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

Hidden Drains on Your Time and Energy

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 <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-practice/201801/easy-self-improvement-examples-one-percent-improvements">1, 10, or 20 </a>percent), rather than to eliminate all self-defeating behavior from your life.

Overcoming Self-Sabotage

<ul><li>Over-focus on decreasing negative interactions, but under-focus on <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-practice/201301/50-characteristics-healthy-relationships">increasing positive interactions </a>and shared experiences.</li><li>Complain about other people’s behavior when you need to make the same change yourself.</li><li>Repeat strategies for influencing others that aren’t effective 90+ percent of the time.</li><li>Operating based on how you think a situation should be rather than dealing with reality.</li><li>Not acknowledging valid points other people make and ignore when they bring up genuine behavioral problems.</li><li>Your emotional raw spots when triggered, result in out-of-proportion reactions.</li></ul>

Relationships

<ul><li>You expect yourself to succeed in making life changes without designating any time or mental space to accomplish them.</li><li>You see your capacity to change as being dependent on other people’s behavior. </li><li>You’re a <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/perfectionism">perfectionist </a>who is dismissive of <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-practice/201801/easy-self-improvement-examples-one-percent-improvements">incremental improvements </a>, and you’re only satisfied when 100 percent of a problem is fixed.</li><li>You’re “too busy chasing cows to build a fence.” You’re too busy to come up with processes or systems that would help you better manage your time.</li></ul>

How You Approach Change

<ul><li>You hold back from investing or otherwise taking charge of your money, because of <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/embarrassment">shame </a>and <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/anxiety">anxiety </a>about a bad decision or experience from years ago.</li><li>You overpay for items due to risk aversion.</li><li>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.</li><li>You make financial decisions based on being sucked into <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/consumer-behavior">marketing </a>incentives when those decisions don’t make logical sense.</li><li>You keep paying for subscriptions you rarely use.</li></ul>

Money

<ul><li>Your approach to pleasure is a <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/denial">denial </a>-binge cycle. You deny yourself simple pleasures and relaxation, and then stay up watching Netflix until 3 a.m.</li><li>You ignore the warning signs that you need a break.</li><li>You don’t solve simple roadblocks to pleasure. For example, you enjoy taking photos, but your phone is full, and you haven’t gotten around to backing it up.</li><li>You hold back from doing the things you want due to erroneous “I can’t…” thoughts.</li></ul>

Pleasure and Self-Care

<ul><li>You self-generate <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/stress">stress </a>. For example, you start more projects than you have time to finish.</li><li>You work on low priority tasks, but leave high priority tasks undone.</li><li>You overwork when what you really need is to step back and see the big picture.</li><li>You’re self-critical when self-acceptance and compassion would have a more positive impact on your behavior and emotions.</li></ul>

Work

Self sabotaging patterns to be rated on a scale of 1 (not a problem) to 7 (big problem)

Pleasure and Self-Care

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

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