I caught myself jumping up and down from my desk, checking Facebook, email, text messages and even dusting when I should have been writing the proposal sitting before me. I had committed to completing the proposal by 5:00 pm, had 5 technical pages to write and 2 hours to submit it.
Although the distractions were a useful way for me to think through the tricky parts of the proposal, leaving things last minute was not. If you can relate to any of this, read on.
The lack of understanding of our emotions lead to the creation of narratives that alter our thinking, awakens ego and fear and result in self-sabotage. Without becoming emotionally intelligent and mature, we will live in our shadows, lose ourselves and succumb to unhealthy coping mechanisms which become lifestyles. ~
Understanding your emotions, identifying all the ways they fuel your deep narratives and drive your behaviours, will support you to reduce or eliminate your self sabotaging behaviours. The way to do that is to build your self awareness.
Get curious… what are ways that you self sabotage? What is at the root of your behaviour? What are you most afraid of? Failure or success?
It will support you to think about specific situations where you’ve sabotaged yourself, either consciously or unconsciously. Look for patterns in your relationships, career or even your finances. What do you notice?
Some examples of self sabotaging behaviour are:
- drinking too much coffee
- staying up late
- sleeping late
- not eating enough of the right things during the day
- not stretching before and after a work out
- not leaving enough time between meetings
- double booking your schedule
- squeezing too many things into a short period of time
It might seem odd that you’d deliberately self sabotage something you’ve been working on, it’s just what happens when we stretch beyond what we think possible for ourselves.
You can keep choosing from fear or choose to overcome the fear and achieve something you’ve never achieved before.
Here are 5 steps you can take to overcome your self sabotaging ways!
- Learn about emotions and then grow your capacity to be with yours, even the ones you’re not fond of like anger or jealousy.
- Make a list of the ways you self sabotage.
- Explore the root cause of the behaviour, and then list a structure that would support you to break the habit once and for all.
- Set up an accountability structure with a buddy.
- When your ego or fear kicks in, comfort that part of you rather than act out from your fear or ego.
No matter what you find, expect your self sabotaging ways to show up, and do what it takes to get out ahead of the behaviour.
If you choose to empower the steps listed above, you’ll experience a surge in your vitality and your results will follow.
Reflect on the pattern you identified earlier. Imagine what would change if you interrupted even one of your self sabotaging ways?
Would you be in that relationship you lost?
Be in a different financial situation?
Would you be able to make that career shift?
Worthy pursuits for your precious life and available to you now in our signature program The Bomb Proof Executive.
