Self-sabotage is the manifestation of your conscious mind (I need to eat healthily and save money) conflicting with your subconscious mind (stress-eating chocolate and going on online shopping sprees); essentially, your inner critic voice holding you back and sabotaging your efforts.
Maybe you set new challenging goals for yourself that you just couldn’t or didn’t reach? Have you ever wanted something so badly but end up failing to achieve it?
Do you repeat the same patterns of behaviours over and over again just to end up with precisely the same results?
Have you ever wondered why?
Are you stuck in a continuous cycle of regret of the things you didn’t do or achieve?
Is there a solution for overcoming these repeated patterns of behaviour?
Yes! Absolutely! That is the beautiful thing about self-awareness and personal development; you can always IMPROVE!
In this blog post, I will explain what self-sabotage is, why you indulge self-sabotage behaviour, and how it manifests in your life. I also go into detail on the same 4-step process on stopping your self-sabotage patterns in their tracks that I use to overcome self-sabotage.
What is self-sabotage?
Self-sabotage is any behaviour, thought, emotion or action that prevents you from achieving what you consciously want and desire.
Self-sabotage patterns of behaviour are the manifestation of the conflict that exists between your conscious wants and subconscious wants.
Your brain is a wonderful thing; it’s a master planner, brilliant idea generator and safety mechanism that protects you from disappointment and harm.
What I mean by that is your brain protects from getting hurt by doing what it thinks is best. Usually, this means keeping you within your comfort zone, which in hindsight, this also stops you from taking risks that could ultimately end up with you living your desired life.
For an interesting take on Self-Sabotage ~ The Solution You Weren’t Expecting ~ checkout iNLP Centre’s article.
Why do I indulge in self-sabotaging behaviour?
You indulge in self-sabotage behaviour, usually, because of a lack of self-esteem, self-worth, self-confidence, and self-belief. Basically, you’re living in a world of fear and scarcity, not abundance and co-creation with the Universe.
Living in fear and scarcity often lead to great difficulty in managing your daily emotional experiences. You end up just reacting to events, circumstances and people hindering your progress and preventing yourself from achieving your goals.
You also indulge in self-sabotaging behaviours to help cope with stressful situations and high expectations.
When you feel as though you’re incapable of reaching a high expectation that you or someone else set, you fall back on self-sabotaging behaviours as a way to cope with the situation.
Indulging self-sabotaging will only lead you to live a life of regrets and unfulfilled expectations, something has to change.
How self-sabotage manifests in your life
Self-sabotaging behaviours manifest in various ways, so here is a list of the typical methods we often use to sabotage our success.
Manifestations of self-sabotage:
- Succumbing to fear of failure
- Holding back from taking risks
- Fearing success
- Setting exceptionally high expectations of yourself and others
- You take inadequate care of yourself
- You don’t practice self-care
- Fear of making mistakes preventing you from being proactive
- Purposefully not listening to instructions correctly
- Avoiding planning ahead
- You speak critically and negatively to your inner self
- Saying yes to everyone and everything
- You don’t consider the consequences of your actions
- You rush when making decisions
- You make no effort to think critically or practically about your current situation or circumstances
- You’re closed-minded when thinking about your problems
- You allow pride to get in the way when you make a mistake
- You set unrealistic expectations on yourself and others
- You let your critical self take charge and judge yourself and others
- You measure your value based on what other people are doing
- You compare yourself with others
- You always complain about other people, life, your circumstances or your perceived ‘bad luck’
- You indulge procrastination and perfectionism
- You accept others advice blindly without consideration to whether or not they actually know what they are talking about or even have the experience to give you that advice
- You struggle with limiting beliefs, poor attitude and controlling your emotions
- You indulge unhelpful thoughts sabotaging your mind
- You focus on what’s not working and daydream instead of creating solutions
Pay close attention to the excuses you make that are preventing you from moving forward and achieving the goals and life you desire.
For example:
- I can’t do this
- I’m too busy right now
- I’m just not ready yet
- I’m just not good enough
Check out IQ Matrix’s post on 19 more excuses you’re making.
Each pattern will manifest in different ways in your life; some will be obvious while others might be more difficult to identify.
You can gain control over these self-sabotaging patterns of behaviour through self-awareness, so try journaling to pinpoint and identify the triggers and manifestations of your self-sabotaging behaviours.
Eliminate self-sabotage with these 4 Simple Steps
I have read many articles an methods of eliminating and stopping self-sabotaging patterns of behaviours, and I have narrowed it down to these 4 steps.
This process will help you take control of the self-sabotaging patterns of behaviours that are currently influencing your thoughts, decisions and actions.
- Identify your self-sabotaging behaviour
- Identify the root cause
- Replace old patterns with new patterns of behaviour
- Reaffirm new patterns by forming habits and setting goals
Step 1: Identify your self-sabotage behaviour
The first step to overcoming your self-sabotaging patterns of behaviour is to identify the patterns of behaviour that are preventing you from moving forward. What are your mental roadblocks or self-destructive habits?
