Identify and Overcoming Self-Sabotage
Everybody at one time or another has unconsciously sabotaged a goal, mission or relationship and sometimes this happens repeatedly, and we start to wonder why. Why does this keep happening? Well, this is a preprogrammed behavior and takes most of us years to realize, it can stem from an ingrained belief, habit, or some form of inner conflict from when you were little or even as a young adult.
Self-Sabotage is an act or behavior that prevents you from obtaining a goal, regardless of the intentions. Have you ever started working out and within weeks or months you’ve stopped, or you keep putting it off until tomorrow, or you didn’t apply for a job because even though you have experience you didn’t feel that you were qualified. Both of these are examples of Self-Sabotage, and once you start to recognize your patterns you will be able to Self-Regulate and overcome you as your obstacle.
How do you learn to recognize and correct patterns and behaviors, well first remember that it is going to take more than one time to teach yourself how to recognize and self-regulate, but it will get easier each time. First you will need to try and define the reasoning, what is it that keeps you from achieving. Is it a defense mechanism, behavior, unconscious thinking or motivation. How do you recognize self-sabotage, well it can be found in the form of perfectionism, procrastination, negative self-talk, avoidance and believe it or not fear of success.
Once you’ve started to recognize your reasoning you can start to self-regulate, this is one of those wonderful ah-ha moments. For example, you never enter to run a 5k because you’ll never win, what if you put it in a different perspective, like, I’m going to enter a 5k and complete it (doesn’t matter if your last, just complete it). Now that you’ve completed it you will enter another similar event, and your goal now would be to beat your last time, by setting an achievable goal you are more likely to complete it, instead of giving yourself reason to not start. This example is similar to the “Perfectionist” that continually self-sabotages and is typically associated with needing of outside confirmation of a job well done. (not always, just most of the time) and all of us do this.
Okay, how do I start (stopping), well first part of this strategy is understanding your unconscious behavior, why do you do the things you do and finding that connection, for me there were two major areas one being a reinforced thought pattern of your not good enough from when I was younger, no matter what I did it was always very easily pointed out that someone else is better, over the years I have recognized that yes, there is always someone better, and that is okay, I had to get okay with being me and that is what I have to offer. The next area was a fear of success, because what if I did succeed, all these people that didn’t believe in me will now want to be a part of my success, what if I can’t handle success or what if I succeed and then lose it all.
Again all of these are okay, I don’t have to share my success with anyone that did not believe in my aspirations, it’s okay if I get overwhelmed with success and it’s okay if I fail as long as I learn from my failures and try it again, (which I have a couple of times). Learning how you as an individual function is the first step to understanding why you feel that you can never accomplish a goal or whatever it is that makes you put up those barriers. The sooner you can acknowledge your unconscious bias towards yourself the sooner you can start to self-regulate and overcome self-sabotage.
Dawn - founder Hitroff Consulting LLC