Some tips on overcoming self-sabotage........

From my own experience, self-sabotaging behaviours have prevented me from believing in myself and that I can and will be a huge success with my life. Trying to change my ongoing, pain in the ass behaviour patterns like self-sabotage is so unbelievably difficult. Each time I recognise and understand what I am doing, another behaviour is emerging over there to become just as destructive to my peace of mind.

I have asked myself this question so many times……. How the hell am I supposed to get rid of these sabotaging beliefs and emotions? The answers I have found are in no way meant to be answers for anyone else, it is just what I have found has worked for me and maybe it might also help someone else. Before absolutely anything else I had to understand and accept myself before even thinking about attempting to understand or accept another person or people. My journey was a long one within to really evaluate me, really think about what I like and what I don’t like about myself. I spent a lot of time looking inside and listening to my inner dialogue or self-talk and I found I had to remain open minded when doing this so I could get a real understanding of my true beliefs. For me, this was an essential step I had to take so that I was able to make constructive changes in my behaviours. I also had to make a decision about how deep before inspection I wanted to go and I believe that anyone wanting to make fundamental changes will need to decide how deep they are willing to look. However, what I have come to understand is that my life has taken on new meaning after I discovered empowering insights to get rid of damaging self-talk and undermining behaviours.

Making the decision to let go of self-sabotaging behaviours that were stopping me from changing took a huge amount of courage and commitment to develop more effective actions for myself. I understood that before I could go around believing I could change the beliefs and behaviours of others, I first had to change myself. This meant having to overcome all of my resistance (there was a lot!) and sabotaging behaviours that had always prevented me from experiencing an optimistic attitude. No matter what obstacles I faced I had to develop an optimistic attitude, and changing unrewarding behaviours and beliefs ultimately awoke me to be able to banish my self-sabotaging behaviours.

Don’t get me wrong, this has taken me years of hard work to get to this place, so I’m not for a second suggesting that this can be done in a few days or anything silly like that. However, there are specific actions you can take right now to help you become aware of and work towards overcoming my sabotaging beliefs and self-defeating emotions:

Recognise and understand that you are at the crossroads where your choices and decisions are yours and yours alone.
Realise that you are making a conscious decision to work on and change your damaging self-talk and undermining beliefs and behaviours. There is no one else who can do this for you!
Change your thoughts of “I can’t” or “I won’t” to “I can” or “I will” on a consistent daily basis. This takes a lot of practice but it can be done quite quickly really. Be aware of the emotional changes happening inside of you and commit yourself to writing down on paper the changes as they happen every day. Keep doing this and then compare each days notes with the previous days notes. As you able to measure your progress by the visible positive self-talk and healthy behaviours it really supports continuing to change your thought process. Engaging in negative self-talk will always create resentments and disempowering beliefs. Self-resentment is most definitely the seed that grows into self-sabotaging behaviours.
Focus on planting seeds that produce positive and empowering beliefs and actions. Every day as yourself, “Are my actions leading me to pleasure producing situations or to pain producing situations?” Always, always take the road that gives you pleasure, not pain and grief. The personal growth that comes from facing and getting through a painful event in life is so important for self-improvement. However, you can also grow and change by nurturing positive emotions such as happiness, excitement and joy.