If you’ve been working hard to improve your life but you’re not feeling any closer to success, you might be showing a few sneaky signs of self-sabotage.
It’s frustrating to feel like nothing you do is making a difference. Whether you’re trying to build a successful business, lose weight, or improve your mindset, it can feel like an uphill battle trying to make progress.
If this is an issue for you right now, you could be making it hard for yourself without even realizing it. You might be self-sabotaging, which is saying you want something and then making choices that prevent it from happening.
One of the easiest ways to improve your life is to become aware of the moments when you self-sabotage. In this post, I’ll pinpoint five common signs of self-sabotage so you can see if any of them are sneaking their way into your daily life.
P.S. If you haven’t yet read this post about what self-sabotage is, I’d recommend reading it first.
5 Sneaky Signs of Self-Sabotage
1. Overplanning
Planning is a stress-buster. It lets us get ahead before we get overwhelmed. The downside of planning is that many of us use it to avoid taking action. We’d rather come up with a super detailed plan than actually act on it. That’s because we like to use planning as a procrastination tool. You might like the feeling of being organized, but you have to make sure you’re taking action for the planning to be worth it. Otherwise, you’ll have wasted the time planning when you could have accomplished something on your to-do list.
Related Post: How to Plan Your Weekly Schedule for Success
2. Searching for inspiration
Like overplanning, searching for inspiration is another way you procrastinate without realizing it. Instead of getting started, you search for answers with the mindset that you need help taking the first step. When you keep searching for answers, you might feel even more overwhelmed because you’re left with a) nothing useful or b) too much information. In reality, you don’t need help from others to get your own ideas going. Dig into what you already know and get started before you know the answers.
Related Post: Why Searching For Answers Is Keeping You Stuck
3. Lack of commitment
Have you ever started something only to give up halfway through because it wasn’t getting the results you wanted? For example, you started a blog but no one read it, so you created a new blog in a different niche. If you’d have given it more time, the results would have most likely come. You can’t always expect immediate gratification. Success happens when you commit to yourself and your ideas, even when it feels like nothing is happening.
Related Post: How To Stop Talking Yourself Out Of Things
4. Lack of consistency
Spontaneity is the key to making life fun, but consistency is vital to success. If you lack consistency in your work, your behavior, or your daily routine, you’ll find it difficult to actually make progress. Maybe you say you’re going to do one thing and then a) totally forget about it or b) end up avoiding it. You have to think about whether people can trust you. Can you even trust yourself to do what you say you’ll do? If you don’t have consistency in life, you’ll constantly feel like you’re playing catch up.
Related Post: 3 Mindset Shifts That Build Self-Trust
5. Putting yourself into a box
Have you been overthinking the way you define yourself? You might think you can’t do something because your personality isn’t right. You might think no one will take you seriously because you’re weird and silly in your private life. But what about the fact that you’re completely professional at work? You can be both smart AND silly. You can be deep and lighthearted. We are all multi-faceted, and it doesn’t have to be something that holds you back. What holds you back is thinking that you have to have a certain type of personality to be successful.
Related Post: How To Build The Confidence To Pursue Your Dreams
9 Responses
Nice post, number 3 particularly rang a bell with me; yes it is important to keep going even when no results are emerging. Hanging in there with consistency is the key, thanks for the reminder!
I relate to all of them! Your post here rang true on so many accounts – and I wasn’t even aware that the things I’ve been doing are self-sabotage, but now I am aware I can address things – so thank you!
Also – I never (well rarely) sign up for newsletters from websites, but your site has spoken to me on so many levels and so many issues that I am facing right now. I am so grateful to find it – and I look forward to your newsletter in my inbox. Thanks so much Catherine.
I’m so glad to hear that, Kate! Hope the weekly emails will be of value to you xo
Kate Jessen, I also relate to all of them as well. I never knew that I was self- sabotaging myself. Now I can have something that i can focus on.
I think I definitely over plan things! I recently heard the saying, “done is better than perfect”. How true! Its something for me to work on.
nice blog thanks for the information
I have been sabotaging my own success and getting in the way of my own happiness for the past 5 years. The thing is, I know exactly what those self-sabotaging attitudes/behaviors are, but I don’t have the courage or strength to fight.
To be honest, this depression is kicking my butt, and I do believe it has contributed to my negative view of self, a lack of self-discipline, and fear of putting myself out there because of what others will think. As it stands, I am thinking about starting a Youtube channel, because I want to do better. Hence, I am doing enough research to pick myself up and push myself out there… I am a nervous wreck. But I have to feel the fear and do it anyway. Thank you so much for this article.
Wow growing up learning so much about life and people how to and what to i thought i knew enough to understand such things on why but yet i struggle there was something still not working which was the self sabotaging . the whole time i blamed others but it was me that i never realized . thank you for the wake up call this is truly important information and am looking forward to challenging my self and at last be in harmony with with my life journey ..
Great information ! Thank you!