, and nurturing relationships.
4. Perfectionist (Stickler)
Perfectionists believe there’s a certain standard to which they must abide. The high achiever is accomplishment-driven, whereas the perfectionist is more quality-driven. This leads to analysis paralysis, low self-esteem, and a harsh inner critic. Perfectionists look everywhere for faults and mistakes. It creates rigidity and fear of failure. The key is to accept that there’s no perfect, only high quality, and be okay with outcomes that aren’t flawless.
5. Pleaser
The pleaser puts others’ needs first above their own. This erodes self-worth and can leave you feeling empty or not aligned. It’s important to balance generosity with valuing your own needs. Overcoming people-pleasing often leads others to respect you more, as long as it’s done with kindness and respect.
6. Hyper-Rational
Hyper-rational thinkers measure and quantify everything, often ignoring intuition and emotional truth. While rationality is valuable, not everything can be perfectly measured. Over-reliance on logic can keep you in situations that make sense on paper but don’t fulfill you in reality. Ask yourself, What is my heart saying? and listen more to your intuition.
7. Hyper-Vigilant
Hyper-vigilance means always being on the lookout for problems. While it can prevent danger, it often turns into paranoia and fear that stop you from taking action. The mind catastrophizes and imagines the worst. The shift comes from training your brain to see positives and opportunities, not just risks.
8. Controller
The controller wants to manage everything. If you’re overly controlling, you feel unsafe in uncertainty or chaos. This leads to over-planning, rigidity, and lack of spontaneity. Build acceptance by starting small: let go of control in minor situations so you can handle bigger uncertainties more calmly later.
9. Victim
The victim feels that everything happens to them, staying in a place of powerlessness. This mental model blocks ownership and action. To shift, see what influence you do have, take ownership of your responses, and recognize that you can change how you engage with situations.
Shifting Towards Freedom
Awareness is the first step to change. Catch the saboteur when it appears and name it without judgment: “That’s my perfectionist” or “I’m avoiding.” Curiosity helps: “Why is this coming up now?” From here, you can choose differently.
Small steps rewire patterns. Pause before reacting when restless. Speak up for your needs instead of pleasing. Let go of small controls before bigger ones. Listen to intuition alongside logic. Choose action over avoidance. Over time, new habits replace old defaults.
Relapse is normal: patterns built over years may return. When you do, repeat the cycle: awareness, curiosity, small change. Each time, the saboteur’s hold will weaken.
Core ideas for the 9 Saboteurs:
Awareness is the foundation for change.
Catch the saboteur without self-criticism.
Curiosity opens the door to transformation.
Small steps build new mental pathways.
Relapse is part of the process.
Thank you for reading,
Enjoy the journey,
Katie
This article is based on a transcript from my podcast episode. To listen to the podcast episode, check out this link.