To identify these patterns, you must first become aware of your daily choices, decisions, actions and their consequences. Go back to the list of how these behaviours manifest and identify which types of self-sabotaging behaviours are holding you back.
Now you have identified how these patterns of behaviour manifest, you need to pinpoint the triggers. Triggers can include people, locations, specifics times, events, or objects.
Try asking yourself:
What triggers this behaviour explicitly?
How exactly does this behaviour manifest in my life?
Can these triggers simply be removed altogether? By removing these triggers, you can take conscious control of your thoughts, feelings and actions.
There is, however, another factor to consider. The self-sabotaging patterns of behaviour may be associated with limiting beliefs. In this case, you will need to convert them into new empowering beliefs. I explain in great detail how to overcome your limiting beliefs in this article.
Step 2: Identify the root cause
Most of us develop unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with stress. Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, watching Netflix 5/6 hours a day, taking advantage of our relationships, avoiding exercising and taking inadequate care of ourselves.
These self-sabotaging behaviours can be so subtle that you are unaware that these behaviours are at the root cause of many of your problems.
Self-destructive habits are often rooted in your connection to your self-worth. You don’t feel like you deserve to be ‘fit and healthy’, you don’t deserve to be successful, you don’t deserve to look after yourself as a stay-at-home mum. You shouldn’t be spending money on you as it takes away from your kids.
RANT WARNING:
I have said it before, and I will continue to say it; You are no good to anyone if you’re at any less than your 100%! This includes the effort you put into your appearance, into your personal development and how you take care of your mind, body and soul!
Don’t get it twisted; I don’t mean go out and buy a whole new makeup kit, spend your kid’s college fund on manicures, pedicures and a full spa treatment.
If wearing mascara, even if you don’t leave the house, makes you feel like a Queen, then wear that dang mascara! If you love wearing stilettos when you go to the shops if only to buy milk, wear those stilettos! If you want to spend money on your personal development, then do it!
Don’t you and your loved ones deserve you at your 100%? No matter how that manifests for you. RANT OVER.
We fear our inner critic is right about us; we start to worry that we don’t deserve happiness, that we aren’t good enough, or we don’t have it in us to achieve our goals and meet the expectations we have set on ourselves. It’s easier to sabotage and indulge our inner critic than it is to prove her wrong. It’s easier to lower our standards and never live up to our full potential.
This negative internal dialogue is just you putting limits on what you can achieve; it’s your brain trying to protect you by keeping you in your comfort zone. But nothing great ever happens in your comfort zone.
Once you figure this out, you can replace your inner critic by building positive behaviour, creating an affirmative and confident voice to help you slay your goals.
Work on identifying and acknowledging what is causing you to sabotage yourself, and then start making changes to stop those behaviours.
Reading Materials:
👉🏼 Improve Your Body Image & Find Balance With These 5 Mindset Shifts
👉🏼 5 Mindset Shifts To Repair Your Relationship With Food
👉🏼 Identify The Cause Of Stress By Cultivating Self-Awareness
Step 3: Replace old patterns with new patterns of behaviour
Fundamental this is important because to eliminate an old pattern you need to replace it with a new pattern. You want to choose a pattern of behaviour that is more resourceful and practical.
It would be great if we could avoid our triggers altogether, but sometimes that just isn’t possible. It’s in these situations that having new patterns of behaviour are essential to responding appropriately.
Ask yourself:
- How could I respond in a more appropriate, resourceful, and practical way that would help me get what I want in this situation?
- How and why is this a better way to respond in this situation?
- What are some reasons for making this change?
- What are the long-term benefits of changing how I respond in this situation?
- What are the key advantages of this new behaviour?
The behaviours you allow yourself to indulge in are the one that is keeping you from your desired life and living up to your full potential. You’re either moving towards or away from the person you want to be.
Step 4: Reaffirm new patterns by forming habits and setting goals
Now that you have identified your new behaviour, it’s time to implement it until it becomes ingrained and completely overrides your old self-sabotaging patterns.
I suggest trying some visualisation methods and imagine you’re going through the motions of being “triggered” and your response to that particular situation. I explain in my beginners guide to visualisation a few methods to get you started.
Start by picking one thing to work on; it’s not realistic to try to change multiple patterns at once. You can’t maintain it, which means you will end up giving up, which in itself is a form of self-sabotaging!
I know I end up self-sabotaging my efforts when I don’t know what to expect. The unknown throws me off and to be quite honest; it’s kinda terrifying! I end up standing still instead of moving towards my goals with confidence and just react to what’s happening—all the while feeling incompetent and incapable.
The best way I have found to overcome this unfortunate side effect of life is to have a solid plan in place. You need firm and well thought out plans for each step towards your goals. This solid plan will give you the confidence to move towards the life you desire most.
You can do this on a monthly, weekly and a daily level. Think through how you’ll respond to situations, people and circumstances.
You are now armed with the knowledge to eliminate your self-sabotaging patterns of behaviour, will you finally commit to yourself and live the life you know you can? Will you put in the effort to change your ways to live a life of purpose? Become a student of life?
The choice is ultimately yours.
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