Self-sabotaging is mainly a way to hurt yourself and put yourself through a hard time even though you may not be the ones who should suffer.
This is quite toxic, where you lose all your confidence and make you slip into depression, and it makes you all the more self-conscious. It should be stopped by your effort, and this requires some minor changes in your life.
What Does Self Sabotaging Mean?
Self-sabotaging means doing things that stop you from succeeding or being happy. It’s like you’re working against yourself without realizing it. This happens when you have negative thoughts about yourself or are afraid of failing.
For example, if you keep delaying important tasks or don’t believe in yourself, that’s self-sabotage. It’s important to notice these behaviors and change them because they can hold you back from reaching your goals and being your best self.
Signs of Self-Sabotaging Behaviours:
- 1 Putting off important tasks
- 2 Setting goals that are too hard to achieve
- 3 Being afraid to try because of fear of failing
- 4 Saying mean things to yourself and feeling bad about yourself
- 5 Trying to be perfect and never finishing things
- 6 Doing things that hurt your health or happiness (like drinking too much)
- 7 Messing up relationships because you’re unsure of yourself
- 8 Not asking for help when you need it
- 9 Forgetting to take care of yourself
- 10 Always finding excuses instead of taking action
How Do I Stop Self Sabotaging?
Try boosting your self-awareness
Awareness is a thing that is mostly required for you to be aware of the surroundings, the environment, and the people around you and about a lot of other things.
It gives you time with yourself for self-reflection, which gives you a deeper insight into all your feelings and helps you understand your emotions.
Try understanding yourself and writing down how you feel throughout the day. This will let you understand where the self-sabotage is coming from and will help in working on it.
Look closely into something before taking a jump
You should always analyze every situation before blaming yourself or others in general. It will make you understand the situation more closely and get to the correct decision.
The situations where you are self-sabotaging yourself will help you understand its reasons and make you understand whether it is hurting you or helping you.
It will let you understand yourself as well as the point from where your self-sabotage is coming and helps you work on those reasons and understand the harm it is doing to you.
Related: How to Become More Mindful
Try befriending yourself
The inner critic of yourself aids a lot in self-sabotage. Acknowledging your feelings and emotions is also important for your existence and a way of growth and development. It makes us look closely into all those feelings from where the sabotage arises.
It is important to be a little kinder and unapologetic to yourself as you tend to be your worst critic, and putting you through hard times won’t do any good as it leads you to self-sabotage which blocks your whole process.
Try practicing mindfulness
Practicing mindfulness will help you keep grounded and connect with reality all the more. It will help you keep focussed and be present in that moment. It will help in doing all things wholeheartedly and with a correct mind.
This helps you in leaving things of the past and helps you in being in the present situation.
It helps in working accordingly to these situations and makes you less critical about yourself, making you realize all the necessities and the reasons behind your behavior and your decisions, letting you be less hard on yourself.
Make some small positive changes in your life
Small changes surely bring a change into your life as needed, but it requires time. The whole process of self-sabotaging also required a whole time to be developed; similarly, it would need ample time to be gone fully. Some positive changes will surely change your notions and your thinking to some extent.
These positive changes will make you realize that your actions and their corresponding decisions come from all your criticisms and you are harsh on yourself. These would require time, patience, and your efforts to be fully eradicated.
Embrace all your strengths
It is very important to know yourself to stop self-sabotaging fully. Everyone has unique character strengths, which are required to be addressed in due course.
These will help you not only boost your confidence but also help you realize that you too have your strengths, and it is these that keep you going; your weaknesses aren’t your only thing.
These strengths are hidden deep inside you, which will help bring less critical about yourself and let you make the most out of it. This will eventually help you a lot.
Try seeing a mental-health therapist
It may be difficult for you to make this decision, but one of the first and foremost things is to realize that you are facing some difficulties in dealing with your mental health and need professional support. It is very important to try seeing a therapist.
This therapist will help you find the right way for you while you are self-sabotaging yourself. It will help you deal with all the reasons and make you find the correct path in dealing with it.
Understand the way for self-sabotaging
Self-sabotaging is a process that will eventually lead to degrade yourself down and break all your confidence and morale as such. It will take questions on everything you do.
It will break you from within, making you think harshly and, more importantly, negatively about everything you do.
It is more important that you should agree to it and realize that this is harmful to you and it is doing nothing good to you. It is important to understand that it is just like a habit that keeps on increasing, and you will not be able to control it.
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Recognize your habits that lead to self-sabotaging
It is very important to recognize the situations which are leading you to sabotage yourself. It will let you understand the things which are making you tough on yourself as a whole.
It will let you look at the daily habits closely and make you realize the habit directly or indirectly aiding to self-sabotage.
This recognition of these habits will let you understand and have a deeper insight into all those factors that lead you to self-sabotage and will eventually help you get out of it.
Identify all the root factors for the sabotage
It is essential to know and learn the factors which are affecting you negatively. This might help you in cutting down those factors or dealing with them in a different way altogether. It will let you know the negative thoughts which are guiding you to sabotage yourself.
You need to accept those habits and try to look at everything calmly and patiently without any haste. You need to understand that it is a toxic thing that needs to get out of your life to move forward.
Try searching for the positive conscience
It is crucial to hear your thoughts and conscience at times. It makes you speak to your inner self and lets you have a positive approach towards anything you do. It lets you realize that your flaws and imperfections make you more of a human.
These flaws and all your incapabilities are nothing in front of your accomplishments, but it is your thoughts and feelings which likes to highlight all those negative things about you the most. It makes you realize all the great things that you are capable of.
