I don’t believe that anyone sits around masterminding ways to prevent themselves from succeeding in life. Who does that? Usually what happens is girl (or boy, hi - welcome to InMyHeels.com!) sees something she wants, girl chases it ’til she gets it. Easy enough right?
Well, not so much.
Self sabotage, simple defined, are things that you do that prevent you from achieving a certain level of success. It’s a sneaky little bugger; it can come in various forms and you may not even realize it for a very long time. The problem here is without investigating the real culprit behind your lack of improvement, you are most likely to find yourself stuck in a rut. You probably eventually figure you have to live with your own unhappiness and try to find ways how to - remaining complacent in your own dissatisfaction. Taking that despair up a notch would be a lot of anger towards life, yourself, and those who seem to be doing much better - wondering why you can’t do it too.
It isn’t that you can’t do it. Someone is in your way like a golden linebacker (Hmmm.. is that the right player? I don’t follow sports). That someone is you and the ultimate truth is you just can’t run from yourself.
So - does this posting even apply to you? I’ve got some examples of self-sabotage here although I am sure there are plenty more I haven’t thought of. And so if you can think of any, I welcome you to add your 2 cents in the comments section. Oh, and I’ve got goodies in this post. Just about every title below is a clickable link to valuable insight written across the blogosphere. Each one was chosen with care - so if you recognize something you need a little help with, take a look at these resources that just may help you pinpoint your issue(s). 
- Procrastination: A lot of us (read, me) know a whole lot about doing this. Delaying things that need to be done until the last possible moment and then ripping hair out if the whole “I work better under pressure” thing doesn’t work out this time around.
- Negativity: The glass is half empty. Life sucks and then you die. What’s the point? If this sounds like your dialogue on a regular basis, you are She of Sour Grapes. A pessimistic attitude gives you no incentive to strive for the goods. Like, why would it?
- Ultimate Perfection: If it isn’t perfect 100%, it was a worthless attempt and the clouds of failure engulf you…perfectly. Whether your comeback is day based (I’ll try again on Monday), task based (I will build it bigger and better and will not be imperfect like that Titanic!) or simply how you timed it (Self pity is ineffective and time consuming), you strive after the elusive title of perfection. Never mind that no one is perfect. It’s the perfect hamster-in-the-wheel effect.
- Busy for the Sake of Being Busy: It can’t be your fault if things slip through the cracks because you are multitasking multitasking tasks (no, that wasn’t a typo.) After all, important people are busy right? Stretching yourself too thin with so much to do makes it difficult to master one skill or complete one task. But.. that isn’t your fault… is it? You can think about that later - add it to your To Do list.
- Debt. Debt. Oh and More Debt: There’s the debt that had to happen (like school) and there’s the debt that happens with bad money habits and prevent you from ever getting out of that mousetrap. You want to do better - feel better about your money. And so you charge your Starbucks on the credit card you consider chucking after shopping with that same credit card to reward yourself for making such a responsible decision. Every week.
- No Real Relationships: You are elusive, cool, desirable, untouchable. You don’t do serious relationships. People have problems. You don’t get close to anyone. People can’t be trusted. You don’t go out of your way to help people. It’s every Gal for herself. Your career is your number one. Family is built in, isn’t it?
And then, you are lonely
. How can this be? - Comparing Yourself to Others: You look around to see what your peers are doing right now. Somehow, this is the indicator of where you should be in life. You’re feeling pretty ok about it - after all, you’re not ahead but you’re not behind. Good! You’re doing good and finally going strong! Yeah, until Whats-Her-Face strikes a 32 million dollar deal with some company who thinks she’s brilliant or You-Know-Who becomes an A-lister. If you didn’t have the boots to crush your own soul, take a step next to anyone worth looking at. Then you quit, because you’re not worth it after all.
