How to Break Free from Self-Sabotage | A Guide to Empowerment and Success

When it comes to our success, the thing that typically holds us back from getting what we want is what is happening in our heads. The self-doubt we can feel when we want to follow our dreams can be so powerful it stops us before we even start. The reality is we are all capable and we all deserve the lives we dream about. To get that life, we must all learn how to break free from self-sabotage. What follows is a guide to empowerment and success you can use any time you want to bring more into your life and make your big vision a reality.

What is the root cause of self-sabotage?

To get past self-sabotage, we must start at the core, not with the symptoms, however, the symptoms can tell you that you are self-sabotaging. Symptoms can include feeling stuck, comparing yourself to others, continually looking to others for advice, procrastination, overthinking, and more. 

When we follow the threads back from the symptoms, we can see it comes down to the level of self-respect we have. Respect and trust go together hand and glove. If you do not respect yourself and trust in your own decisions, you will not feel empowered to move toward the things you want. That’s where self-sabotage comes in. It is also why you may feel quite confident and find it easy to move ahead in some areas of your life, but not in others. 

Our self-respect and feelings of worthiness, or a lack thereof, are built through our experiences, many from our childhoods. 

What we must remember is that who we were then is not who we are now, and that our past does not equal our future.

We have the power to choose who we will be in each and every moment. We have the ability to learn. And through our determination, we can empower ourselves to create the success we want to experience in our lives. 

Why do I self-sabotage so badly? 

Taking what we learned above about the core of self-sabotage, the reason we do it is based in fear and doubt. We don’t trust in ourselves and our ability to meet our goals. In How to Overcome Fear and Take Action I give steps you can take to get out of that state of overwhelm. One of those steps is separating fact from fiction, which is an important one for getting past self-sabotage. 

When we realize that many of our feelings of unworthiness come from our childhoods, we also empower ourselves to take the step back and recognize we are not that person anymore. That means many of the thoughts we have in our heads about ourselves are not true. It also means that we have been making many decisions in our adult lives based on those childhood fictions! 

This is why we have to take the time to separate facts from fiction, in order to break free from self-sabotage.

How do you break free from self-sabotage?

I want to preface this by saying, based on our personal life experiences, each of us will start in a different place, and some of us will need more help than others. Sometimes it will require professional help. It’s important to remember this is not a statement of self, it is simply a starting point, and to become our best and bring into our lives everything we deserve, we must use all the tools at our disposal, which will help us move forward faster and more effectively.

To get past self-sabotage, we all must start with the mind. 

Our self talk is so important because everything we say to ourselves our brain believes. That means we need to know when the inner critic is speaking to us, and we must take steps to curb the negative talk, which is where separating the facts from the fiction comes in. 

When your inner critic gets loud, ask yourself if what it is saying is true. 

If it is NOT true, why not? Take the time to write down your answers, which will help to reinforce those answers in your mind. That will, in turn, improve your self-confidence and with it, your self-respect, helping you feel more empowered. From that state it is easier to take the steps toward your success. 

If what your inner critic says is true, it’s important to lean into what it is saying and get to the specifics.

For example, let’s say you want to start a new business, and you have never done that before. Your inner critic might say, “You have no idea how to do that. You will fail.”

The fact that you have no idea how to start a business, is a true statement. You will fail, is not. Failure cannot be determined without taking action, and even then, it is just data we can use to build a new strategy, which means we can set that statement aside and put our focus on the true statement. 

The final step is to build a strategy based on your inner critic’s true statement.  

Working with the fact that you don’t know how to start a business, gives you a starting point to build a strategy to get what you want. In this case, you just need more information, so the first step in your strategy will be to find it. That can come from courses, books, coaches, mentors and more. You’d select the option that works best for you. 

From there, it’s simply a matter of taking that step, then checking in with your progress. With new information, you adjust your strategy based on your results, set a new goal and take the next step toward bringing what you want to life, which takes you out of self-sabotage and puts you into action, leading to your success!

When we learn how to break free from self-sabotage, we see that the steps are simple and straightforward. By taking the steps above, we have a guide to empowerment and success that we can use any time we are feeling unsure of ourselves or when we feel afraid to move forward.

If you would like a comprehensive guide to overcome self-sabotage and fear, I invite you to get a copy of Outwitting the Devil, by Napoleon Hill. In it, Hill digs deep to identify the greatest obstacles we face in reaching our personal goals—including fear, procrastination, anger, and jealousy—and he gives seven principles that will allow us to triumph over each one to finally succeed. CLICK HERE to get your copy now.