Change your behavioral pattern
Negative behavior towards everything can matter a lot to you and completely change your perspective. The negative behavior affects a lot in dealing with your trauma and insecurities. It is important to change your negative behavior at times too.
It not only makes you at peace with yourself but also lets you deal with all situations calmly without overthinking or pessimistic behavior. If you think negatively, it makes everything around you negative, and you seem to be giving off a negative aura.
Plan some goals and visualize it
It is very beneficial to have a plan in your life. It lets you find a purpose in your life. It helps in making decisions and follows the correct path accordingly. The foremost thing is that it does not make you waste your time. Rather it enables you to look at your mistakes and move on with them.
Visualizing your goals helps you in keeping connected with your aim and lets you have a clearer approach to everything. It doesn’t make you stuck at any point and helps you in going on.
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Plan for any obstacles or hurdles
It is very obvious that in life, you will come in front of many hurdles and obstacles, but you need to face them courageously without any hassle.
It makes you build up your confidence and also lets you trust yourself. You need to understand that during hard times procrastination would not do any benefit unless action is done.
Planning makes you a step ahead from beforehand. It lets you keep the worse things in mind and helps you stop sabotaging yourself. It lets you have a clear approach in everything you do, even if it happens for the worst of things.
Boost your tenacity for uncomfortable feelings
It is very natural to feel awkward or have any uncomfortable feelings while you are doing something new. This should not be a reason to stop you. This should be part and parcel of your lives which you need to carry forward henceforth. It helps you in managing every situation gracefully.
Your tolerance needs to be boosted for uncomfortable feelings so that the next time you face it, you should not bow down to it but rather embrace it and let it go away slowly. It also lets you deal easily with people around you when they are facing uncomfortable feelings.
Clarify your morals and values
It is one of the powerful steps to stop self-sabotaging yourself. It is very important to look into your values from time to time. As you grow, you tend to change your morals as well as your values. It is something that is the result of your growth and development.
It is also necessary to carefully analyze your values to keep a check that they should not become a reason why you become tough on yourself. It should help you in reaching your heights while keeping you grounded at the moment.
Allow yourself to note your thoughts without any judging
You should be in your safe place and should feel at peace with yourself. It makes you deliver your full potential and never fear to give out for your raw, unapologetic self. It is important to notice your thoughts without judging yourself.
Your thoughts will make you realize your trigger points and makes you look into those points. This will help you deal with erasing self-sabotage from your life. It will make you be less harsh on yourself and look after yourself more.
Notice the slow, gradual improvements
The process of self-sabotaging is indeed something that makes you pull out of everything that you are good at by overly criticizing yourself. It is important to keep in mind that improvement will be a slow and gradual process.
It is not something that will go away in a day. Rather, it is something that will take little steps to go away from your life completely.
You need to notice your life’s slow improvements as you try to stop self-sabotage. These improvements will make you motivated enough to let you do all the healthy practices.
Look out for multiple alternatives
Multiple alternatives are available to stop self-sabotage. You should not remember that if you fail in one way, all the doors are closing for you.
There are millions of ways to get out of this toxic habit, and if you ever feel incapable of doing this, then you can always look out for professionals.
Looking out for multiple alternatives helps you in believing that you will pass through this phase if you channel your efforts in the correct direction. It makes you realize that self-sabotaging is nothing to be afraid of, and it is all a part of the growing process.
Related: Benefits Of Self Discipline
Clap for your accomplishments
Accomplishments are never small or big. You feel proud about it, and you should rightfully celebrate this whenever you wish.
The validation from the outside may not look into all your efforts but just pass a random judgment, so it is better to keep every achievement of yours to yourself and be proud of who you are.
Connecting with your accomplishments will let you understand that you are capable of many things and thus help you be a lesser critic of yourself. You will find yourself in a safer space. It will motivate you to hustle for more.
Keep a check on your expectations
Expectations are something that you tend to ask for more when it is a different person. So it is always better to write down to whom you are assigning the specific task and what instructions are to be given to them. It is better to put yourself in their shoes and see how you would perform.
It lets you have a better idea of your demand and makes your expectations a bit more reasonable. This reasonability will not let you blame yourself later, and it will help you in dealing with self-sabotage.
Look for strategies to combat procrastination
Procrastination is one of your worst enemies. It makes you dwell too much on anything and thereby wastes your time making you think negatively about everyone, including you.
You should look for your coping mechanisms to deal with them as this aids a lot in self-sabotaging yourself.
These strategies will only be subjective to you and may differ from everyone else. It will help you in procrastination and makes you put your words into action without giving out any negative vibes.
It lets you try everything in your life wholeheartedly. This strategy will, in turn, help you in the reduction of sabotaging yourself.
Related: Amazing Benefit Of Self-Control You Should Know
Conclusion:
The process of self-sabotaging is indeed a toxic habit. It lets you have a negative approach toward everything you do and breaks your confidence and morale. It hinders you from trying out anything with the fear of being bad at that particular thing but always keeps in mind that no one is good at the first attempt it’s patience and hard work that does the trick. The above-mentioned points show you some ways to stop sabotaging yourself and help you get away with it.
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“Mindfulness, meditation, and positivity – these three words describe me the best. I founded “BeHappyHuman” blog dedicated to spreading happiness and inner peace through mindfulness and meditation techniques. As a self-taught practitioner, I have been exploring these practices for the past decade and my passion lies in sharing their benefits with others. My mission is to help individuals achieve greater happiness.