Self Sabotage #3

There are very frustrating times in life when you know what needs to be done (what you should do), but you have to force yourself to do it or you decide not to do it at all. Another situation, which I think can be very damaging to self-confidence, is one in which you start accomplishing something, but then fail to finish it. If this happens often enough, over a long enough period of time, you may begin to think that there is something genuinely wrong with you as you self sabotage your own life.

Shifting your behavior to get into alignment with your goals and desires is one way of tackling self sabotage. Shifting your behavior involves molding your current actions in such a way that they come together to form the foundation of your goals.

The focus is on taking action and then shifting that action to the direction you want to go.

For example, if you have trouble motivating yourself to go to classes after work or waking up early to go to the gym, the idea is to reinforce actions that get you to class on time or to the gym before work. Tangible rewards are often used to reinforce the behaviors and shift you from a current state of laziness to one of focused action. People use behavioral conditioning with animals all of the time. When a dog learns to run back to you with a ball and you pet him; that is an example of behavioral conditioning.

What is great about using behavioral conditioning to get past self sabotage is that it forces you to create the physical manifestation of your goal quickly and effectively. It also forces your thoughts to accept the new physical truth – there is no other way it can be.

For example, if you can stop yourself from eating dessert or from lighting up another cigarette, then you have created the physical reality of being a healthy eater or of being a nonsmoker. Even if you still think of yourself as unhealthy, the physical reality is that you gave up junk food or cigarettes. The behavior of stopping the food or cigarettes from going into your mouth will spur the creation of new thoughts that reflect your new reality. The physical actions will lead to new internal beliefs that you are now a healthier person. If you change your behavior, your thoughts have no choice but to follow.

Once you have taken action, your motivation to carry on will continue to rise and you will find it easy to get past self sabotage. It is the act of taking action that makes people feel vital and motivated. The key is figuring out what to do in order to get the results that you want. For some things, like quitting smoking, it is easy to figure out that if you quit putting cigarettes in your mouth, then you will automatically become a non-smoker. For other activities, figuring out what to do can be trickier. Becoming a good speaker, for example, involves learning how to stand, project, put together good presentations, talk, and answer questions. For more complex tasks, it generally works best to break things down into manageable chunks. Focus on one portion at a time, such as voice projection, and don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to conquer more than one behavior at a time.

Remember, we are all always doing something; the key is to do the things that will get you the results that you want.

Just doing the right things will get you almost all the way to the finish line. For me, tonight, I really wanted to watch Curb Your Enthusiasm re-runs on HBO. But, sitting on the couch with some frozen yogurt won’t get me any closer to my goals. In fact, the odds are good that tomorrow I would be disappointed that I didn’t carve out a chunk of time to write a new post - and I would probably be regretting eating the frozen yogurt. Taking two hours to write this article, however, is an action that I can take today towards my goal of having an informative, helpful, and thought provoking blog. And, instead of feeling sluggish tomorrow, I feel energized tonight, simply by taking action.


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