Good day Crowned Ones.
Do you notice at times your actions and your intentions are not aligning up to reach a certain goal or task? If yes please know you are not alone, I am saying shaking my head yes with you. In this blog, we will talk about what self-sabotage means and how do know if we are “Self-Sabotager”. Three reasons why we often Self-Sabotage ourselves and three ways to overcome self-sabotage.
Self-Sabotage – Behaviors or thought patterns that hold you back and prevent you from doing what you want to do.
Knowing if you are self-sabotaging yourself can come from a self-awareness perspective, according to Psychology Today. You can examine whether your behaviors are aligned with your long-term goals. You can apply this to short-term goals, like exercising once a week, reading three books a month, or calling an old friend. The time and opportunity are there for you to do these things, but for some reason, you end up doing everything but what your intentions were to complete that goal.
Finishing homework days before the due date instead of waiting the night before and kicking myself by saying “I should have done this days ago.” Now that I think about it, my short-term goal of getting school work done affects my long-term goal of getting my degree and going on about my day (good ole self-awareness).
Reasons Why We Self-Sabotage.
If we love ourselves and want ourselves to be great, why would we be our worst enemies and sabotage ourselves?
1. Fear
The company of anxiety sits next to us asking us questions about events we don’t have the answer to just because we thought about leaving our safe place. Our inner selves are also protecting ourselves from the fear of failure. “Wanting to avoid failure can lead you to avoid trying. If you don’t try, you can’t fail, right? So your unconscious mind might present you with excuses and ways to sabotage yourself” (How Self-Sabotage Holds You Back).
Plainly, if we don’t do, we don’t fail, we stay in our comfort zone and we don’t grow.
2. Procrastination
Many people view procrastination as being lazy or poor management of time, but according to an article in the Washington Post, “Procrastination usually happens when people fear or dread, or have anxiety about, the important task awaiting them. To get rid of this negative feeling, people procrastinate — they open up a video game or Pinterest instead. That makes them feel better temporarily, but unfortunately, reality comes back to bite them in the end” (The Real Reason You Procrastinate-And How To Stop).
This is the reason why a lot of people, myself included, procrastinate. We hate sitting in our anxiety and fear of doing a task, especially something we have never done before or unrewarding. Sadly, the outcome is we feel shame when we complete the task at the last minute.
3. Perfection
When we try to perfect every task or goal, we slow ourselves down or we forget the original goal. We can also dismiss growth and life experience having the inner thought of “I am not applying for that new position so I am not sharing creative art unless it is perfect.” This thought allows us to keep ourselves safe from failure and disappointment not only from ourselves but from other people.
How To Overcome Self-Sabotage
Reminder: improvement of self for yourself is not an overnight process. It takes a lot of emotional and self-awareness exercises. What works for me may not work for you. We are not on this Crowned Journey alone.
1. Accept Fear
I know it is not easy to do, but think of all the things that you have accomplished despite your fear of failing. Raypole suggests “Practice getting comfortable with failure” (How Self-Sabotage Holds You Back). We have to accept that we are not perfect and failures don’t stop our personal growth; it adds to our personal growth. As the saying goes “You will know better next time” and to know is to grow.
Get Comfortable With Failure
-Crystal Raypole-
2. Celebrate The Small Progress
If you are wanting to write a book and keep thinking about how you are going to fill up 200 pages, start small…even if it is just five paragraphs a day. At the end of the week, read over each page, find a way to reward yourself, and keep going.
Tim Pychyl, who is the author of Procrastination, Health, and Well-Being states what I believe is to be true by saying “Procrastinators are great visionaries — they love to fantasize about the beautiful mansion they will one day have built — but what they need to be are gritty construction workers, who methodically lay one brick after the other, day after day, without giving up, until a house is built” (The Real Reason You Procrastinate-And How To Stop).
Every time we think of “The Mansion”, we have to remember: one brick at a time and we must also reward ourselves for that brick.
3. Let Go
In your Jill Scott voice say it with me “You have to let it go, it no longer belongs to you, just let it go”. When Jill Scott said this during the Verzuz Battle, that was a crown moment for me and still is.
When I started my first semester of school, I would hold on to my writing assignments until the last minute. My assignments were complete and I know I gave 100%; it was just the fear of my words and thoughts being graded. There was also a fear of me going through the motions again for my next assignment. By the 4th week of school, I was channeling my inner Jill and reminding myself that I can not get far if I don’t let my writing assignments go and move on. Sometimes, we have to remind ourselves that self-growth is letting go and moving on to the next adventure. There is such joy in letting go.
The Assignment
Do you unknowingly self-sabotage yourself from a short-term goal like house cleaning on Sunday or a long-term goal like sitting down and creating a budget? Write down a short-term goal and the day you wrote the goal on a sheet of paper. Write down everything you did until that goal was accomplished. If the goal could be accomplished in an hour but instead it took you four hours because your behavior or thought pattern held you back from doing the task and going on about your day, you may or could be a “Sabotager”.
I would leave that self-awareness and crown moment to you. It took me weeks to accept that I often sabotage myself, so please grow at your own pace just remember to be a work in progress that’s where the true growth lies.
Don’t Forget You Are Crowned and Don’t Forget Your Crown.
The Links
Seven Self-Sabotaging Things Perfectionists Do
How Self-Sabotage Holds You Back
https://www.healthline.com/health/self-sabotage#overcoming-it
The Top 3 Reasons Why You Self-Sabotage and How to Stop
The real reasons you procrastinate — and how to stop
