Stop sabotaging your success! I know that is easier said than done because I have been there. When I think back about the goals that I set that I did not achieve, I can usually identify one or some places where I got off course. Sometimes I was able to get back on track. Sometimes I wasn’t.
In this article, I am going to share some of the sabotaging behaviors that impeded my success. Use these lessons that I learned to help you avoid making these same mistakes. Don’t let yourself get sidetracked or held back from achieving your potential!
How to Stop Sabotaging Your Success!
Don’t Get Distracted by Success Sabotaging Shiny Objects
Shiny objects are distractors that will sabotage your success by taking your eyes off the road! You can’t focus on looking forward if you are looking in the rearview mirror, looking at what everyone else is doing, or sightseeing. It is important to know what is going on around you for situational awareness. However, if you are not paying attention you will go off course. There is always something that looks more attractive, and somewhere else that you may want to go. Don’t let these shiny objects distract you from your goals.
I started this blog recently, but I have had the idea in my mind for years. I still have boxes of files containing notes where I organized and reorganized my thoughts. Every time I started to make my blog a reality, someone seemed to need my attention or a new “opportunity” magically appeared. These people and opportunities took many forms: family or friends, real estate deals, investment advice, part-time jobs, book ideas, and the list goes on.
Each time someone asked me for a favor, I felt guilty about not helping. So I turned my focus away from my goals. I thought that whatever others needed was more important and that I could always start the blog later. I didn’t notice how much farther I was getting away from my original starting point. Each time someone would present an “opportunity of a lifetime” or something shiny caught my eye, I stopped putting time and brainpower into my goals. After each personal emergency was over or the shiny object dulled, I struggled to start working on my blog again. Each time I stopped focusing on my goals, I sabotaged my success because it got harder to keep motivating myself to start over.
There are No Shortcuts to Success
Much like getting distracted by shiny objects, it is easy to sabotage your success with the promise of a shortcut! Who doesn’t want a faster, smoother, easier way of getting to the end of a long journey with twists, turns, and bumpy roads? Beware of the shortcut, it will sabotage your success! Yea, the shortcut always sounds and looks good, but it might not take you where you need to be.
Think about a goal or something you set out to do that you didn’t follow through on. You made a plan, and you were content and confident with your plan. Then you found out about a shortcut, and you took it, and it didn’t work the way you thought. Did the shortcut also have unforeseen requirements of its own? Perhaps the shortcut did not lead straight to where you needed to be. The shortcut may bypass some valuable information and lessons that you will not know you need until you got to the end.
Whenever I used to tell my Dad that I couldn’t start something because it would take too long to complete, he would say “what difference does it make how long it takes? You plan to be alive don’t ya?”
Here is what happened when I took the shortcut
I remember a time when I did not read the fine print of a deal because it sounded too good to pass up. I was having financial difficulty and was looking for a way to lower my debt. The student loan customer service representative told me about a great student loan consolidation program and I jumped on it. I consolidated my student loan with my now ex-husband in 2003. Neither the program nor my marriage lasted beyond 2011, but the “no backsies” clause in the loan documents lasts forever. I am still paying for that consolidated student loan today! Grrr! I learned to stop sabotaging my success by looking for a quick fix to financial problems. I decided to do it the old-fashioned way: lower expenses, save, and be more fiscally responsible. This positive behavior put me in a financial position to build my dream home.
Once, I left a good job for a “better” higher-paying job without asking my usual probing questions. I should have known something was up when the interview was too easy, and the interviewers focused their questions on my conflict resolution skills and experience handling problem employees. But all I could see were dollar signs! Soon, all I could see was the exit sign because I found out that my fancy new office previously belonged to the office crazy person. She wanted my job and her office back! I sabotaged my success because when I left my previous job, that door shut behind me. I could not go back and had to make a career change to get out of there. The lure of more money is a shortcut that does not always lead to happiness. Sometimes it takes you to a starting point farther back than where you started.
Do Not Absorb Negative Messages
Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one! Success is not for the delicate and thin-skinned! It would be great if everyone who offered opinions about your goals framed them in positive words of encouragement. However, not everybody can be a writer for Hallmark. Just like there are highly emotionally intelligent, uplifting, positive people in this world, there are a lot of jerks too! When you are working on your goals, someone may tell you that you are too old, too young, not smart enough, do not know how or can’t do something. Don’t buy into that!
It doesn’t matter what other people tell you, it is what you tell yourself that dictates how you approach your goals. Don’t adopt other people’s perceptions of you and use them to make excuses to sabotage your success. Yes, I mean stop making excuses, cop-outs, and rationalizations about why something would “never work anyway” so you can give up. Instead, focus on those times in your life when you didn’t get it right, you made mistakes, you fell, and you got back up and survived. Talk about those times, write them down, put up pictures, and do whatever you need to keep those images at the forefront of your mind. Draw upon that strength you used and bring it back to the surface and use it to keep moving forward right past those jerks!
All Negative Feedback is Not Created Equal
You don’t have to get into confrontations with people who have opposing views and opinions about your choices. Stop engaging in Facebook fights over every negative comment you get. Don’t respond in a Twitter rant over every opposing opinion. You don’t have to comment on social media about everything going on around you. Responding to negativity is a vicious cycle. You absorb part of the negativity coming at you, for you to package it up and give it right back. I freed myself from absorbing negativity after thinking about ways I could lower my blood pressure and reduce my stress and anxiety. I realized that I was sometimes responding to negativity or debating issues that did not matter. But I was entrenched in the fight as if I was going to get a gold medal for winning.
I’m not saying that I reject all negative feedback. Negative feedback can be helpful to identify areas for growth and improvement. However, I am saying that I don’t give all negative feedback the same level of energy or let it define who I am or the way I see myself. While the idea of being disliked does bother me, I concede that what I am doing maybe my flavor but will not be everyone’s cup of tea.
Stop sabotaging your success with negative communications with positive communications. For every comment you see or hear that tells you that you are not good enough, make a statement to yourself about why you are. For every comment you see or hear that tells you why you will never make it, make a statement to yourself about why you will. Write these statements down in a journal. In time, you will have a personal book of affirmations that will show you that you are more capable than you think.
How to Stop Sabotaging Your Success
Here are a few things you can do: 1) Act like an insurance company: make it your policy to reject offers that ask you to commit your time or money unless proven to be worth your time and money; 2) develop an elevator speech to use to politely decline invitations where maintaining a relationship is important; 3) Stop looking for shortcuts and quick-fix solutions to problems; 4) Don’t respond to every negative comment; 5) Create positive affirmations; and 6) Keep your eyes on the prize!
