Three most common types of self-sabotage I see in my work
Whether or not you’re a New Year’s Resolution girlie, the beginning of every year tends to hold a lot of promise and excitement. (I’m not a resolution person - I prefer more vision boarding and goal setting but not the sort of all or nothing nature that you often hear in resolutions. More on that in a second.)
And while this time of year can be really exciting, there’s often something really insidious that’s brewing beneath the surface. Whether it was a resolution, a goal or a vision for the coming year, there’s something very important to pay attention to.
Here’s a really quick test to tell if this will apply to you.
I’m going to ask you a question and it’s important you listen to your very first thought/response. Ready? I want you think about the goal, resolution, etc. you’re focused on and then consider this…
Based on goals/resolutions you’ve set in the past, how confident are you that you’re going to successfully achieve this one?
Answers often break down into 3 key categories:
Being asked about the past brings up good thoughts about your ability to follow through on goals you set out for yourself, which then supports the belief that you can achieve current goals.
Being asked about the past brings up mixed thoughts about your ability to follow through, which then either leads to sort of dogheaded conviction (”but this time I’m going to do it!”) or leads to doubt (”I hope I can but I’m not sure”)
Being asked about the past brings up negative thoughts about your ability to follow through, which then undermines your commitment to the current goal (because you almost feel like the fates are decided already).
Obviously, we want to be in the category number one but what do you do if you’re sitting in two or three but want to be in one?
And yet, that feels like a Catch-22 - how do you feel positively about your past when you haven’t gotten what you want in the past?
How do you switch that pattern the first time so you can feel the ball rolling in the right direction?
My friend, we have so much to talk about. I decided this is the topic I wanted to write about today in my first post of the year because I know this is a time of year that is so ripe with sneaky little patterns that are undermining your results and leading to that negative self-talk come February when you’ve fallen off the bandwagon (which then leads to more doubts this time next year).
So let’s dive in to how you might be sabotaging yourself from achieving your goals (so you can stop them before they start)!
What does self-sabotaging look like (so you can avoid the most common mistakes and feel confident this year)
We’re living in the age of therapy speak, so let’s get clear for a second…
What is self sabotage
Self-sabotage, simply, is when you get in your own way. The obstacle to your success isn’t outside of you (some boss rejecting a promotion, a rainstorm cancelling your ferry, etc.) but rather it’s your behaviors or choices that are the obstacle to what you want.
I think about it this way - to get what we want in life, we have to do what it takes to get the thing and avoid doing anything that would get in our way of getting the thing. Think about it this way, in order to ride a bike to your friend’s house, you have to get on the bike, push on the pedals and turn right when you get to her street. But you also need to make sure not to run over that nail that would give you a flat tire and don’t pull in front of a car that’s coming through a crosswalk.
We both need to contribute to the effort and avoid problems. Self-sabotage can come up in both ways (what we do and what we don’t do).
“What we don’t do” self-sabotage - You say you want X but you don’t do what is necessary to achieve that goal. i.e. you want to eat at home more this year but you don’t go grocery shopping so you don’t have healthy food; you want to write a book this year but you don’t sit down to write.
“What we do” self-sabotage - You say you want X but you do things that get in the way of that goal. i.e. you want a relationship but anytime you get interest from a guy, you pull away, never giving yourself a chance to get to know them; you want to save for retirement but you impulse shop so you don’t have money left over at the end of the month.
When we are watching for self-sabotage, we want to be aware of both types (because they can be sneaky). In a little bit I’m going to walk you through the three most common self-sabotaging behaviors I see so you can have a head start on where you might want to be watchful.
What does self-sabotage look like
But this can all feel very vague, so what does it really look like?
Well answering that question isn’t so simple because self-sabotage is personal. For one person a behavior might be exactly the right thing and for another it might be significantly sabotaging.
For example, if you are a person who experiences major FOMO but your goal is to save more money this year, asking the group chat “so what’s everybody doing tonight?” might be considered self-sabotage because you’re making it so much more likely that you hear about plans to go out, making it incredibly difficult for you to do what you know you should do to achieve your goal.
But if you’re the introvert of the friend group and your goal is to meet more people this year, that same behavior (sending the text) is really constructive.
So in order to identify self-sabotage, you need to know what your goal is. There can be even more nuance here when we get into the “meta” i.e. thinking about your behaviors.
The most common example of this I see in my work is women reflecting on how they feel about guys they’re dating. They want to be in a relationship so they’re swiping and going on dates, they’re having conversations on those dates and then, when they get home, they’re reflecting on these dates and how they feel about the guy they just spent time with and this is when the self-sabotage kicks in because without even realizing it, they come to the conclusion that is self-sabotaging. Most commonly, “he was nice, but idk if I felt a spark” OR “he was okay, I guess, but it’s so rare to meet a nice guy, maybe I should give him another chance?” (Which one of those you are depends majorly on your past relationship patterns! I dive into this way deeper inside of Exclusive)
But let’s give you a few more examples so you can really start to get your head wrapped around this!
