How to Prevent Self-Sabotage

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Self-sabotage can negatively affect all aspects of your life, from your work to your relationships, and it is important to understand self-sabotage because everyone is prone to it as some time or another. For example, if you are applying for a job that intimidates you, you may self-sabotage yourself by thinking that you will never get the position. This forces you to not even apply and you lose out on a job that you would love. There are ways to prevent self-sabotage so that you can improve your life and not miss out on things.

Validate Your Negative Feelings

It is important to have a positive attitude, but you should never just ignore your negative feelings in hopes that they will go away on your own. Communicate with yourself and validate your negative feelings. This allows you to confront these feelings so that they do not linger and lead to self-sabotage. When you confront your negative feelings, you can determine why they are occurring and make peace with yourself.

Stop Repeating Past Mistakes

It is easy to keep repeating the same mistake over and over again. However, if you continue to do this, you will not move forward and succeed in life. It is important that you accept your past and use it as a lesson for the future. If you continue to victimize yourself by making the same mistakes, you will continuously self-sabotage yourself. If you find yourself reflecting on the past and about to make the same mistakes, take a few minutes to step back and think about what is happening. This allows you to make the necessary changes to move forward and not sabotage yourself.

Develop a Supportive Voice

When you are thinking about things, are you using a supportive voice or a voice that is overly critical of what you are about to do? It is easy to fall into the trap of self-criticism because people are naturally very hard on themselves. This is especially true when it comes to things like your personal relationships, your grades and your performance at work. You need to shift away from the self-criticism and start to think with a positive voice. This generally involves confronting the self-criticism and actively working to change this so that you start telling yourself that you can accomplish what you set your mind to.

Turn Judgments Into Goals

When you relax at the end of the day, you probably spend time judging the day's activities and thinking about how things would have gone if you approached the situation differently. Instead of torturing yourself with these harsh judgments, turn your judgments into goals. For example, if you had a discussion with someone and did not say everything that you needed to, make it a personal goal to strengthen your personal communication skills for future talks.

Accept Things that You Are Unable to Change

Many things in life are completely outside of your control and it is important to recognize this and know what is out of your control. This gives you more time to focus on the present and the things in life that you can work toward making more positive. Acceptance will help you to stop self-sabotaging yourself because you will learn to let go and move on from the things that are hindering you.

Give Yourself a Break

If you are constantly demanding perfection from yourself, it is easy to fall into the habit of self-sabotage. You must give yourself a break when things do not go exactly according to plan. When you stop demanding that you be perfect, you will have more flexibility and this will open you up to many new experiences and possibilities. This also allows you to be more open to learning from the mistakes that you make so that you can build your integrity and your ability to rebound from bad experiences.

Use all of the above tips and advice to ensure that you do not miss out on things or strain your relationships. When you stop self-sabotaging yourself, you are working toward a life of more success and happiness. If you frequently self-sabotage, it will take some time to stop doing this and improve your life. Start with one tip and work on it before you move onto the next one. This allows you to gradually improve your life over time so that the changes you are making do not seem so drastic. 

- Rosemary Kitchen

References

Cain. M. (2012). How to Defeat Self-Sabotage so You can Get What You Want. Retrieved on February 18, 2015 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/glassheel/2012/04/26/how-to-defeat-self-sabotage-so-you-can-get-what-you-really-want/