- Cheating: On diets, on your significant other, on tests, on life. You’re all about the shortcuts to the Pleasure Road and can’t nobody stop you. After all, no one can detest you if they are none the wiser. This is, until you begin to detest yourself. You feel shortchanged - cheated out of the goods the life has to offer. So you find a quick fix to help you feel better about it. *sigh*
- When the Good Things Don’t Count: It doesn’t matter that you single-handedly rescued 3 kittens, make the best chili in a 75 mile radius, wake up with great hair EVERY day, and that people think you’re funny. You burned dinner last night and that must mean you can’t do things correctly. Magnifying the negative things to the point it consumes all of your attention is tiresome. If all of your attention is on the things you can’t do, how can you do anything?
- Blaming Anyone Who Isn’t You: If everyone who is anyone in your life plays an active role as to why things are not going well for you, perhaps you have an accountability problem. This isn’t to say your childhood wasn’t bad, or so-and-so didn’t stab you in the back. But when does that change into taking responsibility for how your treat others? Well…it’s society’s fault that you are not well-adjusted.
- Ignorance: The red pill or the blue pill (Heh heh, a Matrix reference for those of you who didn’t know). How does not learning about money secure your finances? How does pretending he isn’t cheating make you closer? How does shutting your eyes and sealing your mouth make those who do wrong make you right? Ignorance is sweet because what you don’t know can’t hurt you right? Not knowing you’re being hurt won’t lessen the final sting when you are finally given the rude awakening.
- Fail to Plan, Plan to Fail: This isn’t an attempt to stifle the free spirit. The spontaneous, happy-go-lucky ones amongst us don’t seem to be doing too badly. A little foresight doesn’t hurt to badly either. In fact, charging ahead without a plan can be a recipe for outright disaster. Going into war without a strategy? Really? How many of us cut corners on preparation and have a scar to prove it? Ever try to run a marathon with no training? Sure, you can refuse to plan if it goes against your mojo - but I hate to break it to ya. That’s you planning to fail. Darn it. When are you going to come up with a better plan?
- Never Finishing What You’ve Started: You love discovering new things in life. You try your hand at many things and that’s always the good, exciting part. It’s the quitting-’cause-you-wanna thing that can leave a tender heart or two concerned. Sooner or later, you find yourself abandoning ship because that’s your out when the going gets tough. I’d tell you more about it, but I quit.
Since self sabotage can become a habitual activity, you need to ID your method in order to work on nixxing it. Perhaps you saw yourself somewhere in this list or know that something I haven’t mentioned still counts. The problems are different but there are some things that you can do. Take your pick. Mix and match. The important thing is actually doing something. If you feel an excuse itching at your very being (”ugh.. these things are so lame!”), I encourage you to get out of your own way in order to help yourself get out of your own way.
Write Away
Journaling can be incredibly useful. I know some people hate writing (I..I don’t understand it!) however you don’t need to produce a mini-novel every day of your life. What you can do is get yourself a very private little book to write in and record the times you feel defeated or like a failure. Little things count just as much as the big things if not more. See, big things like an obvious pie-in-the-face are pretty self explanatory. It’s the little things like skipping yet another night at the gym that help you identify your self sabotaging logic. You can record these things in the form of short paragraphs. Each event you write about will have two parts. The first part is what you’ve done (or didn’t do) and why. That would be the self sabotage. The second part is for challenging your Why in the first part. Of course, you are going to need to be very honest with yourself. How did act of self-sabotage help you - if it did? What’s a more productive alternative? You can write this in the form of a chart if you so please. You can choose to dive into the journaling by expanding on your feelings and your thoughts at the time. With some time, you will have personal data available to you that can help you pinpoint patterns. That’s powerful stuff because when you’re conscious of what you’re doing, you can do something about it.
Bad Habits Gone Good
The only thing worse that being a victim of your own mind is having the ammunition on autopilot! A lot of things we do to sabotage ourselves develop into full blown bad habits. Lucky for you, not too long ago, I wrote When Bad Habits Happen to Good Peoplewhich can help you replace your undesirables with behavior conducive to your success.
