Self-sabotage can be the biggest barrier that holds us back from achieving our goals, happiness, and success. It’s a defense mechanism that we unconsciously use to protect ourselves from failure or rejection. But it’s also the reason why we can’t seem to move forward, grow, learn, or change. In this article, we’ll explore why we self-sabotage, how to recognize when we’re doing it, and how to overcome it.
One way we self-sabotage is through self-handicapping. This is when we create obstacles to justify our poor performance or lack of effort, especially when we know our performance is going to be evaluated in some way. We do this to avoid the blame being placed on our inherent skills or abilities as a person. We can also self-sabotage by overthinking, doubting ourselves, overly fearing the opinions of others, being excessively critical of our own work, procrastinating, or engaging in self-destructive behaviors like overeating, overspending, or substance use.
The reason we self-sabotage is that we have a conscious part of our mind that wants us to move forward, grow, learn, change, and succeed. But we also have a subconscious, unconscious part of our mind that wants us to feel safe and secure, comfortable, and wants to do everything possible to avoid failure or rejection. It’s protective in nature, and it’s where we default to when we feel threatened. The conscious mind is the one that wants us to make better food choices, turn our hobby into a business, or pursue the idea of a committed, loving relationship. But the unconscious mind thinks we’re never going to change, what are other people going to say, or I’m not worthy of love.
To overcome self-sabotage, we need to become aware of when we’re doing it. We need to make the unconscious conscious. We can do this by paying attention to our emotions. The conscious mind brings about feelings of curiosity, creativity, excitement, and joy. The unconscious mind brings about emotions of anxiety, disappointment, regret, shame, blame, and anger. If we’re noticing these feelings, we can pinpoint when self-sabotage is happening and identify the belief or fear that’s holding us back. We can challenge it and rewrite the narrative with a more empowering one.
For example, if we’re not exercising, we may fear failure or not looking fit in the eyes of others. But we can rewrite the narrative by focusing on progress, not perfection, and reminding ourselves that we’re taking care of our health and our body is capable of change. We can also create a bias towards action by not overthinking our goals and just taking action. We can start small, build momentum, and celebrate our successes along the way.
Learn more from this video by Sadia from Pick Up Limes