Overcoming Resistance & Sabotage

How You Sabotage Yourself (and What to Do about It)

 

6 Most Common Ways to Self-Sabotage

Status quo bias

When you prefer the current state of affairs, you perceive any changes to the status quo as a loss. It leads to powerful resistance to change. Even if you want to achieve your goals, you can’t help but feel you’re losing something. Consequently, you sabotage yourself and give up in order to return to the previous state of things. Studies suggest that losses hurt twice as much as gains would feel good. Consequently, if you want to set effective goals, the reward you’ll get from them has to be at least twice as powerful as the feeling of loss you’ll experience because of the sacrifices you have to make.

Restraint bias

Research shows that people who overestimate their ability to control impulses like hunger, drug cravings, and sexual arousal are more prone to overexpose themselves to temptations. Due to this bias, you’re likely to sabotage yourself if you believe you’re great at controlling impulses. If you want to write a book and set a goal to write 1,000 words a day, the restraint bias can lead you to skip several days of writing because you believe you can always go back to your routine. The result is predictable – two weeks pass, and your routine is gone It’s better to underestimate the power of your self-control than overestimate it. Don’t expose yourself to temptations if you don’t have to.

Boredom

Every time you try something new, dopamine (among others, responsible for your reward center) makes you feel good. It thrives on novelty and variation. Advertisements prey on this phenomenon, promising you a new experience, a different taste, an improved product, and so on. The moment something becomes boring, you may become tempted to give up and seek something else. It’s an extremely common pattern among entrepreneurs looking for the perfect business. Instead of focusing on just one venture, fueled by their need for variation and novelty, they jump from one idea to another. It’s dopamine at work. When you find something that works for you, stick to it and do all in your power to keep it exciting. If it becomes too boring, the risk of self-sabotage will increase with each day.

Feeling unworthy

Low self-esteem can make you feel as if you don’t deserve success. Even if things are going well, you’ll sabotage yourself just because of the mistaken belief you don’t deserve to achieve your goal. Building self-esteem starts with self-awareness and self-monitoring. When you start monitoring your inner critic and replacing bad thoughts with positive ones, you’ll be on your way to kill your self-critical voice. Making a list of your positive attributes is another useful technique to improve your self-esteem. The key is to be honest and write the list without any judgments. Once it’s ready, re- read it every single day until it sinks in that you’re not as worthless as you think. Another useful method is to become kinder toward other people. When you treat other people well, they will return the favor, thus making you feel better about yourself. In more extreme cases, such as low self-esteem caused by domestic violence, a consultation with a psychologist is the first step toward recovery. Again, I don’t play a doctor.

Fear of the unknown

Even if you really want to achieve your big goals, sometimes you’ll sabotage yourself just because you’ll be too afraid of what’s going to happen when you achieve them. It’s a crippling mental block that can prevent you from achieving success in life. One of the most effective ways to overcome the fear of the unknown is to speak with people who have achieved your goal. The more you understand the process, and what reaching the goal entails, the less afraid you’ll be of achieving your goal. Each time you achieve a small win, look back and ask yourself if it’s scary to be on the other side. Gradual changes will make you realize your life won’t dramatically change overnight. Fear of the unknown is often related to the fear of losing control. Some people sabotage themselves when they think something is too good to last just to maintain their belief they’re in control. Deal with this problem by gradually letting go of control over the small things. The more often you expose yourself to situations where you have little to no control, the more at peace you’ll be with the feeling of uncertainty.

Limiting Beliefs

Limiting beliefs don’t get a lot of publicity in your head. They work behind the scenes, leading you to make the wrong choices and give up for the wrong reasons. Some of the most common limiting beliefs  include:

• I need to drive myself to exhaustion to succeed.
• I failed so many times it will happen again.
• It’s not possible.
• It’s too late to change.
• I have no idea how to do it.

 

THE ANTIDOTE TO SELF-SABOTAGE:

1. Status quo bias will tempt you to return to the previous state of things. Battle it by asking yourself if the status quo serves these objectives. Would you still have chosen the status quo if it hadn’t already been in place?
2. Remember the gains you’ll experience from your goal are at least twice as good as the losses you’re going to suffer.
3. The restraint bias will lead you to thinking you’re better at self-control than you really are. Don’t overexpose yourself to temptations. Underestimate your ability to control your impulses rather than the other way around.
4. Introduce novelty and variation when working on your goals to avoid boredom that will lead to burnout.
5. Work on your self-esteem to avoid sabotaging yourself because you do not feel worthy of the reward. The top ways to build self-esteem include monitoring your thoughts, acknowledging your strengths and being kinder to others.
6. Research what will happen when you achieve your goal to reduce your risk of the unknown. Practice letting go of control to become more at peace with the feeling of uncertainty.
7. Limiting beliefs can lead you to self-sabotage. Eliminate them by coming up with evidence against them.

 

Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way. Penguin, 2016.