Avoiding Self Sabotage – 7 steps to Permanent Positive Change

Self Sabotage is something we are all guilty of at times, however those who engage in constant negative self talk find this cycle of initial motivation to complete failure is a regular occurrence in one or more areas of their life. People can and do change! Do not, under any circumstances assume you are “just like that” and cannot legitimately transform your actions, behavior or circumstances. I’ve done it and seen plenty of other people do it too. If you have taken the time to come here and read this, you are already on the way to achieving it! I believe self sabotage stems from people not believing that deep down they deserve what they want. Life doesn’t have to be depressing, hard, sad and pointless.
Life should be abundant, happy, exciting, educational and emotional, don’t settle for anything less.

My personal experience

I’ve noticed the people most affected by this tend to be very selfless and generous. Always doing things to please other people. They get immense pleasure from helping and supporting everyone around them, to the extend that they are uncomfortable if the favour is returned and feel awkward asking for help when they need it.

If there is one point I want you to take away from this article, it would be:

If you notice you are in a cycle of self sabotage, become more selfish.

Learn to become comfortable with doing things for your own benefit. Take time to consider how your intended behavior or action might affect YOU in the near or distant future. Will it be a good day at work tomorrow if you yell at a colleague because they are late on a task? Will you be fitter next week if you skip today’s training session? I believe just as we can have physical imbalances in our bloodstream/body, our emotional levels can be out of balance. If you self sabotage in any area of your life, it might just be that you need to be more selfish and realise that if YOU are happier and healthier, it will resonate with everyone and everything you deal with on a daily basis. If you enjoy making other people happy, you should know by now how to do it, so give a little of that medicine to yourself.

What do I mean when I say for your own benefit?

• Being comfortable handling highly stressful situations
• Being assertive at work without being aggressive
• Eating wholesome food to support your body (your life’s vehicle!)
• Avoiding conflict by calming down before responding to accusations/arguments
• Using spare time to educate yourself on something you need to be better at
• Telling people you love, that you love them!
• Celebrating achievements no matter how small

Do any of these things “benefit” you?

• Flying off the handle during arguments
• Admitting defeat before you begin
• Unwillingness to increase demands during training
• Make excuses for not eating nutritionally dense, healthy food
• Blame someone, something for anything that you perceive as going “wrong”
• Procrastinating instead of taking immediate action
• Taking on too much at once
• Being disorganised

Everyone has the resources and ability to initiate a true change in their behavior to stop the cycle of self sabotage. The positiveness can and will snowball to the point where you have no choice but to accept it! You need to get momentum with that initial drive and goal, and then change into a comfortable gear to get through the journey in a reasonable time frame.

Are you lazy by nature? If so, it will strongly affect any long term change. Be prepared for this and do whatever it takes to remind yourself daily that this really matters to you. I’ve said before – a bad day shouldn’t create a bad week. Accept you didn’t get it right this time and pick up where you left off, immediately. Celebrate improvements and ignore failures. Focus the energy on what you want, not what you are doing wrong.

Be realistic with goals, expectations, time frames when planning anything in your life. Keep in mind that other people will do their best to bring you down, not even consciously a lot of the time. Jealousy can cause people to say and do things they wouldn’t do if they were conscious of it. Don’t rely on other peoples compliments or comments to uplift you. Beating self sabotage is a deeply personal, internal experience that must be driven by you, for you.

Ready to stop self sabotage? Get a pen and paper and continue on:

• Allow yourself to accept praise. You need to be comfortable feeling proud of any change and achievements. Give yourself permission to shine! What has happened in your life to make you think you do not deserve long term success? Write it down.
• IDENTIFY Take the time to write down what it is you are “failing” at. What areas of your life do you continually self sabotage? Next to each one, write how you can combat it. You might plan to count to 10 before responding to an email, or packing your training gear into the car so you can get changed at work and go right to the gym. Plan simple strategies to combat the individual circumstances so you have a failsafe in place to keep you on track.
• What is the PATTERN? Get detailed here and really express on paper what goes through your mind before, during and after a cycle of self sabotage.
• How long does it take from motivation to failure? (hours, days, weeks, months?)
• Barriers to success – List anything or anyone who presents a challenge to your success? (e.g. work hours, family member, lack of information) Present solutions to each of your barriers.
• What should the priorities in your life be? (For me they are fitness, health, education, happy relationships, time for rest/play, helping others.) Can you combine priorities to ensure success?
• Seal the deal. If you train yourself to have immediate awareness when initiating your pattern of behavior that results in self sabotage you can stop it before it gets any momentum, and redirect your energy.

