In this blog post we’ll look at the definition of self-sabotage, understand how it adversely affects the life of the person engaging in it, and at last we’ll look at the signs of self-sabotaging so that you can find out if you’ve ever indulged in them (consciously or unconsciously) and how you can stop.
What is Self-Sabotaging?
The dictionary definition of sabotage is “deliberately destroy, damage or obstruct (something) especially for political or military advantage.”
Imagine you doing this to yourself, your own mind or body. And then imagine how destructive that would be, engaging in a bad habit and doing it deliberately. It’s almost as if you don’t give a heck whatever happens to you. You don’t care, you don’t think positively for yourself, you put yourself down. It’s almost masochistic behavior.
And it’s unhealthy, obviously.
So, many of you might realise right now as you’re reading this, that yeah, you’ve kinda self-sabotaged a lot over your life, such that it isn’t even unfamiliar now because you’ve gotten used to putting yourself down, trampling on yourself and crushing your own dreams and aspirations.
In this sense, you don’t even need an enemy.
You become your own bad guy.
This was about those people who do realise what they are doing when they self-sabotage. But then there are also others do it unconsciously. These people don’t necessarily act in a self-sabotaging manner, or they don’t really want to do this—but some way or the other, through the passageways of their minds and their impulses and their thoughts they end up self sabotaging too.
It’s not like they want, or like it, it just happens. They just end up doing it nonetheless.
Now, you need to realise that you’re self-sabotaging so that you can stop it.
We’ll come to the signs and symptoms in some time, but first I need to convince you to stop adopting this practice.
What Self-Sabotaging Can Do To You
Imagine you getting a hundred different opportunities to turn your life around. How great would that be! You have so many different chances, and you get to choose which to take up.
Every door is open for you. The people around you tell you that you are meant for great things.
And you start to believe them…and believe it…and implement it…and…oops—someone held you back.
Nope, not that classmate who envied you, not that colleague who could’ve gotten an inctement instead of you, no, no, no.
It’s not them. It’s you.
Self sabotaging is clearly when you hold yourself back. You pull yourself down this staircase, back at the bottom step, prevent yourself from climbing back up and going to get what you want.
Now forget about the others.
It’s all about you, imagine how bad this would be for you. First, you wouldn’t reach your full potential, you wouldn’t be able to give your best, because you’ll always be hesitant. Second, it will instill a sense of guilt because deep down you’ll know that you are preventing yourself from getting it. Lastly, it will be highly frustrating, because you’ll know that you could do this it you wanted, you would achieve success if you wanted to, but you’re the one who’s holding yourself back.
These will be conflicting desires: wanting to achieve success and wanting to stay where you are comfortable.
These two desires will coexist and you’ll end up stuck in the middle.
Now that we’ve realised how so not good for health this is, we’ll want to know if we’re doing this too, and if yes, we would want to stop immediately.
Then let’s look at the signs of Self-Sabotage behavior listed below:
Signs You Might Be Self-Sabotaging
#1 You Resist Change
I personally think we all resist change to some extent.
It pulls us out of our comfort zone and naturally, all human minds are wary of the unknown. So we want to step back from this stage of change and keep living the the life we know and are familiar with.
But we all also know how important and inevitable change is. Life changes at every point of time as you grow up.
Some of us resist this change more than others, even if what this change brings might just end up being beneficial for us in the long run.
All the new opportunities in life come in the form of change. To upgrade your life, you have to change it, and it’s only for the benefit of you. But it is so that people aren’t really afraid of change, they’re only afraid of the dark black abyss that the change comes disguised as.
How To Stop This?
Take it slow. Sometimes it’s not change that people are afraid of, it’s change in a huge amount, taking place really fast. It’s sometimes your life going so really fast that you can’t keep with its pace. You feel left out, and to stop it, you decide to stop the change.
Take time to think about it. Write the pros and cons. If the change is beneficial for you, the pros will outrule the cons, and because you’ll have written proof now, it’ll be easier to convince yourself to let this happen.
If, however, the cons rule out the pros, maybe you’ll need to think a little more to really find out if this change is even good for you.
Take calculated steps when dealing with overwhelming change.
#2 Something Holds You Back
Have you ever stayed low even when you knew that you were capable of more?
Seriously, what are you doing there? Get out of your own way.
Maybe it’s such that you’re not even afraid to change, but still something holds you back. It might be your fear of rejection, your past experiences, that feeling that you won’t be good enough. Maybe it’s something mean someone said to you years ago.
It’s holding you back now of all times. You hold yourself back now.
