What if I told you that the car you were about to drive had been sabotaged? I could even tell you how it was sabotaged and what would happen when the sabotage would damage the car. You’d know that your brake lines had been cut and that you wouldn’t be able to stop the car well before you ever got in.
Only a fool would get into that car, as a reasonable person would probably thank me for the warning and then get their car fixed. Whenever someone else sabotages us, we react and avoid the situation, and stay away from the saboteur. However, whenever we sabotage ourselves, it’s a different story.
We know what we are doing and we know that we are screwing ourselves over, but we continue to do it anyway. Worse, we don’t punish the saboteur, but we let them do it over and over again. Self-Sabotage is something everyone does, and there are a million reasons for it. However, it only ever comes with one outcome, and that’s a big crash.
But how do we stop self-sabotage, especially when it is so easy? That’s what this article is going to talk about, and by the end of it, you will have the tools to overcome self-sabotage and start chasing your success and your happiness.
What Is Self-Sabotage
According to Merriam Webster, sabotage is defined as an act or process tending to hamper or hurt or deliberate subversion. Self-sabotage is whenever you hamper or hurt yourself, and you subvert your own expectations. It’s whenever your internal self doesn’t match your outside dreams and desires. These bad behaviors and thoughts keep you away from what you really want.
It often manifests as the internal voice that stays ‘you can’t do this, so why try?” It also happens whenever our conscious mind is at odds with our subconscious. The conscious mind is what you think of and what you should do, while the subconscious mind is what you want to do.
For example, whenever you wake up, you know that you should go to the gym and exercise, however, your subconscious mind wants you comfortable and wants you to sleep in. So, you tend to be at odds with these two mindsets, and self-sabotage comes in when you actively deny what you want when you are thinking with the conscious mind.
It could be procrastination where you know that you have a big test to study for tonight, but you push the studying off to play video games. Or where you know you need to meet a friend at 8:00 AM sharp to figure out your latest project, but you consciously oversleep because you are afraid of starting. It can be mental too, where you know that you need to start a project like writing a book, but continually put it off until tomorrow, because you are listening to all those negative thoughts.
All this hesitation stops us from achieving our goals and prevents us from grabbing those new opportunities, and then we sit and wonder why our life hasn’t changed at all. But if we know we are self-sabotaging ourselves, and we know the actions that we take to self-sabotage ourselves, why do we do it?
The Number One Reason We Self Sabotage
Fear. Full stop, that’s why we sabotage ourselves. We freak out so much over what people might think, what could happen, being overwhelmed, and a million other things that we just never start. After all, if you don’t try, you can’t fail.
Putting things off, avoiding behaviors, making excuses, and endlessly waiting for the ‘right time’ are all byproducts of fear and that’s why we self-sabotage ourselves. We are afraid of failure, and we can also be afraid of success.
For example, going to the gym. If you go to the gym, you really can’t fail unless you injure yourself, but you can succeed with enough consistency and patience.
People don’t avoid the gym because of failure, but they avoid the success that comes with a healthy and attractive body. They might have a story in their heads that says, “I’ve always been overweight/come from an overweight family/eaten poorly, I always will feel that way.” Then they never try to change, because they are so comfortable feeling bad that they don’t want to lose that.
It’s odd whenever you look at that from the outside, but if you have spent your entire life being sick and tired, it can certainly feel odd whenever you are finally healthy and filled with energy.
3 Key Ways We Self Sabotage
Now that we know why we self-sabotage, we need to understand how we do it. Self-sabotage can take a few different tacks when it tries to undermine our happiness, and here are some of them.
- Procrastination: Possibly the biggest indicator of self-sabotage there is, procrastination is whenever we put something off and engage in distracted behaviors. We might have 2 weeks to complete a project, but we wait until we have two hours. This creates sloppy work that isn’t our best at all. We also tend to procrastinate whenever we have something to do that is part of our dream. For example, if we need to send in a form or do a quiz to get into a school or program, we will wait and dawdle, and then rush through it.
- Reinforcement of negative beliefs: Using your negative beliefs to keep you down is something that most people don’t even realize they do. But what does your self-talk look like? Are you constantly criticizing yourself or looking for reasons not to do something? For example, you might say ‘I always procrastinate, so I wouldn’t be able to complete the project on time.” Then you procrastinate and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, rather than you trying to prove yourself wrong.
