3 Ways You Can Sabotage Your Own Success

Have you ever wondered why it seems so hard to do what you’ve always dreamed about doing?

If you’re like most people, you daydream all day long about how you wish things were, versus how they are. Maybe you want to lose weight, or change careers, or be a singer or actor. Yet no matter how hard you try, nothing ever seems to happen.

Most people have no clue what’s standing in their way of making their dreams become their reality, for if they did, it’s likely they’d already have accomplished them! But what they don’t realize is what’s stopping them from getting there in the first place.

I’ve always been fascinated by human behavior and what makes us do what we do. In the field of natural health, we look for root causes of bodily symptoms instead of just treating them, so that we can address the problem itself, which applies to the mind as well.

Why do we suddenly get sick when we have a big audition coming up? Why do we pick fights with the people we love the most? If someone compliments us, why do we say, “Oh, it’s nothing!”

The reason is fear.

Fear is the #1 driving emotion behind all self-sabotaging behavior, and it shows up in 3 ways:

1. You listen to your own fear. The way you’ve been conditioned in life causes you to react and do things based on your subconscious beliefs, which for many people are deeply rooted in fear, one because of how the brain works naturally, but also, as a result of the environment you were raised in as a kid. Whatever makes you feel the most comfortable will cause you to form a comfort zone for your life that can be hard to break free from because anything outside of that comfort zone is perceived as a threat, and uncertain, and too scary too.
2. You listen to others people’s fear. When you’re in nature, the oak tree never attempts to persuade the elm by telling it what it should do with its life. It already knows what to do and how to do it because it’s programmed in its DNA, which is the same with people. Yet we still try to steer the lives of others. Why? Because we think we know better, when it’s really because of our own fears. (Refer back to #1.)
3. It distracts you. Fear is great at causing confusion and directing your mind away from something that could actually change your life for the better. It throws up objections that seem justified about why you shouldn’t do something you desperately want to do. It appears to be your friend, when it’s really your foe, especially if it takes you off course from having the dream life you’ve always desired.

So it makes sense if you meet the love of your life and you immediately look for their flaws. Or if your big moment is about to happen, you suddenly get ill. Or, you turn a compliment into a distraction from how great you really are.

People who aren’t used to attention or who shy away from it tend to panic when the spotlight shines on them, panic of course being just another form of fear. They’ll do anything and everything to get away from it, including sabotaging careers, relationships, and anything else that’s actually something they really want for themselves.

It’s funny how the mind works, and how much pain and distress it causes us to not have what we want in our lives because of it. But it can be changed to work more in your favor, and the key to changing it is awareness, which allows you to take the first step toward creating the life that you truly desire.