Are You Self-Sabotaging? 4 Sneaky Ways You May Be Holding Yourself Back

Mindset

Jan 14

It's hard to fathom the idea that you are holding yourself back from greatness. Why on Earth would you want to do that?

You might ask yourself questions like: "Why does this always happen to me?" or "Why do I keep doing this to myself?"

Self-sabotage is when you're stuck in specific thought patterns and behaviors that hold you back from doing what you want to do.

Self-sabotaging behaviors don't happen consciously. You don't think to yourself: "I don't want to do this because I fear ___ and if that happens, then ___ will happen."

It doesn't flow that smoothly in your mind.

It's not you consciously doing it, but rather subconsciously.

Self-sabotaging behaviors stem from your limiting beliefs about yourself. It may come from your beliefs on worthiness or self-doubt. Sometimes, it comes from invalidation and pressure to succeed. But other times, it comes from your fears.

Let's say you notice that with every partner you have, it goes really well initially, but then it begins to crumble. You wonder why it starts off so well, but then something always comes up. For some reason, no one wants to stay.

Now looking at this situation surface-level, it seems like your partners are always the problem, and they leave. Or you think that something is wrong with you and so they leave.

I'm telling you right now both of these observations are lies. It's not that all the good people in the world are taken, and there's nothing wrong with you. Instead, look at your fears.

Are you scared of commitment?

Are you scared that if you get too close to someone, they'll betray you?

Do you feel unworthy of love, so when someone does show you, love, you feel uncomfortable?

Once you begin looking inward, you can start to pick up where you might have some self-sabotaging thoughts or behaviors.

Maybe you begin pushing partners away so that you won't feel hurt if they leave you. Perhaps you pick them apart, find all their flaws, and realize you could never be with someone like that.

Sometimes it's not you, and it's not them. It's just the beliefs and programming you have that cause these self-sabotaging behaviors.

Self-sabotaging behaviors can be subtle. You won’t even notice that they’re hurting you until it’s too late.

4 Sneaky Ways You May Be Self-Sabotaging

1. Procrastination

Procrastination isn't you being lazy or not wanting to do the work. It's much deeper than that. You might procrastinate because you're afraid that your work will not be good enough. So you wait until the last minute to do what you need to do. If you find out you didn't do as well on the task, you can tell yourself that you waited until the last minute, so that's why it wasn't good instead of putting a lot of effort into it and turning out bad. Procrastination is a way of saving face because you don't feel like what you're doing will be good enough, so you blame procrastination if it doesn't turn out well.

2. People Pleasing

Do you ever say "yes" when you mean no? Do you ever silence yourself to fit in? Do you put others before yourself? You might be a people pleaser. People-pleasing typically stems from the feeling of not fitting in and needing to be liked by everyone. But when you put others before yourself in hopes of them liking you, you tell them that you value them more than you value yourself. If you constantly bend over backward for others, you put more energy into them than yourself.

3. Pushing Away Emotions

When you avoid difficult emotions, you are cutting yourself off from being the one thing that makes you a human - feelings. When difficult emotions arise, they're telling you that something is off. Emotions want to be felt; they need to be felt. The longer you push them away, the worse it'll feel later. You are doing a great disservice to yourself because you aren't fully feeling. And when you don't fully feel, you may project those emotions onto other people.

4. Ignoring Intuitive Nudges

Sometimes nothing bad happens when you ignore your intuition. But sometimes, you'll end up on a path that is taking longer to get you to your goals. It's like taking the local streets instead of the highway to get to your destination, and it just takes longer. So if you have a feeling that you should start a blog or create an Instagram account or move to a different city, maybe look into that a little more. You wouldn't have these nudges for no reason at all. But when you constantly ignore them, you are putting yourself on a path that simply takes longer to get you where you need to go.

How to Break Self-Sabotaging Behaviors

1. Figure out how you are self-sabotaging

There are many ways that you could be sabotaging yourself. But the best way to identify it is to look at patterns in your life, like the relationship one in the beginning, and find ways you might be holding yourself back. If these behaviors aren't obvious, it's time to do some digging to find them.

2. Dig deep to find your fears

Most self-sabotaging behaviors stem from fear. Now that you know your self-sabotaging behaviors, it's time to figure out why you do them. It can be the fear of failure, success, rejection, not being good enough, worthy enough, or more. There is always something driving your behaviors, and if they are behaviors that are keeping you from achieving more, then it's most likely because you are scared about something happening afterward.

3. Figure out why you have that fear

Your fears come from any trauma you experienced. If you can go back to figure out where it came from and then why you have this fear, you can begin rewriting your narrative around these behaviors and why you do them. An excellent exercise to get down to why you have a fear is the "Why?" method. Say you have a fear of being in a relationship. This exercise would work like this:

Fear: I am afraid to be in a relationship.

Why? Because I'm scared of commitment.

Why? Because I don't want the responsibility of being in a committed relationship.

Why? Because it will take up too much of my time and energy.

And so on…

You can keep going until you reach a statement that really hits you hard, then you know that's the reason you're afraid to do something or not do something.

(Hint: Most of the time, the fear you have around something doesn't really have to do with that thing)

4. Rewrite your reality

If you listen to Haley Hoffman Smith, you know that she always asks the question: "What would you rather believe?" Beliefs are simply thoughts you think over and over again. So now you can ask yourself, instead of believing what I've been believing, what would I rather believe? This allows you to step into a new reality by rewriting your current one.

Who would you be if you didn't have these fears? When you begin writing affirmations and visualizing the person you are without these self-sabotaging behaviors holding you back, you tell your brain who you want to be instead. You can rewrite your reality at any moment by looking past your perceived limitations and imagining the version of you that is limitless.

Self-sabotaging behaviors stem from years of programming and lies that limit you. You have fears holding you back, and those fears come from beliefs instilled in you from a young age. But it's your responsibility to uncover the ways you may be sabotaging yourself and dig deep to rewrite them.

This work isn't for everyone, but start looking inward if you feel called to it and need a fresh start. Everything begins with you and your decision to change.