- Constant waiting: It’s never the right time. You’ll start your business when the economy calms down, you’ll work on your health next year, you’ll call that girl back when your mental health is better. We can get trapped in an endless limbo of waiting, and that prevents us from taking action. After all, the perfect time will never come, no matter how much you wait.
Now, you will notice that most of the ways we self-sabotage involve doing nothing while taking action is the way to move towards your goals. Of course, humans follow the path of least resistance, and doing nothing is much easier than actively working to follow your dreams.
Even though we might know that self-sabotage is wrong and that our actions aren’t going to get us where we need to be, it’s hard to stop doing nothing. That’s why it can be hard to get moving on our goals because simply putting them off is easy for us.
Self-Sabotage Is An Unhealthy Response To Stress
Now that we’ve looked at what we don’t do when it comes to self-sabotage, what do we do instead? If we aren’t starting our business, going to the gym, or hanging out with friends, what are we doing?
Most of the time we are doing low-value activities such as social media, eating high calorie foods, and generally being couch potatoes. While that is certainly not a bad thing, you can do that too much, and generally, those things should be rewards, rather than just you doing them in excess to the detriment of your goals.
Often, we get afraid and that causes stress to build up for us. Whenever we are stressed, our brains look for something to stop that stress from happening, and that manifests in the ‘feels good now’ behaviors of scrolling on our phones or watching too much TV. Self-Sabotage is really our bodies trying to overcome stress, but we do it in that unhealthy way.
Consider procrastinating on a book report that’s due in a week by going on your phone. Every time you think about how much you need to do for the report, you jump right to your phone until you have to work on the book report.
Responding to stress and self-sabotaging in this way doesn’t solve anything, but only makes the stress worse. You now have even less time to do the same amount of work, and the stress is much bigger.
Or maybe you have a chance to go to the art school that will improve your ability to chase your artistic dreams. All you need to do is make a phone call and you are in, but you hem and haw and do everything but the phone call. Before you know it, by the time you do call they’ve already taken on the earlier applicants.
Instead of facing the fears and stress that our dreams will inevitably cause us, we self-medicate with these unhealthy habits, and then we find ourselves stuck in the same place and feeling worse about ourselves.
Most people who self-sabotage themselves will do the same thing over and over again, dropping the ball on their goals, before wondering why nothing in their lives has changed. They’re still stuck on doing the same thing over and over again, and even though they might want their goals more than ever they aren’t focusing on how to get them.
Why Don’t We Want To Be Happy?
Now, from the outside looking in, this seems a little silly. Are people sabotaging chances at happiness just because they are a little scared or stressed? Especially whenever what they need to do is so easy, and then happiness is all but guaranteed? For people who already are happy, it can be difficult to see people throw their chances away.
Most of the time, being happy goes against the grain of our world. If you look at most people, they might be content, but being content and happy are two very different things. To be happy, you need to work for it because it is not given to you, and the sad thing is most people are content to be content. They don’t want to do that work, but if you look at the happiest and most successful people out there, hard work is part of the process.
We self-sabotage because of fear and doubt and worry, and we let those negative emotions overcome our desire for a positive outcome. Most people focus too much on their weaknesses and not enough on their strengths, and they let their past define their future.
Only by delving deep within themselves can they prevent their prophecies from becoming self-fulfilled, and most people aren’t willing to do that. It’s hard and scary to focus on yourself and face those demons that you have created, and even harder to slay them in the name of getting what you really want.
Which Pain Do You Want?
There’s a motivational quote that says: “You can have the pain of discipline or the pain of regret, pick one.” If you’ve ever felt the pain of regret, then you know that it hurts a lot more than the discipline it takes to put down the tools you are using to sabotage yourself.
If you chase your dreams, you will experience a lot of things both good and bad, but it will be worth it in the end. You’ll be grateful for that journey and for the pain for making you stronger.
The pain of regret is just a bitter aftertaste that will never really go away, and while it might fuel you to take on a new challenge, it doesn’t give you any other real benefits. With self-sabotage, you simply get the pain of regret and nothing else.
Then in order to escape the pain, you tend to self-sabotage on your next goal. This continues until you break the cycle, which will be discussed next.
How To Stop Self Sabotage
Now that we’ve focused on what self-sabotage is and why people do it all the time, let’s look at how to stop it from happening. First, you need to be able to reflect on yourself and see why you are hamstringing your goals along, instead of taking massive action to take them on. This can be a little hard to do, but it is a necessary step.
The reason why you self-sabotage could be because of how you were raised. If your parents only valued your achievements and nothing else, you might have become a perfectionist so they would value and love you. Then you carry that into your workplace and life, seeking only perfection in yourself and others, which just isn’t possible.
