How to Stop Self-Sabotaging & Pursue Your Dreams

Most common reasons for self-sabotage

1. Comparisonitis

When you compare yourself to others, you’re doing yourself a huge disservice.
To compare is to despair, because it’s impossible to look at this objectively.

We only see the tip of the iceberg of other people’s success.
You can never really know how much effort, sweat and tears got them to where they are now.

So when you feel like a failure because your results should be “so much better” your measuring system is probably off.

And that can make you self-sabotage because you get so discouraged in comparison that you don’t even want to give it a real try.

Never underestimate the network most successful people have. They invested a lot of time and money into building it.

Also, they usually started many years ago, when it was much easier to get noticed.
It’s possible that they wouldn’t have the same success if they were just starting out now.

So, focus on your own progress. Do something every day that makes you better.
Improve yourself and don’t beat yourself up over others who are years ahead of you.

2. Imposter syndrome

Who am I to be doing this? Why should anyone listen to me?
One day, they will find out that I was just lucky and that I’m actually a fraud!

Does any of that sound familiar? When you suffer from imposter syndrome, you don’t believe that you’re competent.

You may see yourself as kind of competent, but not at that level. And one day, you’re sure it will all blow up.

You’re comparing yourself to others again, even others who are completely fictional.
Like this perfect person who knows so much more about your job than you do.

Only, this person doesn’t even exist if you think about it objectively.

Because you are good or even great at what you do.
You just put way too much pressure on yourself because of this imaginary perfect person.

Whichever little weakness or doubt you have, you think Mr. Perfect doesn’t have it.

But this comparison is completely irrational and unreasonable. Stop putting this kind of expectations on yourself.

It only hurts your confidence and can go as far as hurt your performance, again because it can lead to self-sabotage.

Even the people you admire are not perfect.
And famous people occasionally suffer from imposter syndrome, too.

Be your own cheerleader 
Regularly write down your skills and accomplishments.
Then acknowledge that there aren’t that many people who have your skillset.

And even less people are better than you in your area of expertise.
Even if some better people exist, they are not here, so you truly are the best person for the job!

3. Procrastination

Aahh, procrastination is a perfect example for self-sabotage.

Instead of tackling your important tasks in a timely manner, you do plenty of unrelated stuff.
You’re avoiding the task at hand because you don’t feel like doing it.

When you spend your day on Netflix or Social Media it’s pretty obvious.
But procrastination can be sneaky, too. In that case, you keep yourself busy with lower priority tasks.

Yes, you need to do them at some point, but you really should be working on your high priority, high impact task.

You can have different reasons why you’re avoiding the crucial task

• you’re missing information (and know you’ll get stuck very soon)
• you’re not inspired by what you’re doing
• you feel overwhelmed by the workload of this task/project
• you want it to be perfect (but you can’t do it perfectly)
• you don’t know where to start 
• you’re scared you’ll fail