Many people struggle with repeating the same mistakes even when they truly want to change. You might set goals, feel motivated, and promise yourself that this time things will be different, yet somehow you end up back in the same frustrating situation. Learning how to stop self-sabotaging behavior begins with understanding why it happens in the first place. When you become aware of the hidden thoughts, fears, and habits that work against your success, you gain the power to change them and start creating the positive results you really want in your life.

You Can Beat Self-Sabotage with Self-Awareness

Is there some aspect of your life where you seem to have a blind spot? You catch yourself continually doing something that causes negative results. After you have endured failure or some negative emotion yet again, you promise yourself it won’t happen in the future. 

Then what happens? You find yourself back in the same situation.

You are far from a person who is out of control. You’re a rational person. Most of your life is under control, and many people who care about you often remark they are jealous of your many positive character traits.

So why is it hard to create a positive outcome in a particular area of your life?

It isn’t that you are lazy or don’t have a strong desire to create change. It’s not that you haven’t put in the time or effort, either. If you often continue to underperform in some aspect of your life, it’s because you are holding yourself back. 

There Are Many Reasons for Self-Sabotage

Some people sabotage their own efforts because of a fear of failure. They stop trying when they are close to success because they are afraid they won’t be able to get past that failure emotionally if they fail. So they stop trying. 

Self-sabotage also happens because of psychological or emotional programming. Something that happened previously in your life is subconsciously leading to negative habits and actions. You may consciously desire to achieve something, but your efforts, no matter how hard you try, are sabotaged by negative mental programming. 

Sometimes we get in the way of our best efforts because success might mean leaving our friends and loved ones behind. We may create such a great reality that the people we care about have no place in our new life. That can be a scary future to think about. 

Self-Awareness Takes Honesty, and That Can Make You Uncomfortable

We move through much of our lives in a zombie-like state. Modern life is busy, hectic, and full of distractions. You might not have enough time to reflect deeply about who you are and what you do. 

It’s important to be aware of everything when you are working towards some goal. You might not be able to stop your actions beforehand. In this case, ask yourself what you did that kept you from being successful? Do you notice patterns that continue to create negative experiences in your life? 

Do you ever have thoughts of not being good enough? After you embrace positive emotions and get motivated to make some big change, what slows you down? Why don’t you keep moving forward with those powerful, positive feelings? 

When you take action to create something positive in your life, be honest with yourself. What is your thought process? Are you trying to sabotage your results before you even get started? If you notice negative programming at work, remind yourself you can embrace any beliefs.

Choose to believe you can succeed and continue to operate with that idea firmly in your mind. 

Over time this self-awareness can help you identify self-sabotaging beliefs and actions that keep you from goal achievement. This can take time, but it’s worth the work. It gives you power over unconscious mental programming and allows you to choose a success mindset instead.

3 Common Patterns of Self-Sabotage 

It seems difficult to believe that people might do things not in their best interests. This behavior sometimes happens again and again. Don’t people want to do what’s best for them? Why would anyone knowingly take action in a way that has caused them some negative outcome in the past and threatens to do the same thing again? 

This is what self-sabotage is. It’s frustrating because it’s often repetitive. A person continues to make decisions that produce a less-than-enjoyable result. Sometimes the person is so aware of what’s going on that they will jokingly refer to the problems they will face if they act in some way (or don’t act).

 This happens because when we continually make choices that don’t produce the greatest results, we are often driven by psychological or emotional influences. This can make it tough to spot self-defeating behavior. If you want to create more positive results in your life, keep an eye out for these three common patterns of self-sabotage. 

1 – Being a Perfectionist 

You might think that attempting to be perfect is a positive trait. It really isn’t. The people that succeed at the highest levels in their fields understand that they always need to push themselves, but they are also aware that perfection doesn’t exist. 

You can always improve in some way. It makes sense to strive to improve in areas of your life because you know this can improve the quality of your life. That’s admirable. 

A problem develops when this becomes an all-or-nothing mindset. It keeps you from taking action or getting involved in opportunities because before you even get started, you don’t see the potential for a perfect outcome. 

2 – Embracing Extremes 

Perhaps you never say no when a friend asks a favor. Before you know it, you have so many responsibilities that your life suffers. You place others before your needs. Maybe you lack moderation in some other way. Moderation helps you avoid self-sabotage that can cause problems in many aspects of your life. 

