Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

If you’re serious about achieving what you desire and deserve, you have to constantly ask yourself, “Is this an act of self-love or is it an act of self-sabotage?” The key to a successful, fulfilled life is self-love. Debbie Ford

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. I had an epiphany the other day. I’d set a goal, and then completely forgot about it. I set the goal of self-publishing my third children’s book on my grandson’s third birthday. It doesn’t seem like a goal to forget, and it would have been a nice gift to give him on his birthday, which just passed.

I had a day of goal setting, and thought it would be nice to publish the third book on his third birthday. I didn’t set up the steps to make it happen, or place the goal where I would see it every day, and it didn’t happen.

Getting off track with our goals is easier than we think. We start to veer off course, and if we don’t correct ourselves, a goal we could have reached becomes a wish, a hope, a dream, or a prayer, but not a reality. There’s always an excuse if we want one, and we often don’t recognize self-sabotage when it enters our lives.

It doesn’t take long to derail our good intentions, lose our good practices, or get off track with something we want to do. It seems I always need to be getting myself back on track. A little more sleep in the morning, a little more TV in the evening, and the progress I’ve been making almost comes to a standstill.

My Dad used to say, “Some people can’t work for themselves because they aren’t tough enough bosses.” Many of us don’t slack when we are accountable to someone else, but when we are accountable only to ourselves, when it is something we want to do for ourselves, we don’t think we count enough to make it happen. Is this self-doubt rearing its head again? Do self-doubt and self-sabotage go hand in hand?

A person’s potential is sabotaged by self-doubt more than by all external constraints combined. Brian Tracy

We need to be as gentle with ourselves as we would be with anyone else, and we also need to be as hard on ourselves as we would be with anyone else. No one cares if I complete my next writing project, and it doesn’t seem I care that much either. I like working on my projects, but completing them is another thing. When they are complete, they are out into the world, in a sense, are no longer mine, they can no longer be as great as I’d imagined, and they can be judged.

I wonder if self-doubt is ever fully dealt with; it rears its head at times we don’t expect, and it makes us second-guess things we thought we’d settled in our minds. We say we want to grow and develop, but do we really, or is that what we tell ourselves as we sink into the couch to watch one more movie or episode of something we find more compelling than our creativity?

Would we be comfortable if we hit a new level of success, or would that cause an identity crisis? How do we get comfortable, or is it getting comfortable being uncomfortable that we need to master?

When we say we want something and then work to prevent it from happening that is self-sabotage. Alyce Cornyn-Selby

There is no doubt that our preferred method of self-sabotage is procrastination. Alyce Cornyn-Selby

Give up getting in your own way. Give up offering justifications. Give up explaining why you are unable to. Quit undermining yourself. Akiroq Brost

Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.