March 6, 2022

How to Recognize the Obvious Signs of Self-Sabotage.

 

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How do we know that we are self-sabotaging our life and not just choosing something that feels more aligned with who we are or who we want to be?

This is a question I have come across today, after feeling like I needed to let go of everything I once thought I wanted. I woke up feeling excited to teach things I know to people and figuring out what to do with my entrepreneurial ideas.

But suddenly, a feeling came over me that I might describe as apathy or resistance; nothing seemed good enough anymore, and my ideas felt fraudulent and misaligned. Thinking of my ideas felt like a big rock was sitting in my path, and I felt propelled away from it. I was contemplating it, leaning into the resistance.

Maybe, I am supposed to teach something else? Maybe I am just supposed to write because that’s what I love to do and there is no pressure on writing by itself?

Maybe my life is just about evolving myself and not actually creating some sort of business or income with my teachings? 

After posting my thoughts on my telegram channel “Divine Oracle Insights,” I realized that I may be self-sabotaging.

Self-sabotage happens after we have a grand idea and get excited over something, we can’t wait to make it happen, but then suddenly, we hit resistance. Thoughts and feelings pour in to tell us it’s not a good idea, or that we can’t make it, or that it will take many years to succeed, if we come up with stories as to why we shouldn’t move forward with these ideas or passions at all.

This is a completely normal reaction of our subconscious mind that tries to keep us within the bounds of safety. “Fear of success” is a concept I never thought was a thing. I didn’t understand what fear of success was until I took a course in self-sabotage.

Fear of success stems from our unconscious beliefs—that sticking our head out of the crowd will get us attacked. I found this especially profound in women. The subconscious mind believes that we need to emulate and copy our squad (the people we surround ourselves with), to be accepted and welcomed within them. If we do anything out of the ordinary, we are no longer emulating and copying; we are daring the leap into the unknown—the unpredictable part of our reality.

This behavior would have gotten us into big trouble a few thousands of years ago, when we were more reliant on our common behavior. It’s still deeply ingrained within our psyche.

Predictability is seen as a safety zone; we believe that nothing bad can happen when we know where we land after we jump off a cliff. But what happens if we can’t see the ground? If we don’t see anyone around us doing it, we won’t know where our feet will land, and so we won’t dare to make a jump into the unknown.

We can imagine the life we want to live all day long, but if we don’t get over our subconscious fears of sticking out of the crowd, or making a leap into an unknown direction, that plane will never take off.

So, am I self-sabotaging or am I just considering my options?

It’s okay to consider options, but if you wait too long, that opportunity may be gone.

If you consider things for too long, it’s self-sabotage.

If you are afraid of choosing love, the person you love may be gone forever. If you are afraid of saying yes to an opportunity, someone else will say yes to it. If you wait too long for the rice to cook, it will be overcooked. If you wait too long to make your move, your success will be pushed further and further into the distant future.

Our hesitancy is self-sabotaging, and we call it “meant to be that way” to get over the fact that we may have missed out on this opportunity because of our subconscious fears.

There is a really good book I read about making things happen; it’s called The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. In his book, he talks about taking action on your dreams and working on them every single day because of the effect of “compound interest.”

If you have a habit that you do religiously every day, you will see the results of that habit in 20 years. If it was a good habit or a bad one doesn’t matter; the results of your choices will be compounded over time.

We don’t have all the time in the world; there is an expiry date to all of us and all of our ideas.

The idea will just move on to someone else if you say no; the idea doesn’t care if you are the one who will manifest it or if your neighbor picks it up. This is something I read in a book called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. She explained in her book how a book idea she had and didn’t act upon was somehow transferred to another author friend of hers. She was surprised to hear her story and plot that were exactly the same idea she had a couple of years earlier, without ever communicating with her the ideas of that book.

How we move through resistance is by changing the crowd we hang out with, the people and things we surround ourselves with. It’s hard to succeed around people who are unsuccessful; it’s much easier to go for your dreams around people who do the same and succeed at it.

You have to find your people, the right people, by stating your intention and taking the right actions. Make it easy for your subconscious to emulate what you want it to emulate by exposing yourself to an environment that benefits that endeavor.

Look closely at your life, the things you expose yourself to on a daily basis, the music you listen to (your subconscious knows all the lyrics), the food and beverages you take in, the habits you entertain…our subconscious mind goes for comfort. It tries to make things easy for us. But easy isn’t always the best and can lead to discomfort over time.

Comfort is the enemy of success. You need to trick your own subconscious mind into believing that comfort is found in the new and the unexplored.

Sometimes, the discomfort we experience when we lack ambition allows us to move forward to look for what else is available to us. But why wait until our need for comfort puts us into an uncomfortable situation?

I like to do things proactively, not waiting until I “must” change something. It’s almost impossible to change from one day to the next. It’s much easier and more efficient when we make changes every day that move us toward the effect of compounding.

What do you feel needs to change in your life for you to be more aligned with the life you want to live?

“My point is simply that there is a cost to waiting.” ~ Jeff Olson

 

 

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