Self-sabotaging behavior refers to intentional action (or inaction) that undermines people’s progress and prevents them from accomplishing their goals. Self-sabotage occurs when people hinder their own success.
While it seems surprising, some people undermine their own good intentions and long-term goals. When people take these destructive steps, their harmful behavior can negatively impact nearly every part of their lives including their relationships and career.
Self-sabotage often serves as a coping mechanism that people use to deal with stressful situations and past traumas. Unfortunately, it typically makes problems worse and limits a person’s ability to successfully move forward in a healthy way.
It won’t come as a surprise to anyone when I say that we’re typically our own worst critics.
When we mess up, fail, or find ourselves in an uncomfortable situation, we often think there’s something wrong with us as a person.
That the cause of the screw up is something intrinsically flawed deep inside and that we just don’t have what it takes to make it.
It’s at times like these that we heap shame on our shoulders, isolate ourselves from others, and get caught up in negative thinking patterns that erode our sense of self.
Challenging critical self-talk, developing the skills to negotiate through setbacks, and building our own resilience in the face of adversity are crucial to turning these types of situations into valuable learning moments, but how do we do it?
Quite simply — we do it mindfully, intentionally, and with an eye to treating ourselves to a healthy dose of self-compassion.
When you’re overwhelmed with critical self-talk in the face of a setback, there’s a way to step back from the noise and stop being so hard on yourself.
Often when life goes awry or things don’t work as planned, the easiest place to begin your search for answers is externally with questions such as, ‘Whose fault is it?’ ‘Why does this keep happening to me?’ or ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ Sometimes the best place to look when life goes wrong without your permission is in the mirror. Sometimes all that you can do is take the time to change your thinking!
How do you know if it’s time to make a change?
Think about your current circumstances in different areas of your life (e.g., health, relationships, career, personal time).
First, ask yourself:
What is working well for you?
What brings joy, satisfaction, meaning, or purpose?
What is moving you in the direction of well-being?
What is aligned with your deepest values?
What is nourishing, helpful, or beneficial?
Make note of these answers. Listen to the signals from your body and be mindful of physical sensations as you reflect on different areas of your life. Is there openness, ease, expansiveness, contraction, tightness, tension, constriction, something else?
Next, ask yourself:
Are there things that you have outgrown, that no longer fit, or that aren’t working for you (e.g., an old habit, an unhealthy or draining relationship, a job where you feel you are languishing versus flourishing, a behavior not serving you, such as going to bed too late or drinking too much)?
What brings unease, feels stifling, or causes constriction in your body? Listen again to your bodily signals as you reflect on the various areas of your life.
What moves you away from well-being in your life?
What behaviors or situations are no longer aligned with your current values?
When you think it thru, you may realize that it is time to make some changes.
Here are 5 steps you can take to change your thinking:
Be aware of your thoughts. If you are not conscious of what you are thinking and how it is unhealthy you cannot change it. Be ok to simply sit with your thoughts and emotions. Be curious about them. Identify them.
Realize negative thinking does not serve you well. When you become aware of your thoughts and how you interpret and respond to them, you will be empowered to take control. You can control your emotional state, and choose thoughts, reactions, and behaviors that best serve you.
Let the negative thinking go. When you are aware of your thoughts, you can learn to hold on to the ones you want and dismiss the ones you do not want. This will take some practice but becomes easier with time. The key is to not let the negative mindset take root.
Replace the negative thought with a positive one. Do your best to let go of the negative thoughts. It can be helpful to write down the negative thought and write down a positive, affirming thought to replace it.
Feed your mind with positivity. Your brain processes everything so be intentional about filling your mind with positive things. Make sure that what you are reading, watching, or scrolling through on the internet is lifting you up. Think of it as brain food.
Positivity
Positive thinking looks at the bright side of life and focuses on opportunities versus problems. As you practice this new mind shift, you will get faster getting yourself back in a positive mindset. When you think positively you can overcome more. You can achieve more. Your future will be better than your past.
What does let it go mean? I’ve always wondered. I’ve also always had a slight aversion to anyone telling me or anyone else to do it. Truth is, I don’t completely understand what letting it go actually is or what it entails.
The suggestion that we need to let something go also suggests that we’re holding onto, grasping, or clinging to it too tightly, which begs the question, what does it mean to hold onto something, particularly a thought or feeling? Alas… always more questions than answers.
Feeding the pain
Holding onto a thought or feeling can mean many things. But one way that we hold on is by continuing to re-think, re-tell, and ruminate over painful thoughts and experiences. We mentally rehash the source of our suffering even when it’s not organically present in our now. We bring it into our now by talking about it, engaging with our thoughts about it, and actively invoking the difficult feelings or whatever else is stuck to it. It can feel as if the pain itself is compelling us to feed it. And we are, paradoxically and strangely loyal to our pain, and driven to keep it alive.
