How to Know if You Have Become Your Own Worst Enemy

4 Signs You Are Your Own Worst Enemy

Are you struggling to get ahead?  Perhaps you are having a hard time finding opportunities, or maybe you are not taking advantage of opportunities presented to you.

Quite often, the most common reason people don’t succeed is that they’re engaging in self-defeating behaviors not realizing they have created themselves to be their own worst enemy.

Is that you? How can you tell? Look for these four signs:

You Run for the Emergency Exit

As you are working to complete a project, do you find yourself backing out at the last minute? When you feel the need to bail, it’s typically because you’re afraid to take the last step. Perhaps you are worried that it won’t work out, or worse, that it will. Either way, there is a fear pulling you away. It’s not uncommon to back away from things that frighten us. Are you the person, or perhaps you know someone, who will find a way to sabotage a relationship the moment you start to feel close to the other person?  By the same token, you may do the same thing at work when we hear you are being considered for promotion. Your unconscious perspective might be that is it better not to be involved or succeed than to try and fail.

You Often Procrastinate

When you habitually find reasons not to move forward something, to keep putting it off, it could be because you are feeling unsure about what you’re doing. Perhaps you fear your skills are not up to the task, or you’re not confident regarding the next step, it’s natural to put things off, hoping to get back to it later. Maybe your thinking is a bit foggy and if you step back it will clear. While it seems reasonable, too often the problem is that this hoped-for clarity rarely comes. In truth, we only wind up sinking ourselves when we should have been asking for help.

You Burying Yourself in Other Project Instead
Are you easily distracted? If you’re worried about the outcome of one project, it’s not uncommon to throw yourself into another. This helps you keep your mind off of what worries you. It also keeps you from getting done what you need to. 

You Focus on Negative Self-Talk

Instead of saying positive things about your abilities to get things done, are you by any chance using negative self-talk to keep you from trying? After all, it’s very easy to convince ourselves that we’re failures. Why do we do it? Because if we convince ourselves it’s not going to work out, we never have to try in the first place.

All of these behaviors can have a seriously detrimental effect on what we’re doing. We truly are experts at being their own worst enemies, especially when trying to accomplish something which involves any manner of risk, or the task that is personally important to us.

Don’t let these behaviors hold you back from succeeding! It’s time to defeat those LIES of negative self-talk by changing your PERSPECTIVE, exploring new POSSIBILITIES, opening PATHWAYS onto which you can choose to PROCEED in TRUTH.  It all starts with you. Become your own best friend, not your own worst enemy.