How To Overcome Self Sabotaging Thoughts & Get Back on Track With Your Fitness Journey.

Over Coming Self Sabotaging Thoughts

Firstly it's important that we address what self sabotage is. Everyone of my online personal training clients has experienced this at some point throughout their fitness journey. It's important to remember that what you are experiencing is not unique to you. So please don't feel isolated and think that it is.

What Is Self Sabotage?

Self sabotage is when we actively or passively take steps to prevent us from achieving our goals. This behaviour can impact every area of our life from relationships, our careers our personal and fitness goals such as losing stubborn body fat or weight.

This trait as mentioned before is extremely common no matter who you are or what background you come from. It is an incredibly frustrating cycle of behaviour that makes us feel inadequate, leaves us feeling stuck and blows our self confidence.

​So why do we do it?

There are many reasons why we may choose to self sabotage but mainly what I have found is that is stems from the lack of belief in ourselves. 

Now, I am not claiming to be a psychologist, however, working with so many highly ambitious individuals throughout my coaching career has allowed me to dive into some research into this as it was beginning to effect some of my clients.

The most common areas of self sabotage my coaching clients experienced was turning to food and procrastination. My aim here is to identify how we can look past this and stand firm so we can stop self sabotaging our lives and start achieving our goals. 

Why Do We Self Sabotage?

1. We lack self worth - We set goals that we do not believe we can achieve. For example if a client wants to lose 10kg but they constantly tell themselves that they are not capable of doing so. We always act accordingly to what we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better. When we don't have the self confidence we will always fall short of what we are capable of achieving.

2. We fear success - ​What people will think of our success. When we work hard for something you will always get people who want to bring you down. That's just part of the process and the sooner you are aware of that the quicker you can remove them from your life. 

3. We want to place fault elsewhere - ​When we think like, " I'm always going to look this way" or  "I won't get that promotion anyway" what we are really doing here is displacing our responsibility in achieving our goals. So when we do not reach our goals we have already told ourselves that we would and therefore pass the blame to someone or somewhere else. 

4. We want control - A Lot of busy professionals struggle to release the reigns of a project or delegate to those who can improve the project. We feel better when we are in control. This is negative behaviour is a self sabotaging pattern as we know that our fitness, our project and our life improves when we delegate to those who are able to hold us accountable. 
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5. We fear failure - This is by far the most overwhelming reason as to why we self sabotage. It is so easy to give yourself all the reasons in the world as to why you failed.

How Do you Know If You Are Self Sabotaging?

I want you to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Am I avoiding what needs to be done?
2. Am I not prioritising self care?
3. Am I always procrastinating?
4. Am I prioritising instant gratification?

If you answered yes to any of these then this could be a precursor to self-sabotaging behaviour. Once you are honest with yourself you may be able to overcome this and nip it in the bud before it becomes the main issue.

How Can We Raise Above & Overcome Self Sabotaging Behaviour?

This should be the easy part but it will also bring home some home truths. Once we have identified if we are showing signs of self sabotage behaviour we can start the process of identifying it and coming up with a plan to overcome it.

Are you  aware of what it is your really want? If you're not sure, make a list of all the things that you think is preventing you from achieving your goals. 

This should be thought provoking and take time to evaluate why you want to achieve this and get very real with your goals. 

What's holding you back? Is it fear or failure? Fear is manifested in your mind, you are not born with fear of failure. The only two forms of fear you are born with is falling and loud noises. 

As a highly driven individual you are used to success and things happening in your favour, an no doubt your start to freak out when to start to "fail". Failure is a lesson, what can you learn it. As I used to say when I coached snowboarding, if you are not falling you are not learning. 

​If you don't feel worthy of success it might be a good idea to start focusing on self care. Focusing on giving yourself time to relax, eat well, sleep well and start making yourself a priority. This will in turn boost your self confidence and allow you to move beyond self sabotage.

When To Reach Out For Help?

It may be time to speak with a therapist if you are having difficulty workthing through your fear and self-sabotaging behaviour. 

When I am working with my online personal training clients, I have no problem in recognising that I may need to plant the seed of therapy if it's something that I can personally not do. It's important that as professional we stay in our lane of scope and refer out when we need to . 

Just by speaking about self sabotage allows us to move past it and understand why we may have been engaging in it. 

Make yourself the priority. Remember you can't drink from an empty vessel, so fills yours first before you fill others.

Talk soon,

Calumn

P.S Whenever you’re ready, here are 4 ways I can help you get happier, healthier, fitter and stronger in only 120 days!

1. Grab a free copy of my High Protein book. It’s the missing piece of the puzzle for your nutrition. If you want to lose weight right and keep it off this is not to be missed - https://bit.ly/3znCj9r
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3. Work with me privately if you’d like to work directly with me to help you lose more than 10+lbs of body fat and get you 2x stronger in just 90 days - https://bit.ly/3zsY9bV
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