This Week’s Blog On Self Sabotage – The Over Committer
Welcome to week 3 in the 4 week series on Self-Sabotage.
Do you constantly take on more work than you can handle, feel stressed & overwhelmed by your To-Do list, then chances are you are self-sabotaging by Doing Too Much.
When you constantly take on more and more work you may be setting yourself up for failure by overcommitting. This also leads to feelings of guilt, depression, and dreaded “Burn Out” as you disappear down the rabbit hole of self- sabotage.
Constantly being and doing extra can take a real toll on your mental health as well as your physical health.
And when you cram your schedule, you can be left feeling like a total failure when you can’t finish everything you start.
The guilt that comes from taking on too heavy of a commitment load will often find you saying ‘yes’ when someone asks ‘can just do one more thing’ to your already overladen workload.
This behavior can make it almost impossible to establish and enforce healthy personal boundaries and can eventually lead to burn-out.
When you always put yourself last, you increase your stress levels. And too much stress = increased cortisol levels = inflammation and weakened immune system = disease.
Yes, you can overwork yourself into sickness.
So if you are a chronic people-pleasing over-committer your need to take back control of your life and set healthy boundaries.
1. Think back. Take inventory of all the things that have loaded up on your To-Do List, especially the things that ended up on there that really shouldn’t have.
2. Be honest with yourself. You have to ask yourself why those things ended up there. Was it because you were pressured? Was it to please someone else & at the same time disregarding your own needs? Was it from a sense of insecurity? You have to recognize any unhealthy patterns, forgive yourself & take care in the future.
3. Make a new commitment… to protect your time and effort. Delete anything from the list that really doesn’t serve you. Create healthy boundaries around your commitments, it will really not serve anyone if you are constantly stressed and eventually make yourself sick.
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
— Warren Buffet
Over Committing Self-Sabotage Tool Kit!
If you want to stop the self-sabotage of all types & finally get out of your own way, the crucial thing to understand why you’re doing it — what need is it filling?
Then apply a bit of creativity to identify healthier and more productive ways to meet those needs.
Here’s a simple guide to help you on your journey of rewriting your self-sabotaging programming:
The cure is Self-Awareness
1. Inventory – Reflect back and get curious about your own self-sabotage.
- What does your self-sabotage look like?
- How does it typically start?
- What are the unhealthy patterns?
By taking the time to reflect and notice any repeating patterns, you can more easily recognize when it’s time to take over and kick those traits in the rear end. You can then take the time to pause and discover what’s happening in your mind and body – what’s triggering the reaction, and how it feels physically.
2. Challenge – Once you’ve identified your self-sabotaging habits, it’s time to challenge what they’re actually doing for you.
If you want to stop procrastinating, you first need to discover that it’s helping you deal with your own fear of success. If you want to stop over-committing, you need to recognize that you are filling a need to feel useful whilst ignoring your own needs. You need to find out what in your past triggers this.
So ask yourself what your self-sabotaging habits ‘do’ for you – and then do the hard work of uncovering what underlying issues you need to work through.
Childhood trauma, feelings of inadequacy, and even a pleasant life without challenges to build resilience can all lead to self-sabotaging behaviors.
3. Create a new pattern – This is the fun part.
Once you’ve spotted your negative self-sabotaging habits and found out the cause of them, you can do the fun work of making a new pattern, new beliefs. Ones that serves you and your end goals and helps you grow with confidence and healing.
Think about who or what you really want to be – and start aligning your actions and thoughts to that potential. Use affirmations to help ease your negative self-talk, so the next time you find yourself turning to your old patterns of self-sabotage, you can confidently choose your new, self-affirming solutions.
Check out my 40 Minute Success affirmation video below. Listen to it as you are drifting off to sleep to reaffirm what you believe about yourself and life.
Self Compassion
Remember to be self-compassionate. Old habits die hard and you will most likely find yourself falling back into old patterns.
If you are a total weirdo like me you will say “stop” out loud when you find yourself talking trash about yourself. Then recognize that you’re trying to remedy your old patterns and move to more positive self talk.
Remind yourself of why these limiting patterns didn’t actually work for you before – then give yourself the opportunity to do better and achieve what you really want in life.
Live life
David
