30 Types of Self-Sabotage (and What to Do About It)

• Wasting time and emotional energy reinventing the wheel
• Needing better routines that work for you.
• People defer all decision-making to you even though you can empower them to make decisions.
• Choosing to be miserable in situations in which you can choose happiness.
• Creating self-imposed rules that trigger or support procrastination.
• You think and research endlessly, trying to find perfect solutions which overcomplicate problems.
• Staying stuck in patterns that are psychologically comfortable, but not working for you.
• Allowing yourself to ruminate or worry without taking problem-solving actions.

• Over-focus on decreasing negative interactions, but under-focus on increasing positive interactions and shared experiences.
• Complain about other people’s behavior when you need to make the same change yourself.
• Repeat strategies for influencing others that aren’t effective 90+ percent of the time.
• Operating based on how you think a situation should be rather than dealing with reality.
• Not acknowledging valid points other people make and ignore when they bring up genuine behavioral problems.
• Your emotional raw spots when triggered, result in out-of-proportion reactions.

• You self-generate stress . For example, you start more projects than you have time to finish.
• You work on low priority tasks, but leave high priority tasks undone.
• You overwork when what you really need is to step back and see the big picture.
• You’re self-critical when self-acceptance and compassion would have a more positive impact on your behavior and emotions.

• You hold back from investing or otherwise taking charge of your money, because of shame and anxiety about a bad decision or experience from years ago.
• You overpay for items due to risk aversion.
• You will overpay for minimal extra gain. For example, you’ll spend more for a top-of-the-line model when the extra features that the model offers aren't even particularly important to you.
• You make financial decisions based on being sucked into marketing incentives when those decisions don’t make logical sense.
• You keep paying for subscriptions you rarely use.

1. Consider addressing any habit you’ve rated a 5 or above.

2. Once you see your patterns, make specific behavioral plans of what you’ll start doing instead.

3. Any behavior change plan you come up with needs a contextual trigger.

4. Aim to improve your habits (by say 1, 10, or 20 percent), rather than to eliminate all self-defeating behavior from your life.