Self-Sabotage Hurts You—And Those Who Want to Love You


“Your Actions always speak louder than your words. If you want to see the beliefs you are truly operating out of in this world, just look at your current actions.”
Howard Falco, I AM

Maybe we’ve met someone new; someone we feel an instant positive connection with; someone who puts a smile on our face because we experience wonderful feelings bubbling up inside of us as we talk with this person. The experience is mutual and the beginning of a new relationship, a new friendship is breaking across the horizon of our lives.

We’re excited about this fateful meeting between our two souls. We want this new relationship, or so we tell ourselves. We also indicate through our smile and our words to the other that we want to move forward with him/her. Everything is bright and positive. We talk on the phone. We email each other. We get together…

Then reality sets in. It’s the ugly reality of whom we’ve always believed ourselves to be: Mr. Unworthy. Ms. Pitiful. All of the old head-tapes of “I am not good enough,” “I have too much baggage” and “This person will reject me once they get to really know me” scream and screech at us as they claw their way through our subconscious mind. They then make our inner-reality an outer-reality as they begin to affect our behavior.

Suddenly, we’re not returning phone calls or emails or text messages to the person that we clicked so well with recently. If we run into this person, we’re not greeting him/her with a smile anymore. Instead we are greeting them with a solemn uncomfortable expression on our face: One that says “I don’t feel good about me. Please go away. I can’t bare the disappointment of being rejected by you.”

Suddenly our behavior, our actions, betray our true beliefs about ourselves and our fate in life. Suddenly we’re acting out of these negative beliefs without consciously identifying what it is that’s really going on with us. We don’t want to reject this new found relationship. It may be the best thing that has ever happened to us. And yet we are so filled with fear, so unwilling to see ourselves in the same positive light that this other person see us in, that we would rather sabotage the relationship and wallow away in our lonely lifeless existence. We’d rather return to the norm of our silent misery than wake up to the possibility that maybe, just maybe we really are “good enough” for this person, baggage and all. Everyone has their baggage, right? No one’s exempt. Wouldn’t it be better to let go of our fears, have some faith and at least try to build something beautiful between us and this new found friend? Yes. It would be better.

If your actions are the exact opposite of what we really want, you need to examine your “I am” statements. They play constantly through your subconscious mind and they directly affect your conscious (actually unconscious) behavior. I added the “unconscious” because when we commit self-sabotage against ourselves, it really is unconscious behavior. We rarely have a clue as to why we’re reacting the way that we are. We don’t understand that we are acting out of the fears embedded in our subconscious minds.

The saddest part about this behavior is that it hurts two people. It hurts us by denying our value in this world. And it hurts the other person who sees value in us, and in sharing themselves with us, but who will never experience the fullness of this joy as long as we are uncomfortable with ourselves.

Get in touch with your I AM statements, understand your behavior and make a change for the better. Everyone deserves the joy of living from positive I AM statements.

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