5 actions to stop sabotaging yourself

stop sabotagingWho hasn’t heard the negative self-talk of the saboteur? “Why do you think you can do this? You know perfectly well you are going to fail, fall splat on your face, and be publicly humiliated.” I can’t tell you how often I have heard these words in my own head. “A lot” is my best answer.

I’ve had to consciously deal with my unconscious saboteur frequently. You should, too.

Counterintuitively, the saboteur whispers destructively to protect you. It’s your subconscious mechanism for preventing pain and rejection and handling fear. You need to stop that negative self-talk early on, uprooting the weed in its seedling stage, before it takes over your mental garden like kudzu. I live in South Carolina, and I’m telling you “kudzu kills.” It smothers the trees and the underbrush.

Self-sabotage can kill, too: kill your ideas, your public performance, your strategies for getting unstuck and moving on. Negative self-talk must be consciously counteracted.

The list of typical negative self-talk statements is long, but here are a few examples:

  • This will never work (aka “Who am I kidding to think I can succeed?”)
  • I don’t know how to do this (aka “I will never have the expertise I need.”)
  • It’s too hard (aka “I am not good enough.”)
  • I don’t know the right people (aka “No one else believes in me, why should I?”)
  • I am not a creative, artsy person (aka “I’m not creative enough to figure this out.”)

Flipping the statements around

So, how do you flip these statements around to support your own conscious goals and fight back? First, you must flip any negative statement around to something more like the actual truth. Then you must take action. Nothing begets success like actual success. It’s not about self-esteem, it’s about the accomplishment. Using the list above, here are some flipped declarations:

  • “I can treat this as an experiment, and decide what I want to change.”
  • “I am capable of learning, and will soon have enough knowledge to get started.”
  • “It may not be easy, but there is already plenty of evidence of my capabilities.”
  • “Other people believe in me and I can believe in me, too.”
  • “I am resourceful and can generate many ideas for solving this problem.”

My friend Carol is a professional equestrian who owns her own stables. After not riding bareback for a quite some time, she started to tell herself she had forgotten how to do it, and that she would probably fall off the horse, an embarrassing and possibly painful outcome. She went to the stables anyway, and got up on her mare, successfully guiding her to do what needed to be done. With that evidence of her actual ability she was able to counteract the saboteur with the assertion “See, see, you are a good rider!” Accomplishment will get rid of the saboteur faster than any affirmation.

One of my clients who is clearly a success by all objective measures considers his life a failure. He keeps getting stuck in the same psychological place, listening to the worrying voice limiting his hopes for the future. The saboteur says, “Don’t step out of your comfort zone, it’s not going to work.” It’s that old bugaboo “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” resulting in limiting patterns of behavior. It’s hard work to stick with your dreams and step out into the unknown. Sometimes the only way to do that is trusting that your leap will land you somewhere better.

If you listen to the saboteur you may not want to do anything at all. You have to jump in. Making yourself do something when you are afraid of failure is the surest way to get over the fear. You may not execute your idea or action perfectly, but you have set the stage for getting unstuck. Whatever action you take will help you get past the fear of failure.

We all fail more often than we will succeed in life. If you are not failing you are probably not challenging yourself. With practice, you can set aside the saboteur’s voice, and keep moving. When you fail, because we all do, remind yourself that you are always learning, and will do it better the next time. Resilience means taking responsibility for your actions, getting back up again, and persisting in your quest.

To recap, the 5 actions to stop sabotaging yourself:

1.  Be aware of the saboteur’s insidious voice.
2.  Make a conscious response to the saboteur using statements that support your ability to move into action.
3.  Take action by doing something: whether it’s getting up on that horse, changing careers, starting that diet, researching a project you’ve been putting off, or working with a financial advisor to reduce your credit card debt.
4.  Treat failure as the learning process it is.
5.  Treat accomplishment as the evidence it is of your own capabilities.

In the end, there is no substitute for the knowledge you gain by getting out and trying even when you are afraid, no matter what you want to master. Each time you succeed, you have more actual evidence to counteract the saboteur. Familiar fear will be reduced by replacing uncertainty with the experience of surviving that stepping out into the unknown. Who knows? The direction you end up taking may even be more interesting and fun than the one you were fearfully imagining.

 

 

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