5 Ways You Sabotage Your Success
Have you ever felt like you were putting in all the effort but still not getting the desired results? Perhaps you have experienced self-sabotage in your personal or professional life before without even realizing it. Many of us have bad habits that hinder our success, but identifying them is the first step toward overcoming them.
This blog post will identify five common ways people sabotage their success and how to avoid them. From negative self-talk to procrastination, these habits can hold you back from reaching your full potential. Let’s dive into how you may unintentionally sabotage your success and learn how to break free from these bad habits.
#1 – You Listen to Others
While there’s nothing wrong with listening to others, especially when it’s helpful, you do have to be wary of listening to bad influences. Because when you do that, you can make mistakes that sabotage what you’re working hard to build.
Other people’s words can help propel you forward or hurt your belief in yourself and the business you’re pursuing. You sabotage yourself by listening to people who aren’t in your industry.
That’s like comparing apples and oranges. Though both are fruit, they’re not the same. So when you seek advice from or listen to counsel from someone not in your industry, they’re not speaking from a place of having inside knowledge.
When you follow their advice, you can end up hurting your business. It would be best if you also were careful about listening to others when it’s people who have yet to have the success you want.
When you want your business to do well, you should seek advice from those with a thriving business in your niche – not from the guy who always seems to achieve his business or financial goals.
It’s always best to listen to others who are where you want to be. They’ve walked the path, figured out what works, and made success happen. But conversely, don’t listen to people who don’t support you or your dreams.
These people may even be well-meaning and think they know what’s best for you, but all it does is discourage you when you’re looking for advice or support, and you come away feeling like you’ve been verbally slapped instead.
You don’t need that. In every industry, there will be those who are positive, and they see even obstacles or problems as opportunities. So you want to listen to them because their enthusiasm is contagious.
Negative people will always point out the worst-case scenario. They’ll tell you why your ideas won’t work, and they carry an air of ìeverything is such a burdenî about them so that you’ll find your mind steeped in negativity when you listen to them.
That’s because negativity always rubs off on those around it. You’ll see the downside of running your business rather than the upside. While it’s a good idea to listen to those who have had the success you aspire to achieve, you even have to be careful about the attitude of these people.
Sometimes people who’ve reached the pinnacle of success you’ve set your goal on might belittle you during interactions with them. It’s almost as if they compete with you and need to hold you back.
Don’t listen to people who belittle you or your accomplishments. That kind of conversation doesn’t come from a healthy place, and you’ll gain nothing by listening to their words of misdirection.
#2 – You Live in the Past
Everyone has failures in their past. It’s just a way of life because there’s no such thing as the perfect person. Having failures is only a problem if you allow it to be by living in the past.
Although calling it the past is incorrect if you’re living in it, it’s your past present. This happens when you keep your failures at the back of your mind, and whenever you’re trying to do something with your life, they’ll pop up and start repeatedly playing like a bad movie.
Why do so many people live in the past, even knowing it holds them back? It’s because past failures keep you safe. They’re a haven, a comfort zone. These familiar failures are reminders that you’re better off exactly where you are.
You won’t get hurt. Your business won’t suffer if you stay stagnant ñ, but you fail to admit it won’t grow. These failures show up to remind you that trying again is scary.
They crowd around, eager to prove that attempting a new thing with your career isn’t a good idea. They’ll impact your mindset, turning your hope and belief into doubt until the pictures you wanted to try either away.
You’ll decide that the failures are correct. Who do you think you are to keep trying? Living in the past replays your losses, so you don’t have to try again. It’s a form of self-sabotage that’s designed to keep you comfortable.
But it’s a place that lies to you over and over again. As a result, you’ll never be comfortable not doing what you were meant to do or not reaching the business heights you crave in your mind and heart.
You live in the past by letting your failures become your identity. You accept past failure as the truth. This kind of thinking leads many people to reframe who they are. For example, someone with a business launch, such as a flopped product, identifies that failure by internalizing the reasoning that says, “I’m not good at creating products.”
Or if it’s a business where you created something like a mastermind course and no one signed up, that can lead you not to want to create a mastermind group in the future because you’re looking backward, which keeps you from moving forward.
Living in the past allows you to create excuses for why something doesn’t work. Living in the past, looking at what you tried that failed erodes your self-confidence. As you look back, doubts multiply.
You’d start to think, How can I trust myself or my decisions with this if I failed in that?
You can stand on the brink of breakthrough success, but because you’re tethered to what happened back then, the weight of that never lets you fly.
Living in the past is one of the worst kinds of sabotage because the past is over and done with it. But by living in it, you constantly breathe new life into it. So if you let it go, taking only the lessons you learned from the experience, you can move on – possibly to even more tremendous success than you’ve ever known.
#3 – You Are Not Consistent
You can sabotage your success when you need to be more consistent. Your mood constantly swings from one direction to the next. As a result, you must work hard to stick with something until you see it through.
People with yo-yo moods often get caught up in shiny new objects or idea syndrome. They’re full speed ahead working on something. They believe at the time that this is what they need to do, and they’re sure it will change their business or lives.
They’re enthusiastic and excited. But then the next thing comes along and captures their attention. Now they’re no longer interested in what they were doing. They might get discouraged about what they were working on because this new thing seems better or easier.
Their initial enthusiasm and excitement transfer to the shiny new object or idea. This kind of yo-yo mood can cause you to meander in your business. You aren’t accomplishing the success that you’d like to have because your focus needs to be 100% solidified.
You go wherever the mood takes you. You’re hedging your bets, only doing what you are tasked with until you feel something better comes along. When you have a yo-yo mood, you sabotage yourself because you work on your projects only when you feel like it.