Examples of self-sabotage:
Talking yourself out of needing to do a task (procrastinating) even though you know the task is necessary (i.e. “I can just go to the gym tomorrow”)
Overwhelming yourself with things to do (i.e. taking on too many projects or new hobbies at once) that make it harder to follow through on the most important goal
Staying home or declining invitations when your focus is making more friends
Buying junk food or regularly indulging in a “little treat” when you want to cut down on sugar
Immediately opening Instagram in the mornings with a feed full of accounts that make you feel insecure, when your goal is to feel more confident
Deciding to cancel your gym membership mid-February when you haven’t noticed results, if your goal is to get in shape
Critiquing yourself for the quality of your photography, cooking or graphic design against experts in the field, killing your motivation to keep learning
Asking advice from people that you know are unsupportive of the goal (i.e. asking the friend who always encourages you to buy the new clothes whether you should get the dress, even though your goal is to spend less this year)
Can you take a minute and ask yourself if you’ve done any of these recently? Or a version of them? What other examples come to mind about ways you might be getting in your own way?
And then we need to talk about something very important…
Why do we self-sabotage
Before I walk you through the three most common self-sabotage behaviors I see, I need you to hear this one thing - if you are self-sabotaging, you’re not broken or unfixable. Almost everybody self-sabotages at one point or another and most importantly, most of it is not a conscious decision.
The majority of self-sabotage is sub-conscious.
Why? Our brains and bodies are trying to keep us safe and often the behaviors needed to achieve goals we come up with in our conscious mind require us to do things that are new and uncomfortable.
And our body and our lizard brain (the part that’s really responsible for our survival and connecting to our emotions) really doesn’t like new and uncomfortable.
So it’s time to give yourself a little compassion. These behaviors are SO common. I’d say that everybody is self-sabotaging in some area of their life at any given time, so the game is to identify where it is and tackle it. Then you can figure out the next one.
It’s like self-improvement whack-a-mole! (And before you get discouraged at the unending nature of it, let’s think of whack-a-mole like the game it is - if you have the right mindset, this can be fun!)
Three sneaky self-sabotage behaviors that might be stopping you from feeling more confident, fulfilled and loved in 2024
In my work, I have supported dozens of women with goals ranging from “find a healthy partner,” “switch jobs to something more fulfilling,” “make more money,” “love my body more,” “stop the negative self-talk,” and so many more. So at this point, I’ve noticed a few super common patterns that I see that are holding people back.
I’m not focused here on the ones that are super obvious like buying junk food when you want to lose weight. But rather the sneaky ones that you might not have been aware of that are causing major damage. Let’d dive in!
“I don’t have time” or “haven’t been able to spend as much time as I want on this”
I often hear this one from my Confidence Club members who commit to joining the membership and then talk about cancelling because they “haven’t been able to spend as much time as they wanted.” This can also look like not starting a project you really want to because you don’t feel like you have time. Working out, meal prepping, reading, the list goes on and on of how this can apply.
The important thing to understand here is that how much time you have and how you spend your time is your choice.
But these thoughts make it sound (in your own head) like the situation is out of your control. You get to stay comfy in your current comfort zone, sure, but the problem is that in 3 months time, when you look back you’re no closer to what you want.
Think about it this way - if your goal is to have a snatched Pilates body, and yet on a Monday evening, you decide not to go to that workout class because “you don’t have time” with all the work you have to do. Said simply, you decide to do nothing toward your goal. Does that choice support the goal or get in the way? Obviously the latter.
The quickest way to cut through this pattern is to replace the phrase “I don’t have time” (note: this also applies to “I can’t afford it”) with “____ isn’t a priority right now.”
“I want to get in shape but I don’t have time to go to the gym” becomes “I want to get in shape but getting in shape isn’t a priority right now.” Immediately, the conflict in your thoughts become obvious and this will help you really decide in that moment which is it - do you want to get in shape or not?
Inside Confidence Club, when I get pings from members who feel like they haven’t been able to take advantage of the program and are considering cancelling (but this also applies to people considering joining the program), I’ll often challenge - “Has your goal changed? Is building more confidence no longer a priority for you right now?”
If the goal is the same, then quitting is only putting them further from achieving it, so why would they do a behavior that’s counter to that goal?
Why? The answer is comfort. They’re uncomfortable with what they’re being asked to do and so they’d rather to go back to the comfort of not being challenged. They’re uncomfortable with spending the $49 a month and living with the knowledge that they didn’t make use of the resource so they’d rather go back to not having to face their lack of action. They’re uncomfortable with the new item on their to do list so they’d rather remove it so they don’t have to change their schedule.
All this makes sense but their goal is not comfort so making choices with the comfort in mind won’t help them achieve their goals!
Which brings me to the next super sneaky but common behavior…
Setting all-or-nothing goals
We’ve been talking about how important it is to have goals and how the self-sabotage behavior is related to your goal and your patterns. But one of the most common self-sabotages I see is in how you set your goals to begin with. It’s like in the goal setting we make it impossible to achieve the thing we’re deciding on. Sneaky, right!
