The lens that we wear to see the world around us is often so tinted, that we barely even notice. Sometimes our believes are stronger than the facts, the other times we would just believe the facts the world shows us.
Sometimes we have happy ears and we hear what we want to, the other times we deliberately twist what we have been told just to be able to hear what we don't want to hear! In all these truths, there's a pattern - we like to sabotage facts, relations and realities just to be able to conform to whatever lens we wear.
What is self sabotaging behaviour?
When things seem to be going smoothly, the proactive tendency to doubt the "smoothness" and the tendency to disrupt the route is self-sabotaging. The disbelief that things can go right and one can be happy without any questions or disruptions, cause people to self-sabotage. When one believes completely that things cannot go right without any disruptions, they start to create disruptions themselves - that is self sabotaging.
It can begin in thoughts and grow into actions. But when someone keeps sabotaging their good "memories" or "relations" or "work", constantly; that's when the problem arises.
Source: InnerSight Blog.
Few examples of self-sabotaging behaviours:
"It will fail anyway" is usually always the foundation of all self-sabotaging behaviours. If not always, most of the times, this phrase is the culprit.
Procrastination:
"It's anyway going to fail, why even strive towards it then?" This is a self-sabotaging behaviour that stems completely from your belief or perception that it is not going to work-out. When you have a pre-conceived notion that something won't work out, you sub-consciously work towards making it fail. By not working towards it, you are only strengthening the chance of the thing failing. And when it does fail (which it will, because you did not work toward it), you'll then say "I thought so!". You have only re-affirmed your belief that it wasn't going to work out anyway.
Over-thinking and drawing your own conclusions:
Because you are so scared of the unknowns and the uncertainty, you create all sorts of X+Y = Z situations and scenarios in your head. You do that just to be able to protect yourself and tell yourself stories you keep telling yourself. "They will cheat on me!" :: You will create all scenarios you can think of, of them cheating on you - just to be able to safe guard yourself and also prove yourself right. Even if they are not cheating, you will constantly keep making scenarios and assuming that they are cheating on you.
Accusing others based on your own conclusions:
Because you made multiple scenarios in your head already - you start believing those scenarios. You start thinking on the lines of "Yes, why else would they take so long to reply me. They are cheating" and then start accusing and taunting the other person. You have started to believe your own version of reality so much - that was created in your head - that you get swayed far away from the actual factual reality.
Not standing and delivering:
You keep compromising your own words, beliefs, promises and even ethics again and again. YOU yourself do not deliver on your words, because you are too scared of failing if you actually deliver - so you would rather not even try. And because now you have not delivered, you tell yourself a number of stories just to conform to the belief that you would have failed anyway, so it was worth not even trying!
Drawing incorrect patterns:
"Someone has tried this, and failed. So I will fail too". This is something you keep telling yourself because you have drawn some patterns with broken facts and incomplete information. Now that you have just observed some incorrect patterns, you set out to actually prove this theory / pattern right and set yourself up for failure in a way that is abiding by the pattern.
Extreme control and visibility:
Self-sabotaging tendencies also give rise to wanting to know everything that there is to know, so that you can control the outcome of it all. While in reality, there's no way we can control an outcome of certain things like relationships, like gambling or even like stock market. But the urge to have visibility and to control every single stimulus in the environment will eventually end up suffocating whatever there is to grow. Once it suffocates enough, it either dies or leaves - thus again conforming your negative theories that it was bound to fail.
How I stopped myself from self-sabotaging:
Perfection is not always needed:
Procrastination stems from the fact that you need / want things to be perfect and if it is not perfect, it's deemed to fail. This belief can go to bed for a while. If you look around, and really LOOK around - universe, people and nature look to get things done (completed) rather than having them completed perfectly and flawlessly.
Some times summers arrive a bit late - but they do. Sometimes rains last a bit longer before they go away - but they do. Sometimes sun sets in early and in a haste way that is not picturesque - but it does set. Sometimes a cow gives birth to a calf that would be limping for the rest of its life - but the cow did give birth.
Sometimes it is important to get things done - however it is.
Tell this to yourself every single day - and then look for examples around that are so beautifully imperfect.
Separating real facts from your assumed facts - every now and then:
Sometimes our brains alter reality and they like to tether in charted waters - which is harming. If you have never known real happiness, your brain will stop you from experiencing it - by telling you that you cannot experience real happiness without deeper sadness. It will create random facts that do not, in reality, exist. But again, if those facts do not exist in reality - you are being anxious about things that DO NOT exist!
Separate yourself from the version you have created in your own head, and then pull yourself back to the facts that you KNOW for real, and have confirmed.
Separate yourself from what you think you know, from what you actually know.
Separate yourself from accusations you have built in, from the facts that reality has to present.
"I deserve happiness without expecting caveats"
You are good enough. You deserve to be loved, without being perfect yourself. Others deserve to be loved, without them being perfect. You deserve happiness without expecting it to fall or fail.
When you keep repeating the above mantras to yourself over and over again - you allow yourself to be genuinely happy, even if for a few spells of time - without trying to look for reasons to not be happy.
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