Self sabotage is something that many of us do.  It is a strange habit to be honest, as we don’t really want to sabotage ourselves but some reason we do!  You know how it is you are all prepared to do something, let’s take a simple example, like going out to exercise, but then you find an excuse to stay in and watch tv.  I am sure it has happened to you on more than one occasion.

In this article I want to talk about some strategies you can use to become aware of and ultimately stop yourself from self sabotage. Once you have this under control you can start to really plan out your goals.

As you may remember I spent some time talking abut limiting beliefs and this is one the things can stand in your way and give more power to that self sabotaging theif that lies within you!

You need to take stock of your limiting beliefs and then create new and more empowering ones.

Here are my top 4 reasons as to why people self sabotage:

Settling for less. Many people settle for less than their best.  I know why people do this, because if they set a goal that makes them uncomfortable, they are afraid of failing, thus if you settle for less than your best, you won’t fail!  However doing this means that you are stopping short of unleashing your full potential.

So why do people settle for less? Because they may not want to fail, but they may also not realise that they have the power within them to actually achieve greatness.

One way of testing your strength is to try to push yourself out of your comfort zone every day. It may be something small, it may be something big, but each day try to do something that feels a small bit uncomfortable.

Not taking responsibility. Too often than not we decide not to take responsibility for our own lives.  We hand it over to someone else.  We say “I could not get that completed because of x or y” Sure there are some things which are beyond our control but too often we blame others for our lack of success.  This self sabotage is nice and easy as “it was not my fault.“

Never depend on other people as they may not help you and then you have an excuse to fall back on when you don’t succeed!  This allows you to easily let yourself engage in self sabotage.

Feeling sorry for yourself. Oh boy this is one I can relate to, and have used in the past! We feel sorry for ourselves and again this can sometimes be combined with the point above of it not being your fault.  More often than not we focus on the negative and dwell on it.  We don’t see the solutions but rather the problems.  Always seek the positive from any situation you find yourself in.

It can be hard to change your mindset and think in the positive, but you need to reflect on your situation in life and accept that things have happened and now you need to think how you can learn from the experience to make you stronger.

No plan B. Do you have a plan B?  A secondary plan that you can fall back on?  It is essential that we have a plan B.  The truth is life happens and sometimes what happens is the complete opposite to what you have hoped for.  By having a plan B you have a safety net.

For example the person who finds themselves out of work because the company downsized.  If you have a plan B in place “just in case” you will soon be back earning.  Too many people have been in the situation that they lose their job – due to the global crisis.

Without a plan B they find themselves in a very tough situation.

Once you become aware of how you are self sabotaging yourself you can take action to put strategies in place.  Look we all do it at some point in our life so don’t beat yourself up over it.  However, you have to make sure you don’t keep doing it!

When we think of things as problems we don’t find answers, so switch your language and call them challenges – it is often easier to find a solution to a challenge.

If you are interesting to find out how what you say can affect you sign up for my NLP ebook below:

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