New years will be upon us before we know it, along with all the lofty promises of losing weight, quitting smoking, getting out of debt (insert other goal you’ve had forever and won’t follow through on again this year). I know that sounds harsh but the numbers don’t lie. Only about 25% of people will stick to their resolution for 30 days and only 8% of those people will follow through on the resolution to completion.
How does all that well intentioned motivation fizzle out so fast you ask. Well it’s thanks to our long-time acquaintance self-sabotage, which shows up in our lives in the form of procrastination, negative self-talk, fear, anxiety and excuses.
I first want to say if you engage in self-sabotaging behaviour don’t feel bad about it and definitely don’t beat yourself up over it. Everyone has fallen victim to self-sabotage at some time or another and to some degree it’s in our nature to self-sabotage. So take comfort in knowing that you are not alone and that you can change self-sabotaging behaviours. There is no magic pill that will make you wake up feeling 100% motivated all of the time though, it takes consistent effort to break the destructive pattern of self-sabotage.
I know better than anyone as I was a chronic procrastinator (not fully recovered but much better 🙂 ) but read on to see how I overcame it.
The reason why I say self-sabotage is in our nature is because as humans we are programmed to either stay within our comfort zone or to be moving towards reward and away from pain/threat. Here are a few examples:
Avoiding pain
Despite your commitment to going to the gym every Monday after work you decide to skip it because you stayed at work a bit later than usual and now you’re too tired. So you stay home.
Pain is going to the gym even though you feel tired.
Moving towards reward
Vowing to stick to your new diet but then you go out for lunch with coworkers and get a huge plate of pasta and chocolate cake for dessert.
Reward is eating that chocolate cake.
Staying in your comfort zone
You pass up on an amazing job opportunity that requires you to move out of the country, you’d like to be the adventurous type but you don’t go because of you fear the loneliness of being away from your family and friends and the difficulties of not being able to speak the local language.
Staying home rather than taking a great new opportunity out of fear is remaining in your comfort zone.
Negative self-talk + clinging to your comfort zone
You want to join a Spartan Race but you feel that you’re too out of shape and don’t want to embarrass yourself in front of all those people who are surely in better shape than you.
Talking yourself out of something because of how you will look to others or believing you won’t be good at something is negative self talk.
Those are just a few examples of self-sabotage. You probably have your own examples as well. I personally am most prone to procrastination and avoiding situations for fear of not wanting to look silly in front of others which I work on whenever I get the chance. Here are the strategies I’ve used to work on self-sabotage whenever it starts to rear its ugly head.
Know your core values and what’s really important to you. Having your values written down can help guide you when its time to make decisions. Instead of just saying you want to quit smoking, write down and tell yourself often that your health is something you value. Reinforce this value by doing things that promote health as much as possible.
Make a plan. Knowing what you want, writing it down and breaking it down into manageable parts so that you don’t feel overwhelmed can help manage the fear of having to change your life in order to achieve something that is important to you.
Be aware of your human brain and your animal brain. The animal brain is usually looking for reward now and makes you forget the inevitable pain later. Skip the gym and eat cake now is a reward, never get in shape and feel sad later is the pain. The human brain is sets goals and is able to postpone the reward. Go to the gym and eat healthy now and look and feel great later. The best way to get the human brain to take over more of the time is to think about the pain you will experience later BEFORE you indulge in the instant gratifcation reward.
Fear set. Fear setting is thinking about the worst possible outcome when you are afraid of the unknown. Sit down and literally do a list of pros and cons. Do research to figure out how likely the cons are to happen. Most of the time when we do that we realize that our imagination was out of control and that we were exaggerating the risks.
Know thyself. At the end of the day we know when we are making up an excuse due to laziness or fear. Catch yourself and do what you can to break the pattern, because most of what we think is just habit and not truth the key to change is being aware of the patter when it starts and breaking the pattern. You can read my article here
on how to be self-aware of thoughts and patterns and learning how to break them without resistance.
These are the steps I use to stop self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviours. It takes work and mindful self-awareness but it is worth it.
If you need help with self-sabotage feel free to get in touch with me.
