Self Sabotage : Why Do People Self Sabotage?
- Self sabotage can cause you to subconsciously destroy success or happiness.
- Examine your self talk for signs of self sabotage.
- Change your handwriting to stop self sabotage!
Self sabotage is a term used to described things people either do or say, which ruins success or happiness they may be experiencing in their life.
This sabotage may affect their current success/happiness, or possible future success/happiness. Generally speaking, there are two obvious ways self sabotage can manifest itself.
The first occurs as reaching a “plateau” in life, whereby you achieve some level of life success/happiness, but can never seem to get any more than what you have.
Even though you try your hardest to climb up the ladder, no matter what you do, you always seem to remain where you started.
The second way self sabotage can manifest itself is by achieving a high level of success/happiness, and then suddenly loosing it within a short period of time. A good example of this can be found with many lottery winners.
Despite winning millions, a large percentage people who win the lottery loose all their money within a few years. They are then right back where they started before they won the jackpot.
An important point to remember about self sabotage is that it is not something which is done consciously, but rather subconsciously.
This means that even though you may want to achieve success and happiness, because of some limiting beliefs you have acquired throughout your life (most commonly during childhood) you subconsciously do not believe you are worthy or deserving of obtaining that success or happiness.
As a result these limiting beliefs can prevent you from achieving more than your beliefs think you are worth, stop you achieving anything at all or destroy something once you have achieved it.
Therefore the beliefs you have in your subconscious mind act like a “success thermostat”. They will constantly regulate what you achieve, and make sure you always have what they think you are worthy of.
The most common areas of your life these beliefs regulate, and therefore the most common areas people self sabotage, include relationships, money, health and career success.
Let’s have a look at a fictional example to demonstrate how and why a person sabotages their life.
Example Of Self Sabotage
As a child Mary was always told by her parents that compared to her sister she was not good looking, and would be lucky if she ever found a man later in life.
When Mary grew up and went to school, she was never very popular and attracted little male attention.
But later when Mary left school and started working, she blossomed into a fine attractive young woman. Her luscious blond hair and voluptuous figure, made her very popular with her male colleagues. As a result of this attention Mary had many offers from men, and soon started dating.
However Mary had one major problem. All her relationships started out wonderful, but within a few months things would start to turn bad and soon the relationship ended.
No matter what Mary did, she could never seem to hold onto a long term relationship. So what happened?
Mary’s childhood and school years continually reinforced the belief that she was undesirable to men, and not attractive enough to be with them.
These beliefs were accepted by Mary’s subconscious, and when she finally started dating, her subconscious beliefs caused her to sabotage any relationship she was in.
Mary’s beliefs told her that she was not good enough to be in the relationship, and so caused her to sabotage it by being over controlling, demanding, obsessive, possessive and negative.
In the end, Mary always got what she subconsciously believed she deserved.
Causes Of Self Sabotage
As you saw in the previous example, Mary’s self sabotage originated from a belief she acquired during her childhood, and which was subsequently reinforced during her school years. This left her with a subconscious belief that she was unattractive, undesirable and unworthy of male attention.
Although this was a fictional example, this type of scenario is very common. However, in reality there are many different factors which may lead a person to sabotage their life.
So let’s now have a look at some of the most common causes of self sabotage.
Belief Systems Created During Childhood
These are formed by the people you meet and the experiences you have with them. Typically these beliefs are created by your parents.
These beliefs may then be reinforced during your school years, or replaced with different beliefs.
The mind is very impressionable during childhood, so the majority of your beliefs will be formed during this period of your life.
Associating Failure With Pleasure
If throughout your life you have learnt to associate failure with pleasure, then you may subconsciously want to fail in life because of some perceived pleasure you may get from that failure.
For example, if as a child you received lots of love and attention after you failed at something, this may have created a connection between failure and pleasure in your subconscious.
Another way failure may become linked to pleasure, could involve receiving a reward after experiencing some kind of failure. For example, after a relationship ends you go on a holiday to take your mind off the pain.
Associating Life Changes With Pain
This type of self sabotage comes from associating pain with changes in your life. This causes you to sabotage things which may take your life in a new direction, such as a new job or a marriage.
Things which may have caused people to associate change with pain usually involve frequent changes in location as a child, such as by moving house or moving school.
Or alternatively, change brought on by the death of a close family member or pet.
Low Self Worth
Low self esteem is a major cause of self sabotage, and is most commonly formed during your childhood along with your beliefs systems.
Low self esteem, and feelings of unworthiness, can cause you to subconsciously believe you are unworthy of any success or happiness in life.
