This impeded the morning commute and gave name to the action of destroying the gains – sabotage. The inability to move forward often creates frustration and disappointment when people consider the gains or their lack of in different aspects of their lives.
Even when the will power and motivation are present something comes in the way of achieving positive outcomes in most desirable situations.
Manilov, a Russian fictitious character could sit on his couch all day long dreaming about the wonderful things he wanted to do, sometimes dreams seemed to become so close to reality and so possible to achieve all he had to do was to get off the couch and move.
But every time he was ready to do that a thought would come into his mind and he would stop, reconsider and stay where he was.
Nothing ever changed in his world but the dreams. How many people start off their lives having grand plans, ambitions and ideas of what they want to achieve and where they want to be in 10, 15, 30 years time and things flow smoothly until one day they encounter an obstacle of some kind that prevents them from moving forward and then with every new obstacle they feel more and more frustrated and defeated, as life is becoming too hard.
Too often people get distracted, lose focus and somehow allow the destructive tendencies to take over their gains, and success just slips through their fingers.
Having great plans and intentions is a starting point, acting on those plans and being alert to any disruptive tendencies or self sabotage is crucial in achieving great outcomes.
And these tendencies are often deeply rooted in our mind. It all comes down to beliefs and values – are you moving towards what’s important to you or away from what you don’t want?
Having success as your value can happen in two different ways – you think of success as something that you really want ,“I want to be successful,” or you think of success as getting away from failure, “I want to be successful because I don’t want to fail.”
Interestingly, our mind does not understand the negatives and allows us to achieve exactly what we think about consciously or unconsciously, in other words it simply discards “don’t” and creates failure only to bring to us the results we were so focused on.
Sabotage happens in many different areas of life, for example health. So many people want to lose weight and start on their journey, determined to change their eating habits to eat healthy, drink water and exercise regularly.
They enrol into a diet program, join the gym, turn to therapy to change their thinking and behaviour only to find themselves achieving a few milestones and then coming to a halt.
They know they are doing the right things for themselves, they know they need to improve their health and wellbeing ,and yet somehow manage to sabotage all their gains and efforts with a few nights out eating badly and finding an excuse not to exercise on a rainy day.
How can one recognise the sabotaging thoughts and behaviours? Looking at your achievements, notice where you have stopped yourself from doing more, feeling better, taking that next step, following through on an important decision.
There could be a pattern undermining your progress at the core of which lie deeply hidden beliefs and values about who you are, and how far you can go in life that you have adopted very early on.
Whether you wanted to prove yourself to the world, to be better than somebody important in your life, to move away from poverty, unhappiness, the underlying values and beliefs will always take you back to the core of your being and unless transformed at that deepest level will govern your behaviour and achievements.
And it can sometimes feel like swimming upstream in a powerful river, where the harder you try the harder it gets. So, how can we deal with sabotaging thoughts and behaviours?
If you find yourself battling constantly, have a hard look at the undercurrents of your situation. Perhaps there are some beliefs and values that helped you before but are of no use to you now, as the landscape has changed.
You may find it easier to let go of the old raft that served its purpose, and replace it with the new boat that would give you speed and safety moving you along much faster.
People often experience disruptive tendencies, and sabotaging one’s own efforts is never obvious, even less obvious is the reason behind it. Looking at the core beliefs and values offers an incredible insight into the underlying drivers of our behaviour, and once they are identified, they can be changed.
Anya Haldey runs Positive Coaching & Therapy, a business that focuses on assisting people realise their potential in business and life. Contact her at change@positivecoaching.com.au
