Have you ever realized that you were sabotaging yourself? I had that experience last weekend and it came as a bit of a shock because I recognized a pattern that I’ve repeated again and again in my life.
Many of you already know that I joined Toastmasters about six months ago to help get over my fear of public speaking. Recently I’ve decided that I need to start looking for more opportunities to speak because I’ve gotten better at speaking in front of my Toastmasters club.
New opportunities with new people would challenge me even further. I decided to start writing a longer speech. Toastmasters speeches tend to be about five to seven minutes in length and I thought if I volunteered to speak in front of a different kind of group I’d probably have to speak a bit longer.
I thought a good way to do this would be to break a longer speech down into seven minute segments that I could practice at Toastmasters. So I figured out what I’d be most qualified to speak about and wrote the first seven minute segment of what was to be a longer speech with the intention of practicing it at Toastmasters last Thursday.
Normally when I am scheduled to give a speech I write it way ahead of time so I could memorize it. I did that this time, but during weekend when I should’ve been memorizing it I suddenly started having doubts.
I started thinking, “Who am I to give a speech about this? I’m no expert. I should just write something funny.” So I wrote a funny speech about dogs. Then I didn’t like that either so I wrote a different funny speech about how to buy local organic food cheaply. That speech was a bomb too so I wrote a speech about how I was having difficulty writing a speech.
It was speech writing madness in this house. I was working on memorizing the final speech I’d written when I realized what I was doing. I was sabotaging myself. Here I was getting ready to move forward and work on improving my speaking ability a bit more, but I suddenly decided I wasn’t good enough or worthy and I decided to speak about something silly and give up on the original speech idea.
This is a recurring pattern in my life. As soon as I approach the point where I could make a major breakthrough in my life, I start to backpedal. I give up on the idea and start doing something else completely. It happens again and again. The difference between me now and the me of the past is that this time I was aware enough to recognize that old pattern creeping in. I recognized it and then I stopped.
I ended up giving the original speech I’d written at Toastmasters last week. It went pretty well. I had no reason to be freaked out about it at all.
Now that I realize what one of my patterns of self-sabotage is I’m able to be on the lookout for it a bit more easily in the future.
What can you do to keep self-sabotage at bay?
Keep your end goal in mind and occasionally ask yourself if what you are doing is moving you closer to or away from that goal. My multiple speeches were moving me away from my goal of speaking in front of a different, larger audience.
Develop self-awareness. Most of the things we do in our lives are habitual. We react without even thinking. Self-sabotage is a habit. If we can catch ourselves acting in a way that is destructive or contrary to our best interests we can work on breaking the habit. When you aren’t even aware that you have a self-sabotaging pattern of behavior doing something about it can be next to impossible.
Meditation has helped me gain a much better sense of myself. It is the key thing that I’ve done to develop self-awareness.
If you’re not meditating get started. It can give you tremendous results.
If you’re not convinced about the importance of self-awareness listen to last week’s podcast. In it Dr. Patricia Thompson talks about the connection between self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
Journal regularly. By reflecting on events in your life and your reactions you can start to notice patterns of behavior.
Be compassionate with yourself. Self-sabotaging behaviors come from a place of protection. There is a part of you that is trying to protect you from something that seems frightening, dangerous, or threatening in some way. It protects you by doing something to keep you from moving forward.
Acknowledge that the behavior comes for a good place. That no matter how bad it is, it is trying to protect you from something. Don’t beat yourself up about it. There is no point in doing that now. You’ve found the pattern and you can change it. No amount of being angry with yourself will change what has happened in the past so don’t waste your time with it.
From this moment you can do things differently. That’s all that matters.