I seldom procrastinate. I’m not a druggie or a drinker, don’t self medicate and I quit smoking. Lord knows I’m not overly modest. Self-injury and cutting don’t appeal to me nor do shopping sprees. So, I’m fine, right? I don’t play the self-sabotage game, do I? I mean, seriously, I did a lot of research on self-sabotage and those things seem to be the most common ways that we shoot ourselves in the foot (so to speak). And, yet, somehow, deep down inside, I have this crazy feeling that, even though I don’t see it, maybe… just maybe… I may be getting in my own way and sabotaging my greatness. I like to play Sudoku, candy crush and solitaire, but self-sabotage is not the game I want to play with myself!
Okay, I admit it, I am a people pleasing, comfort eating, put the other guy first type of humanoid. And I do have a very LOUD inner critic that I constantly have to ignore, but what does all that mean? How could that stuff be stopping me? Is it possible that those silly little habitual behaviors – including the things I do that (I think) make me a nice person, are also the things that are holding me back and tripping me up? Naw, it couldn’t be, could it?
Maybe this is one of those areas of life where it’s waaaay easier to see where someone else is screwing up than it is to recognize where you’re doing it. I’ll put you under the microscope. Okay… sit back and relax, then, while I look at YOU (That’s the ‘global’ you, not YOU you)!
Let me think… what have I noticed, or said to ‘them’ about their obvious bouts of ‘self-defeating doings’? It’s so much easier to recognize that stuff when someone else is doing it.
“By the time I got there the job was taken.”
You might have gotten the job if you had gotten there a little bit earlier. Remember we talked about you being first in line. (Wait a minute, I’ve done that.)
“I’m so angry at myself for skipping my workout!”
Wait, now you’re going to eat the cupcake because you already blew it today by skipping the gym? (Oops, this might have been me once or twice.)
“That jerk finally called after I waited for three full days, so I didn’t take his call.”
You spent three days hoping he’d call and then when he finally did call you didn’t even talk to him? (Hmm, I may have “cut off my nose to spite my face” a time or two.)
“It’s fine. I don’t need the help. I can do it myself.”
Of course you can, but wouldn’t it be a lot faster and easier if you let someone help you
(There may have been a time or two when my stubbornness got in the way.)
Okay, ENOUGH ALREADY!!! I’m getting it. You don’t have to hit me over the head with a two by four! I self-sabotage. I see that. It’s a stupid game. No one ever plays it with me and I never seem to win! I QUIT!!!