Self Sabotage And Its Many Forms

It’s true - the single thing keeping us from everything we’ve ever wanted, more than anything else, is ourselves. Wired into us through evolution is a deep desire for safety. But here’s the problem… It gets in the way of many of the things we want in life.

Things are safe when they’re familiar and predictable. When we know what we’re going to get, or what to expect, our mind is at ease because we can better forecast our safety. Conventionally, we call this ‘being in our comfort zone’.

And because this evolutionary bias is so strong, it actively fights against anything that threatens it. Steven Pressfield has popularized this as “resistance”, an invisible force that makes growth and change so hard to do. Resistance is present in everything we do, but we only realize how invasive it is, and how responsible we are for it, when we call it by its other name: Self-sabotage.

To ‘sabotage yourself’ literally means to take action against your best interest. To betray and obstruct your own success. And the mechanism is insidious, hiding in plain sight and operating in ways that you can hardly recognize. It’s so gentle you often don’t even know it’s happening, and it disguises itself as logic and rational thinking.

This becomes more obvious when I overview some common forms of self-sabotage: Perfectionism. Procrastination. Imposter syndrome. Overthinking. Negative self-talk. Fear. Getting distracted. Indecision.

What do all of these all too familiar mechanisms of the mind do? They keep you from doing the things that are unfamiliar to you, that put you in new and unpredictable situations, and therefore keep you in your comfort zone.

Think about starting a business. Is it the right idea? (Indecision). Is it ready? (Perfectionism). What are my friends going to think? (Fear). Now’s not the right time. (Procrastination).

Self-sabotage seems perfectly rational, but it’s a facade. Underlying it is a desperate attempt to resist change. And the more aware you are of how it’s showing up in your life, the more power you have over it.

If you want to understand self-sabotage at a deeper level and learn how to overcome it… Click the link in the description.

‍