This is particularly common with perfectionists. You want to get in shape, so you set a goal to work out 3 times a week. But as a perfectionist, you don’t want to fail and you haven’t worked out even once a week for the last 3 years, so deep down you seriously doubt 3 times a week is feasible. Lo and behold a few weeks later, you have only worked out once each week, you feel like you’re failing and you quit trying all together, rather than continue to face the discomfort of not doing what you said you’re going to do.
Sound familiar, my friend?
In the very goal, you set yourself up to fail and then you did. Not fun.
If you’re like me, you might have seen this play out with apps that encourage streaking like Calm (the meditation app) or Duolingo that encourages you to do something every day. It’s super motivating, even addictive, to keep the streak going but the first time you broke the streak, you felt a repulsive push to not go back. “I have to start again from zero, i’ll just start again tomorrow.”
The perfectionist mind is roaring because you’re facing an acute failure that makes you want to run for the hills. But the goal itself was lofty - every day is a big pattern to achieve for any new behavior.
If this is sounding like you, what I’d recommend you do instead is to build failure into your goal setting so you can stay focused on the goal more consistently long term.
“I’m going to work out 3 times a week” becomes “I want to work out 2-3x a week” or “I want to work out 3 out of every 5 week days.”
These small adjustments give your brain room for “failure” (i.e. a day you don’t work out) while still being on track for the goal.
The most important part about overcoming this self-sabotage behavior is what happens at the first true failure.
You said “I want to work out 3 out of every 5 week days,” but here you are at the end of the week and you’ve only worked out once. What you do next is the deciding factor as to your goal achievement.
If you let the failure make you less motivated to keep going (like when the streak breaks in the app), I’ll just be straight - you’re not going to achieve the goal. In this moment, the opportunity is to focus on what you can do to make yourself more successful next week.
(In many ways, this principle is what I was referring to at the beginning of this post when I talked about “how do you switch from a pattern of not following through to starting to shift the momentum”.
Your past of not following through will be your future until you have a moment of failure and decide to let it motivate you more and not less.
If you know you have a tendency to do this, you should be meticulously watching out for times when you want to give up and with enormous compassion, try to get yourself to just take the tiniest step to keep going.
Even if your goal is to work out 3 times a week and you’ve only done it once, even trying to work out even once next week will always get you closer to your goal than giving up entirely.
Which brings me to the third and final sneaky self-sabotage behavior I see all the time…
Giving up too early “it’s not working for me”
The prior example was self-sabotage built into the goal. The result was that you feel like a failure and decide to quit. This is the same thing except you blame the failure on something external - the program isn’t working, the serum isn’t working, the meal plan isn’t working.
You can apply almost everything we just talked about above, but instead of deciding to give up because you didn’t follow through, you decide to give up because you decide that the other thing/person/tool won’t follow through.
The insight here is that often we come to this conclusion far too prematurely.
I’ve been in many a business program that teaches how to grow on social media. Other participants apply what the coach is teaching them in terms of posting frequency, structure of posts, etc. Then two weeks go by and they come back saying “it isn’t working!”
Are they factually correct that they aren’t seeing results? Yes. But is stopping now going to get them closer to the results that they want? Absolutely not. Chances are if they stop, they’ll go find another program, another tactic, another coach, try their system and then come back in two weeks with another report of failure.
The problem isn’t the program/tools/resource, the problem is how quickly they expect to see results.
The self-sabotage here is an unrealistic expectation of how long things take to happen.
You know enough about getting in shape to know that you’re not going to drop 5 pounds after the first time you go to the gym. But when you’re a month in and not seeing results, you decide it’s not working. What if it’s just that it takes 2 months?
For my clients trying to heal anxious attachment, I often hear this after a few weeks. I have to level set that real progress often takes 3-6 months.
For clients trying to make more money, I hear doubts after a month, when this is often a 6-18 month journey.
For clients trying to tackle negative self talk, again, the time frame is months.
This isn’t fun to hear when you want immediate progress, but you can thrash against that or you can accept that some things take longer than you want and keep going.
How to avoid self-sabotaging in 2024
If you have felt called out by any of the above, I have a few very simple suggestions that can help you to avoid these mistakes this year so you are more likely to achieve your goals.
Set a regular check-in with yourself (don’t rely on memory - put it your calendar or set an automated reminder) and ask yourself a prompt related to the pattern (i.e. check in every month and ask yourself “am I trying to give up on something prematurely because I set too high a goal?” or “Is the way I’m spending my time reflecting my priorities”
Track your progress - it’s so easy to lie to ourselves about how often we’re doing things or how many times we’ve done something. What gets tracked, gets managed.
Get a third party support - we are SO bad at seeing our own blind spots or identifying self-sabotage, especially the subconscious kind. This is where an outside support system can really help you see where you might be getting in your own way and hold you accountable to the behaviors you want to follow through on (If this sounds helpful for you, head here to learn about how I can support you.)
Was this helpful? Do you know some self-sabotaging has been going on already? Shoot me a DM to tell me what resonated most with you!
