Self-Sabotage. You Deserve Better From You.

Sabotage - To deliberately destroy, damage, or obstruct

*Using this definition, self-sabotage literally means to bring about damage to oneself.

Procrastination

Let’s just get into the thick of it. Procrastination is one of the most understood forms of sabotage. Everyone can understand when they are bowing out on doing an important task, missing deadlines or waiting 'til the very last minute to complete the to-do list. This is the most obvious, so we won’t harp on that for too long. 

Doubt - Know yourself 

Doubt is just one seed that sprouts self-sabotage. Doubt has a powerful emotion attached to it and holds a lot of space in your mind. Your mind clouded with what you think you can’t do, there’s no way you can see what you CAN do. This lack of confidence comes from a lack of practice. The first step to combating self-sabotage is to relieve your mind of any doubt regarding your worth.

Refusing to seek help - You are not less than

I have a problem with asking for help. No matter what the situation is, I have a mindset that I will just figure it out on my own. This in itself is admirable… until it's not. Knowing you need help and refusing to seek it, is self-sabotage. There hasn’t been a moment that I refused to seek help and fucked up along the way without success being the outcome. As a kid, I learned to move like this because no one wanted to really help me. Adults wanted to make an example of me and my peers simply didn’t have the answers or their answers were garbage. So, I went at every problem alone, even when I didn’t have to. When I started to ask for help as an adult, it was strange. People were more enthusiastic about giving me aid. They simply just helped me and because of it, I’ve moved much faster through life.

You aren't enough - Mindset shift 

I’ll admit it's not the easiest thing to up and change your mindset. The hardest part is first understanding that your balance is off. The first step is to understand that you are more than what people give you credit for. Even more than you may give yourself credit for. Adopting a more positive and self-inspiring train of thought is worth the effort. Of course we can’t be 100% all the time. Even when you fall short, you’re there to pick yourself up. 

Unconscious activity

Self-sabotage can be aggravating because it's an unconscious pattern most of the time. When you recognize your own patterns is the moment you can be more conscious about them. We often go through with sabotaging ourselves because we justify WHY we’re doing it. “This person made me mad, so I’m going to get revenge”. Say you get revenge, then it backfires, now you feel worse than before. Although our actions are mostly unconscious, it isn’t hard to grab a hold of your mind ahead of bad patterns. Once you begin to think about the origins of your actions, then you can take the steps to reducing self-sabotaging actions.

There have been many times that I had to really look at myself in the mirror. All to get it through my head that I’m better than I’ve been acting. Days where I just felt weaker than usual. I’d feel hurt by the smallest of things people would tell me. I just recently had one of those moments. I had to sit down and think to myself how off balance I was. Words would cut deeper, and my feelings were hurt more easily over some regular tasks. I didn’t want to do anything because it wasn’t going to be my best effort. That’s what I thought. But I realized something when I’d talk to the people closest to me. Every conversation I had was actually reaffirming my worth. No, these people weren’t praising me. It was more of something that I figured on my own. I gave up on myself, sabotaging my thinking, killing my ambition. Therefore, I sulked back into my own self-sabotaging actions. Feeling like number 2 to everyone around me. My reflection in the mirror had a different person in it, that I didn’t like seeing. So, I had to move myself into a better mental space. 

Feeling unable to proceed - Trust yourself

Learning to trust yourself is a major factor in knowing how to end self-sabotage. Knowing what you have to do and doing it every time. Trusting your intuition. Knowing right from wrong is subjective depending on the culture you come from. So, it really comes down to you and trusting that you do right by you at the end of it all. Sometimes, in order to be selfless, you have to be selfish. It’s never a bad decision to put yourself first. SABOTAGE begins and ends with YOU. Trust in who you are. There lies a power within us that we often fight against. Learn to trust YOU, and I bet things get better.  

-J