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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
