“I decry the injustice of my wounds, only to look down and see that I am holding a smoking gun in one hand and a fistful of ammunition in the other.”

― Craig D. Lounsbrough

Do you ever noticed that when you get a good run at things in your life, something usually comes up to break the flow? A few people I know try to get a good run at the gym, at their diet and something always comes up, some of these things are orchestrated by people and signs of self-sabotage and some aren’t.

For example, some get ill when they have put in a good couple of weeks at the gym consistently. Biologically speaking, you can expect that to happen because working out consistently can stress out your immune system since you are pushing your body past its comfort level. Also, no one volunteers for sickness so no one can really control that.

Some other things that belongs under the category of “man-made” are things like not scheduling the time to work out and shopping for fresh produce. These are tasks that encourages you to succeed at weight loss but some find it hard to do so even though they know they should.

We know we shouldn’t eat that cake or drink the vodka tonic, binge watch Netflix when we have a paper due or procrastinate by watching Youtube videos and scrolling on Facebook, yet we all do it. Have you also seen just how many celebrities go off the rails when they experience success? It seems so counterintuitive but it happens all the time. We self-sabotage consistently and often, we can’t really help it.

Self-sabotage doesn’t occur because you are lazy or not as good as others, it happens because you are a human and here are 3 reasons why:

1. You don’t think that your capabilities will get better, you think you have reached the peak of your success/life/intelligence and everything else is downhill after that.

In 2007, scientists Dr. Jason Plaks and Kristin Stecher, conducted a study on two categories of people who viewed their intelligence as fixed or malleable. They found that those who viewed their capabilities as fixed i.e. won’t improve nor change, were more likely to feel anxious and become disoriented especially when faced with a dramatic success.

Doesn’t this behaviour seem familiar with celebrities? They get the best movie role of their career or a breakthrough role and they immediately seem to spiral out of control with their behaviours such as drugs and bad attitude which almost guarantees them not getting anymore work. Some bestselling authors self-fulfilled their prophecy of never writing another bestseller again by never writing a book again.

Even in real lives, when people have experienced a big success like losing a lot of weight and then getting back to their bad habits even though they know that their initial success meant that their hard work paid off which should continue to pay off if they work at it. Or when some people get the promotion of a lifetime, they start to slack off at work in different ways.

What do you think of your own capabilities? Are they fixed or malleable? Do you have a growth mindset of fixed mindset? When you have a fixed mindset, you believe that your abilities, intelligence are fixed traits so out of your control whereas with a growth mindset, you believe that you can develop your abilities through learning and effort.

The knowledge that you are in control and will have more successes after your initial success will help you get out of your sabotage spiral.

2. When you are stressed out, you become even more afraid of uncertainty and thus tend to choose things that are familiar and predictable, even when it gives you a negative outcome.

It is no secret that we tend to choose what we know over what we do not know. This is how we avoid eating dodgy food or walking down dangerous alleys. Unfamiliar things and situations hold a level of risk that we are uncertain of. Sure, we can eat that dodgy looking food and discover a gourmet treasure or walk down that alley and find charming little shops and cafes instead of bandits but we don’t know that and so we tend to automatically avoid these things in favour of self-preservation.

Most of time, our response to unfamiliar situations helps us in our daily living but there are also times when it doesn’t serve us well and in fact makes us likely to self-sabotage as Stanford psychological scientist Ab Litt and his colleagues discovered. In their study, the scientists divided the participants into two groups of people, one group was told that they had four minutes to complete the task and the other was told they could take as long as they want, in addition they were promised cash rewards if they did well.

They were then told to choose either a long puzzle or a short puzzle and the difference was that the long puzzle was designed by someone they were familiar with and the short puzzle was designed by a person completely unknown to them.

The participants who had the time pressure of four minutes chose the long puzzle and the participants who had all the time they want chose the short puzzle. This tells us that when put under pressure (the four minutes) people tend to default to things or situations they find familiar even when it is detrimental to their performance.

