Self Sabotage

Variables Involved

1. The brain judges a project based on current energy levels.
For example, if you come home tired after a day’s work, and your house is a mess. Your mind is likely going to shut down your efforts at cleaning because your energy is lower than the size of the job. If you wake up, go for a morning jog, and come home rejuvenated, your mind will look at the same mess, and the job will appear easy. This is because your energy level is now greater than the task at hand.

Solution: Adjust your job or raise your energy.

2. An “all or none “mentality leaves no room for error.
For those who have an “all or none” mentality, unless a job can be done perfectly, the mind will see the end result as failure. If the emotion “failure” causes pain, the mind will avoid it.

Solution: Define forward movement as success.

3. If expectations are non-adjustable, a person cannot navigate changes in context.
When working on a project, the context will likely change. This change in context can involve changes to resources, time, or people. If a person cannot adjust their expectations, then they will fail at meeting them. This can result in a person ceasing to strive forward.

Solution: If contexts change, stop working, relax the body, and readjust the expectation for the project.

4. If the risk of failure is high and the value is high, the person will likely not want to risk doing it. If an outcome is very valuable to a person and the risk involved is high, the person is likely to avoid doing it. This can involve not putting enough time into trying, not starting the project, or delaying the project.

Solution: Take time to relax the body and then explore what it will mean to fail at the project. Decrease your fear of failure. If the failure is potentially catastrophic, take time to embrace the potential event and calmly plan how you will handle it if the catastrophic event occurs.

5. Anticipatory anxiety is the anxiety we have towards an uncomfortable situation.
The tendency is for a person to avoid the emotional pain of the task. When we avoid the task, we signal to the brain that the anxiety is protecting us. The anxiety is creating distance between us and the task. The brain, in response, increases anxiety towards the task in order to increase the protection. The longer we avoid, the higher the anxiety becomes.

Solution: Do the project as soon as possible. Anticipatory anxiety immediately drops when a project is started or completed. An accountability partner can help decrease delay.

6. In for a penny, in for a pound.
Oftentimes, a person will make a mistake. They will do something that causes temporary euphoria and long-term pain. For example, they may ingest a drug, drink alcohol, look at porn, or gamble. Their perception of themselves will decrease. If they feel really bad about themselves, they will feel emotional pain. The mind will want to escape the emotional pain. Their perception of themselves has already fallen, their emotional pain is high, and a temporary escape is already in front of them. The person often succumbs to the failure and embraces the temporary euphoria in avoidance of the emotional pain.

Solution: After making the mistake, relax the body, embrace the emotion, and allow the emotion to pass. When thinking about the mistake, don’t catastrophize the mistake and don’t dismiss it either. Look at it for what it is. Don’t get angry or anxious about it. Simply accept it and allow yourself to feel the pain of the mistake and the pain it caused others. For more information, click here.

7. The to-do list is longer than the time allotted.
If the mind is looking at a to-do list that cannot be completed within the time allotted, the mind will likely shut down.

Solution: Create a to-do and a to-day list. The to-do list will never run out. It operates as a placeholder for problems, externalizing the problems onto paper, instead of keeping them locked in the mind. The to-day list lets the brain know that only one or two items actually have to get done that day. A person who completes their to-day list can feel successful at the end of the day.