Self-Sabotage is a term that is bandied about as much as we discuss the changes in the seasons or the next Covid wave. We love talking about it, but we don’t really fully understand it.
I love the term Self-Sabotage. It’s a beautiful conundrum. The word “SELF” holds so much strength, it is a deep connection to who we are, it is hopeful. “SABOTAGE,” however, is all about destruction, an act of disconnection, of hopelessness.
And yet, the words are compounded together, as though both are needed in the true discovery of who we are and why we do what we do.
So how can we ensure that we don’t stay in the space of Sabotage and that we can move into a space of Self?
Humans are awesome, and strange, and we complicate life through our own thinking and our own behaviours. Edith Eger writes in her latest book The Gift, that ‘Behind Every Behaviour, There is A Need’. So what is the need behind the behaviour of self-sabotage? What is the need that is precipitating or manifesting this behaviour? When we uncover the layers of sabotage, what do we find?
The needs behind acts of self-sabotage usually stem from a lack of self-esteem or a lack of a sense of self and from feelings of a lack of control. Is it possible that a small (or large) part of ourselves believes that we don’t deserve good things? Is it possible that we are so sure that things will go wrong in our lives, or that we will be rejected, that we initiate the rejecting or “messing things up” by ourselves, so at least it is being done on our own terms? Are we so afraid that it wont work out – that we ensure that it indeed doesn’t? The loudest voice in the room is always the one in our head. There can be 100 people telling you how thin you look, but if your inner-voice is telling you that you’ve put on weight, then that is the only voice you will hear. Our inner-voice is either self-validating or self-criticising.
Our experiences in life always come to us through our thinking. Whatever we are thinking about in that moment is what we will be experiencing. If we have negative thoughts or thoughts of self-doubt, we will see ourselves, or our situation, in a negative way – and we will experience it negatively. The good thing about this is that we have hundreds of thousands of thoughts a day that are coming and going, and passing naturally through our minds. But the problem is that we take our thoughts far too seriously. We believe our thinking to be absolute truth, because, well, we thought it… we believe our perceptions of people and places and situations. Most importantly, the perceptions that we keep around ourselves will be the breeding ground in which self-sabotage can live and grow or – not exist at all. And while we cannot control our thinking, we can certainly decide how much we are going to believe and buy-in to our thoughts. Especially the thoughts about ourselves.
Let’s look at the word ‘self’, as it can give us clues as to what to do. When we understand what SELF is, we will realise that we are so much more than our thoughts, we are so much more than our experiences and most importantly, we are so much more than our incorrect perceptions of ourselves. Now, the bridge between self-criticism, self-doubt and self-sabotage is Self-Awareness. Self-awareness creates self-love, self-acceptance and an identity of one’s self.
Can we observe our thoughts without believing in their absolute truth? Can we observe our thoughts without a need to action them? What if we have those self-doubt thoughts, but we are able to see them for what they are, as just reactive thoughts in the moment? What if we become conscious that thoughts come and go, and, what if we choose instead not to get stuck in them and invoke that self-fulfilling prophecy?
Our first step to ensuring that we don’t ‘sabotage’ the good things, is to practice and practice and practice Self-love. We need to start believing in our innate capacity; we need to start slowly creating a space for ourselves where we can be quite okay with our human-ness and therefore accept that we are deserving of good things. The question is, can we trust ourselves to understand that we are constantly growing, evolving beings who will mess up, succeed, mess up and succeed, time and time again?
Just as we don’t need to teach a tree how to be a tree, we don’t need to teach a human how to be a human.
We all have a subconscious agenda based on our mindsets, our perceptions and our thought patterns. The minute we start to bring the subconscious to the conscious, we become aware, we become empowered, and we can then make choices about our lives. Start with becoming aware of your self-sabotaging moments. Be kind to yourself, and be curious about your behaviour… ask yourself what is underneath the actions. Why am I saying these words or doing what I’m doing? Is this helpful to me or is this destructive for me? What do I need right now? Sometime the best gift we can give to ourselves is to take a step back and not to make a move, to allow life to unfold as it should. Trust the process and trust ourselves within the process. Do not get caught in the spiral of self-doubt, but look in the direction of self-love and self-awareness. When we do that, we allow ourselves to decide if we are going to sabotage the good, or if we are going to honour the self – who we truly are.