No matter how much you try, you can’t let go of past memories and people and experiences, and in some way they are preventing you from moving on and moving up the ladder. This is what self-sabotage is, right?
Without any given reason, you prevent yourself from doing this thing or taking that opportunity up.
How To Stop This?
Let the past go. The old you is gone now, it has grown up into a new “you” who’s more mature and more experienced and definitely worthy of happiness.
You need to tell yourself that life has moved on, and so have you.
You have the key to unlocking your true potential within your own hands. So what are you waiting for? It’s still time, to do that thing you’ve always wanted to do, start that business, travel the world, find that relationship, pick up that career.
The past has gone now, and now you’re past that time too.
#3 You Have A Desire Of Perfectionism
It’s not just a desire. It’s also kind of a disorder, termed as being a part of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) when the person has this wierd impulse to be perfect in whatever they take up, except that in this case, they are also fully supportive of this trait of theirs.
They think it’s perfectly normal.
It isn’t, fun fact.
Because if they aren’t perfect, they beat themselves up.
That isn’t right at all.
If you are a perfectionist and see something that is not up to your mark (that something being you, first and foremost) then you’ll freak out. And you’ll want yourself to be perfect (so you can set up an example in the world, or whatever); and since no person can actually be perfect, you’ll be hard on yourself for this.
You’ll give yourself the toxic motivation talk, always telling yourself to go work hard, go work hard, forget sleep, forget food, go work hard, be the best in whatever you do.
That isn’t so bad in itself, but you need to be considerate that you can’t ever achieve perfection no matter how hard you try.
How To Stop This?
Allow yourself to be a human, not a robot. Allow yourself to make mistakes, and take rest. Enjoy life alittle and don’t just be working all day and all night. Reward yourself and even if you’re not perfect (which you won’t be). Don’t fret.
Stop sabotaging yourself by constantly being present for the thoughts that run through your head, and calling yourself out whenever you are desiring flawlessness.
Read Related Post: The Greatest Thing About Perfection is That it isn’t Oxygen: You Don’t Need it to Survive
#4 You Victimize Yourself
Have you ever whined and complained excessively about your sorry condition in life? Even when you were not so unprivileged, but wanted to gain sympathy and attention, and hence had you made yourself that ultimate victim?
It’s okay even if you have done this; you can just accept it to yourself, if not anyone else. And it’s also possible that you’ve done this, but haven’t realised. That’s okay, people do it consciously or unconsciously. Maybe you are one of those who don’t mean to do it, but do it nevertheless; you need to stop.
The more times you say how bad you’ve got it, how life is unfair, how nothing is in your favour—the more it will become true.
Eventually, you and your life will become what you say about it.
How To Stop This?
So stop victimizing yourself.
Even if you are the victim, think about empowering yourself, think about how you can come out of this unprivileged state, but don’t ever rant about the bad that has been done against you.
This is such a thing as manifestation in this universe and if you call out to negative thoughts and emotions, then so will you receive.
#5 You Give Excess Excuses
If anytime you’ve set out to do something, but have found excuses in the way, and even moreover, you have let these excuses affect you and stop you from doing your task, then of course you’ve been self-sabotaging.
Excuses and procrastination is just something that’s there to rot our lives and aspirations (like cavity rots our teeth.)
It feels comfortable in the short run to procrastinate and think up excuses why you can’t do that thing, but it’s a destructive habit. Given, it will do you no good.
How To Stop This?
Realise that the everyday life is full of a million different excuses always available for you to use. It’s up to whether you give in to the temptation and let the excuses spill out of your mouth, or you keep up the steely mind and not just get diverted from your pathway.
In the end it all depends on you.
You decide who wins, your excuses or you?
#6 You Feel Guilty For Your Accomplishments
This is not uncommon.
Some people are raised to believe that being successful is an act of corruption, and successful people have no desire in life other than money and fame. This mentality creates a kind of rift between the successful people and their counterparts.
This creates the feeling of guilt in your mind when you at last become successful because you think that you dont deserve this level of success and that you’re stealing someone else’s spotlight who deserves better.
Furthermore, when you are successful and looks at others who aren’t (in fact, who kind of belong to the unprivileged class) then you feel guilty that you have got it all and those others haven’t (particularly if you are a nice person)
As a result, you get this feeling that you don’t deserve all that you’ve got.
How To Stop This?
Fill your glass before filling others. Then distribute.
Make yourself believe that you’ve come here through your own hard work and dedication, and no one deserves to tell you otherwise.
You deserve every happiness you get.