When you don’t feel like it, you blow it off. This becomes a considerable problem when whatever you’re working on is essential for the success of your business. You can end up needing more consistency.
You might have a hundred projects, and most still need to be finished – if any. However, a mindset or actions requiring more consistency can lead to a dependence on inspiration to get things done.
You’re not dedicated to the task and can take it or leave it. The reason is that your mood convinces you that everything will be okay and that it’ll all work out regardless of the effort you do or don’t put into it.
Sometimes people don’t recognize this form of sabotage because they don’t understand it’s an issue. But you can tell that this mood is a struggle if you find yourself constantly creating excuses.
There’s not enough time to handle an important project, so you’ll spend time making a list instead. You change direction too quickly, whether in action or the mood. You can’t find the right resources or tools, so you’ll stop working on what you have to get done and instead work on what ìmovesî you regardless of whether or not it grows your profits or client list.
There are reasons why some people struggle with a yo-yo mood. One of these is due to a need for more accountability. If you have no one to answer, it’s more accessible to give in to the fluctuations.
When that happens, you can have a mindset that things will get done when they get done. This can lead to problems like blowing off tasks, missing deadlines, and more. You shrug it off and sabotage yourself in the process.
#4 – You Go to Extremes
One of the problems that many entrepreneurial types run into is that they can tend to go to extremes. Being someone who goes to extremes can have some advantages.
People who go to extremes can be super focused, but because it can cause you to live out of balance more often than not, it can also lead to burnout. But, on the other hand, going to the extreme makes your experience bigger.
So if you fail at something, you’ll have the mindset that a failure is the absolute end of something, rather than putting it into perspective and quickly moving on. When you live by extremes, you can have an all-or-nothing mindset, which lends to seeing every situation as one way or the other, with no middle ground.
This can become a cycle for how you live your personal life and conduct your business. Going to extremes can cause you to strive to become an overachiever. You’ll start setting impossible goals, such as landing 50 new clients in a week when the most you’ve ever converted is 5.
Giving in to extremes can make you drive yourself harder than is physically or mentally safe. You’ll develop tunnel vision and get so focused on one thing that you miss entirely other things that need your attention.
They are going to the extreme works both ways. For some, they go to the extreme of performance. Others go to the extreme of quitting. Their mindset is that if they can’t land at least 20 new clients in a week, they might as well quit.
Again, all-or-nothing thinking can have trace elements of perfectionism or low self-confidence at its root. People can try to improve themselves or measure up to an impossible standard.
Or, they can have doubts about their abilities, and going to the extreme, they try to compensate for those doubts. So, the same truth underlies whether you’re overachieving to reach impossible goals or quitting.
It’s that you’re putting unrealistic expectations on yourself. On the one hand, you’ll feel like you’re on top of the world. But, on the other hand, you’re invincible and will dominate at whatever you’re attempting to do.
But on the other hand, you’ll feel afraid and vulnerable – maybe even like a failure because your desire for what you can or can’t accomplish isn’t based on actual, achievable goals or expectations.
#5 – You Believe in Perfectionism
Someone who believes in perfectionism desires to do great things without flaw. They know where they’re going with every project; they have a lot of talent and great ideas and need help to take action steps.
One of the many causes of believing in perfectionism is focusing on the finished result. So you see the project as it should be when it’s completed rather than all the messy parts that go into putting it together.
Because you see the polished end, the chaotic beginning is more difficult for you. But unfortunately, people who believe in perfectionism often compare the beginning or middle of their efforts to someone else’s finished and polished creations.
So then they see their work as amateurish and others as professionals. Having a belief in perfectionism often causes procrastination. Not because the person needs the means, time, or knowledge to succeed but because the work is never done – never good enough for them.
These types of people will often find something to criticize about their efforts. This is because they work harder than most others yet often have a minor track record of accomplishments.
The mindset is often, ìIf this isn’t perfect, I won’t finish it until it is. Believing in perfectionism is rooted in self-doubt. They’re not afraid that the finished product won’t be worthy, but that somehow they won’t be worthy of admiration for their efforts.
It would be best if you learned to believe there’s no such thing as a perfect first-time product draft. Every creation has editing stages; these rough drafts are early action steps.
If you look at what your competitors have accomplished – such as products they’ve brought to the market or courses they’re offering clients- a belief in perfectionism can make it appear as if that product or system sprang into existence overnight.
That’s because all you see is what’s been done in the end. It would help if you saw the many hours of work poured into it. You don’t see the nights they felt like giving up or when they walked away and had to take a break because an issue stumped them.
You need to find out the resources they used or if they had outside help. A belief in perfectionism can cause you to need help to get started with your goals. To overcome that, you can create in the middle.
Work out of order, and then put whatever you’re trying to do together. The reason behind doing this is that it does away with the getting started mental roadblock.
One area that can lead to a belief in perfectionism is trying to compensate for something else. For example, you’re trying to be perfect in one place of your business because you feel like you’re failing in another. An example would be spending a lot of money constantly tweaking a website font or color when you know you should be working on getting your product launch ready.
Another area is overestimating your abilities. You don’t feel confident because your perfectionism has given you no room to learn what you need to know. As a result, you don’t let yourself experiment and fail and grow, which is, in essence, the nature of a business. And that prevents you from making the progress you should and need to make.
In conclusion, these 5 ways you sabotage your success are only a few of the many that exist. Taking control of your journey toward success and understanding how you can be your worst enemy will help move you in the right direction. Acknowledging behavior patterns can help you become aware of situations where you may be unknowingly sabotaging yourself so that you can consciously try to change them. With honest self-reflection or working with a life coach, everyone has the potential to move closer to their goals and achieve true success.
