How And Why We Engage in Self-sabotaging Behavior
What is self-sabotaging behavior? If you have ever felt that you prevent yourself from realizing goals, feeling happiness, or actualizing success you may be engaging in self-sabotaging behavior. We self-sabotage ourselves when we think we aren’t good enough, smart enough, or deserving enough, which makes us our own worst enemies. The worst part is that most people aren’t even aware that they are doing this!
Negative Thought Patterns Are Largely Unconscious
First, it is important to understand that many people are unaware of the thoughts that they think. Thoughts are so prevalent and relentless that people rarely take the time to do an inventory of the running commentary that goes on in their heads. A distinctive part of spiritual coaching is the deeper investigation of a client’s thought patterns so we can discover what energy is circulating in your mind on a regular basis. Yes, I said energy; everything is energy. If we can think of our thoughts as ‘things’ then we can gain a better understanding of the power of positive vs negative vs neutral vs no thought.
All thoughts have power but not all thoughts pack the same punch. We can visualize a thought as a wisp of smoke existing for a moment and then slowly disintegrating into the air. Many thoughts exist for a moment and then disappear. But if a person consistently thinks the same thought over and over again then this wisp of smoke can turn into a raging fire.
“It is the consistency and repetition that creates the momentum for a thought to become a reality.” – Liz Hancock
How are our thoughts like a wisp of smoke?
5 Key Causes Self-Sabotaging Behavior
The cause of self-sabotaging behavior are negative thoughts. Everything that you experience is because it was a thought first.
The most common way in which people create negativity in their life is by thinking in absolutes; aka black and white thinking. If you find yourself using the words: always, never, every time, everyone, no one, etc then you can be sure that you are engaged in black/white thinking. Some examples of black/white thinking include:
- “I will never be successful. I’m just not wired that way.”
- “No one will ever love me. I’m always alone.”
- “Every time I try to get ahead I’m always knocked down. I just can’t get anything right.”
- “Everyone thinks I’m weak. I always end up overeating.”
Do any of the above thoughts resonate with you? At one time or another we’ve all had our share of absolute thinking. Black and white thinking is a remnant of childhood and a mark of immaturity. It is a way of interpreting the world when we look to others to define who and what we are. We only limit ourselves when we think this way. When it becomes a habit, it also becomes our reality.
Another way in which we self-sabotage ourselves is imagining the worst and expecting it to happen. So many people suffer because they imagine a future scenario in which they anticipate a negative experience. This creates anxiety, fear, and a feeling of being stuck. When someone anticipates failure, they have already written their future. They wonder, “What is the point in even trying if all that will happen is that I’ll fail?” This limiting and self-sabotaging way of thinking will keep you small and scared to try anything new.
Yet another way in which people self-sabotage themselves is by assuming they know what another person is thinking and feeling. There is so much untold suffering created just by assuming we know all the answers already. When we go into a situation thinking we already know what someone is thinking, we are limiting ourselves from being open to learning something new or allowing a greater vision to come through which can help us mature, expand, and grow into something more than we currently are.
The fourth way that people self-sabotage themselves is by thinking that god/the universe/existence has a plan for you. This way of self-sabotaging lets people get away with not taking responsibility for their life and taking action. If you think a greater being is running the puppet strings of your life then you will always be at the mercy of the ebb and flow of what life brings you. If you sit back and do nothing you will get exactly that – nothing.
“This is the nature of existence – if you do the right things, the right things will happen to you.” – Sadhguru
A final way in which people self-sabotage themselves is through habitual negative programming through years of struggle and hardship. Statements like, “Life is hard”, “Life is not fair”, and “We’re meant to struggle as this builds strength and character” are all just beliefs. They aren’t true. We create our reality – it is that simple. Existence isn’t easy or hard – it simply is.
Self-sabotaging behavior can come in so many forms. Some of these include:
- Career: Difficulty finding a job, feeling too old to change careers, not qualified, not confident or inspired enough to take action.
- Relationships: Frequent complications in romantic relationships, inability to be vulnerable, express emotions, communicate honestly, or feel safe with another person. Feelings of self-imposed isolation and loneliness.
- Health: Eating disorders, sleep difficulties, chronic anxiety and auto-immune disorders, lethargy, and/or depression.
- Confidence: Feeling unloved, unwanted, undeserving, and unworthy.
Why Do People Have These Negative Self Limiting Thoughts? Where Do They Come From?
Thoughts seem to come from nowhere but that isn’t exactly true. Each thought carries a certain energy imprint or vibration. We can think of positive thoughts as having a high vibration and negative thoughts as having a low vibration. The thoughts that come to us match the general energy state that we vibrate on. This isn’t meant to sound too woo-woo but it is a fact that everything in this physical universe is energy vibrating at various different frequencies.
Humans are similar to batteries in that we have the capacity to charge ourselves and hold immense amounts of high vibrational energy which then affect our thoughts, moods, and external reality. For example, it’s easy to visually see and feel the overall energy state of a person dying of cancer vs the high vibrancy and of a newborn baby. The sheer intensity of a baby’s scream is testament enough to the amount of high frequency energy packed into a tiny little package.