And speaking of the fame and money, you can, and should, of course, use it to aid others.
You don’t always have to feel guilty.
#7 Having The Wrong Circle Of Friends Is Self-Sabotaging
How do you realise if you have the wrong friends?
Are your friends helping you forward or pulling you back? Do your thoughts and your way to approach any given situation match? Do you ever feel like what your friends do is not right or kind towards others, and they don’t amend it even after you try to tell them where they went wrong by pointing it out?
If you move in the wrong circle, no matter how much you are determined to not adapt to their bad habits, you will eventually become just like them. Of course you wouldn’t want that, because then it’s not just you who’s sabotaging yourself. Others are sabotaging you too.
Maybe you are just moving in the wrong circle because you are afraid of being alone.
The people we surround ourselves with are an important factor of determining our behaviour and personality.
Choose your friend wisely.
How To Stop This?
If you have got a wrong circle of friends, make sure you create distance.
Don’t stay near toxic people, be it a toxic friend of a toxic partner. That way you’ll have two forces sabotaging you.
Change your circle. And if doing that requires being alone, be brave enough to stay alone (not lonely) for some time. On order to reform yourself, you’ll have to leave friendships and relationships behind. The right people will come along.
#8 You Adopt Unhealthy Habits
There are a ton of unhealthy habits out there some will just affect your body, while some will affect your mind.
Needless to stay, none of them would act in your wellness.
All of them, in some way or another, degrade the quality of your life, and since you voluntarily will be engaging in these bad habits, it will be another form of conscious self-sabotaging.
How To Stop This?
Habits are hugely formed with impulses.
You have an instinct to do something, you do it. Then you do it again. And again. And again. You end up building a bad habit.
There are habits that are highly deadly. Smoking, drinking and driving, indulging in reckless daily routines.
Then there are some that affect you in a less serious way. Watching TV all day, eatinf unhealthy food, procrastinating.
We start by replacing them one by one. We replace the bad habits with the good habits, and then feel proud of ourselves when we go through with a healthy routine, so that our subconscious mind can know that we are making progress.
Maybe a chart.
#9 You Judge Others, You Are Self-Sabotaging
When you judge others, you look at their lives and then think how they are either better or worse than ours. We end up spending time contemplating on comparing the two different lives and picking out faults from others.
It also creates these misconceptions within us that are predetermined, and thus, often wrong.
But we believe what our minds have been fed since forever. And because of this, we end up focusing more on other people’s lives than our own lives.
How To Stop This?
Keep in mind that everyone is fighting their own battles and there’s no use feeling good or bad about one person’s lifestyle when we don’t know what it took them to get there.
#10 You’re Afraid Of Failing (And Thus, Trying)
This is an ever-present fear in the minds of almost everyone in the world. As it’s said, doubt kills more dreams than anything else ever will.
The doubt if you are even good enough, the fear of failing, all of these contribute most of the reason why people are afraid to even try.
How To Stop This?
Believe in yourself.
Don’t be afraid of failing. Be afraid of not even trying.
Go into the tunnel, even if it is dark. You’ll either come out successful or stronger. Maybe both.
#11 You Overthink
Maybe the most common practice out there.
We all have overthought every once in a while, all afraid of something unplanned happening. So, we beat it by thinking again and again about it and compromising with our mental health.
While overthinking is not necessarily a self-sabotaging activity, but expecting something really bad, or being sure that your irrational fear will come true, this is certainly something that sabotages you.
How To Stop This?
You can think.
You can think day and night and wonder what will happen. But stop just short of letting a negative thought enter your mind.
Don’t think something bad will happen. Don’t try to predict the future.
Whatever is going to happen, think about adapting yourself to it, as need arises, so you can survive in any situation.
But it doesn’t help to think negative thoughts, throw them out of your brain.
Conclusion
So these were the 11 self-sabotaging signs that prevail a destructive mind or behaviour. Can you recognize wth any or a few of them? Or all of them? (I seriously hope not!)
If your answer is in affirmation, I suggest you take action on this right away. This kind of self-sabotaging might just be that which is holding you back from your goals.
So, yeah self-sabotaging has many different names, such as downplaying, judgmental attitude, fear of failure, self-destructive habits, self-victimizing, etc. Most people just don’t realise they’re doing it until they see the direct results.
But the good news is that all of it can be prevented.
How did you like the post? Comment! Or maybe you want to contact. Works fine. But until you make up your mind, you can read another post: 13 Self Discipline Pratices That Work if You Do, which specifies how important it is to be self-disciplined if you want to achieve high.
