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Most of us struggle with self-sabotaging. It’s a common practice to continually verbally abuse yourself.
One of my clients was recently telling me how one of her friends had an accident. She was telling me that if that had happened to her she would have done something impulsive.
Then she said she would have been mad at herself for making an impulsive decision. She said, “I would be saying, why did you do that? You're so stupid! Why do you always act so impulsively! Why can't you stop and think about your choice?" And I asked her, "How often do you sabotage yourself with words like that?" And she responded with, "All the time! I am always telling myself that I should have or that I'm stupid and so on." And I totally felt her pain.
I absolutely used to have head noise like that. I was always making myself wrong. And let me tell you what, the wrongness, just makes things worse and louder. If you want to break self-sabotaging habits you have to get clear about them.
Here are some steps to take to change self-sabotage for good.
1. Stop making yourself wrong.
If you want to stop making impulsive decisions or bad choices or feeling stupid the first thing you have to do is stop making yourself wrong for all of them. It’s really that simple for any repeated "mistake" or choice you don't want to choose anymore. You have to stop looping in how stupid or dumb or upsetting they are. We all make not so great choices, but you can’t loop in making yourself wrong about them. No one is perfect.
2. Ignore the head noise.
The thing about number one is, you are probably always auto-responding in making you wrong. To combat that you have to stop listening to your head. Your head is repeating patterns. It doesn't have any new information as it's just in recycle mode from the energy you have been in. It doesn't know a new way to be so you have to train it to think differently. First step in that is too ignore the negative head noise, eventually, it will ease up and then you can replant some new stuff.
3. Breathe.
When you feel overwhelmed or dumb or like you just made a really inappropriate choice and your trying to ignore your head. BREATHE. Take a nice deep breath. Look around you. Put your barriers down and do some expansion. Do anything you can to refrain from the old patterning.
4. Acknowledge what you did.
Acknowledge that you made a not so great decision. Okay. Great. You did something or choose something that you didn't want too. It's okay. Breathe. We all have made or said or did things we weren't proud of. Acknowledge it so you can move on.
5. Say you're sorry to yourself and anyone else if required.
Now that you have done it, ignored your head, took some deep breaths, expanded yourself out and acknowledge it. Now you can move on! Surrender to what happened and apologize. First to yourself, "whoops I did it again. I'm sorry I keep perpetuating those same patterns." Say it to those around you if you did something too.
6. Remind yourself you are choosing to change.
The most powerful thing you can do for yourself after apologizing is reminding yourself. "I don't want to do this anymore and I am going to do my best to choose something different next time.
7. Ask some questions.
Take some time to ask yourself some questions.
What have I learned? What can I do differently next time? What can I do to just receive and move on with my life?
8. Choose to do something different moving forward.
Make a conscious choice to stop doing whatever you did. And if you do it again tomorrow or in an hour or next month, go back to the beginning and repeat these steps.
Changing self-sabotaging behavior takes time and space. You must be patient with yourself, your learning a new way to be. If you need help, use some clearing tools. You can find some life-changing tools on my website and in my podcast.
About the author
Jamie Bates is a consciousness facilitator, author, podcast host, wife, mother, empath, and energy healer. Jamie's podcast, Expand Your Reality offers a wide variety of tools and healing processes that are also found in her many workshops and online programs. Check them all out at www.jamie-bates.com