Watch Your Mouth!
Berating yourself is classic self-sabotage behavior. “I Can’t” holds a lot of power in it’s punch. When you’re about to attempt something difficult, pre-facing it with “I Can’t” is actually you already deciding to not put every ounce of effort into your own success. It is very possible to speak negative things into existance. Filling your thoughts with a negative dialogue within yourself affects your capabilities. It is a wall that you build for your self situated between yourself and the desired outcome. Rephrase your cannots with the cans. Highlight your haves instead of the have-nots. Saying this tip won’t work ensures that it won’t. Ah, that mind right? I know. It gets me too.
Conscious Living
I’ve grazed the surface on the topic of conscious living here. It’s important to note that when you’re looking to correct certain behaviors, it takes personal awareness. A lot of times, we avoid getting to know ourselves which - I feel - IS an act of self sabotage. It ties ignorance, procrastination, blaming anyone who isn’t you (to name a few saboteurs) - into the nasty little knot that has you bound to your own unhappiness and failures. If you want to get out of your own way, you’re going to need to tap into your reality and take responsibility for it. Waiting for someone to present you a happy life may be a very long, fruitless wait. Take responsibility for you own life by:
- Owning your mistakes, not the other way around
- Pay attention to your emotions and respect them
- Pay attention to your own health. Your doctor can’t be healthy FOR you
- Realize that you are a product of the types of thoughts you produce. Want to change that? Change your thoughts.
- There ARE bad circumstances in life, just as there are good ones. There is a difference. Find it.
- You can let life happen to you, or you can be an active participant. Just know, when you have a say, things tend to happen the way you want them to.
- Don’t berate yourself when you find the flawed patterns. That’s more of what you don’t want.
- Make your happiness your own responsibility.
I am working on minimizing my own self sabotaging behavior. I find that, over time, the actual process of change is exciting. You know you’re in a better place when you catch yourself doing what you always do. That’s further than square one. It feels good to overcome the self-inflicted obstacle - which is often the biggest one. When you make it, you know you truly deserve your rockstar status. :-)
Get out of your own way. You’ve got places to go.
Links I Love
I was thrilled to check my inbox and find this piece by Albert over at UrbanMonk.net. If this post resonated with you, Knowing and Mastering your Thoughts With Cognitive Behavior Therapy is an excellent read that will grant you some more, very valuable insight. Note, that IS a rave because yes, it’s very good.
Photo by: tdl
Hi JEMi,
I would say you covered this subject extremely well. It is true, we do need to take responsibility for our thoughts, actions and words. It’s easy to blame others, but that’s only a temporary escape.
It’s written (somewhere) that those traits we find as irritable in others are traits we also possess. It’s like we’re looking in a mirror. When I first read this, I thought “no way”, but I’ve seen the truth in that statement too many times now, to dispute it.
Barbara’s last blog post..Go Home and Cover Your Crack
@ Barbara: Good to see you ’round these parts *grin*
But I suspect it may be true. Man. *kicks a rock*
I’ve heard that too - “…that those traits we find as irritable in others are traits we also possess”
Thats a tough cookie for me to swallow
I often times never finish what I’ve started…when it comes to writing books, not blogging. I could have already been a published author if I would just see a project through. I did make it a goal this year to finish at least one book and send out the manuscript to a few agents.
Enjoyed this post and thanks for the additional links. I’ll be sure to digg this post. I may need to read it again.
Natural Woman’s last blog post..6 Tips for Writer’s Block
Very good article. I am guilty as all hell of being self destructive especially when things start to go good I find a way to send myself back into the world of depression that I know all too well.
