Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Self-Sabotage: What It Is And Why You Can Stop It

By Lachlan Haynes


It's easy to forget just how powerful our subconscious minds can be. We are often completely unaware of how our actions (or inaction) are affecting our lives. We may complain that things never work out for us, we always seem to have bad luck, or we just don't have what it takes to be successful.

With this type of thinking, very few people realize that their path to success is really being blocked by their subconscious self-sabotage. That's right; most people don't even know that it's their way of thinking that is hindering their chances of success - and nothing else.

In order to overcome self-sabotage we need to use conscious awareness to explore our emotions and fears, and understand how they might be influencing our actions. Why? Well, once we have determined the cause of any destructive behavior, we can then take the necessary steps to prevent it from happening in the future. Simple enough isn't it? If you don't know how or why something happens you can't do anything about it can you? So what's really happening when we sabotage ourselves?

When we have something we want to accomplish, say losing weight, it's very important to want to achieve that goal both on an intellectual level and on a subconscious level. You see, when overweight people constantly fail to lose weight, or just fail to keep it off; it may be for a number of reasons. It may be because they are scared of the outcome on some subconscious level. They might feel like their fat is protecting them from the outside world; protecting them from reality. It may provide a shell for their insecurity. And suddenly, losing weight isn't a happy ever after solution anymore: it's a threat. So even though might say they want to lose weight, and firmly believe that on an intellectual level, they're subconsciously sabotaging their diets or workout plans rationalizing it by promising themselves that they'll try harder tomorrow.

Self-sabotage might also occur when we fear what other people will think of our efforts or we fear the results of actually achieving the goal. When you're worried about the consequences of your efforts (even if they are good) we tend to act in ways that will ensure failure. This doesn't mean we're aware we're doing it. Quite the opposite in fact. Self-sabotage means we are blissfully unaware that we are preventing ourselves from succeeding. We trick our mind into thinking that we're doing everything absolutely right. The key is to take some time and think for a minute about how you are behaving? Do you say you want something but do things that are inconsistent with that ambition? Do you say you want to get some work done but do anything else but the work? Do you feel that you just cannot accomplish your goals even if you try as hard as you possibly can? Do you feel you may not be worthy of your goal?

Fortunately, anyone can overcome self-sabotage. The most important step to stopping self-sabotaging behavior is to recognize that it's happening (and that's not always easy!) So what's required is to develop a conscious awareness of our thoughts, emotions, and actions.

If you've been struggling with a certain goal and things just don't seem to be working out for you, take a look at the setbacks that were encountered and evaluate the situation. Could any of the obstacles have been avoided by making wiser choices on your part? Are there a significantly high number of obstacles that seem to have arisen for this one particular goal. Ask yourself what you may be afraid of? What fears do you have? What uncertainties? What makes you feel uncomfortable about this goal? For what reasons would you try to hold yourself back? Can you think of anything at all?

When we become truly aware of our complete control of our actions and our success, we are released from our own chains and are able to explore a world where the sky is the limit. If we're able to lift the fog from our minds and become aware of what we want and what could be holding us back, then self-sabotage has essentially been eliminated. All the energy we were using to destroy and prevent our success will suddenly be used only towards our success. And that's a situation worth thinking about!




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