Mark: Alright Michelle, pop quiz. What’s the number one thing holding you back from your goals? Michelle: Oh, easy. Procrastination. My phone. That last slice of pizza. Mark: All wrong. According to our book today, the biggest thing holding you back is your own brain trying to protect you. Michelle: My brain protecting me by making me watch three hours of cat videos? That's a new one. What book is making this wild claim? Mark: It’s The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery by Brianna Wiest. And what's fascinating is that Wiest isn't a psychologist; she's a writer who became wildly popular by writing about her own struggles with anxiety and OCD. She writes what she needed to hear, and millions of readers have connected with that. Michelle: So it's coming from a place of personal experience, not a clinical textbook. I like that. It feels more like a conversation with a wise friend than a lecture. Mark: Exactly. And that's why it's resonated so much, though it's also drawn some criticism for that very reason, which we can get into. But her core idea is revolutionary for a lot of people. She essentially argues that we need to completely rethink what self-sabotage even is. Michelle: Okay, I’m intrigued. Where do we even start with an idea that big?

Mark: We start with a really provocative statement from the book: "There's no such thing as self-sabotage." Michelle: Hold on. That feels like a get-out-of-jail-free card. I absolutely sabotage myself. I make a plan to wake up early and go to the gym, and then I hit snooze seven times. That feels a lot like sabotage. Mark: I get it, and that’s what we all think. But Wiest’s argument is that the behavior isn't born from a desire to fail or a hatred of ourselves. It's actually the result of a conflict between what our conscious mind wants—"I want to be fit and healthy"—and what our unconscious mind needs. Michelle: What kind of need is my unconscious mind fulfilling by keeping me in bed? The need for more weird dreams? Mark: It could be a need for comfort, a need to avoid the discomfort of a hard workout, or even a fear of what happens if you succeed. Wiest says self-sabotage is simply an unconscious need being met by the behavior. It's a coping mechanism. She uses a fantastic historical example: the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Michelle: Oh, I'm ready for a story. Mark: As a kid, Jung hated school. He felt out of place, anxious—it was a source of real suffering for him. One day, he took a fall, hit his head, and for a moment thought, "Maybe I won't have to go back to school now." Shortly after, he started having these uncontrollable fainting spells. Every time he was supposed to do his homework or get ready for school, he’d just… pass out. Michelle: Whoa. So he was literally, physically shutting down to avoid the thing causing him pain. Mark: Precisely. His doctors couldn't find anything wrong with him. It was Jung himself who later realized what was happening. He wrote that his neurosis—the fainting—was a "substitute for legitimate suffering." His unconscious mind had found a way to "solve" the problem of school without him having to consciously deal with the misery it caused him. The fainting was a protective strategy. Michelle: That is a wild story. But it also sounds like a very extreme, specific case. How does that translate to me avoiding my emails or procrastinating on a big project? Mark: It’s the same principle, just less dramatic. Your conscious mind says, "I need to finish this report for my boss." But your unconscious might be thinking, "If I finish this report and it's amazing, I might get a promotion. A promotion means more responsibility, more stress, more eyes on me, and a higher chance of failure. That's terrifying." So, suddenly, cleaning out your entire fridge feels much more urgent. Michelle: Huh. So the procrastination isn't about the report itself, but a fear of what the report represents? Success? Mark: Exactly. It's a conflict of interest. You want the goal, but you're also deeply attached to the safety of your current situation. The brain resists the unfamiliar, even if the unfamiliar is a good thing. It’s a homeostatic impulse; it wants to keep things the same because the same is predictable and safe. Michelle: I can see that. There's a certain comfort in the familiar mess, even if you want to clean it up. But this framing has also been a point of contention for the book, right? Some readers feel it puts too much blame on the individual, suggesting all their problems are self-created. Mark: That's a valid critique, and Wiest does walk a fine line. She acknowledges external problems are real, but she focuses on chronic problems—the ones that follow you from job to job, relationship to relationship. Those, she argues, often point to an internal "mountain." The book isn't for someone whose main problem is a systemic issue they can't control; it's for the person who recognizes they are the common denominator in their own recurring struggles. Michelle: That’s a really important distinction. It’s about taking accountability for the part you can control. So, if these behaviors are signals from our unconscious, how do we learn to read them? Mark: That's the perfect question, and it leads directly to her next big idea. We learn to read them by paying attention to our triggers.

