The problem with us, our over-academised generation, is that we can talk-very well-about things. But we can't make them.

"The fizzy drink and the chips have made me sick"




"I made myself sick by drinking the fizzy drink and eating the chips"

Understanding Self-Sabotage, Part A

Behavior is said to be self-sabotaging when it creates problems and interferes with long-standing goals. The most common self-sabotaging behaviors are procrastination, self-medication with drugs or alcohol, comfort eating, and forms of self-injury such as cutting. These acts may seem helpful in the moment, but they ultimately undermine us, especially when we engage in them repeatedly.

These acts are a short-cut to feeling well, but place us further from our long-term goals into a self-destructive cycle. The thought pocesses that lead into self-sabotage don't spur action, inspiration, or problem-solving. We can used sentences like "X is this way, but Y can be that way" to change our behavioural patterns.

People aren't always aware of their own self-sabotage as the effects of their behavior may not show up for some time. Unfortunately, connecting a behavior to self-defeating consequences is no guarantee that a person will disengage from the behavior. Still, it is possible to overcome almost any form of self-sabotage, and people do it every day. There are behavioral therapies aimed at interrupting ingrained patterns of thought and action and strengthening deliberation and self-regulation processes. Motivational therapies reconnect people with their goals and values. There are even computer programs that help eliminate the constant temptation of online distractions.

Other though processes can include ideas that we try to avoid, or thoughts we are afraid to face. Sometimes we do this because our thoughts terrify us. The more you battle your thoughts, the more you deny yourself the opportunity to work through them, and the more you keep yourself locked in a negative pattern. Try acknowledging your thoughts and facing them, emphasizing that they are just thoughts, and labeling them as such. For example: "I'm having the thought that it was a mistake to get engaged. That's probably because I've been stressed out. I don't have to be afraid of this thought; it is human. I will get a bit more sleep, get over this bad week at work, and see if I feel differently. If I don't, I'll think things through further."

Burying feeling can also be a trigger to self-sabotaging behaviours. Thus feelings, when hidden, grow bigger and bigger. And they are prone to corroding people from the inside out. Emotions don't tend to go away on their own just because we try to keep them in. It's similar to repeatedly slamming down a lid onto a pot of water that's boiling over. You know that if you let the water get a little bit of air—set the lid so that it doesn't completely cover the pot—you'll soon get a calm, smooth boil instead of a frothy, rattling mess. Acknowledging your feelings doesn't make them spin out of control, but putting the lid on them does.

Procrastination can also play a big part, when we try to shift forwards or move our feelings to avoid feeling anxiety or panic. If you are someone who must have a "clean slate" to get motivated, it need not be tomorrow. Why not have that clean slate start in one hour? Or fifteen minutes? This helps stop the surge of all or nothing thinking that can lead you to write off the rest of the day, getting you farther and farther from your goals. Even better, instead of arbitrarily declaring the slate clean because the calendar flipped over, create a true and meaningful clean slate through your behavior. Take a brisk walk. Do a brief meditation. Have a quick chat with a friend. Do some breathing exercises. Allow yourself five minutes of a video that makes you laugh. Each of these things can help reset your mind and your productivity much better than the vague "tomorrow," which, when you think about it, is never actually here and never really puts you in the driver's seat.

In this way, coping strategies can become powerful new habits if we incorporate them into our daily routines. The calendar flipping to a new year, feelings of being "fed up," new workout gear, or public promises can all (briefly) jumpstart new behaviors. But they don't address the underlying inertia, which is truly needed to change long-term behavior. You must build the right day-to-day structure in order for new habits to take hold. Otherwise the inertia of the old habits never really goes away. Yes, those new workout pants are fabulous, but if your gym is still too far away or too incompatible with your work hours, then you haven't done anything to address the inertia that prevents you from going to the gym. Focus not on the jumpstart, but on the overhauling of the battery to get inertia working for you, rather than against you.

                                                  Understanding Self-Sabotage, Part B

I specially wanted to outline this other aspect of self-sabotage that is has to do with low self-esteem. Something we engineer ourselves in order to cope with failure. 

You see, when the going gets tough—you get a deflating midterm score, or you fall behind on the reading, or your work piles up—saying to yourself "I suck at this" may not be great for further learning, but it sure can protect your self-esteem. By invoking an inherent lack of ability, you reduce your personal responsibility in the negative outcome, since you couldn't have done anything about it anyway. In other words, a fixed-ability mindset absolves you, and you don't have to think about what you did (or didn't do!) to contribute to that bad outcome. And while an incremental mindset can remind you that negative outcomes are indicators of the areas you need to improve on, this mindset rests on the assumption that the change is essentially up to you. This can be scary, because if outcomes are up to you, and you still do badly, it's not going to feel good.

Study findings show us that even when we believe that our abilities are the result of our effort- a mindset I have urged my students to adopt-- we are not out of the woods when it comes to academic motivation. The knowledge that our effort (as opposed to our genetics) is tied to our abilities can be threatening precisely because it's in our hands, and incredibly, puts us at risk for self-sabotaging our own success to protect ourselves—just in case our efforts are not enough.

Some people believed that ability is fixed (the entity theorists) and others believed that ability is nurtured through effort (the incremental theorists). I can only hope that the insight that incremental theories can sometimes be linked to self-handicapping will lead us to be on the lookout in our own behaviors, and that this introspection will itself be a protective factor.

And this comes back to our earlier discussion, where we talk about putting new behaviours in place, which have a positive impact on ourselves, rather than a negative, self-shielding effect. It is about switching from one bad habit or bad activity that harms us but "benefits" us in the short term, to a constructive, positive action that hopefully becomes a habit. This would lead us to become more balanced with our self-esteem, while we find out positive coping strategies that aid our incremental capacity for learning and ability. Allowing to be better at our activities in the long run. Becoming positive incremental theorists.

This mindset can lead us to try the little, doable things that slowly build up to success.

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