You self-sabotage for a reason. Usually, the surface level reason can be fairly obvious: You don’t feel like you deserve good things. You’ll probably fail, so why try. You’re not the best anyway.
However, underneath the surface are more subtle ways you’re sabotaging yourself. Self-sabotage isn’t always so obvious and can sometimes feel confusing when the root isn’t understood.
In this post, I’m walking you through several roots of your self-sabotage so you can face them head on, tackle them, and go on to live your best life.
1. Assuming you’re going to fail.
The truth is that we all fail. Failure isn’t a bad thing and it doesn’t have to be a shameful one. Read about how to embrace failure here.
What’s most detrimental in this failure mindset is caving to your negative self-talk and staying stagnant. When you do this, you’re holding yourself hostage to a victim mentality that will never swing in your favor.
If you want to move forward, make progress, and feel successful, you need to ditch the idea that you’re not good enough, you suck, and you’ll probably fail anyway.
How to Stop: You need to replace those thoughts with kind words about how great you are, how you’ve succeeded before, and how failure is an opportunity to become better. It may feel strange at first and you may struggle to believe it. However, over time, repeating the kind, positive mindset to yourself will cause a huge shift in your life.
2. Trying to be or waiting for perfect.
In a lot of ways, striving for perfect and living by the reins of perfectionism is a means of self-harm. Perfect is an impossible, idealistic standard no one can meet, not even yourself.
Every time you hold yourself back because something isn’t “perfect yet”, you’re denying yourself so many things: your livelihood, opportunity, joy, your voice. You’re harming yourself when you cut yourself off at the knees and punish yourself for being human.
How to Stop: Just do the damn thing. Whatever it is, rip off the bandaid, and get it done. Detach from the idea of expecting a certain outcome or result by going in with no expectations. Commit to showing up, even when you feel like sitting on the sidelines. Accept today that you’re going to make mistakes because you’re human and it’s all part of the learning process.
3. Suppressing your emotions.
While there may be moments in our day-to-day that require us to set aside our emotions and immediate gut reactions, it’s not helpful to be consistently practicing that tactic throughout your life.
Emotions are the mind and body’s ways of trying to get us to pay attention to certain areas of our lives. You feel them for a reason. While not every emotion is rooted in rationality, or even reality, each serves a purpose.
How to Stop: You don’t have to sit down every single time you have a feeling and pick it apart. That’s not helpful either. Instead, the most effective way to honor our emotions without letting them rule the day is to come from a place of acceptance.
More often than not, that looks like saying to yourself, “I’m feeling __________ in this moment”. You have choices from there. Either you know why, you can nod to it, accept it, and keep moving. Or, you don’t know why, you reflect, you discover, you accept, and keep moving. Or, you don’t know why, you accept anyway, and keep moving.
Key components in all of that: you accept and you keep moving. Feel your emotions. Don’t let them rule you and keep you hostage.
You self-sabotage for a reason. Usually, the surface level reason can be fairly obvious: You don't feel like you deserve good things. You'll probably fail, so why try. You're not the best anyway. Click To Tweet4. Resisting reality and change.
Change is a part of life. Life thrives off of change. When it comes to our lives, it can feel the opposite.
Change can also be a great source of fear and anxiety. None of us really thrive when it comes to unknowns. We don’t like plot twists in our actual lives. Predictability means stability and safety for many of us.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting safe and stable. It’s healthy to feel like that’s the type of environment you thrive in.
However, it’s equally unhealthy to try to keep a death-grip on your life by maintaining pseudo-control through resisting change and your current realities.
How to Stop: Acceptance. Easier said than done, yes, but worth it all the more. Start by accepting that change is not necessarily good or bad, but just is. Change is the most expected variable in life. Accept that, when it comes to change, control cannot usually coexist. Again, not good or bad, but just is.
Then, I want you to think about the times that unexpected changes happened in your life that ended up being the best thing that could’ve happened. Those are not isolated incidents. Change can, and often does, turn out for the better.
5. Refusing help.
Being able to “do it all” all by yourself can feel like a badge of honor, especially in a society that is hyper-focused on achievement and solo-success.
In reality, we as humans do much, much, much better when we’re in a community. Whether that community is family, friends, or a combination, the support is irreplaceable to our livelihood.
Asking for help doesn’t make you weak. It makes you smart. Playing to your strengths and bringing in help for where you struggle is going to make your life a thousand times more enjoyable.
How to Stop: Next time someone offers you help, let them help you. And, let them fully help you. Let go of micro-managing and worrying about them “getting it right”. Try asking for help with a minor task. Practice stating your needs in a compassionate way. You’re allowed to have people offer a helping hand.
6. Aiming for instant gratification.
The thing about instant gratification that most people seem to miss is how instantaneous it is. Sure, instant gratification means you get your desire or need met instantaneously. But, it also goes away just as quickly.
If you want something to last, then you need to have the patience to get there. Whether that’s baking a cake or working hard for that promotion, instant gratification tends to last a minute before you’re seeking for something more.
Instant gratification isn’t fulfillment. It’s a bandaid. And, it usually requires you to compromise some part of yourself. That can mean that the quality of your work went down the tubes or it can mean that you’re settling for a fraction of your true needs and desires. And, that’s just not worth it.
How to Stop: Commit to the long game. Lower your expectations about how long something “should” take. Instead, focus on cultivating patience and gratitude in your life. This may not be where you want to end up, but this present moment is going to help you get there. Don’t rush what you want to last a lifetime.
7. Repeating old, harmful patterns and expecting a different outcome.
This is the biggest crux people run into. Behavior patterns are much like habits.
Let’s use a popular example we can all relate to: relationships. Have you ever gotten out of one relationship, into another, to discover some time into it that you’re running into the same damn problems? It’s like you’re a magnet for these people that struggle in one area.
The truth is that you are a magnet, but at the same time, you’re not. What’s really going on is that you’re adhering to the same mindset and behavior patterns that you experienced in every relationship prior.
How to Stop: Recognize your role in this before you start pointing fingers at other people and situations. It’s not that they don’t play a role; it’s that the only factor you can change is your role. Reflect on what behavior patterns and mindsets are keeping you in this cycle.
Where do you feel this in your life? Where do you feel this in your relationships? Do the people in your life tend to all have a similar negative trait? When and with who did you first experience that negative trait in childhood? What feels familiar about it? How does this trait play out in yourself? What trait would you rather gravitate towards?
Answering these questions and reflecting on your life will offer you the discover you need to be able to break the cycle and move forward.
Ready to commit to ending your self-sabotage? Then, start with this guided workbook to start healing the pain that’s leading you to sabotage in the first place.