@ Natural Woman: You just make sure to let me know whenever you do write that book! I would be happy to read it
That’s an impressive goal and I’m rooting for you 
@ untreatable: Hey, thanks for stopping by. I recognize what you mean.. I think thats the part where one can only be comfortable in his discomfort and its a struggle to break that cycle. It takes a lot of work mentally, excercising will, finding your way to make it stop. I think most of us are guilty of doing this on some level
Whew… I was really worried that the “Watch Your Mouth!” was about not swearing. I was convinced you were going to tell me off through your blog :-).
–Clay
Clay’s last blog post..Creating Goal Movies: A 12 Step Guide
Why why why do we do this to ourselves? I have to print this because too much of it has to do with me. Congratulations this is my new forite site.
Thank you so much for the link love! Glad you liked the post
Cheers,
Albert | UrbanMonk.Net
Modern personal development, entwined with ancient spirituality.
Albert | UrbanMonk.Net’s last blog post..Meta-Emotions: The Downward Spiral to Unhappiness and How to Avoid Them
@ Clay: I’ll have you know when I tell you to watch your mouth, you’re getting your own headline! (tee hee, Just kidding! … maybe a link!)
@ Albert:
You’re welcome so much for the link love! Your blog is spectacular and the piece is such a useful one that I am sure my readers can fully appreciate. Keep up the good work!
The above is insightful and will done. Your on the money! Thank you for that. Below is a little add-on to your wonderful article. I hope you will enjoy as I did yours!
The room is silent as you ready yourself. You plot out your battle strategy as you slowly and methodically place each piece of your armor in its proper place. You steady yourself under the weight, as you rise to face your skillful foe. You know every movement and every thought that they know, for you have battled this opponent day after day. Your opponent has a name that you know oh so very well. That name is your name. That name is YOU!
There are plenty of challenges in our lives and some of them are of our own making. Ok, I’m being kind here. Most of them are of our own doing! We undermine ourselves, and make assumptions about what’s possible, that restrict choices in our lives, and let our fears stop us from even trying to reach our goals and dreams. Like a pig that is unaware of the mud that he is wallowing in, being stuck in old ways of thinking keeps us blind to the many opportunities that surround us outside of that mud hole.
How can we get unstuck? How do we get ourselves out of the mud we so readily find ourselves playing in? It won’t occur by thinking and doing things the same old way, but, by shedding the negative thoughts and self-defeating actions that we have found to be so predisposed to in times of difficulty.
Every day of our lives we have thousands of thoughts that race through our heads; some positive and some negative. Most of us carry over many of these thoughts into the next day. For some, there is a tendency to dwell on the past and over-analyze what we could or should have done. “Analysis equals paralysis” as the old saying goes. If those thoughts are not supporting you, you will no doubt have trouble getting the results you want and overcoming the challenges along the way. Being able to manage your thoughts is at least 80 percent of the battle in being successful.
The very first thing that we need to accomplish when we are ready to change and move out of our own way, is to recognize that we are the ones blocking the doorway.
The following is a list of ten Forms of Paralyzing Thinking. It’s these thinking patterns that perpetuate the obstacles of getting in our own way! Most of us live with these thoughts day in and day out, playing out over and over again like a broken record. As stated above, it is essential to recognize these unconscious patterns of negative thinking. For some, we have developed ways to influence our thoughts and act on them with positive results. Discover which of the following forms of paralyzing thinking infuses your mind and robs your motivation to get out of your own way. Just becoming aware of these thoughts, and observing them, will weaken and starve their grip, as you begin to uncoil these negative thought patterns.
1. All-Or-Nothing Thinking
You see things in black-or-white categories. Anything short of perfection is seen as a total failure in your eyes. You make one mistake and it becomes a deal breaker! You have a slice of pizza, and think “I’ve blown my whole diet” and then polish off the entire pie. When this plus or minus type of analysis occurs, it’s usually because of all-or-nothing thinking.
2. Over-generalization
You know this is happening when words like “always” or “never” enter your thoughts. You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat. A sales person hears “no” from a prospect, and thinks, “I’ll never get a sale.” You look at situations as “Universal Facts”. “Everybody knows this is the best sales strategy”. These over-generalizations blind you from seeing new, different, or even better possibilities.