As a result, when you achieve success or happiness, your beliefs will limit what and how much you ultimately achieve.
Identifying Self Sabotage
Self sabotage can be found in all areas of life, and the reasons for it can be varied and complex.
However in general, most self sabotage occurs due to beliefs that were acquired during childhood, and subsequently reinforced later in life.
As stated earlier, the most commonly affected areas by self sabotage occur in relationships, health, money and career success. You will know that you are sabotaging your life when :
- No matter how hard you try you can never seem to achieve more.
- You are close to achieving something, then it suddenly slips away.
- You experience some degree of good fortune, only to loose it shortly afterwards.
If you notice any of the above in your life, you are most likely subconsciously sabotaging yourself due to some limiting beliefs you have acquired at some point in your life.
If you want to learn more about self sabotage, I recommend you read the books “Success Secrets Of The Happy And Rich” and “Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind”.
Both of these books you can download now for free in the free ebook section.
The Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind is an extremely interesting book, because it talks about how we each have our own “financial blueprint”.
This blueprint is a direct result of the beliefs you have acquired about money, and therefore determine how wealthy you become.
The millionaire mind is a good book to read because it specifically talks about beliefs created during childhood, which is something that affects us all.
How Bad Is Your Self Sabotage?
Your belief systems (the majority of which were created in your early years of life) will largely determine the extent of your sabotage, and how worthy you subconsciously believe you are of success or happiness.
For example, self sabotage does not have to completely destroy or end a relationship. It may be enough for it to continue and for the person to remain unhappy, with the thought of some happiness in the future when things “get better”.
The trouble is, happiness in the future will always be in the future, and so it never comes. Ultimately this type of belief system leaves the person in a relationship they are unhappy in, because at the subconscious level that is what their mind thinks they should have.
So never assume that a relationship or career has to fail completely for there to be self sabotage. Sabotage can occur in many different forms, one of which includes keeping you unhappy and unfulfilled in life.
Low Self Esteem And Self Sabotage
Things that make you happy, or present you with an opportunity to be happy, are a good way to discover how highly you value yourself.
This is because in people with low self esteem, happiness and success often act as a trigger that activates internal limiting dialogue. This is known as negative self talk.
Sabotaging Self Talk
Negative Self talk occurs as phrases such as “I don’t deserve this”, “it will never last”, “don’t worry about me” or anything else that puts you down or minimizes your importance.
If you use negative self talk when success or happiness presents itself, this may indicate limiting beliefs systems you have acquired, and is a good sign that you will probably sabotage happiness or success when it appears.
However the good news is that once you are aware of negative self talk, you can actively monitor your thoughts and change or replace the self talk to something much more positive and empowering.
Eventually your negative self talk will be replaced entirely, and you will have created new belief systems that finally allow you to achieve your maximum potential in life.
Change Your Handwriting, Stop Self Sabotage
Another way to determine if you self sabotage is to look at your handwriting. To do this simply write the letter “y”.
If your last stroke heads up to the baseline then turns away (as shown in picture) you have a subconscious fear of success and are likely to self sabotage.
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If you would like more information about handwriting analysis, see “Success Secrets Of The Happy And Rich” in the free ebook page on this site.
Eliminating Self Sabotage
Overall just remember that whilst there are many different reasons and causes for self sabotage, they all originate from subconsciously acquired limiting belief systems.
The best way to overcome these beliefs include monitoring self talk, examining your handwriting and carefully thinking about the beliefs you may have acquired as a child.
This last point is perhaps the most important, as the majority of your belief systems were created by your parents, who obtained those beliefs from their parents.
If you can identify the challenge you now wish to overcome in your life, and link it to something which may have created that limiting belief in the past, you will be in a very strong position to finally overcome the sabotage in your life.
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December 14th, 2007 at 8:29 am
Just a quick question, have you wrote any article that describes in detail why some people fail to complete something they started? Is that like a fear of success and if that’s the case why do some people fear success? As if they might think success is something hard to achieve or that they will most likely fail before they succeed which is why they fear the success? or could this be a behavior programmed by the parents or experienced through life, how can it be described properly and dealt with?
December 14th, 2007 at 8:37 am
Yes i have written about fear of success before, but not in detail.
It ties in with beliefs you may have acquired as a child.Usually this occurs as self sabotage, where people subconsciously stop themselves from achieving something just as they were doing well or about to achieve it.
