How to Stop Self-Sabotaging
5 Ways to Stop the Negative Behaviors That Hold You Back
I don’t know about you but life didn’t turn out to be anything like I expected it to. Being an adult has proven itself to be ridiculously hard to figure out. It’s easy to feel stuck amongst the long lists of things we give ourselves to check off. But here’s how you can stop self-sabotaging yourself and get unstuck!
What are you stuck in? Is it a relationship, a job, or a shitty financial situation? All the above?
Life can feel overwhelming when so many things are going wrong, or just not going anywhere at all. So overwhelming in fact that you feel frozen. Like an iceberg frozen.
You can dream of the life you want but you never take the action to get there. You go about your life on autopilot, eventually building up resentment until something in you snaps and here you are reading this blog post.
I’ve been there! For pretty much all of my early twenties, I felt stuck. Stuck in my apartment, stuck in my city, stuck in poorness. It wasn’t until I started focusing on myself that I realized the reason was… me. I was in my own way.
In what ways do you self-sabotage?
Take for example the list of self-sabotaging things I did on the daily
· I spoke negatively about myself to myself
· I indulged in bad habits of drinking wine too often and binge eating food
· I skipped out on the gym often or left in the middle of my workouts
· I cared way too much about what people thought of me
· I had self-doubt about my dreams and potential
· I relied on my partners to give me love and never gave myself love
If you resonate with any of the above too, it’s never too late to start to better yourself and I’m glad you're here lovely! Let’s do this together! Here are some ways in which you can stop the self-sabotage and finally get out of your own way.
1. Get out of the box you put yourself in
Do you ever refer to yourself as “insert job title here”? I’ve done it. Labeled myself as whatever I was doing for a job at that time. I’ve also done it with negative adjectives. Constantly referring to myself as the awkward one or the one with anxiety. I labeled myself with negative words & here’s why you need to stop that immediately!
Stop Labeling Yourself
Labeling yourself puts an imaginary box around you. Or imaginary bubble. In either case, by doing so you are limiting your potential. You are not defined by your job! Pop that bubble! Flip over the box and kick it out of your way babe! You are not a label. You are you. And you can be whoever you want to be!
Notice how I said “be WHOever you want to be”, not “WHATever you want to be”. We want to focus on YOU. Not the what.
To help you get this metaphorical box out of your personal space I suggest journaling. Write down the person you want to be. Is that person doing what you’re doing now? Is she labeling herself? Is she engaging in the habits you do now or is she someone who takes action and puts herself out there and lives her dream? That can be you! So, pop that damn bubble and really visualize the kind of person you want to be, the life you want to live, and reallllyy do it with intention.
2. Make friends with Self Awareness
This goes hand in hand with labeling ourselves. We have to become aware of what we say about ourselves in order to be able to identify how it is we are sabotaging ourselves. I have found that the best way to become self-aware is by journaling, reading, and being present in the moment.
Journal- Dive deep into self-reflection.
Some questions you can ask yourself include…
How motivated am I really to do the things I need to in order to be where I want to be?
How do I handle rejection?
How do I spend my free time?
How much time and energy do I spend working on myself and my passions?
How do I respond when others judge me or doubt me?
How do I replenish my energy? How much time do I devote to it? Could I do more?
Reading
Reading is more of a passive action toward self-awareness but I find that it’s much easier to learn how to become self-aware by reading about it, in addition to direct actions like self-reflecting.
One of the best books I’ve read that really helped me with Self Awareness was Think Like A Monk, written by Jay Shetty. I couldn’t recommend it more! He makes this journey so light and easy to understand. I actually did a book exchange once on IG and I sent everyone this book. I think the whole world should read his book! It is so insightful and written so mindfully. It’s also easy to read and understand so even if you don’t feel like you are a good reader or maybe you feel like you read on the slower side, this book is still a great option!
Other books I recommend as well
The Four Agreements- Don Miguel Ruiz
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck- Mark Manson
Buy Yourself the Fucking Lillies- Tara Schuster
Own the Day Own your Life - Aubrey Marcus
Be in the present moment
Another way into the world of self-awareness is by being present in the moment. This can be done anywhere which is fantastic! So you can practice in the morning when you first wake up or in the car ride to work or while making dinner. It’s pretty simple and easy to do.
