I knew better, so I should have done better.
Last week I had a conversation with my girls about self-sabotaging, and how easy it is for you to fall victim to it. As I recount all of the times I slipped up, and texted someone I know I had no business talking to. Or of the many times I didn’t speak up for myself, which in return put me in situations I didn’t want to be in. One of them was a whole relationship. I’m reminded of all the times I self-sabotaged, and to be honest, I sabotaged a lot of shit.
Self-sabotage is the behaviors or thought patterns that hold you back and prevent you from achieving goals or sustaining lasting relationships. In simple terms, it’s when you “work against yourself”.
The saying, if I knew better, I would do better comes to mind when I think of self-sabotage. You could easily get caught up in the moment, and not even realize that you’re doing it.
How many times have you given chances to people who always let you down? You know the outcome, but you still endure the pain.
How many times have you continued a situationship knowing it’s bad for your mental health? Or allowed a friend to take advantage of you because, “they mean no harm”. You can self-sabotage yourself at work by staying in a position for to long that’s not good for your spirit, or by mixing business with pleasure. Also by not speaking up you could land yourself in uncomfortable work environments. Ultimately sabotaging yourself for the job.
There’s been more times than I want to admit where I allowed unnecessary annoyance and stress in my life by my own doing. Not that I did it on purpose, I hate stressing about anything. I just didn’t fully realize what I was doing.
Which makes me think, if life is worth living, why am I making it harder on myself?
Given, in some circumstances we have to take the L and ride it out. But what about the million other ways you self-sabotage? What made you do it?
For me it was my fear. Fear of change, any change. I’m a Taurus, we hate change. That fear triggered my anxiety of fearing that I wouldn’t succeed. So I stayed in places and situations longer than I should have because I was more afraid of failing than living. Which caused me to work against myself, and hate everything around me.
“When you work against yourself you’ll never win. You have to work with yourself from within to really succeed”.
What do you think about when you think self-sabotage?
A couple of things I think about are;
What was my part in it?
What do I want in the long run?
Is this good for my mental health?
Why am I doing this? Should I be doing this?
What is the possible outcome?
Am I happy?
Is this even good for me?
What have you done for me lately?
Understand that there will be times where you just have to do what you don’t want to, to get where you want to be. In those cases you have to keep your goals in the back of your mind. Without goals there’s no direction, and no chance of a realistic outcome. So always ask yourself, why am I doing it?
Self-sabotage can be invisible or very visible depending on how intuitive you are with yourself.
Self-sabotage can look like:
Talking yourself out of something you really want
Playing it safe because of fear
Stagnancy
Procrastinating
Gossiping
Forcing yourself to forgive
Going back to what you prayed yourself out of
Talking negativity to yourself
Surrounding yourself with negative people
Not expressing your true feelings
Situationships
Putting others feelings before yours – all the time
Argumentative behavior
Acknowledging these behaviors can help you avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. It helped me. I started by choosing myself everyday, on the days that I could. Think about what you’re not going to tolerate, and go for what you want.
Me and my girls have this saying;
“Would the woman you want to become do this?”
If not, then don’t do it. In order to become who we are meant to be we have to practice being that person. Start by writing down each time you dodged a self-sabotaging moment then go back and re-read it after a week. I look at it as a challenge, a challenge to become the best person you can be. You’ll be surprised at what you can accomplish when you acknowledge the truth, and do what’s best for you.
Happiness is key to everything we do in life. If there’s no happiness, then why are we doing it?
xox Black Daria