Michelle: Triggers. That word gets thrown around a lot. Usually, it means something to avoid, something that causes pain. Mark: And that's the reframe. Wiest argues that our triggers aren't just landmines of past pain. They are our tour guides to freedom. They show us exactly where our unmet needs are. Michelle: Okay, you're going to have to give me an example, because when I feel triggered, my first instinct is to run, not pull out a map and ask for directions. Mark: Let's take a common one: jealousy. The book has this great story about a woman named Sarah, a marketing professional who felt stuck. She'd scroll through social media and see her friends buying houses or getting married, and she'd feel that familiar, ugly pang of jealousy. She always just dismissed it as a personal flaw. Michelle: I think we've all been there. It feels petty, and you feel bad for feeling it. Mark: Right. But one day, a friend posted about opening her own bakery. And the jealousy Sarah felt was different—it was intense. Instead of just scrolling past, she sat with it. She asked herself, "Why this? Why the bakery?" And she realized she had always, always loved baking but had never, ever considered it a real career. The jealousy wasn't just envy; it was a giant, flashing neon sign pointing directly at a buried desire. Michelle: Wow. So the jealousy was her own ambition, just reflected back at her through someone else. That’s a much more empowering way to look at it. Mark: It’s a total game-changer. Wiest says, "If you want to know what you truly want out of life, look at the people who you are jealous of." The same goes for other "negative" emotions. Anger, she says, shows you where your boundaries have been crossed. It’s a sign that you need to stand up for yourself. Regret shows you what you absolutely must do differently in the future. Michelle: I love that reframe. But how do you distinguish a helpful 'trigger' from just a bad mood? If I'm angry because I'm stuck in traffic, what's the 'deeper truth' there, other than that I hate traffic? Is it a sign I need to quit my job and become a hermit? Mark: (laughs) Probably not. That's where emotional intelligence comes in, which is a huge part of the book. Wiest makes a distinction between what she calls intuitive nudges and intrusive thoughts. An intuitive thought is usually calm, clear, and rational. It feels like a quiet "knowing." For Sarah, it was the quiet realization: "I love baking." Michelle: And an intrusive thought? Mark: That’s the loud, hectic, fear-based stuff. It’s your brain catastrophizing. The thought in traffic isn't "I should become a hermit." It's more like, "I'm going to be late, my boss will fire me, I'll lose my apartment, I'll be ruined!" That's not intuition; that's anxiety. The key is to learn to observe those thoughts without getting swept away by them. The gut instinct is the quiet voice; the fear is the screaming one. Michelle: So it’s about learning to listen for the whisper underneath the roar. Okay, so we've identified that our 'sabotage' is a coping mechanism, and we're using our triggers as a map to understand our needs. Now what? How do we actually climb the mountain and make a change? Mark: This is where the work really begins. It’s about consciously deciding to build a new future, which first requires a radical approach to releasing the past.

Michelle: "Releasing the past." That sounds so simple and so impossible at the same time. People say "just let it go" like you're dropping a hot potato. Mark: And that's exactly why it doesn't work. Wiest uses the classic "White Elephant" analogy. If I tell you, "Whatever you do, do NOT think about a white elephant," what's the only thing you can think about? Michelle: A giant, white, floppy-eared elephant. It’s in my brain right now. Mark: Exactly. Trying to force yourself to "let go" of a painful memory or a past hurt does the same thing. It just makes the attachment stronger. The book’s approach is different. You don't release the past by focusing on it; you release the past by building a new life that is so compelling, so engaging, that the old one just... fades away. Michelle: So you're not erasing the old path, you're just paving a new, more interesting one next to it until you forget the old one is even there. Mark: You've got it. And this leads to one of the most powerful and challenging quotes in the entire book: "Your new life is going to cost you your old one." Michelle: Oof. That hits hard. It sounds terrifying, honestly. It means leaving behind comfort zones, maybe even relationships or identities that feel safe, even if they're not making us happy. Mark: It is terrifying. And it’s the heart of the climb. Real change isn't just adopting a few new habits. It's a fundamental shift in who you are. It might mean leaving the friend group that encourages your bad habits. It might mean moving away from the city that keeps you small. It requires letting go of the person you used to be. Michelle: This feels like a direct challenge to the whole social media 'glow-up' narrative, which is all about getting revenge, looking hot in an Instagram post, and showing your ex or your old boss what they're missing. Mark: A hundred percent. Wiest says the real glow-up isn't about proving people from your past wrong. It's about finally feeling so content and hopeful about your future that you stop thinking about them entirely. The transformation is internal. It's about how your life feels, not how it looks to others. Michelle: That is so much more profound. It’s not a performance; it’s peace. Mark: It’s self-mastery. And that’s the final destination. The point isn't to conquer the mountain as if it's an enemy. The point is to realize the mountain was just the training ground. In the end, it's not the mountain you must master, but yourself.

Michelle: Wow. This book really reframes the whole struggle of personal growth. It’s not about fighting yourself, but about understanding yourself. So after all this, what's the one thing we should remember when we feel that 'mountain' in front of us, when we're stuck in that pattern of self-sabotage? Mark: That the mountain is you. It’s not an external enemy to be defeated, but a part of you asking to be understood. The friction, the discomfort, the self-sabotage—that's not a sign you're broken. It's the sign that you're growing. Wiest uses these beautiful nature metaphors, like a volcano erupting or a star imploding before it becomes a supernova. Destruction precedes creation. Michelle: Like a forest fire. It seems like total devastation, but it’s what clears out the dead undergrowth and allows new seeds to sprout in the nutrient-rich soil. Mark: That's the perfect summary. The pain is productive. The breakdown precedes the breakthrough. The mountain isn't in your way; the mountain is the way. Michelle: That's such a powerful way to see it. It makes me think about my own 'mountains' completely differently. I'm curious what 'mountains' our listeners are facing. Head over to our social channels and share one thing this conversation made you rethink. We'd love to hear from you. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.