Thankyou again for reading, I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to check out my articles. I love writing and hope I have helped someone today!

110kg to 56kg – Melinda’s Story

I’ve taken some time this week to have a chat to Melinda, a 32 year old mother of 3. I wanted to share her story with my readers because she is nothing short of inspirational. Her journey to health has not been easy, nor did she have a lot of support. What she did have was determination and the strength to continue on no matter what was thrown at her.

Melinda went from obese at 110kg, down to a strong 56kg. She still has goals and is constantly seeking to challenge herself further. I am certain her story and experience will show you that anything is possible and that any goal is realistic if you are prepared to be in it for the long haul and make a commitment to your health. Here is Melinda at her heaviest:

My interview with Melinda follows:

What bodyshape did you have as a child/teenager?

I was skinny & bony as a kid, and went on the pill at 17. I started to put on heaps of weight, went from 45kg to 85kg at age 20. I went on fad diets, starvation diets lost weight put it on again. At 24 with exercise & a bad diet due to lack of education on food I went down to 57kg.

What did pregnancy and/or eating habits change about your body?

During my pregnancy I got really depressed, thought I was eating for 10, worked for a company where there was photography studios, they were shooting food, when they were finished with it I got to eat as much of it as I wanted, every day! Packets of chips, cream cakes, hot chips, roast lunches (along with living at Mcdonalds.) I ended up with huge with no neck & strechmark city.

What weight did you get to at your heaviest?

Went from 57kg to 110kg. 3 months into my first pregnancy I was in maternity clothes by 6 months they didn’t have a hope in hell of fitting me & by the end of the pregnancy. I was wearing size 24 clothes. 8 months after the first baby was born I was still wearing size 22 at 105kg

Bra size was a 16DD & that was tight.

What did the weight make you feel like or stop you from doing?

Having this much weight made me feel depressed & suicidal, no confidence, no friends, judged by others. Less of a person like I didn’t mater. I walked into Sports Girl once & the sales girls would not even acknowledge me, they were so rude because they didn’t cater for my size, I walked out in tears I felt about 50 years old not 24.

At one point when my baby was around 11 months I was so close to a nervous breakdown.

I couldn’t do activities with my baby, wouldn’t go swimming had no energy to even go for a family walk it started to create marriage problems because he was embarrassed by my weight, even a marriage counsellor suggested along with my husband that I should lose weight that just really upset me.

Tell me about the decision to change (how, why, when, with what help)

My decision to change came from nasty judgmental comments that still ring in my head to this day (which I can now laugh at those who made them). “You will never lose that weight”,” look how fat she is, hahaha”. I said to myself, stuff these people! and set out to prove a point.

From the time my first baby was 8months old it took me 5 years but I did it. I started off with a personal trainer, dietician, determination & dedication also asking the right people in gyms etc lots of questions along the way.

What food habits did you have to break?

I had to break eating Mcdonalds, hot chips, hamburgers, chocolate & any other crap you can imagine.

What kept you going every day?

Determination & wanting to prove a point to those people with negative comments that I’m better than them!

Did you find it hard or easy overall?

It was a very rocky road lots of highs & lows, lots tears, frustration & anguish. I was ready to chuck in the towel many of times, it was the hardest journey of my life.

What does it feel like now, to be training as an athlete and eating even better than ever?

Now after 3 children, & a huge life style change, eating healthy food & regular exercise  I feel alive & well like Im 20 years old not 32!

It’s unreal I now have more confidence than I have ever had, friends & I’m happier than ever at 56kg & a size 8. Im in much better shape than all the judgemental people who I now seriously laugh at. I’m doing things I never would have imagined possible 8 years ago & with the best trainer that I’ve ever had encouraging me, I’m training to be in the best shape I can possibly be in. I want to be a personal trainer & help other women or men who are in the same situation that I was in because I understand them & know how hard it is. It is possible!

