5 Signs you’re Self-Sabotaging and How to Quit

Have you been working hard every day to improve your life but instead, you feel like nothing or little is working in your favour?

What if you’re unknowingly self-sabotaging? Indeed, nothing is more frustrating than feeling as if you’re not worth it. And that nothing or little makes a positive difference. You have the feeling that your spiritual wellness is messed up and that you need do something about it, but you don’t know how. You’re in the right place! For instance, you might have been trying harder to establish a thriving business, attract the right partner, stay in a long term relationship, improve your mindset but making progress feels like an uphill battle.

Here are the top five tips on stopping self-sabotaging behaviour and regain complete control of your life.

1 You are comparing yourself.

Are you stuck in the ever-alluring yet very emotionally-draining trap of frequently comparing your achieving or yourself to others? The social comparison theory states that people attempt to self-sabotage and compare themselves to others to draw accurate evaluations about themselves. But what does comparing oneself to others cost? Although comparison and self-sabotaging sometimes can be a source of valuable motivation and growth mindset, over comparison can spin someone’s life into self-doubt. For instance, social media has made it possible for us to access infinite material upon which we use to compare our failures or success. The bitter truth is that comparison is often unproductive and can result in frustrations and low esteem. Since comparison is natural, you can still work through those unpleasant feelings by embracing meditation to attain a stress-free mindset.

2. You are failing to meditate daily.

Meditation is an excellent way of giving yourself the ability to focus. It also helps you to have a clear view of the long-term goals rather than focusing on petty details in every situation. It’s time to breathe deeply and face the challenges present in life since this can ultimately bring inner happiness and peace beyond the material world. Through regular meditation, you’ll master the art of self-care and self-love, which are vital in stopping the dangerous self-comparison and self-sabotaging behaviour. You can find out more on how to stop the destruction of self-comparison here.

Often, a tight schedule can prevent you from meditating daily. Or else you are trying to avoid thinking deeply about a specific subject. The good news is that journaling is the best way of focusing your mind and thoughts on a piece of paper. Just like meditation and breathing, there are several techniques for achieving your journaling skills. Learn more about journaling here.

3. You are failing to practice mindfulness.

Mindfulness is a natural human ability to live in the present. And being aware of everything you’re doing and where you are. It’s the ability to not getting overwhelmed and over-reactive about what’s going around your life. While mindfulness is something that all people naturally possess, it’s more prevalent to those practising it regularly.

Do you know that bringing awareness to whatever you’re experiencing directly through your sense, emotions, state of your mind? And thoughts is a way of being a mindful person? Several pieces of research have shown that training your brain to be fully conscious is an excellent way of re-structuring your brain’s physical structure. Practising mindfulness aims at activating the inner working of your emotions, mental and biological processes and helps you to stop self-sabotaging.

How to practice mindfulness

Dedicate some time. You don’t require soo many items to start practising your mindfulness skills. All you need is to set aside a conducive space and time. View the present moment just the way it is-mindfulness targets quieting your mind or attempting to attain a state of eternal peace and calmness. The ultimate goal is trying to pay maximum attention to the current moment without attaching negative judgments. You can learn more about how to practise mindfulness here at Modern Zen effectively. https://modernzen.org/practicing-mindfulness-at-work-modern-zen-blog-post/

4. Overplanning

Indeed, the first step of solving any problem is recognizing the root cause and then developing a practical and effective plan as the guide. However, coming up with such a plan can be pretty stress-blustering and overdoing it can be mentally and emotionally overwhelming. The problem of overplanning is that many people will use it as an excuse for not taking action until it’s too late to take control of the wheel. In the long term, overplanning can be self-destructive behaviour. Indeed, don’t be that person who waits and wishing for a good life yet doing nothing to come out of the self-destructive behaviours. If you’d instead develop a comprehensive plan rather than taking the first actions.

This is simply because you want to use overplanning as the reason for procrastination. It’s okay to have the feeling of wanting to be perfectly organized, but failing to take action renders your detailed plan useless.

5. You have a limited mindset, “I can’t achieve this”, or “I’m not worth this.”

Do you sometimes feel like you’re not worth good things in your present life? Yet you work very hard to achieve your goals? For instance, do you believe that you can’t advance your diploma certificate to a BSc degree or higher level, but others deserve to be ahead of you? Or do you think you can’t be in a happy relationship or a happy marriage? Simply because you feel you don’t possess the best features to impress your partner?

You’ll end up assuming that the relationship will end up soon even after you invest and commit to the relationship, so you might decide to end it up first. Maybe, it could be a result of a previous mistake that you’re unable to forgive yourself. Typically, this is referred to as imposter syndrome, a phenomenon in which victims feel inferior and undeserving of great success.

Despite working very hard to achieve remarkable goals, a person suffering from imposter syndrome is convinced to behold any reasonable doubt that hasn’t achieved anything by merit but by luck or manipulating others. As success increases, you may start to self-accuse and self-confrontation as you feel more unworthy and insecure. Such doubt is self-sabotaging, and it will indeed prevent you from achieving the best version of yourself in the future. Questioning your abilities to achieve great success like you have or thinking that others could have done better than you did is self-destruction, something you must stop anyway.