How to Tell If You Fell into Self-Sabotaging Behavior?

2. Leaving things for the last moment

When you pay the bills late or start working on projects shortly before the deadline, you can be sure that the inner saboteur is running the show.

I don’t agree that there is not enough time for everything that matters to us. The reason why people struggle with time is that they don’t master their energy well. They invest their energy in things that serve as distractions, and then they start doing the important stuff at the last moment.

Self-sabotaging behavior: 

You procrastinate on acting on the critical projects or show-up late for meetings. You’re unreliable, and your friends would even call you irresponsible.

Postponing things creates a vicious circle. Unintentionally, you train your mind to live in constant stress and fear. Your mind expects hardships and obstacles to show up, and you manifest them by aligning yourself with that belief.

Cause:

Your subconscious mind is addicted to drama. For if things went smoothly, your mind would get bored. The mind is designed to sort out information and to solve problems. Thus it likes to recreate stressful situations in your life.

3. Overthinking

You’d love to travel the world, start a new business, meet the love of your life, but you tend to overthink any opportunity that comes your way.

Overthinking is like a slow poison cluttering your thinking.

 

We always know what we want. Sure, sometimes we fear to admit it to ourselves, so we play with ideas back and forth, but when we become honest with ourselves, we always know the right answer.

Self-sabotaging behavior:

Your inner saboteur makes you question your decisions. Instead of turning your attention inward and discovering what you want, you ask others. Nevertheless, you still hesitate to act while the precious time is slipping between your fingers.

Cause:

The inner saboteur wants to make sure that you don’t make a mistake. In the past, you got hurt, and you fear that it would repeat if you’d be spontaneous. Although the precautious makes sense, it undermines your self-confidence and intuition.

4. Creating assumptions

Do you often assume something, and later it shows up being wrong? Most people develop assumptions about their abilities, intentions of others, or how things will turn out.

Assumptions are reflections of the fear-based mind rather than reality. 

 

Self-sabotaging behavior:

You may decide for others (for instance, the weekend plans) and assume that it’s fine for them too. Or you go to a job interview and assume beforehand that you’re not the best candidate for them.

Cause:

Creating assumptions is one of the ways to keep you in the realms of the familiar, so you avoid potential pain.

The inner saboteur assumes that things will turn out the same way as they have always had. Thus it sends you the thoughts that block out any other evidence.

5. Putting on the armor

Putting on the armor to protect our hearts keeps us locked behind the same defensive walls too. Sure, guarding our hearts seems easier than risking to be vulnerable in relationships. Our ego likes to keep situations under its control.

However, I’ve never met anyone happy while hiding their true selves from others. Have you?

Self-sabotaging behavior:

This is an inner saboteur’s favorite trick. In interactions with others, you strive to portray your best self. You have a bag of faces and put one on depending on who you talk with. When you’re in relationships, you keep beliefs, thoughts, emotions for yourself.

Sometimes the inner saboteur makes people withdraw from their partners or pretend that they’re better than they believe.

Whenever you try to get close to people, the inner saboteur rushes in to create conflict and drama.

Cause:

The inner saboteur is the master of keeping our hearts safe. It wants to ensure that we don’t get hurt. Especially when it has already happened, thus it makes up problems in relationships so that we don’t create a too intimate bond with another human being.