Reverse the Self-Sabotage
Posted on May 06, 2018 by Stephanie Lewis, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
If you're not mindful of the conversation going on in your head you might not even notice how much you're sabotaging your efforts to reach your goal.
“The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the conversations you have with yourself.”
-Dennis Waitley
How mean have you been to yourself? If you really listened to the conversations in your head, how often would you find that you tell yourself you’re lazy, stupid, a quitter? How often do you tell yourself that you don’t deserve to be healthy, lose the extra weight you have been carrying around, or to be happy? Have you instilled in yourself the idea that you don’t have it in you to achieve or sustain your physical, personal, or professional goals? That mantra will only serve to demotivate you. One of my cousins recently shared with me a story from when we were all young children—she told me that she and another cousin had pulled aside a friend of mine and let her know that they didn’t appreciate the way she had spoken to me. Think about that; if a friend or relative heard someone talking to you the way that you talk to yourself, do you think they would also pull you aside and ask why you’re putting up with that kind of abuse? I’m sure they would.
If you aren’t mindful of the monkey mind conversation going on in your head throughout the day you might not even notice how much you’re sabotaging your own efforts to reach your goals. Take a moment and just listen to the internal dialogue you have with yourself—what are you passing off as the truth? What lies are you telling yourself about your capabilities and the kind of life you deserve? What health and wealth have you effectively stolen from yourself with the negative conversations you have permitted to play on repeat in your head. Now, I want you to reflect for a moment on how that affects your spirit. What impact has it had on you? Then, ask yourself if you would accept the same thing from someone else? Of course not!
While there is no magic fix for overcoming self-sabotage, intentional steps can help us come to a place of self-compassion and ownership of the power that lies within us. Before understanding why we do this to ourselves and then taking conscious steps to alter the behavior pattern, we need to get to the very first step: awareness. A lack of awareness that it is even happening often comes from the unconscious disconnected-from-our-true-selves state that is easy to lapse into amidst our hectic lives. It takes a conscious effort to not go down that path. Sometimes those close to us can help identify that this is happening. Family, friends, and coaches can often recognize patterns of behavior in a different way than we can. Once we reach that state of awareness and positive mindset, then we can also harness our tools and support systems to maintain that progress.