You could be self-sabotaging because you had one bad experience and you are allowing it to define your present. For example, you may have had a toxic relationship, and self-sabotage would be never going on dates or finding new partners. Or even worse, expecting toxic behavior from your new partners and becoming confused when they don’t show it to you.
The best way to stop self-sabotage is to make sure that you are thinking through your actions and finding the patterns that are keeping you trapped. Then you can go through each pattern and get them fixed by trying a different approach.
If you are a perfectionist you need to write the script that you can make mistakes and that everyone does them. If you are still hiding from a toxic relationship then you need to let your partner love you, and you need to trust they won’t hurt you in return.
It won’t happen overnight, but you will break those patterns.
1| Change Your Habits Into Rewards
If you have a primary way that you self-sabotage yourself, such as spending too much time on your phone, then make it a reward. Instead of jumping on that and scrolling through your social media whenever you need to get something done for your dreams, do it when the work is done.
You can change your entire view on procrastination by doing this, where instead of having fun now, but constantly worrying about the project, you can complete the project quickly and then have fun without any stress or guilt. Imagine now much fun that would be! Instead of constantly glancing at the clock while you play videogames or calculating how many 30-minute shows you can watch before you have to work, you can do the work and then waste as much time as you want for a reward.
Changing your behavior and pushing what you normally did first to last and bringing what you procrastinated on to the forefront can be difficult. One of the best things that you can do is to change your environment, so if you always procrastinated in your apartment, move to get your work done in a coffee shop. That will help you focus.
2| Make A Small Change
Of course, it can be very tempting to look at all the things you self-sabotage because it is rarely just the one thing. Work, relationships, friendships, your dreams and passions, your health… all of these are often affected by self-sabotaging behaviors. You might decide that you are free from the chains of self-doubt, so you may as well start fixing all your problems at once, right?
Well, not only can that be unrealistic, but the sheer amount of work you would have to do to overcome all your self-sabotage can be so massive, you end up self-sabotaging your efforts to stop sabotaging yourself! It’s best to just focus on one thing at a time, and then you can make sure that you get that problem fixed before moving onto another.
Let’s say you decided to stop self-sabotaging your big dreams. You could start by making small steps for what you need to do to get back on track, and then break down and track those steps using a to-do list. Self-Sabotage is often done whenever your brain fears the unknown, so having the steps laid out makes this much easier and your brain won’t be as resistant to it.
For example, if your big dream is to become a painter, figure out what field of painting you want to go into. Then look at if you need any education, special skills, or materials to get started in that field. After that, you can start moving to get those materials and so on. Pretty soon, you will be making real and noticeable progress on your goal.
3| Make Sure To Avoid ‘Busy Work’
One of the subtler ways that we self-sabotage ourselves is by filling our time with busy work, so we can make the excuse of not having enough time. Going back to the above painting example, let’s say you need to paint a bowl of fruit and send it in to several art programs to become qualified.
A way self-sabotage can creep up on you, as we’ve discussed, is through perfectionism. You might paint a bowl, decide it isn’t good enough and paint another. Technically you are practicing your painting skills, but you are really distracting yourself with busy work to avoid moving forward and sending your paintings in.
This can happen in any career, because busy work gives us the illusion of progress without the fear of being rejected. Make sure that you can see those illusions coming and are still making progress and not just delaying.
4| Do Something Challenging and Crazy
The reason that we self-sabotage ourselves is to remain comfortable, so the best way to break out of that is to do something challenging and crazy. Pick something that’s hard enough to be challenging, but easy enough to be done realistically, and you have your challenge. If you are a painter, do a piece of art for 30 days. If you want to improve your health, hit the gym at the same time for 30 days.
Not only will you reap the growing rewards of doing the same thing every single day and getting better at it, but you will also be able to look back on the challenge and see what you can really do when it comes to it. Plus, you can reward yourself after it’s all over.
Self-sabotage can’t stand up to a challenge, and you’ll find that the simple act of doing something and getting the task done can make you happy. Just pick a challenge and a timeframe, and then get started.
5| What About The Inner Voice?
All right, so you’ve decided to break away from self-sabotage for good, you have some plans, and you are going to make the changes you need to make. This is all perfect, and the only thing you will need to deal with is your ‘inner voice.’ It’s the one that’s always been self-sabotaging you, and it wants you to fall back into your old habits. So how do you beat it?