When you want to practice being present try this.
What are you feeling right now? What are you hearing? Are you sitting or standing? What are you sitting on? How does it feel? Are you shifting your weight or leaning on your hip? What do you physically feel? What do you smell? Can you describe it in detail?
The trick is to just describe everything, touch, smell, sound, sight, and taste. How you are reacting, feeling, etc.
Doing these three things should help you become friends with self-awareness. Cause again, we can’t stop the self-sabotage if we don’t know how we are self-sabotaging. When you can do this trick with your senses, you can do it with your thoughts too.
3. Speak kindly to yourself
When we speak negatively to ourselves it stops the momentum we have to pursue our dreams. This is probably the biggest way we self-sabotage.
We get in our own ways by letting our frenemy win. We can’t allow this anymore.
We can stop this by speaking kindly to ourselves. Let that inner frenemy know that her words of discouragement are no longer welcome and that she has to leave. Try to be mindful and only allow positive, kind words in.
I want you to practice changing the way you speak to yourself, you can do this in front of a mirror out loud to yourself or by writing it in your journal.
What kinds of negative words do you speak to yourself? For example, for me, it sounded a bit like this
“You’ve gained so much weight it’s no wonder your ex left you”
“You dropped out of school 3 times, you’re such a low-life loser”
“You never finish anything you start, you’re a quitter”
Yeah… pretty harsh. It actually sparked a bit of emotion writing those out because I worked so hard to change it that I can’t believe I used to speak to myself so cruelly.
Instead of this, I want you to reverse them. For example,
“You’ve gained so much weight it’s no wonder your ex left you”--- > “ It’s okay that I gained weight, but now I’m working on becoming healthier and am not defined by my weight gain. I am beautiful and worthy of love”
“You dropped out of school 3 times, you’re such a low-life loser”---> “It’s okay that dropped out of school, I gave it a try and decided it’s not for me. Now I’m pursuing a different path and that feels good”
“You never finish anything you start, you’re a quitter”---> “I’ve struggled with procrastination but I know I have it in me to accomplish the goals I set. I can do this. It’s okay that it’s taken me a bit longer than I planned”
When we change these negative thoughts we are able to see the potential we have. We open doors that invite growth and healing and most important… forgiveness. We have to forgive ourselves so that we can see our true potential. Our limiting beliefs are not the end of the road, just a little roadblock that we must learn to get across.
4. Realize you are not perfect the way you are
I understand how harsh this sounds when you first read it but hear me out. If we always say that we are perfect the way we are, how are we going to incite change?
That’s what we are trying to do here… Change our behaviors so we can stop the self-sabotage and move beyond our limiting thoughts.
When we stop the self-sabotage then we finally grow and find our real potential.
If we go on believing we are fine the way we are then we will never have the mindset we need to make the necessary changes we have to. If we have negative attributes that we don’t like about ourselves, why would we allow ourselves to be complacent about that?
If you don’t like how much you drink whenever you go out to parties, then try not drinking at all.
If you don’t like that you can’t hold a conversation with a stranger but you want to… then learn how to communicate better. Practice asking better questions to someone you can talk to.
If there is something you do not like about yourself then you absolutely can and should change it for yourself. Change that thing, and learn to be better, so that you can build the person you want to be.
We will never become who we want to be by telling ourselves we are perfect the way we are. It’s okay that we are learning and healing and trying, but what is not okay is not trying because “we are perfect the way we are”. We’re not. & that is okay. Embrace this chance to be better than who you were yesterday or even 10 seconds ago.
5. Never stop learning
Okay so right now our 4 ways to stop self-sabotaging include getting out of the box we put ourselves in, and stop labeling. We have to become self-aware, speak kindly to ourselves, and realize we are not perfect the way we are and we need to change things we do not like about ourselves. What’s next?
Never stop learning.
You are a student of life and so there will always be more to learn. More self-care practices, more mental exercises to try, and more physical challenges. & I encourage you to always seek those things out. Never stop trying to be better. Always try to one-up the version of you that you were yesterday.
In this way, you’ll have the ultimate one-up on your self-sabotaging behaviors by staying ahead of it. It’ll always be out of your reach as long as you promise to yourself, that this one life you get to live is best spent pursuing the absolute best version of you that you can build.
