SELF SABOTAGE

A GAME OF MENTAL TUG OF WAR

We sabotage our potential in many ways.   

Maybe your inner voice speaks messages like “you can’t do this” or “this can’t be happening.” You May feel stuck. You start second guessing yourself which steadily erodes all of your energy and enthusiasm. Sabotage!

Psychologists call this second guessing the 'Upper Limit Problem'. It shows up when we have reached a place that feels good, victorious and happy; it would seem that we don’t know how to hold onto those good feelings. It appears to be that these powerful feelings move us out of our comfort zone and our own unbelief shocks us back to what is recognisable and ordinary. It just seemed too good to be true.

Why do we act like this?

So often there are emotional traumatic triggers that transform wisdom and sense into flights of panic.

According to Jonathan Fields author of ‘Uncertainty’, you kill the dream when you kill the butterflies. If you didn’t have butterflies in your tummy when doing something you have never done before, you could never fulfil your dream!

So where does this fear come from?

Answer: In our response to those butterflies.                                                                            

The response can be self-sabotaging when it generates problems and interferes with long-standing goals.

The real danger of self-sabotage is that it’s often subconscious. The actions are so rational and natural to the person engaging in them and they are oblivious to them. There is a complete unawareness of the outcome of such a response.

The expression “you are your own worst enemy” rings true for most of us. How many times have we acted against our self-interest then asked ourselves why? 

Why did we say that to a loved one? Why have we stopped doing that one thing that makes us feel great? Self sabotaging thoughts and behaviours are maintained by an inner critic we all posses, known as the “critical inner voice.” 

~ Robert Firestone,

He states that our critical inner voice is formed from our early life experiences. Without recognising it, we are apt to internalise feelings that were directed toward us by parents or influential caretakers during our developmental years e.g. if our parent saw us as lazy, we may grow up feeling useless or ineffective. We may then engage in self sabotaging thoughts that tell us not to try.

 “Why bother? You’ll never succeed anyway. You just don’t have the energy to get anything done”.

 Bring out the Anti-Sabotage unit.

If you feel yourself stumbling, even though everything appears to be going well……..

List the PROS and CONS. 

Over 3 days write out all the pros and all the cons you can come up with regarding your circumstances.  Read through both lists and be on the lookout for patterns of thought that may be self sabotaging.

Put a star next to the most important points, rewrite both lists. Wait 24 hours and then make you final decision.

Enough light for the next step. 

People often believe that difficult circumstances that have been in their lives for years, will forever block them from moving forward; there seems no way out. Yet as they have taken small steps to ponder the outcomes, the circumstances they had long seen as hopeless start to seem hopeful.

You can do things differently.

 

 

References:
Fields, J: Uncertainty.2011

Firestone, R: Combating Destructive Thought processes. 1997