Your Own Worst Enemy: How to Sabotage Self-Sabotage

Posted on November 28, 2007 in Motivation by byronb

As much as we may love ourselves, we can also be our own worst enemy, at times. No one sabotages our success better than ourselves; no one has the power to sabotage our success like we do. Fortunately, the flip side is that the power to remove our greatest obstacles to success is in our hands alone. Once we realizze that we are the biggest thing in our way, we need only step out of the way and nothing can stop us from achieving imminent success.

Procrastination is arguably the most common form of self-sabotage we inflict upon ourselves. It’s also one of the most pernicious. We’re always waiting for the time or energy to do what we feel we need or want to do; we say we’re “not in the mood”. Procrastination is the act of putting off life. When would now be a good time to start living your life?

Next time you’re procrastinating doing something, remember that it takes loads more energy to think about doing something than it does to actually do it. Sound strange? It’s perfectly sensical, really. Think of a car battery. If a car sits long enough without being run, the battery eventually dies out from disuse. But when the car is running, the battery is constantly recharging itself.

You’re like that battery. The longer you procrastinate, the deeper you sink into a slump of lethargy and stagnation. Start that battery up (just a spark is all it takes) and you’ll suddenly find you have all the enery you need - and more! - to get the job done.

Another form of self-sabotage may be termed “Farsightedness”; it’s looking at the larger picture at the expense of the smaller parts, the end result at the expense of the process, the future at the expense of now. Sometimes we set our sights on goals so high, so vastly different from our cuurent reality, that we are overwhelmed into paralysis by its awesomeness. To combat it, simply break down your larger goals into its smaller, incremental parts. Focus on these smaller goals, these realistic and achieveable steps in reaching your larger, overall goals.

We also sabotage ourself with our relentless perfectionism. We get so attached to the outcome of our actions matching our expectations of what they should look and feel like that we reject and resist all outcomes (no matter how positive) that don’t look the way we think it should look. Perfectionism is really just a noble-sounding excuse for laziness and inaction.

When you find yourself caught in this self-defeating cycle of attachment to our expectations think of the phrase, “All roads lead to Rome”. In other words: there are innumerable ways to achieve your goals. Give up attachment to how the process should look like and embrace the anticipation of pleasant surprise at how things shape up, knowing, trusting, and believing that the goals you envision for yourself will be realized, all in time, one way or another.