Category: self-care

Self-sabotage is a real thing. To know you are within sight of achieving your goals but self-doubt and your ego trip you up and fear keep you down is the reality for too many among us. 

Self-doubt 

Self-doubt is one of our greatest nemeses. It tells you, you cannot do anything and you cannot achieve anything, that you are limited by your limitations. For whatever reason, we feel compelled to second guess everything we do. In many instances, we may seem to take steps forward but because of self-doubt, we take even more steps backwards that keep us from what we truly want. Debilitating self-doubt means deferred or abandoned dreams which is the tragic reality for too many. Too many who have been buried with their potential, potential, as Myles Munroe said in one of his sermons, robbed the world of great books, great inventions or great ideas that could have led to transforming lives.

The Ego When it is Negative 

Now, this is a tough one. Our ego distorts our impression of ourselves. It can make us see ourselves constantly needing to prove something when all we need to do is stay within the bounds of what we can do at a particular time. So, to prove we can in every way we overextend ourselves and our resources and try to be an overachiever when no one asked us to be. As a matter of fact, no one required this of us, except our ego, which we work hard to appease to the detriment of our possible success. 

No one has the answers to all we need to know in this life. But we can take the time to reset and reevaluate where we are to avoid self-sabotaging our way through life. We have to return to the simple truth, “once we know better, we must do better”. We know what we must do to be true to who we are to avoid self-sabotage. Let us stop with poor thinking, excuses, self-doubt and a ‘woe are me’, mentality when all we need to do, is do what is right. Nothing is wrong with having a healthy view

of yourself, I believe it is necessary. However, we need to come to terms with the truth that we are not always authentic and we need to be more authentic and more intentional about who we are and how we want to be treated by other.

Fear Can Imprison Us

Then there is fear, the biggest nemesis to self-actualisation. We court fear when we doubt everything we do or say. Fear can come from feeling that at any moment people will realise that we are a fraud and we don’t belong. Such thinking ultimately can lead us to do everything except what we need to do to be on our way, to our business. The vicious cycle that fear can produce will have us seeing a light but remaining in the shadows, frustrated with our inability to move when we need to move. We cannot allow fear to have a stronghold on our minds and in our souls. Once it is there, it will never want to leave because it finds fertile ground to thrive. Let us instead do things anyway, even if you cannot utter a word because if you try to you now you will choke. Move even if it takes all your strength because you have to fight against an insane logic that tells you survival rests in being inactive.

It’s hard but we have to constantly fight against our self-sabotaging ways. For if we do not, how can we truly be the best we can be and experience the joy of living in our truth?