Self-sabotage occurs when you wittingly or unwittingly become your own worst enemy. As your own worst enemy, you tend to do the opposite of what would make you happy and successful.

If you were to look closely, you’d likely discover that many failed goals, relationships, businesses, and dreams have strong roots in self-sabotage. We tend to get in our own way – and do it consistently.  What if we didn’t, though?

What if you eradicated self-sabotage from your life? Wouldn’t that be transformational?

You’d immediately begin to reap the following 7 benefits.

1. Better Decisions

Poor, impulsive decisions are often the gateway to failure. When you make a self-sabotaging decision, you have to get very lucky in order for things to work out. Here are some examples:

  • Saying yes to marriage when you have serious doubts about the person you are with.
  • Starting a business without experience, funds or a plan.
  • Making purchases that you cannot afford.
  • Confiding in someone with a history of gossip.
  • Doing something with your life for the sole purpose of pleasing someone else.
  • Saying yes even though you mean no.

Essentially, self-sabotaging decisions overlook all the red flags, good advice and sound logic that lead to happiness and success.  If you had no self-sabotaging tendencies, you’d make much better, more mature decisions. Decisions would be patient, timely, set up for success and aligned with who you are.

2. More Self-Discipline

A lack of self-discipline leads to emptiness and misery. When you don’t control your eating, spending, study habits, time, excessive behaviors and emotions, you lose a grip on life.  If you had no self-sabotaging tendencies however, you’d follow through with your plans, exercise even when feel down or lazy, be strict with what goes into your body, honor your commitments and motivate yourself even when it is difficult to do so.

Self-sabotage encourages you to take the easy way out, but that is a self-deception. The easy way out is often the path that challenges you to become your best self, not run from it.

3. Better Relationships

Relationships are perhaps the ultimate test of maturity. Can you speak your mind, be flexible, take the other’s point of view, make sacrifices and be true to your word?  Can you balance respectfully your needs with the needs of your partner? Most of all, can you do what you know in your heart is right and take feedback with an open mind? In the absence of self-sabotage, yes you can!

Self-sabotage would have you choose wrong relationship partners, and then have you justify your poor choices. You’ll choose people who control, reject and deprive you of what you need to be happy.

4. Vitality and Health

“There is no greater peace than to know that you are 100% invested in fulfilling your purpose in life to the best of your ability.”

Lots of energy and vitality are not difficult to acquire. You just need to eat right, exercise and supplement any nutritional deficiencies over time. This requires lots of study and experimentation. Most of all, it requires sticking to a conscious plan consistently.

In the absence of self-sabotage, you absolutely can achieve a wonderful and fulfilling state of physical and mental health. Just do the research and stick to the plan. You want to treat your mind and body respectfully, because they are your vehicles to peace and happiness. It’s obvious! Why would you ever mistreat yourself? You would because self-sabotage will encourage you to give up and throw your health out the window. In some cases, people are willing to shave decades off their life as part of their cycle of self-sabotage.

5. Peace of Mind

There is no greater peace than to know that you are 100% invested in fulfilling your purpose in life to the best of your ability. Peace of mind comes from acting in the way that you know is right, working hard and accepting your limitations.  Self-sabotage is the ultimate destroyer of inner peace. Self-sabotage is that voice in your mind that tells you to give up, that you can’t do it, that it’s not worth it. If this voice is more powerful than you, then you’ll probably believe it and not put forth your best effort. No peace in this!

6. Greater Emotional Resources

Most people have tremendous emotional resilience and resources. Within you lies the courage, patience, drive and the will to do whatever it takes to achieve your goals. That is, until self-sabotage convinces you otherwise. Again, that voice in your head that criticizes your efforts would have you give in to despair and helplessness.  When you give power to your self-sabotaging tendencies, you give in to pessimism and failure – and lose access to your emotional strength.

7. Stuff Just Works!

The bottom line, whatever you set out to do will be as successful as it can be if you stay out of your own way. And when you put forth your best effort only to meet failure, you’ll still be pleased with yourself; accept the defeat and begin to make new plans, incorporating what you have learned.

Here’s a bizarre, challenging self-sabotage experiment:

If you have a pattern of failure in any area of your life, try the following experiment.
Warning: This may seem crazy, but if you do it, you may blow your own mind.

1. Consider the failure – where are you struggling to succeed?

2. When failure happens, how do you feel? Humiliated, rejected, empty, out-of-control, helpless, lonely, worthless?

3. Pretend that some part of you is so used to feeling this feeling that it actually seeks out opportunities to feel that way again. In other words, this negative feeling is seeking to be expressed, over and over. And your unwitting failures are the perfect opportunity. Therefore, in a strange way, you are actually motivated to fail!

4. Now, catch yourself setting yourself up for failure. How do your decisions and actions lead directly into these old, familiar negative feelings? Once you understand the process, you are on the way to letting go and living up to your potential.

To learn more about how self-sabotage works, and a simple process to move beyond it, watch this free video.