So if you are failing to complete something you start it may not be a fear in the traditional meaning of the word, but rather a subconscious belief that you should not achieve success or have happiness. This is extremely common, and many people sabotage themselves.
People who think success is hard or think that they will not achieve it so why try, are acting out limiting subconscious beliefs that they are not worthy or capable of achieving something. Again this is something that was most likely formed during their childhood.
I will be discussing this in the articles i am writing this week on how childhood effects our adult lives. Virtually all of the limiting beliefs people have come from their childhood, which is why i am spending this week discussing these factors and why they occur.
in terms of dealing with this it will require programming the mind, to think you are worthy. This is why i spent so much time writing about self esteem and self acceptance after the subconscious mind programming techniques. Without true self esteem and self acceptance it is very difficult to program your mind successfully, as i discussed in the articles on self esteem.
Generally i write about subjects that build on and support each other, so usually its best to read articles in the order they were written whenever possible.
Also read the book i mentioned and look at the handwriting section as it specifically talks about how to identify and eliminate a “fear of failure”
Of course there may be other explanations as to why a person may not finish what they are doing, such as lack of motivation by doing the wrong work, or simply a lack of self discipline.
Martin
March 1st, 2008 at 11:56 am
The whole idea that the WAY you write can tell sooo much about your personal feelings and character is just awesome info! Thank you very much for sharing this!
March 20th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
My wife and I have been fighting as she has stopped taking her prozac because she didn’t feel it was doing anything and so over the past few months she has gotten completely out of hand and is pushing me so hard away that I am ready to leave but all she can do is talk about how everone eventually leaves her and is unable to see the connection. Is this a Form of Self Sabotage? How can I help her to see this is what she is doing?
March 21st, 2008 at 5:27 am
There was a report on BBC news recently (a major news channel here in England) that prozac was just as effective as a placebo, and had very little effect on depression. So its quite possible that your wife was correct in saying it had no effect on her.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7263494.stm
However this very much sounds like self sabotage. As if the medication was having no effect on her, then there would be no reason for her mood to change once she stopped taking it. Subconsciously she may be using the excuse of giving up prozac to destroy any success or happiness she was having. In other words, she was happy, but then had a subconscious desire to end that happiness. This is a classic example of self sabotaging behavior.
Your wife basically needs to be educated about what self sabotage is, and reasons why she may be sabotaging her life. The fact that she says men always leave her, suggest this sabotaging has been going on all her life.
If you want to help her, you need to find the root cause as to why she self sabotages. I have outlined some possible reasons for this in the article, however the main reasons are:
a) Has learnt to associate pain with pleasure in the past. You may want to try and discover what she has done in the past after a relationship ended. Did she spend lots of time with family or close friends getting lots of attention? She may have learnt to link some pleasure to failing a relationship, although it may take some time and skilled questioning to find out what pleasure she links failure to.
b) Has learnt to associate pain with change. This usually occurs when there was some change a persons life that bought on a negative experience. So if there is anything that could signal significant change in her life such as moving house, new job or having a child, this may cause her to self sabotage to avoid this change.
c) Low self worth. this is usually the result of childhood exeriences, where the child is made to feel undervalued, unloved and unworthy of anything that may be good or pleasurable. In other words, a sense of low self esteem (you can find more information about self esteem on this site)
I think if your wife can better understand what self sabotage is, she will stand a better chance of beating it. But it may take a while for her to actually realize what she is doing to herself.
The fact that your wife has said that everyone eventually leaves her, suggests that she subconsciously realizes she is self sabotaging and that she feels unworthy of love or long term happiness. It’s almost as if she is saying, “i know your going to leave me eventually because i know im not good enough for you, so i might aswell sabotage this relationship now because i know its going to end”.
If i had to guess, i would say she had a bad experience in the past where she lost someone close to her. This has caused seperation anxiety, in addition to feelings of low self worth.
This is why it can be difficult to correct this as you really need to talk in detail about her past, and her childhood. Which depends on how open and honest of a relation you have with her, and whether she would feel comfortable talking to you about those things.
To confirm that it is self sabotage, you may want to examine her handwritting, paying particular attention to the letter “y” to see if it signals self sabotage as detailed in the article.
As a side note, I would not recommend taking prozac as it has been linked with an increase in suicide rates, as is the case with most psychotrophic drugs.
http://www.drugs.com/forum/latest-drug-related-news/antipsychotics-increase-suicide-risk-20-times-33941.html
http://www.teenscreentruth.com/psychiatry_drugs_suicide.html
http://www.namiscc.org/Research/2002/AntipsychoticSuicideRisk.htm