Break Up With Self-Sabotage!

Understanding some of your self-sabotaging habit patterns is essential to being able to work with them and make positive changes. Let's take a deeper look at how to move through some of your conditioning toward this bad habit to the other side of sabotage, to freedom!

Here is a link to a little Self-Sabotage questionnaire. If you are ready to get personal up in here and really address what's holding you back, go ahead and take the quiz, and come back to learn more about breaking up with this negative pattern. 

Ease OUT of Self-Sabotage!

​Start Where You Are - Look back at your quiz results. If you answered a 5 or higher on any of these, make a little list. Read through the list and notice which ones seem most relevant to you right now. What intuitively feels like it is tripping you up the most, as you are today? If there are a lot, pick the three that resonate with you the most. 

Reframe the Habit in Your Own Words - Make it as relevant to your life as you can. Can you see this pattern interfering with your current success? Write your thoughts down about this. 
Once you bring light to the unconscious behaviors that trip you up, you will begin to see them as they happen in real time. You can set a trigger for behavior change right now. When that problematic behavior crops up, you can have a strategy for how you will respond in the future. For example, if you're feeling a bout of low self-esteem and drawn to go on an impulse shopping trip to numb out those feelings, let that be a trigger for you to take 2 minutes, sit down, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and then find a place to get a cup of tea instead of heading to the mall. Use your time to focus on your breath, and on a nurturing behavior instead of one that will compromise not only your bank account and maybe relationship, but also your integrity. 

Any Behavior Change Strategy Needs an Identifiable or Tangible Trigger - When you notice or do X, instead you'll do Y. EX: when I start ruminating about going to Athleta to buy myself a new pair of leggings because I'm feeling bad about myself and I start to feel that dopamine hit, that's when I'll catch myself, sit down wherever I can, take 3 deep breaths  and make a plan about where I'll get tea instead. Maybe I could even keep a running list on my phone of how much I'm saving when I skip the impulse buy, and when I've tallied $1000, THEN I congratulate myself with a gift, not as therapy, but as reward for hard work. 

Changes Should Be Small to Succeed - When we try to change too much at a time, we set ourselves up for failure, thereby ensuring that the negative habit that we're aiming at will win out in the end. Make your change small and doable instead of giant and unattainable (for a long period of time). Rewire your brain with a methodical, slow meticulousness that will help you want to and be able to maintain going forward. 

Give it a try and please let me know how it goes for you. I'm deeply interested in your habit evolution! Comment below or email me at [email protected]. 

In evolutionary process, 
Alex