Explainer: The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest
The Real Reason You’re Stuck (And How to Get Unstuck)
👋 For all the new subscribers, welcome!
Every Wednesday, we break down a book, podcast, or trend to tell you what you really need to know.
So far, we’ve covered:
📚 The Let Them Theory
📚 Atomic Habits
🎭 The Justin Baldoni vs. Blake Lively saga
📚 Relationship attachment styles
📚 Lonesome Dove (yes, the cowboy epic is trending again)
...and a bunch more.
This week: we’re diving into the TikTok favorite The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest aka, the book that explains you’re not lazy, you’re just emotionally blocked.
✔️ If you’ve ever thought, "I know exactly what I need to do…so why am I not doing it?,” this book speaks directly to your soul.
It’s not just procrastination, or a lack of motivation. Self-sabotage is how your unconscious mind protects you from the emotional discomfort of change.
The good news? Once you understand it, you can climb right over it.
Here’s your self-sabotage explained in 5 Minutes (without the therapy bill)
💡 WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA?
Self-sabotage isn’t failure. It’s misdirected self-protection.
When you stay stuck in bad habits, toxic relationships, or endless self-doubt, you're not being weak, you're avoiding emotional risks that feel too overwhelming for your nervous system to handle.
The "mountain" you need to climb isn't external obstacles but the collection of fears, deeply-held beliefs, and emotional wounds that keep you from reaching your next level of growth.
You can dismantle self-sabotage by uncovering the emotional needs underneath it and meeting them in healthier, more conscious ways.
Self-sabotage doesn't just protect your feelings, it protects your identity. Growth often means letting go of who you think you are, and that can feel terrifying even if it's good.
🏔 You don’t move the mountain. You learn how to climb it.
📌 "Your mountain is the block between you and the life you want to live."
🧩 WHY WE SELF-SABOTAGE
Self-sabotage is typically driven by:
Fear of failure (or success): If you don't try, you can't fail, or succeed, which can feel equally terrifying.
Low self-worth: Subconscious beliefs that whisper you don't deserve better.
Fear of change: Even positive change can feel deeply unsettling because the unknown always triggers our survival instincts.
Emotional avoidance: Staying busy, distracted, or numb to avoid confronting uncomfortable feelings.
📌 "Self-sabotage happens when the desire to alleviate immediate discomfort wins out over the desire to stay on course."
🔥 SIGNS YOU'RE SELF-SABOTAGING
You might be self-sabotaging if you:
Ghost opportunities you secretly want
Procrastinate on projects that deeply matter to you
Stay in relationships you've emotionally outgrown
Live by "all or nothing" thinking (If I can't do it perfectly, why even start?)
Consistently choose short-term comfort over long-term growth
Aka, you’re not lazy — you’re protecting yourself from emotional risk.
🛑 HOW TO STOP SELF-SABOTAGING
1. Notice your triggers.
Identify when you feel most tempted to self-sabotage — and what emotional discomfort you're trying to avoid.
2. Challenge old beliefs.
Examine the limiting narratives you’ve internalized (like "I'm not good enough" or "success will make people hate me").
3. Build emotional tolerance.
Learn to sit with discomfort without fleeing or numbing out. Emotional growth = sitting in the awkwardness without panicking.
4. Transformation Happens Gradually, then All At Once.
You may feel stuck for a while, but that’s normal and part of the process. Healing often feels invisible at first, like you're doing all this emotional work and nothing is changing. Then suddenly everything clicks.
5. Resistance to Change Is Rooted in Identity.
You don’t just fear failure. The reason you self-sabotage isn't because you don’t want success, it's because you're afraid of losing who you are. Self-sabotage often happens because success or happiness would threaten the identity you’ve built around struggle, unworthiness, or survival.
6. Create small wins.
You don't need a giant life overhaul overnight. Tiny, consistent actions retrain your nervous system to trust change.
7. Healing Isn't a "Fix" It's a Shift.
You don’t heal to erase pain. You heal to create a different relationship to it. The mountain (your wounds, fears, etc.) doesn’t vanish, you learn how to move through it instead of being blocked by it.
8. Practice radical self-compassion.
Shame keeps you stuck. Self-compassion helps you heal and move forward and reminds you that progress often looks invisible until it suddenly doesn’t. Be kind to yourself on the way.
📌 "The way you heal yourself is by learning how to become the person you needed when you were younger."
📌 QUOTES TO REMEMBER
📌 "You are not lazy, unmotivated, or stuck. After years of living your life in survival mode, you are exhausted."
📌 "Self-sabotage is not you being weak or flawed. It is you responding to unresolved emotional pain."
📌 "Growth is often disguised as losing everything you once valued."
♥️ IF YOU LIKE THIS, YOU'LL LOVE…
📚 Atomic Habits by James Clear How tiny behavior shifts change your life without relying on motivation.
🎧 We Can Do Hard Things podcast Glennon Doyle + Abby Wambach talk about navigating discomfort, change, and emotional growth.
🎥 Everything Everywhere All At Once (max) If emotional sabotage, generational trauma, and redemption could be captured in a multiverse martial arts movie.
🔑 TL;DR
💡 Your Struggle Isn’t Failure. It’s Self-Protection.
💡 Your unconscious mind would rather keep you "safe" than risk change (even positive change).
💡 You can dismantle self-sabotage by addressing the emotional needs driving it.
💡 Change feels invisible... until it doesn't.
💡 Self-sabotage protects your sense of identity, not just emotions.
🏔 The mountain isn't in the way. It is the way.
👋BEFORE YOU GO…
📩 Found this helpful? Share it with a friend who keeps saying "I'll do it tomorrow" or someone you know is scaling their own personal mountain right now.
💬 What's your biggest self-sabotage pattern? Hit reply, leave a comment, or join the chat and let me know. I read every response!
What trend/book/podcast episode should we do next?