13 Ways to Crush Self-Sabotage and be Successful
“After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can’t give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity.” –C.S. Lewis
Have you ever wondered why you sabotage yourself right when things going well?
There’s a saying that comes from the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament that explains perfectly the reason we get in our own way:
Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall (Proverbs 16:18 NLT).
Pride is usually at the root of self-sabatoge. Why? Because you’re so invested in yourself and your own specialness that you won’t do what needs to be done. You don’t feel like you should have to do it.
There are some things that are universal, which will help you stop sabotaging yourself by putting pride in the back seat. They’re effective even though each of us is trying to accomplish something different.
1. Get Good at Something You Don’t Like
“Little by little one goes a long way.” — Spanish Proverb
At some point it became popular advice that if you don’t like doing something, you shouldn’t do it. Quit the job you hate and pursue your passion. My ego tells me that I shouldn’t have to do something I don’t like.
The problem is if you’re only willing to do things you like to do, you won’t ever do what’s necessary to achieve your dreams. I don’t like getting up before 5 a.m. to write every day, but if I don’t do it, I can’t reach my goal.
Learn to do something you don’t like now-and do it well-so you can build that muscle and make it serve you later. Getting good at something that you don’t like gives you a tremendous sense of power. Think: if I can do this, I can do anything.
2. Do What You Can’t
“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
We go to extremes to ensure that we stay comfortable and avoid discomfort. We thumb through Instagram, binge on Netflix, down medication, build a fantasy team, all to take our mind off of our pain or to distract us from doing what we need to do. And we still aren’t happy. So what would happen if you took a different approach?
What if, instead of running from discomfort, you leaned into it? Even though it has been said a million times over, you really can’t grow if you’re afraid of being uncomfortable. Action is always better than fear.
3. Focus on the Process — Not the Result
“Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph.” — Zig Ziglar
Most of us like to imagine how our lives will be one day. We spend all of our time in our heads (see #4), planning how things will be, the house we’ll buy, the family we’ll have, how much people will love us.
We don’t want to work hard for years with little reward, learn to communicate with our partner, or face criticism, so we give up in the process. But what you learn on the journey is what makes you ready to receive the result.
I’m learning that successful people love the fight more than the victory. Your current situation is the classroom for your calling-even if you can’t see how. Strength comes from climbing the mountain, not from enjoying the view at the top.
4. Get Out of Your Head
“Face your problems as they come, one by one, give them the attention they need and move on.” -Gary John Bishop
I cannot overstate the destructive effects of living in your head. How do I know? Because I did it for years. I could never really be where I was because I always wanted to get on to the next thing.
Being stuck in your head includes ruminating over problems, constantly imagining yourself at some point in the future, or replaying previous conversations. Not being present saps us of our effectiveness and causes us to miss what’s right in front of us. Nobody ever solved their problems by ruminating over them.
5. Turn Down Your Perception
“Observation and perception are two separate things; the observing eye is stronger, the perceiving eye is weaker.” -Miyamoto Musashi
We get so caught up in trying to perceive the meaning of an event that we miss what it wants to teach us. We dive endlessly into speculation about what this or that means and why it happened. We ask God why, demand answers, and come up with them on our own when he doesn’t answer quickly.
At his Stanford University commencement speech in 2005, Steve Jobs said: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
You’ll never see the full picture until you can look back. Trying to read too much into your present will only lead to frustration and prevent you from making effective decisions.
6. Drop Your Entitlement
“When we replace a sense of service and gratitude with a sense of entitlement and expectation, we quickly see the demise of our relationships, society, and economy.” ― Steve Maraboli
They say that my generation is entitled. Actually, it’s not just my generation. I’ve worked with a lot of old rich people whose sense of entitlement put my generation to shame. Still, most of us, regardless of our age, carry a sense of entitlement that holds us back.
It’s that sense of specialness — that pride — that’s always there to sabotage you by making you think you’re somehow different or special.