For starters, recognize what it is, your brain seeking some pleasure. However, the pleasure is fake. Sure, sitting on the couch and doing nothing might be fun for a moment, but it won’t bring you the long-term fulfillment that you seek. Only chasing and fulfilling your dreams will do that.
Also, you don’t have to please or believe that inner voice either. If it says that you can’t do something or you don’t deserve something, flip the script on its head and say that you can do something and you deserve everything. Eventually, the consistency and the hard work will pay off because your inner voice will turn into your biggest ally.
You can also focus on replacing your negative self-talk with rituals that will help keep you centered. Maybe get up in the morning, look yourself in the mirror, and repeat affirmations or phrases to yourself that will get you closer to your dreams. After a while they will be done without you having to think about them at all.
6| Reach Out To Others Who Are Living Your Dream
Self-sabotage is rarely something that you can beat on your own, and you’ll need to work with people to truly overcome it. One of the best groups of people that you can work with are those who have already done what you want to do, they are living your dream. Talk to them and understand their stories. They had self-doubts, fears, stresses, and moments of self-sabotage as well, but they pushed through them to become successful.
If you pay close attention to their stories and their words, you will find a lot of parallels to your own quest for your dream. Take wisdom from that, and these people can become your mentors to further help your journey. The fastest way to beat self-sabotage is to surround yourself with the people who are where you want to be, because if they could do it you can certainly do it too.
7| Listen To The People Who Want What’s Best For You
Finally, there are people who love you and who want to help you in the world, and when it comes to self-sabotage, they might have some things to say. Make sure to listen, because they will be able to cut through all the emotions that are holding your back and get to the root of the issue. That’s something we can’t do ourselves.
Often, even while you are in the midst of self-sabotaging yourself, you know what you should be doing to pursue your dreams. We might refuse that obvious path because it is obvious, but someone who is on the outside looking in will not. They just see a path is there and want you to take it.
Reaching out for help is one of the best ways to prevent self-sabotage, and it’s a great way to make sure you are on the right track.
What Does A Self-Sabotage Free Life Look Like
If you are one of the people who likes to begin with the end in mind, then think about this. If you’ve managed to fight your way free from self-sabotage and overcome self-doubt to have your dreams, then you feel unstoppable. Your mind is working 100% with you to deal with your dreams and goals, and you have confidence in yourself.
You don’t have the vicious cycle of beating yourself up for messing up your goals due to self-sabotage, setting new ones, self-sabotaging those goals, and having it repeat over and over again. Instead, you pick a goal, you meet it, and then you set a new one. Plus, because you are setting your goals so fast, you can also spend more time having fun and handling the rewards that you get for completely those goals.
It’s a great life, and something that everyone can have. You will have success, happiness, support, and also no fear when it comes to taking on any challenge. Your inner voice will go from saying “You can’t do this’ to ‘how can you do this’ and that’s a very powerful shift.
You’ll Know How To Handle Those Doubting Moments
If an opportunity comes out of left field, and you doubt that you can complete it in time, you won’t be racked by self-doubt and indecision. Instead, you can simply think through the facts rationally and then consider if you are right for the opportunity.
For example, let’s say you’ve been given an opportunity to go on a trip related to your dream. If you are a painter, maybe there’s a painting class in Germany that you’ve been offered to go too. Instead of your inner voice going: “I can’t go to Germany, even for my dream” and making a million excuses as to why you cannot go, your inner voice will start asking the questions that will get you there.
It’s a much better place to be mentally because you know what to do and what questions to ask yourself. Doubt might still be a factor you need to consider, but it isn’t going to be the paralyzing factor that it once was.
Keep Your Eye On The End Goal
Finally, the last thing that you can do to stop sabotaging your own successes and your overall happiness is to make sure you are looking at the end goal. As you work on your dreams, make sure to always consider what it will feel like to have those dreams met.
Self-sabotage always has you think about the worse possible outcomes, rather than the best possible outcomes, so make sure to keep your positive end goal in mind.
Think about what will happen when you write your book, become a professional artist, get yourself healthy and where you need to be, and all those other goals. It’s a really good thing to visualize right? It will feel even better whenever you achieve those goals and get to where you are living your dream and not just having it.
The battle against self-sabotage can seem to be a long one, especially if you’ve been ruining your own chances of success for a very long time. Once you get to a place where you can overcome it, all that hard work and the long road will be worth it. Then you can live a happy and fulfilled life without fear of sabotaging yourself!
