Self-Sabotage

Are you your own worst enemy?

It’s much easier to look for external enemies, like the divide and conquer strategy, but often the biggest obstacles to success are found by looking in the mirror. 

Self-sabotage can take many forms, but they produce the same result.  Your project, your organization, your cause, your very reason for being - all can be blasted into smithereens - by you.  

Obviously this is never intentional.  After all, who would try to destroy those things which are most important to you?  But we all do it.  Unconsciously.  Subconsciously.  Maybe even a bit consciously.

Try on some of these common self-sabotage techniques. 

Look at them through different lenses - your work, your cause, your organization, your personal life.  Any of them feel uncomfortably familiar? 

One Right Way 

You are absolutely, positively, completely convinced you know the answer.  Whether it’s as simple as how a report should be formatted to the grand strategy for an organization or an entire cause, you have done the research, earned the credentials, logged up hours of experience, and you have a gut feeling - you know what should be done to solve the problem. 

Solution:  Just as you avoid fashion blunders by having a best friend and a full-length mirror to give you honest feedback, run your One Right Way past a friend, colleague, or mentor and ask for brutally honest feedback.  Listen.  Hold up the full-length mirror - ask yourself how you would feel if someone else came up with the idea.  Is it still a great idea?  Get working on building a cadre of supporters - but keep the lines of communication open or you’ll start believing your own press and head back to the self-sabotage death spiral.

Personal note:  This was totally me 13 years ago when I entered the drowning prevention field.  I absolutely had the one right idea.  (insert hysterical laughter)  I still believe I have great ideas and am doing good work - that part doesn’t get thrown out, though some ideas died a necessary death. I did add a whole bunch of listening and respectful collaboration.  Takes more time, sometimes frustrating, but so much more effective in the long-run.

No Right Way

The problem is too complex for any mere mortal to solve.  The barriers are insurmountable.  Hugely complex.  No political will.  How would we get all parties to the table?  No funding.  “They” won’t cooperate.  No one understands.  No one cares. 

Solution:  Is this the battle you really want to fight?  You may feel you ‘should’.  Perhaps a loved one is impacted.  Perhaps you were impacted personally.  Perhaps it’s the cause du jour that everyone is talking about.  But is it really your thing?  Far better to find what stirs your soul than to trudge through the ‘should’ quagmire with hands grasping at your ankles moaning, ‘Noooooo, don’t go!  We neeeeeeeed you’  Trust me, the world has enough problems, you can choose where to spend your time and energy.

Personal note:  Coming from a family of volunteers, my grandmother wisely said, ‘set your limits or they will suck you dry’.  Volunteering at a hospital nursery was my thing.  I fainted the first day volunteering at the rehabilitation center - not my thing.  Physically active is my thing - lengthy meetings after my work day has ended is not my thing.  As the poker saying goes, know when to hold, and know when to fold.  

It Worked For Me

Close cousin to One Right Way, but definitely different.  Frequently found where organizations are beginning to grow beyond grass-roots activism.  The founders funneled what worked for them, or they sought to fill the void in products or services they needed, but refuse to adapt as the organization grows.  Rather than evolve, they choke the organization and then blame everyone else as the organization slowly dies.  Also found in individuals and causes when you hang on to what has always worked for you.

Solution:  How do you respond when someone suggests a new approach?  Defensive?  Resentful?  Angry?  Dismissive?  It may be time for you to get out of the way and let the new guard take the lead.

Personal note:  My work in drowning has gone through so many iterations it is unrecognizable from those early days.  I developed ideas and programs using my primarily business and consulting background plus research in the field.  Some have been implemented. Some ideas I’ve handed over to others and watched them run with it, in ways I never envisioned.  Some ideas didn’t work at all until I shoved my ego out of the way and figured out where things fit based on listening to others.

Perfection

As soon as it is absolutely perfect, we will launch this idea!  One of the most deadly and efficient idea killers.  Perfection is a myth.  Learn from Amish quilters and Islamic art - God is perfect and humans are not, therefore imperfection is deliberately built into magnificent art in acknowledgement of this fact.

Solution:  If you never move past the planning stages, you are stuck in the search for perfection.  If you dismiss everyone else’s idea, you are combining perfection and one right way.  The only way to break out of the perfection trap is to act.  Just do it.  Write a ‘to do’ list and start one task, no matter how small.  I’m not suggesting you settle for flawed or not doing any planning at all.  To keep improving constantly ask yourself ‘what is going well, what will I do differently next time?’  The key is taking action.  

Personal note:  When I started writing my book, I just stared at the blank screen.  Frozen by the fear of failure and imperfection.  Visions of the gales of laughter and ridicule that would erupt when I announced I was writing a book.  Who did I think I was?  So I started writing.  I deleted most of the first attempt of every chapter, because the early efforts were pretty much crap, but as I wrote the logic started to flow and the words started to make sense.  I just kept reciting to myself, ‘fake it ’til you make it’.  Better flawed and out there then perfect only in your mind.  

It’s All About Me

Tough one.  There is a very human need to be recognized, valued, appreciated, healed.  The most effective advocates in the world are usually speaking from their personal experience - driven by the need to change a damaging status quo.  Their stories and passion are the fuel for pretty much every significant social change in the world.  However, when you are unable to see how your need for recognition is interfering with moving the broader agenda forward, then it’s self-sabotage.  

Solution:  Listen to the people on your team, whether colleagues, family members, or friends.  If you are getting push-back, you may be having trouble seeing the forest for the trees.  If people are giving you helpful hints and well-meaning advice, maybe you need to listen.  Not always, but it’s worth at least putting it through the filter of ‘is this legitimate or not?’  Don’t beat yourself up if you’re in this mode - we’ve all been there multiple times.  Just acknowledge it, maybe find another outlet, and keep moving forward.

Personal note:  In the early days in my drowning prevention work, I had something to prove.  I was digging back from some tough times.  Those early years were an embarrassment of ‘look at me’ and ‘I can do this’ that would have done a two-year old proud.  We’re all human.

Take a hard look as to why you are sabotaging what is most important to you. 

I find it most helpful to grab a pen and paper and just start writing.  Sometime after a bunch of drivel, the grocery list, and the excuses as to why this can’t possibly be me, the truth does emerge.

Knowledge is power.  You can’t change what you can’t name.  Name your enemy.