Hello beautiful people, I hope you are all doing well and stay safe and healthy. In today’s blog post I thought it would be interesting to talk about 3 ways in which we are sabotaging our own success. We are going to focus on 3 ways in which we are standing in our own way to success.
Take a moment and think about two times in your life that you failed at achieving a goal that you set. It might be that you failed at a class, or that you started binge eating 4 pounds before you hit your weight loss goal. It might be that you failed at reading 12 books this year as you promised to yourself or that you gave up on your blog for more than two months because YoU WerEn’t GetTing tHe TrafFic ThAt your HarD wOrk wAs WorTh (yep, that’s me right there).
Now that you chose those two failures of yours, I want to think of the reason why you failed. Was it because you were actually incapable of succeeding? Was it because life went extremely wrong and the circumstances came all messed up? Or was it your own self, your own Ego, that stood in the way of your success?
I am confident enough that at least one of the two cases you chose, answers to the last question with an “oh, well, I don’t know, probably yes”.
Fortunately, most of the times, the reason why we fail at succeeding, is nothing but our own self.
Self sabotaging
Self sabotaging is a defense mechanism against disappointment. It is our own brain trying to protect us from change and hurt. And unless you are able to identify and become aware of this behavior of the brain, succeeding becomes impossible.
Conor Neil defined our performance as the result of removing the self sabotage from our potential. What this means is that, if our self sabotage is 0, then our full potential is our performance, and that’s a huge achievement for someone no matter how wise, old or successful she/he already is.
Self sabotage will always be there. As we already mentioned it is a natural mechanism of the brain that aims for protection. What you can do is identify and work past these behaviors in order to reach your full potential.
Here are the 3 main ways in which we are self sabotaging our own success:
Fear of success
As weird as it sounds, fearing our own success is really common. Succeeding in your goals means that there will come change, and our brain fears change. Our brain hates it when we get out of our comfort zone. It prefers staying in the same environment for as long as it can because this means that it keeps you safe. Safe from getting disappointed, hurt or exposed.
Becoming aware of this behavior is going to help you fight through it when you need to. It will help you get over the fear, push through your comfort zone, and NOT give up when your mind is trying to convince you that you are not good enough for it, that you will be hurt broken, or that you are in danger of losing it all.
Fear of failure
This one seems more reasonable right? Fear of failure is the most common reason why people don’t succeed. It is the most common reason why we are self sabotaging our own success. Fear of failure is associated with the subconscious mind, trying to protect The Ego from getting hurt.
What the subconscious mind does, is pushing you to self sabotage by preventing you from going all-in for your goals. It tells you to binge because there is no point in having control since you are never going to get your dream body and it also tells you to stop working so hard because it’s not worth it since you will never be successful. In this way, if you actually fail, it won’t be because you weren’t good enough to achieve it (which would hurt The Ego), it will simply be because you didn’t work as hurt as you should.
And this circle will keep repeating itself, and your Ego will keep on pushing you to self sabotage your success, just so it won’t get hurt in case you actually fail.
There is a glass ceiling on your success
What this means is that you believe that you deserve just so much happiness in your life. If you get more, it will be more than you are worthy of, therefore, you should get over it. This way of self sabotaging our success starts from self doubt and lack of self love. We often believe that we aren’t good enough, disciplined enough, pretty enough or smart enough to have success in our lives. In this way we trigger our Ego to start sabotaging our efforts to become a better, happier more successful version of ourselves.
But it doesn’t need to be like that. Here in Upperley we believe that we create our own reality. Your only limit is yourself and you are worthy of all the success and all the love and happiness. You have to work hard and harvest the results of your sweat like a pro. You need to believe that you are worthy of success. Self sabotaging is always going to be there trying to sabotage your success. Just now that it is your brain trying to protect itself. And nothing more than that. There is no real danger. The only danger is living life from your comfort zone without taking risks. Everything else can be dealt with.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read it. Follow my instagram to have access to more of my content. Also feel free to let me know how you liked it in the comment section. Do not hesitate to email me at [email protected] for anything you may need or questions you might have. Let’s be here for each other.
XO
