5 Steps To Overcome Self-Sabotage

Questions To Help You Understand Why You Keep Doing The Things That You Do

Self-sabotaging behaviours, I think we all have them.

If you have ever had the feeling of just falling short of the goal, get mad at yourself for keep on doing the things that you do when you know it’s not helping you, or maybe you hit the goal and then let it all slip back?

We live in a time when we have all of the resources and information that we need to reach our goals right at the ends of our fingers, and most of it for free. It isn’t due to a lack of information or know-how. More often it’s about aligning your behaviours with your goals and actually following through with the action steps required.

Its knowing that to lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit and then stopping yourself from eating the biscuits and sweets.

It’s knowing that to build your business you need to spend more time working on it and not sitting around procrastinating.

It’s knowing that to have loving relationships you have to actually connect with people and not shut yourself off because of your fears of being hurt.

It may be time to look a little deeper beyond the surface and uncover what is really going on, and how it’s not just your lack of willpower why you just can’t seem to stick to the plan.

The reasons for self-sabotage can be widespread but it’s something that is really common both with clients that I work with and it comes up in my own patterns and behaviours too. It’s something I know I have to continually work on.

So what is self-sabotage?

It’s when your actions don’t align with your goals. Intentionally or not, it’s doing things that move you further away from your goals instead of towards them.

It can appear at different times throughout your life, but often it’s a recurring pattern that can sometimes be difficult to identify.

Self-sabotage can look like, comfort eating, wine o’clock, procrastination, putting off getting started, overspending, scrolling on social media, snapping at someone you love. The list could go on, but it’s any behaviour that you keep on doing that leaves you feeling bad or guilty about it afterwards, because you know that it’s not helping you to get to where you want to be.

If there is a bad feeling after, that feeling is highlighting that there is a disconnect and this awareness is really your starting point. To get curious about it and not just to keep on ignoring that it happens, stop blaming it on yourself for just being weak-willed.

This is not to be judgemental or harsh on yourself, every feeling and emotion is valid. You get to look at this as a gift that is here to teach you something, to allow you to actually address what is going on beneath the surface.

Left unchecked you find yourself repeating the same old patterns again and again and again. It leads to frustration and can also be damaging to self-confidence as you feel like a failure for not being able to follow through with the goals that you set for yourself.

Why Do We Do It?

Sabotaging behaviours generally come from underlying beliefs and conditioning. We get conditioned by society, what the people around us have told us to believe, parents, our own experiences and perceptions that we learn on our journey through life.

It all builds to mould and shape our behaviours and belief patterns.

To give an example of this of something that came up with one of my coaching clients recently. She had set a goal for this year to dramatically transform her body and her health to the tune of wanting to drop 50lb in 2021. So far she is on track to achieve that this and she has done amazing.

During a conversation in our member's group about beliefs, she said something really interesting that had come up in a conversation with her mum.

The thing that she had realised, was how she believed that being bigger made life easier.

It’s easier because she gets taken more seriously at work, especially working in a male-dominated industry. It’s easier because she felt she didn’t get harassed by men the same, that she could be left alone. It was easier in a job where she spent a lot of time working away and staying in hotels where it’s not easy to have access to healthier food options.

This isn’t about disproving the belief, I have no doubt that those issues are very, very real.

Here we can see that how that belief could support you in behaving in a way that keeps you exactly where you are. Keeping the weight on feels safer, how it might possibly feel unsafe to be leaner because it could draw more unwanted attention, or to not be taken seriously as a woman in the workforce, it would make sense to stay where you are, right? So here come the unseemingly unknowing behaviours. You could potentially be self-sabotaging your weight loss results because deep down it makes you feel safer.

Of course, the beliefs and reasons differ from person to person this is just one example of how our subconscious beliefs can influence the choices we make.

The 5 Steps

The first step is to bring your subconscious behaviours up into the conscious shining a light on them, this about gaining awareness and you can do that by asking yourself questions.

Questions are what will bring about more clarity.

Below are a series of questions that will help you delve a little deeper beyond the surface of why you do the things you do. With this awareness, you then empower yourself to be able to create change.

The key comes when you can catch yourself in a moment of sabotage, or do this work when reflecting back. The oh fuck it moment when you allow yourself to just go and have or do the thing.

Now don’t get me wrong there are moments when having the thing is completely ok, go for it, life is meant for joy and pleasure. But what I am talking about are the times when you have the feeling of GUILT that comes after, that is when you are not in alignment with where you want to be.

Now there seems like a LOT of questions here, but you don’t have to go through them all. Read through and feel into the ones that stand out for you. The more you practice doing this, the stronger the practice becomes. I know I have to come back to these to strengthen my own empowerment mindset and I come back to these time and time again.

STEP 1: AWARENESS — Feel your emotions, they are a gift

• What am I feeling right now?
• What emotion am I in?
• What am I focused on?
• What are the thought(s) I am having right now?
• How do those thoughts make me feel?
• What is my body language, posture, or physical state doing?
• How does my tone of voice sound?
• What language or words am I using that indicates how I am feeling right now?
• What am I mentally seeing and focusing on, and how does that make me feel?
• What is the best way for me to describe the feeling inside me?

STEP 2: The WHY

• Why am I feeling this way?
• What brought it on?
• What happened?
• What was said?
• What was the thought?
• What image did I see?
• What triggered the thought and feeling?

STEP 3: What Do I Want?

• What will I get if I stay in this space?
• Who do I want to become?
• What do I really want right now?
• How do I really want to feel?
• Will these thoughts and actions allow me to be the person I want to be, or have what I want?
• Is what I’m currently doing working for me to create what I want?
• If you want something different than what you are currently experiencing and feeling, then move onto Step 4 to break through it.

STEP 4: Change The PERCEPTION — Is it even true?

• Is the thought, belief, or perception I am attaching to really TRUE?
• Can I absolutely know that it is true?
• What else could this mean?
• Is this experience in front of me that experience from the past? (Is This, That?)
• Do I have a standard in my life that isn’t serving me or I’m not communicating?
• Do I have rules or beliefs attached to this situation that aren’t serving me and I get to change?
• Do I have a perception that this has to look a certain way that I get to let go of?
• What am I learning from this and what is it teaching me?
• What is the benefit here?
• What success can I find in this?
• How is this empowering me and giving me more clarity to move forward and get more of what I want?

STEP 5: ACTION and SHIFT (Action-oriented questions to get what I want)

• If this situation was whatever I desired it to be, what would that look like?
• How can I create this experience to be more of what I want?
• Do I get to communicate more effectively for what I want?
• Do I get to change my belief or perception?
• What would I get to believe in order for me to feel the way I want to right now?
• What belief supports my new belief systems to have the results I want?
• Do I get to change my expectation, standard or how I think it has to look?
• What would I get to do to get more peace and flow right now, and get what I want?
• Do I get to change my behaviour?
• What do I get to let go of, change in my schedule or time frame?
• What is my priority focus instead?
• What do I want this to look like?
• What am I really seeking and wanting to feel right now?
• How do I give myself that feeling?
• My New Perception and belief to get what I want is?
• My new behavior(s) to get what I want is?
• My Action Step to create this moment to be more of what I want is?
• What I really want to feel right now is?
• My Action to shift my vibration and create the feeling I want to feel right now is?

Use these any time you notice that a behaviour seemingly pops up from no where and you do something that isn’t in alignment with where you want to be, or the person that you want to become.

The more you use this, the easier the shift becomes and you will start reaping the rewards and moving closer towards your own goals.

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