I am Dr. Hassan, a Board-Certified Physiatrist and Independent Practice Owner. I help physiatrists start and grow their own profitable practices so they can achieve financial independence and live without limits.
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Sabotage is a word often found in thriller books about spies. A literary saboteur is usually a sly and cunning character that insinuates his way into the enemy’s inner workings. He attempts to derail, damage, or destroy some important aspect of his enemy’s game plan.
The silent programming that quietly and consistently gets in your way while chasing your dreams is like an undercover saboteur. It presents itself as something positive (keeping you from failing, staying comfortable, avoiding conflict), but it sneakily damages you at the same time.
That’s what self-sabotage does. Let’s give it a simple definition.
Self-sabotage can be defined as behaviors or beliefs that block your success when trying to create positive change in your life. They can occur unconsciously or consciously, and they damage, slow down or totally defeat you when you’re trying to achieve a goal or accomplish something.
Why Do We Stop Ourselves from Succeeding?
It may not make sense that we would get in our own way, be our own saboteurs. It happens all the time, though. There’s actually a biological response involved in a lot of cases.
Imagine that you decide to set a goal. There’s something you’ve wanted for a long time. You are finally going to do something about it. So you set down a game plan to turn your thoughts into reality. You’re very excited, and you know you’re finally going to be successful.
When you set goals, you trigger the development of feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine. These chemicals make you feel happy and positively charged with energy, and your mindset is that you will succeed.
When your inner saboteur sees this happening, he leaps into action.
He might subconsciously tell you that you might fail if you try to do something difficult. His idea is that he’s selling you on him, protecting you from failure. What he’s actually doing is keeping you from achieving something great.
This is how we rationalize the negative things we do that keep us from achieving our goals. We convince ourselves that we will experience negative emotions if we fail. It might be better to stay in our limiting comfort zone rather than put ourselves in a position of uncertainty and possible harm.
We avoid conflict rather than facing it because we justify that the outcome could be bad for us.
On the face of those thoughts, it appears we are looking after ourselves. In reality, this is self-sabotage at work, keeping us from achieving big things and creating positive change. The key to preventing this is being aware of your actions. Understand the “why” of what you are doing, and you can keep from sabotaging your efforts when you pursue a goal.
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Once you’ve decided that you want to leave your current job to start your practice, you need an exit plan. Check out our blog post here for tips on developing an exit plan and starting your new independent practice.
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I’m Dr. Hassan, a Board-Certified Physiatrist and Independent Practice Owner. I help physiatrists start and grow their own profitable practices so they can achieve financial independence and live without limits. Please go to businessofrehab.com/contractnegotiations to pick up the free guide to help you negotiate the contract of your dreams.
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