Are You Your Own Worst Enemy? If You Are You Need To Read This!

Being your own worst enemy could be the reason you are at risk of failing?

We are all our own worst enemy sometimes, but some people do it repeatedly!

Self-sabotaging behaviors such as over-eating, drinking too much, procrastination, failing to learn from mistakes, failing to invest in yourself often happens when attempting to solve or cope with the everyday challenges on your own. 

 What happens then, the behavior interferes with long term goals and unsettles relationships.

There are key reasons for becoming your own worst enemy the first of which is a lack of self belief.

Lack of Self Belief

It’s not what you look at that makes the difference; it’s what you see. Your perspective is your reality.

The greatest obstacle towards achieving success in your life is the inability to back yourself and believe success is possible. Instead of focusing on strengths, most people focus on their weaknesses.

When you focus on your weaknesses you develop a diluted sense of yourself and what you can or can’t achieve. You don’t see the greatness within, nor do you believe you can achieve whatever you put your mind to. This is a major reason you don’t set goals, for you don’t believe you will ever reach them.

When you think of yourself as not being worthy of the goals you set, it distorts the size of the challenges before you, and this is often what derails you.

Negative Thinking

Behavioral researchers have found almost 75% of everything you think is in the negative not positive. According to Dr Shad Helmsetter, the reason you concentrate on the negative, rather than the positive, has to do with the negative programming you received in your formative years.

When you think of yourself as not being worthy of the goals you set, it distorts the size of the challenges before you, and this is often what derails you.

“During the first 18 years of your life, if you grew up in fairly average reasonably positive home, you were told ‘no’ on what you could not do more than 148,000 times.  If you were a little more fortunate, you may have been told ‘no’ only 100,000 times, or 50,000 times. However many, it was considerably more negative programming than any of you needs.”

If this is the case, then it is no wonder you form a low opinion of yourself and end up with low self-esteem.

Lack of Self Esteem

Self-esteem can be defined as your internal belief system and how you respond to, and experience life, externally. Self-esteem is the way you think and feel about yourself and others. Your self-esteem is usually measured by the way you act, and the way you act is largely a result of how you feel.

Each of us is born with the capacity to experience positive feelings and form a positive self-image. However, it is also possible to learn not to like yourself and form a negative self-image leading to poor self-esteem. Either way, the feelings you have about yourself are largely a result of your life experiences and the influences in your life during your formative years.

The image you have of yourself determines what you think, what you see, what you feel, how you act, resulting in what you do or don’t achieve. Your self-esteem affects everything you do.  It reflects the “you” to everyone you come into contact with. 

Self-esteem is both conscious and unconscious.  It is an ongoing self-evaluation, leading to a belief about what you can and cannot do. 

If you felt unworthy as a child, as you matured into adulthood, it’s possible the feelings of inadequacy and insecurity became your dominant thoughts resulting in low self-esteem. These feelings can cause you to experience a fear of failure, fear of rejection, or even a fear of success.

Having Low Self Esteem

Low self-esteem is generally caused by negative emotional responses primarily from the experiences you had in your childhood. If you were constantly criticized by your parents, other adults, or your peers, it is likely you formed a low opinion of yourself. Your environment, like the media and society, can also cause feelings of inferiority, leading you to experience low self-esteem. You might feel you have to live up to what the media portrays as the “ideal” person or the “ideal shape” and feel inadequate when you don’t.

If these negative feelings are constantly reinforced by negative belief patterns, they become habit forming, and low self-esteem will result.

Your self-esteem can change, sometimes daily, depending on what you are experiencing or how you are feeling. You may feel confident in one environment and, an hour later, move into a different environment and your feelings of self will change.

Regardless of what you think, the cycle repeats itself unless you change your thinking.

You Become Your Own Worst Enemy

If you have low self-esteem, chances are, you go through the motions, won’t even try, or simply give up. By not trying and giving up, you will learn to fail more often than you learn to succeed. This reduces your levels of self-confidence and self-esteem. This is a continuous feedback loop that reinforces the belief you have in yourself that you are a failure.

Develop High Self Esteem

Having high self-esteem means you have a positive sense of your inherent worth as a person.  If you have high self-esteem, you are more likely to persist and overcome any challenges towards achieving your vision and reaching your goals.

If you persist, you will learn to succeed more often than fail, the result being, you gain more self-confidence and increase your self-worth.

High self-esteem manifests itself as having a great deal of self-confidence and developing a high sense of self-worth and self-respect. 

Developing a high self-esteem can be learned, but it does not happen overnight. The key to improving your self-esteem is how willing you are to take responsibility for your feelings, thoughts, desires, abilities, and interests and to focus on and accept your overall strengths.

Every time you are tempted to give up or go off track, you must fight the desire to revert to bad habits. Use your WHY, your vision, and your goals to keep the fire burning within. Be willing to fight for your dreams.

One way you undermine your self-esteem is to attach too much importance to getting things perfect. If you allow yourself to make mistakes, you are less likely to make them because they become less important. When they become less important, it reduces your anxiety and increases your confidence levels.

Mistakes give you the opportunity to learn something new.

You need a WHY

Success comes down to having a WHY. Your WHY is what drives you. The bigger and more powerful your WHY – the more motivated you are to change what you DON’T want and expose the habits that hold you back.

The problem is, most people go about their daily life without really knowing or understanding their WHY. When you discover your WHY, it reinvigorates your goals, and sets you on the Pathway to Success. This is why the Destiny Train is such a powerful model for success.