3. Mental Filter
You pick out a single negative detail and dwell and analyze on it exclusively. As a result, your vision of reality becomes gloomy, like a clear day turning cloudy. For example, you receive many positive comments about a sales or marketing presentation you made, but one person says something a bit critical. You obsess about his reaction for days, and ignore all the positive feedback that you did receive. You attend a sales meeting and focus on what is wrong with the meetings facilitation, missing the positive aspects of the meeting.
4. Discounting the Positive
You discount positive experiences by saying they “don’t count”. You do a good job and minimize it by thinking you could have done better, or that anyone could have done as well as you did. This extracts the pleasure out of life, and makes you feel inadequate and devalued.
5. Jumping to Conclusions
You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion. There are two forms of jumping to conclusions: (A) Mind reading: without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you. (B) Fortune-telling: you predict things will turn out badly. For example, before a presentation, you think “I know I’m going to freeze up and forget what I was saying”, or “They’re going to hate my speech.”
6. Magnification
You exaggerate the significance of your problems and shortcomings and you minimize the value of your desirable qualities. One time after a seminar, I Brad, was working with a participant regarding his fear of presenting to his co-workers. I asked him to shut his eyes and imagine himself doing a presentation to his co-workers. I could visibly observe that he was anxious, so I asked him what thoughts were going through his mind. He replied, “Every single one of my co-workers is thinking, I don’t know what I’m talking about”. Every one of them, I asked? This was a classic case of magnification.
7. Emotional Reasoning
You assume your emotions reflect the way things really are. “I feel uncomfortable asking for a raise, so it must be an inappropriate thing to do”. Or, “I feel a deep sense of inadequacy and if they want excellent service they should go to my competitor”. Our emotions are like the weather. They can change day to day and moment to moment for a variety of different reasons. Our emotions are valuable, because they point to our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us. To equal measure, they are often not reflective of what’s really going on. So, we need to be careful about how we respond to our emotions by examining the evidence with our intellect.
8. “Should” Statements
You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped for, or expected them to be. “Musts,” “ought tos” and “have tos” are similar offenders. These statements reflect rules that we have adopted either explicitly or implicitly. When these statements are directed against our selves, they lead to guilt, frustration and storytelling. When directed toward others, they often lead to anger, frustration and jealousy. They rarely put you in a practical position to change behavior. Instead, they will often make you feel either rebellious (and give you the urge to do the opposite) or hopeless (and make you want to do nothing).
9. Labeling
This is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying, “I made a mistake,” you attach a negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser”. You might also label yourself “a fool” or “a jerk”. This labeling is totally irrational because what we do is not who we are. These labels are useless thoughts that lead to anger, anxiety, frustration and low self-esteem.
10. Personalization and Blame
Personalization occurs when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that is not entirely under your control. A classic example is the person who regularly takes the blame for other’s unhappiness or anger. Although we may be able to influence other people’s feelings, we certainly are not responsible for them. We can only keep our side of the street clean, not theirs. Another example is when a mother finds out her child is having difficulties in school and thinks, “This shows what kind of mother I am”. Personalization leads to guilt and feelings of inadequacy.
Some people do just the opposite. They blame other people or their circumstances for their problems, and they overlook ways that they may be contributing to the problems in the first place. “The reason I have such difficulty at work is because I have an unreasonable boss”. Blame doesn’t work because other people will resent being the scapegoat, and will toss the blame right back in your court. It’s like a game of hot potato.
No one wants to get stuck with it.
Becoming aware of these types of thinking is the first step to creating change. Once you’re aware, you can begin to “shift” your thinking and engage more rational responses to the events you encounter. Then, as you condition this new way of thinking, you’ll notice a significant improvement in how you feel about and respond to these types of triggering events.