3 – Trying to Do It All Yourself 

We all need help from time to time. The self-saboteur refuses to admit this. If you don’t get help when needed, this can lead to failure. You have no one to blame if turning to your friends or loved ones for help is all you would have needed to be successful instead. 

Remember that perfection doesn’t exist in the human condition. Strive for moderation and steer clear of extremes. Get help when you need it. These are simple ways to avoid destructive and damaging behavior that can keep you from experiencing positive results.

Understanding What’s Causing Your Self-Sabotaging Behavior 

The English word sabotage has French origins. In the late 18th century, French laborers demanding better working conditions would make noise by beating their wooden shoes together. They would also throw these shoes, called sabots, into machinery to stop production as a protest.

 A saboteur was someone who made noise with sabots. It wasn’t until 1897 that Emile Pouget, a famous French anarchist of the time, wrote about the “action de saboter un travail,” or “the action of sabotaging or bungling work.”

The word sabotage these days is linked to those early definitions of its roots by referring to a deliberate action to cause disruption, obstruction, or destruction. 

That means that self-sabotage is us getting in our own way. We consciously or unconsciously keep ourselves from achieving a goal. This destructive behavior can affect any area of a person’s life and is difficult to stop without a plan proven to keep you on your path to success. 

Understand, Stop, and Act Differently 

Think about times when you did something that acted against your best interests. These were times when whatever you did caused some of the following feelings.

·        Anger

·        Emptiness

·        Frustration

·        Stress

·        Loneliness

·        Rejection

·        Humiliation

·        Self-Doubt

·        Pessimism

·        Failure

·        Guilt

·        Shame

We all experience these emotions at one time or another. When you consistently find these feelings arising because of something you’ve done and continue to do things that create these feelings, you might be working on a set of marching orders you gave yourself as a child. 

Self-sabotage is most often caused because of unresolved psychological and emotional issues. Psychiatrists tell us that what influences our behaviors as adults is our upbringing. You could have encountered some situations when you were a child that still subconsciously makes you react in certain ways. 

Knowing this is good. If you know a process leading to a negative result, you can destroy the process and get a positive outcome instead. Here’s what to do. 

Understand That Negative Programming Is at Work 

Have a conversation when you catch yourself about to do something, and it’s a behavior that has caused negative feelings and problems in your life. Remind yourself that some past issues may be causing you to believe that you deserve a negative consequence.

That’s what’s at work often when we do things that sabotage our lives.

Once you understand that this is a negative process at work in your life, you have the power to make a different choice. Start looking for situations where your unconscious, knee-jerk reaction or conscious decision might lead to a negative outcome. Understand that you control your choices and that there are healthier options you can consciously choose. 

Stop

 Once you understand a self-sabotaging process might be at work, stop. Take some time to consider all your potential choices and their possible outcomes. If you can, walk away from making the choice right away. 

Look at your past. If you’ve faced similar situations, what decisions did you make, and what were the results? Instead of acting quickly and instinctively, which is sometimes not the best thing to do, stop and take some time to back away from taking action. 

Act Differently 

Here’s where you have to be strong. You are going to be resisting very strong impulses. The first few times you do this, it will be very uncomfortable. You have lived with certain instincts for so long and given in to them, and now you’ll fight them. 

Be proud of yourself. You’ve made a conscious decision to understand what’s going on. You know that you could instinctively be making some bad decisions. You stopped and backed away from the process, giving yourself time to think about multiple decisions and their outcomes. 

Now you have a chance to act differently than you used to. Remember, if you want to enjoy something different than what you had in the past, you will have to do different things than you’ve been doing. This is the power of acting differently from your instinctive influences that, for whatever reason, are trying to hold you down or create a negative outcome. 

Practice Makes Perfect 

Changing decades of behavior is not going to happen overnight. The more you go through this process, the better you will become. You’ll start identifying self-sabotaging thoughts and instincts and stopping yourself before you act upon them. 

You should understand that making decisions that will lead to a better result can feel very uncomfortable. That’s okay. This is a sign that you’re trying to change emotional or psychological hardwiring that’s been going on for a long time. Practice makes perfect. Keep at it. The fact that you want to stop self-sabotaging behavior means you have the mental and emotional resolve to do that.