Up, up and away with the hurt and pain
Letting go then is the practice of restraint, refraining, of less not more. It’s breaking the habit of continually re-introducing thoughts and feelings that cause us pain—declining the mind’s seduction to replay our grievances in the hopes of figuring out a better outcome or solution. So too, letting go is resisting the urge to build a storyline out of our experience—getting in the habit of feeling our direct experience on its own, in our body first, and perhaps naming it if it’s helpful. But, and this is the key, leaving our experience there in the simplicity of what it is, without the who, what, where, when, and why, the what it means that follows and tightens our grip.
The power of choice
Letting go is not denial or ignorance; it’s not about pretending our hurts don’t hurt. It’s also not about willing ourselves into a pseudo-okayness with something we’re not really okay with. Some traumas are simply not let-go-able. But letting go is a process of stopping—stopping to cause ourselves further suffering when we don’t have to. Some grievances will fade away when we stop stoking them, some will remain painful when bumped into. It’s not really up to us. But what is up to us is the choice to stop awarding our grievances with our habitual attention, romancing them if you will, parading them in front of others and ourselves to see, again. Furthermore, we can choose to stop feeding and growing our hurts with more thoughts about them, the storylines we write which intensify their importance and power.
Choose to let it go
Imagine holding onto a little bird, holding it tightly because we want to keep it from flying off and leaving us. That little bird is our pain. We grasp onto that pain because we believe that keeping it, remembering it and feeding it, is a way of taking care of it, and thus ourselves. But what if we loosened our grip on that bird, opened our hand a bit. That bird might want to fly off. Our pain might want to fly off. Letting go is trusting that taking care of ourselves might mean not feeding our bird, but rather opening our hand and allowing our pain to transform and be free to fly.
Recognize when the possibility to take corrective action exists, if it’s worth taking, and then take it. But if there’s nothing you can or want to do about it, do yourself a favor and let it go.
Get some perspective.
Ask yourself how important this thing you’re hung up on really is in the grand scheme of life (and not just your own). Is it that serious, or dire? With all the tragedies, and all the other ways you could be spending your energy, should thinking about this thing really be one of them? In most cases, the answer will be no – and letting go, won’t be so hard after all.
Which means no more thinking or talking about it, accepting that I’m not perfect and acknowledging that my intentions were good.
To let it go, is to let love and peace flow. You can’t feel these things fully when your thoughts are tied up in stories of the past. Letting go is literally like waving a wand and granting your soul the peace it so desires and so deserves.
At some point in life, many of us swap our bikini for a one-piece and a cover up.
Not Filomena Warihay. She’s given birth to four children and turns 80 this October. And when she lounges by the pool or hits the beach, she proudly wears a bikini-and, it must be noted, she looks fabulous.
“I wake up every morning with a drive and a sense of purpose,” Warihay says. “I’ve been blessed with energy and talent and desire to help others be all they can be, and I’m truly grateful.”
In the new book Secrets of the World’sHealthiest People, Warihay says there are three key secrets that have kept her in such great shape.
1) Follow a 70-20-10 diet
That’s 70 percent of calories from fruits, veggies and grains, 20 percent from lean proteins such as chicken and fish, and 10 percent from fat. “It’s a lot of chopping and food prep, which is a challenge, but it’s worth it,” Warihay says.
2) Go running
Warihay didn’t start running until age 40. “My middle daughter got an athletic scholarship, and when she received her training schedule before her freshman year, she saw it included running three miles, three days a week. She said, ‘Mom, will you run with me?’ How could I say ‘no?!’”
Eventually, Warihay was in such good shape, she decided to try a 5K. “Well, didn’t I win the gold in my age group? That was it-I was hooked,” she says.
Warihay won the gold every year from age 40 to 75.
When it comes to motivation to exercise, it helps to have a goal. Goal-setting helps boost performance in all types of exercisers, from recreational gym-goers to elite athletes.
3) Give thanks
Each day, Warihay writes something she’s grateful for and drops the note into her gratitude jar. “The mind-body connection is so clear,” she says. And, yes, it can also help you to stay fit and trim-to the point you can proudly wear a bikini at age 79. When we’re thankful, we tend to be more positive and happier with ourselves, which makes us more likely to lose weight if we need to and control our weight if we’re already at a healthy number.
Whether it’s fiction, poetry, journaling or cat-scratching, just do it ! Write out and express that feeling you’re having. Get it on screen, on paper, whatever. No one needs to see it except you. No one will correct your spelling or grammar.
