The painful truth about self sabotage
And the things you can do to stop!
What is self sabotage?
In the most basic of terms, self sabotage is the (often subconscious) behaviour that prevents you from achieving your goals.
Self sabotaging behaviours could be as innocuous as procrastination. You know you should be doing something but instead you’re sat scrolling social media or playing a mindless game. Eating chocolate when you are trying to lose weight. Not setting the alarm when you know you have an important meeting the next day.
But they can also be far more harmful habits and behaviours. Drug or alcohol abuse, cheating on a partner you love dearly, gambling, you get the picture!
Self sabotage might be something you only do in your personal life, or in your business or it could affect every aspect of your life.
There are no hard and fast rules about how self sabotage will manifest in your life.
Why do people self sabotage?
There are many reasons people sabotage their own efforts to achieve their goals and ambitions. They are rooted deeply in the self limiting beliefs that you hold about yourself - you know, the ones you never tell anyone!
Let’s look at some examples of the reasons people self sabotage.
Lack of self-worth of self-esteem
If you lack self-worth or self-esteem you lack the belief that you are capable of achieving your goals. You may have conversations in your hear about how you are rubbish at something, you’re not good enough and you don’t deserve the things you outwardly strive for.
That means that when things are going well, you will start to self sabotage in order to fulfil that belief about yourself.
Fear of success
If you’ve worked really hard to achieve something, you may start to fear what that success means. You might experience imposter syndrome - that feeling that at any moment you will be caught out and exposed as a fraud who doesn’t deserve the success you have achieved.
So avoid that fear becoming a reality, you do things to limit your success, or even destroy it altogether.
Fear of failure
In contrast, some people’s absolute fear failure prevents them from even trying to succeed. They harbour the belief that, whatever they strive to achieve, it will ‘never be good enough’ so take the ‘why bother’ approach. After all, by not really committing to a goal, they can’t fail!
Desire for control
Most people feel better about life when they feel in control of their destiny. So when you take the view that you are never going to succeed before you’ve even tried, you stay in control of your own failure, even though you didn’t really want to fail.
Recognising self sabotage
The first step to beating self sabotage is in recognising it in yourself. Think about these questions:
Do you avoid doing the things you know you need to do?
Do you spend time on activities that won’t move you closer to achieving your goals?
Are you a martyr (i.e. do you put your own needs at the bottom of your priorities)?
Do you procrastinate?
Do you focus on the negative thoughts you have and dismiss any and all evidence that proves these thoughts aren’t true?
If any of these sound remotely familiar then you, my friend, are probably self sabotaging in areas of your life.
And if you want to make changes, you need to be honest with yourself, and perhaps those closest to you, in order to identify what you truly believe you deserve and determine how to move forward.
Because that’s the really good news. You can make changes.
Beating self sabotage
The first step to beating self sabotage is probably the hardest because this is where you have to acknowledge that it’s an issue for you. But simply acknowledging that you are preventing your own success in areas of your life or business isn’t enough.
You need to be brutally honest with yourself about the reasons for your behaviour. Keep asking yourself ‘and then what’ to really get deep into the nitty gritty of the causes. This will probably take some time and you will need to cut yourself some slack while you work out the root of your behaviour.
Once you’ve done that it’s time for some self-reflection. This will enable you to reflect on things in your past that have gone well - evidence of past achievements is a useful antidote to present self sabotage. But also to reflect on the true importance of the reasons you behave the way you do. What does it stop you having, doing or achieving? Are they things you truly want to have, do or achieve?
If the desire isn’t strong enough and you are aiming to achieve goals based on a skewed belief or perception of what you ‘should’ be aiming for, you need to reassess your goals.
Now it’s time to find your inner positive voice and turn the volume right up. Listen to it so intently that it drowns out your negative thoughts.
Remember the compound effect of consistently doing small positive things. If you ever heard the saying ‘look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves’ that’s an example of the compound effect. Doing one small thing consistently that has a positive effect will soon result in bigger and better results.
Set goals and break them down into small tasks. Then reflect regularly to see how far ticking off one tasks at a time has moved you towards your bigger dreams, goals or ambitions.
Never be afraid to seek help. Overcoming deep-seated self limiting beliefs won’t happen overnight. Enlist friends, coaches, colleagues, partners or medical professionals to help you stay on track. The who and how will depend on exactly what behaviours you need to change.
Hypnotherapy and NLP
Therapies like hypnotherapy and NLP can be extremely powerful tools to reframe your thought patterns and help you ‘turn down’ the volume of negative thoughts and voices.
Over the years I have worked with people to overcome self sabotaging behaviours in their professional and personal lives, helping business owners thrive and enabling individuals to go on to live rich and fulfilling lives.