7 Ways You Sabotage Yourself on the Path to Reaching Your Goals

Sometimes, you really are your own worst enemy.

Ayodeji Awosika
Mind Cafe
Published in
11 min readApr 2, 2020

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We all put ourselves through the cruellest form of mental torture.

We place ourselves on a pedestal and act as the centre of the universe while simultaneously taking poor care of ourselves when it comes to our long-term goals.

You develop this weird self-inflicted anxiety.

You’d think that you’d have your own back. As much as you obsess over your life, you’d think you’d be able to muster up some motivation, but you when you try, you shoot yourself in the foot. Then you beat yourself up for doing this. Then you beat yourself up for beating yourself up instead of just bouncing back.

Damn. Being a human being and just existing is stressful.

You’re susceptible to living your entire life like this — constantly sabotaging yourself and living in this limbo your whole life where you have dreams but you don’t do anything about them. Double damn.

Like I always say, no listicle is going to solve your problems. But use these little koans to spark the thoughts and behaviours that will.

You Misunderstand Your Comfort Zone

We think hesitation is a safe stop-gap measure. You think your inaction is just… inaction. You’re not doing anything about reaching your goals but you’re also not harming yourself, right? Wrong.

Hesitation creates fatigue.

Think of a situation where you have some chore you want to do. The more you hesitate to do it, the more stress builds up. You keep avoiding it but you also keep thinking about it. If you just did it, it’d be over with.

How do you solve this hesitation problem on a macro level?

You’ve been thinking about starting your business for years. You’ve spent weeks or months mulling over starting that workout routine. Hell, your whole life seems like a giant period of hesitation where you never move in the direction of your purpose.

You solve this problem on a macro level by solving it on a micro-level.

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Ayodeji Awosika
Mind Cafe

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