One Way to Manage Self Sabotage

Self sabotage is self-defeating behaviour. It attacks your values and undermines your ability to achieve your goals. Clues to managing self sabotage are in it’s definition.

One, you are not your behaviour. Two, your values form your personal standards, so you can reduce self-sabotage by honouring them. Your personal standards hold your behaviour to account. If your standards are not clear, then you leave yourself open to acting in ways that you wish you hadn’t.

Think of your values as wholistic by nature. They imbue your mental, emotional and physical bodies. Right now, you’re emanating your values. You know what I mean. You have a good feeling about a person. Or you have a bad feeling about a person. You’re getting a sense of their values.

Embodying your values makes it easier to stand by them. When you live by your values, you are living your truth. When you have established clear values, you’re able to call on any one of them and apply it when the need arises.

Your values are yours to pick and choose. Values such as loyalty, honour, respect, authenticity, trust, and equality fuel behaviours.

I am loyal. I am honourable. I am respectful. You get the idea.

But.

Of course, it’s worth pushing this further. From another perspective:

I am disloyal. I am dishonourable. I am disrespectful.

Another perspective:

I have been disloyal. I have been dishonourable. I have been disrespectful.

One more perspective:

I have been betrayed. I have been dishonoured. I have been disrespected.

It’s clear that personal values need to be questioned because they affect personal standards and behaviours. The values that are dear to some are not to others. Your behaviour is a accurate demonstration of your values and therefore, your personal standards. You might question what’s right or wrong, but I find it useful to think about the application of values as either constructive or destructive, and wholistic or selective.

Honour might be a constructive behaviour, but not if it’s misplaced. A classic example is the concept of honour amongst thieves. Using honour for your personal advantage and confining it to one area of life is not wholistic. It’s selective, so it discriminates. Which indicates that this wannabe honourable thief also values discrimination because other areas of life are not worthy of being honoured. They are worth being dishonoured. To be sure, this indicates the potential for honour to exist outside of thiefdom, but any thief will tell you that’s not easy to prove.

Conquering self-sabotage is a life long task. You can sabotage yourself, but once that sabotage ball starts to gain ground, you may be tempted to compromise your standards in an effort to regain it. And you leave yourself open for others to sabotage you.

In your heart of hearts, and unless it’s a mental health condition, if you wanted to reduce self sabotage then you would examine your motives for self sabotage right now. How does it serve you? What do you gain from it? Why does it suit you to sabotage yourself? What does it allow you to get away with? What excuses does it give you?

Do any of these behaviours make a constructive contribution to the evolution of human consciousness? Because that is the power of your values in action.