Familiarity = Less Risk

In this case, they chose the longer puzzle because they felt it was safer and less risk. I suspect that they also felt compelled to choose the familiar puzzle because their minds were already stressed out by the notion of time limitation. When push comes to shove, our brains will very often choose the path of least resistance.

Can you imagine this scenario playing out when you are faced with launching a business, selling a product, writing a book or releasing your own songs? When we are stressed out, faced with the possibility of putting our work out there (eek!), our work being judged or our prospects saying no, our reaction is to choose things that are familiar and certain to us (such as tweaking with our business profiles, respond to emails) and avoid eating the frog (writing the next chapter in your book, calling business prospects, publishing the sales page).

We know that we should do whatever it is we have to do but we don’t because we fear the uncertainty.  

3. You feel insecure and threatened about situations you cannot control and so your first reaction is to create the barrier between you and others or the situation so that you can control how involved you get and thus minimise the hurt where necessary.

Self-sabotage doesn’t just occur on our own, it can occur when it comes to our relationships with other people. For us to exist harmoniously or to connect with others, we need to have a good level of self-esteem and to feel secure with ourselves before we can even try to get close to others. If you have been living on this planet for the last 10 years and have channels like National Geographic or Animal Planet, I am sure you would have heard of this man called Cesar Milan.

Cesar is an expert on canine behaviour who helps pet owners with dog behavioural issues. He is an expert because he understands the underlying psychological process that attributes to the dogs behaving the way they do. One of the most common behavioural problems the owners have with their pet pooch is aggressiveness with other dogs or dogs and people and almost all of the time, it is because they are insecure with themselves and therefore they perceive everything as a threat and react adversely.

We are of course a little more complex than dogs but when it comes to this, we are not much different. In a study conducted in 2018 by Dion Robeau Thompson, participants were assessed on their level of cooperation at work and they were also measured on their self-esteem.

In this study, the primary participant was a female who was unable to get along with her colleagues and found it hard to accept changes in work responsibilities and tasks required of her, she was also unable to tolerate when her demands were not accommodated by others.

It seemed to others that she went out of her way to be uncooperative which naturally made most people think that she was just naturally unpleasant without any justifiable reasons. What the scientist found however was that part of her combativeness could be down to her low self-esteem plus a high level of neuroticism.

Low Self-Esteem = Insecurity = Overprotectiveness

Her behaviour towards others guaranteed that no one liked her or tolerated working with her which in itself was self-sabotaging because she kept everyone away from her. Her actions also sabotaged her own work because she was unwilling to work with others or even heed advice.

The researchers concluded that her behaviour was a result of the need to protect herself from others whom she perceived as a threat. Remember these thoughts aren’t always rational to others but the person herself. She was insecure in her own self and thus felt the need to always be on the attack to protect herself.

In real life, we may not be as unpleasant as the lady above but do you recall knowing or meeting people like this who are so abrasive and so counterintuitive in their actions and what they are trying to achieve? Or have you experienced being in situations where you have made sure that you don’t get as involved so you do not run the risk of failing or being hurt?Would it surprise you that insecurity and low self-esteem might have a part to play?

Many people around us have done this in relationships, you know those who are afraid of commitment and find the first opportunity to ruin the relationship or break it off? This can be applied to starting something new as well, we make up excuses to not start a business, go to the gym or write a book because it might not succeed and by not even trying in the first place, we are guaranteed not to feel the pain of disappointment.

At the end of the day….

We form defensive mechanisms to protect ourselves and self-sabotage is one of those mechanisms. Connecting with people, putting our work out there is scary and it requires a lot of vulnerability and courage on our behalf. When you put your heart out there, you risk getting your heart broken.

When we commit to people, to situations, to goals, there is always a chance that it won’t work out but there is also a chance that it would.

What happens if you do not give anything a chance in life and just let it all pass you by, now wouldn’t that be the real sabotage to yourself?