Similarly, a positive individual is generally healthy and attracts kind people and beautiful experiences into their lives. They rarely experience suffering because again, suffering is created only in the mind and these positive individual’s do not indulge in negative thinking. There may be negative things that come across their path from time to time, but these positive individual’s deal with it in the moment, take charge as best they can, and then let the whole thing go. They do not carry the negatively charged experience with them, because again – they do not indulge in negative thinking.
Mother Teresa embodied the energy of selfless compassion and love. What do you embody?
Building off of the premise that people vibrate at different frequencies or levels of consciousness, we can say that a highly positive person would attract positive thoughts into their energetic aura. Let’s take for example a person who thinks they are a deserving individual worthy of love and happiness. We can use a real life example of Mother Teresa. The thoughts that circulated through Mother Teresa’s mind were thoughts of benevolence, non-violence, deep compassion and unconditional kindness. She believed all beings were worthy of love and forgiveness no matter the circumstance. She thought all people deserved to die in dignity. How do I know these were her thoughts? Because this is the legacy that Mother Teresa has left behind.
“Our repeated and consistent thoughts spur us into action and generate behavior consistent to the energy we vibrate with. The thoughts that seem to come from nowhere are really a consequence of the energy state that you are currently living in.” – Liz Hancock
So now that we can see the clear connection between thoughts, behavior, action and consequences we can now start to reverse engineer our lives to understand why we self-sabotage ourselves.
Self Identity Is Rooted In The Past (Or Is It?)
We each have a story of what we refer to as ‘us’ that we strongly identify with and use to navigate in this world. When we were born our identity was blank; a clean slate so to speak. Through the process of life and the various experiences we encountered, our brain interpreted these experiences and stored them to create a private world that was completely subjective and personal.
This is the reason why siblings can be brought up in the same household but remember, interpret, and perceive events and information completely differently. One person may be traumatized another may be only knocked off course slightly and quickly regain composure. One person may believe everything they hear another person may use discernment to conclude if it makes sense to them. One person may see the world as scary and difficult another person may view the world as an immense opportunity for growth and expansion.
It is this one-of-a-kind uniqueness that each individual carries that is truly the gift of life and existence. No two people see the world the same way and no two people will ever truly understand one another.
So we are brought into this world and layer experience upon experience to create a mosaic of who we are and how we see the world. This mosaic of deeply personal experiences merges together to form a general energy vibration complete with operating programs by which we live in this world. Operating programs can also be called belief systems.
Remember Mother Teresa? Her belief system or operating program was that all beings deserve love. In order to think this she must also embody this and so she herself believed that she was worthy of love, forgiveness, happiness, and devotion. She was devoted to her patients and they were devoted to her. Such is the way energy mirrors itself in this physical universe.
You Have Two Ways To Live – Which Do You Choose?
So we can easily see how our past holds the key to how we identify ourselves now. However, we are not limited to our past experiences in order to define ourselves. There is another way of writing our story.
From a tiny acorn to a sturdy tree. The miracle and mystery of life is all around us!
The universe, source, god, existence (whatever word you feel comfortable with) created life with pre-existent programs. No one has ever figured out how our everyday miracles exist but they do nonetheless. Take for example the transformation from an acorn to an oak tree. The acorn falls to the ground and through it’s divinely governed genetic material it knows how to grow into the ground to become a tree. This tree also learns to adapt to it’s environment and has survival skills.
Animals operate by similar means but have the added ability of locomotion with more complicated physical bodies. Yet humans show the most complex physical systems including their advanced neurological organization and structure. All beings are conscious or sentient but not all have the ability to expand their awareness infinitely; only humans possess this powerful gift.
Thus, there are two ways we can choose to live in this world; consciously or unconsciously. We can choose to live by default otherwise known as unconsciously; living as if we are only the product of our past and environment. If we choose to remain this way we remain stagnant in a particular energetic field and attract only similar vibrating thoughts, people, places, and experiences.
The alternative is to live in full conscious awareness. This alternative is really what is meant to be fully alive as a human be-ing. We take conscious control over our body, minds, emotions and energies through responsibility. We live in full awareness of our everyday moment to moment creations and we know the consequences of the energy we put out. This is what it means to be fully alive. But how do we get there?
Living Your Truth and Becoming Aware
There is an old saying that goes, “Anything worth having is worth fighting for” and the same goes for wanting to overcome self-sabotaging beliefs and limited thinking. You don’t take a magic pill and wake up one day cured from your own worst Self. The process of changing your thoughts and consequently your life does take dedication, discipline and of course, time. Those that can play the long game and delay gratification will reap the rewards.
Becoming self-aware takes work. What are you willing to do?
Becoming aware of yourself takes many thousands of hours of dedicated meditation, self reflection or concentrated spiritual work. These are the most common options for most people. But, in today’s modern age, many people don’t have the time or inclination to pursue meditation to this degree so they choose to work with someone that can speed up the process for them.
Rediscover and Empower Yourself with An Energetic Reading
An Awareness and Integration Reading supports you in cultivating greater self-awareness and heightened perception. This intuitive and energetic experience gently guides you through introspection, illuminating unconscious patterns and energetic blocks that may be holding you back. You’ll receive personalized guidance, practical self-inquiry questions, and intuitive insights designed to help you integrate these newfound understandings into meaningful growth and transformation.