I hope by now you can see that the results you get from what can be a quite a long, challenging journey are well worth it. Melinda will never go back to her old ways, one chat with her and you get the impression she means business! She made a decision one day, and stuck to it. She does miss days of training and does eat chocolate and icecream, but the majority of her days are based on good nutrition and short, intense exercise sessions that continue to give her results. She doesn’t have a trainer coaching her for 5 hours a day like on The Biggest Loser, so yes it did take a little while. If you can understand that and respect that your body took some time to get big and will need more time to reverse the damage you will find it easier to be consistent.

What sets her apart from people who fail to sustain change is that she picks herself back up when she has a bad day, and gets on with things again, rather than spending a week eating herself sick because of one small mistake. Despite having a demanding role as a mother of 3 (her youngest is 18 months) she makes time for exercise (20 mins 6 days a week) and puts the effort into educating herself about new foods and recipes as much as possible. She stopped making excuses and started demanding better respect from herself and everyone around her so she could live again. Get off your chair now, and go bash out a set of push ups, or look up a new healthy recipe. It starts with one small step!

My Crossfit Log and some rambling.

I’ve decided to keep a livejournal crossfit log of all my workouts. I’ve tagged each workout so every time I go to do a new session, I can easily search by tags to get results from any same or similar workout. I’m doing this so I can go to the gym with old times and weights in hand and ensure I have the best chance to smash them!

Finding it very motivating to record everything on my journal. It doesn’t take long to clock up  heaps of sessions and you feel a real sense of pride and achievement scanning back over all the old workouts. It’s great to see in such a short time how much I am improving.

My training goals before Christmas 2009

• To be able to complete one full muscle up
• Increased confidence and weight on olympic lifts
• To run 5km without hating it or stopping (yes, I’m a trainer and I hate running!)
• To  perform Glute-Ham Situps as prescribed in a workout (not as easy as it looks!)

I have some specific training goals that I’ve shared here today. Purpose being, that I wanted to demonstrate the Constant and Never Ending Improvement concept from my perspective. I’ve achieved a lot of goals and do not want to lose weight or tone up anywhere. What I DO want is more strength and to be more capable with a lot of the crossfit workouts and exercises. I see a lot of people give up on training because they can’t cope with getting to a certain fitness level/weight/strength, then being told they need to take it up another notch. They regard it as failing because more is being asked of them. It is quite the opposite! It is SO important, right from the very start of your transformation that you are aware that the expectations must always rise and there is no finish point. Embrace this! It is a positive thing and it will be something you cherish as time goes by. The majority of people get addicted to the improvements and are happy to seek them out infinitely.

So, don’t lose heart if your trainer ups your push ups, or makes you run faster all the time, it just means your body has adapted to the training, and it is no longer training or improving your health if you don’t ask that little bit more. If you don’t have a trainer or coach, be that little voice inside your own head and keep looking for ways to do a harder progression, run a bit faster, lift a bit more weight. Learn to love that aspect of your exercise because it will lead you to a body that is capable of so much more. I hope with a lot of the people I have helped that they one day may feel confident enough that they can then go on and teach others.

Obesity and my fears for YOUR health!

I have a real fear that here in Australia (and also the U.S) that obesity will become the norm. I drove past the local high school last week, and I honestly could only spot 2 girls out of over 80 that were not overweight or obese. Everywhere I go I see people who I regard as obese. It really concerns me, not only because being overweight ruins your self esteem – it ruins your life. Your health risks increase dramatically (diabetes, heart disease, joint problems are just a few), you are more likely to have trouble conceiving children, and your life is shortened. It is all avoidable and it frustrates me so much to see how acceptable it is to be overweight now. I will no doubt offend some people with this post but perhaps it is time we all took a real good look at ourselves and our children and did something about it. We have become so lazy and so spoilt by technology that exercise is not a part of every day life for a lot of people anymore. I honestly don’t give a crap about what people look like, I’m not expecting everyone to look like an elite athlete – it is about what is going on inside that worries me!

If you know someone that doesn’t exercise or play sport – why not offer to go walking with them as a starting point. You can use the walks as a time to suggest meeting up for little circuit workouts or going to a class at the gym together. Get off your butt now and go save a life! You can make time no matter your circumstances. I’m yet to coach a client who I could not help with a slightly re-arranged schedule, kids, shift work or otherwise!