A hard truth to learn is that nobody owes you anything. Period. If you stop expecting people to treat you special, or for big breaks to come your way without a lot of effort, you won’t be disappointed when they don’t. Oh, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised when they do.
7. Take Ownership of Your Life
“Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.” — Viktor Frankl
Psychiatrist Jordan B. Peterson believes that the key to a meaningful life is to take on as much meaningful responsibility as possible.
Pursuits such as raising children, volunteering, taking on leadership in your community/church, all of these and more are things people find meaningful because they serve a purpose bigger than ourselves.
Taking ownership of your life isn’t popular because we live in a culture of victimhood. The simple fact is that bad things happen and people get over them. People who have horrible childhoods grow up to have a huge impact and change lives. People who fail come back and are wildly successful. Happy and successful people take ownership of their life while refusing to be a victim of their circumstances.
8. Be Like Water
“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless like water, if you put water in the cup it becomes the cup…water can flow or it can crash.” -Bruce Lee
Bruce Lee’s philosophy extends beyond martial arts. Formlessness and fluidity is a mindset that acts as an offset to the rigid, black and white thinking we often fall into as we get older and more cynical.
Flexibility and a willingness to try something new, see if it works, and move on if it doesn’t, opens up possibilities.
9. Realize That Criticism is Never About You
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” -Maya Angelou
People only criticize in others what they hate about themselves.
I work with the public, and I’m hit with people’s complaints and nasty attitudes just about every day. It used to bother me until I realized that only someone who is miserable theselves would negatively criticize another person.
We all have things about ourselves we don’t like. We all have wounds, fears, and anxieties that run just under the surface. A lot of times we project those feelings onto other people. Negative criticism is never about you, it’s always about something going on with them.
10. Obsess Over the Right Things
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other thing.” — Abraham Lincoln
Why aren’t people liking my post? Do I look okay in this shirt? What do they think of me? Most of us obsess over things that just don’t matter at the end of the day.
So what are some things that do matter? Your purpose, your relationship with God, family, health, being Jesus to others, and growth. In 100 years, nobody will remember how many Instagram followers you had, but they may remember the impact you made on them.
11. Stop People-Pleasing
“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” — Lao Tzu
People-pleasing is about trying to get something from someone. You may tell yourself that you you’re being kind, a good person, or that you want to help. But, people pleasing is a belief that if I give someone enough of what they want, they will give me their approval, love, support, etc. in return.
I’ve struggled with this my whole adult life. People pleasing doesn’t come from a place of humility and good-naturedness, it comes from a place of fear. It comes from an unconscious belief that if I do what I’m supposed to, don’t ruffle any feathers, and don’t cause any problems, then I will be like/loved. Living from a place of fear will always keep you from reaching your potential.
12. Don’t Follow Your Passion
“Remember, ‘zealot’ is just a nice way to say ‘crazy person.’” — Ryan Holiday
A lot of people spend their time searching for their passion. But passion is dangerous because it can lead us down the wrong path.
I’m not talking about passion in the sense of caring about something, but about unchecked enthusiasm, flash in the pan excitement, that causes us to make rash, life-altering decisions and chart off down paths that can lead to disaster.
Passion never lasts. People who spend their time searching for or chasing their passion are chasing a feeling. Author Ryan Holiday believes that it’s better to focus on your purpose than your passion. Why? Passion purely self-centered because it’s about pursuing what you want, purpose is about pursuing something bigger than yourself. Which do you think will last?
13. Know Your Limits
Each of us has an inner thermostat setting that determines how much love, success and creativity we allow ourselves to enjoy.” — Gay Hendricks
It’s strange to think that there’s only so much joy or success you can take. But have you ever had something great happen to you, only to find yourself waiting for “the other shoe to drop?”
When you hit your upper limit of love, success, and creativity, you will start engaging in self sabotaging behaviors. Learning where those limits are, and that they do in fact exist, can help you understand why you do what you do. The only way to learn what these behaviors are is to observe them.
Pride may tell you that upper limits don’t exist for you, but experience will teach you otherwise.
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Originally published at https://www.kylechastain.com on July 2, 2020.