I’m re-posting this as a note to myself to remember self sabotage – it’s at work again with me right this very minute.

We all do it.

It’s the cookie, that extra drink, the extra twenty dollars we threw away on something meaningless, the weight we didn’t lose, the cigarettes we didn’t stop smoking, the unwritten lines, the unpainted canvas, the thing we wanted to do that we didn’t do because something got in the way.

Self Sabotage.

Sometimes things do get in the way and that’s legitimate and reasonable, but I often look back on things and think – oh man – I did that to myself, things didn’t just get in the way.

Self sabotage is our way of letting ourselves off the hook for something we want but at the same time fear might come true. We don’t usually recognize the fear part of it, we think we want it, but there is a part of us that is saying no way, you can’t have that, you aren’t good enough, smart enough – insert any “you aren’t xxx” here.

Self sabotage is our quickest way out – it’s our way off the ledge.

It’s the easiest way to get out of doing what you want to do. Sometimes we hold ourselves back or blame other people for getting in the way of our dreams, but if everything in life is a choice, then we can say yes or no. There is not one thing we must say yes to. Self sabotage is our way of getting out of things we’ve said yes to that we don’t want to be doing or the things that scare us, the things we want to say yes to, but for some reason cannot. It’s as if we can’t really stand up and make the choice, so instead we get ourselves there in another way. We sabotage ourselves into it.

For me it’s finishing some writing work. Excuses. Excuses. EXCUSES. I write and write, but I labor over the finishing. Self sabotage. STOP.

No more laboring, just keep going. Decide if it’s what you really want and then GO! Don’t give up, don’t sabotage yourself into giving up, no excuses. Go to the end and then decide.

You’ll be happy you did.