How We Self Sabotage to Keep Us Safe and SINGLE

TeamDF69 — Thu, 03 Dec 2015 18:18:44 +0800

Imagine this, you are walking on the streets and see a girl so beautiful it reminds you of sunrise. She is walking towards you and soon, both of you will be within talking range. You did not maintain eye contact because that’s what introverts do, but inside, you are pondering. You have 2 options, to walk past her or to talk to her. In this split second moment, you mind is racing, your blood flow increases, while you are weighting your decision, you pull out all your life experience to aid that decision making process. “Should I, or should I not” this is the question you are playing inside your head. Then a though creeps up, you were reminded of the last time you were in a similar situation; “Remember that time when the girl says no. You muster up all your courage to talk to her and still, she told you that she already had a boyfriend”.

Both of you now within talking distance, she check you out, you caught her eye momentarily, but then you looked away and continue walking.

WHY?

Why do we do that?

A lot of this behaviors are automatic, knee jerk reactions. The decision we make in that moment happened in our mind, fast and automatic. Past behaviors are a good indicators of future behaviors. Why then did this happen, why the hell are we doing it again and again? Why do we self sabotage? Well, think of self sabotage as the result of the brain’s dysfunction defense mechanism. They are a result of your early life experiences. The defense mechanism are there to keep us safe but if they are formed by a false self-belief, then it will become dysfunctional. Like the example above, you are reminded of the early experience where you did attempt to take a chance but unfortunately events did not go out as planned. The brain is trying to protect you from being hurt again, therefore the logical decision this time around is to walk on. Well at least you are safe right?

But what if, events did go out as planned previously? Will that change your decision this time around? I am willing to bet that it will. You will take your chances again because the previous experience is favorable.

QUOTE

“Past experience is a good indicator of future behavior”.

Now let’s continue with the story, you walked away and continue with your life. Two weeks passed, you find yourself walking on the same streets again (lets assume this is the streets that you always took to walk home and the same for her, lucky you). As you are walking, in the corner of your eye you saw the same girl again, that reminds you of the warmth, beauty and glow of sunrise! Again your mind is racing, blood flow increasing and you are weighting the decision. “Will this time be different?” you asked yourself. But this time is different, you felt different. You still felt stress but surprisingly, not as stressed as the last time. It is easy to come to a decision. You let her pass again and continue with your life. Then the same thing happened again the next time, this time you felt lesser stress in making the decision and you let her pass. The same event happened again for the 4th time, you no longer feel anything to the current event. You had anchored the decision for the event, you mind had already formed the necessary neural connection for this event’s decision. The formalized decision is to let her pass, so that you can be safe. Well, at least you are safe right?

An interesting thing happened internally over here. Why does decision seem to be easier the second time around?

QUOTE

Every time you make a decision, you are reinforcing the decision. It is a vicious cycle, unless you break the cycle, it will continues again and again. With each subsequent cycle the decision become easier and easier to make.

Self fulfilling cycle

What then drives the decision?

Your DECISION is driven by your BELIEFS. To continue a path of destruction, we allow fear to drive our decision. This can manifest in the following ways:
- The fear of rejection – “If she rejects me, I will feel lesser as a man”.
- The familiarity of failure – “I do not have a girlfriend before, why will this time be any different”
- Feeling unworthy – “She is too pretty for me, no way she will like me”.
- Fear of uncertainty – “What should I say to her? What if I run out of things to say?”

What about our behavior?

Besides walking on the street and letting our chances to meet woman go, we self sabotage in several others ways. It is usually not obvious in plain sight but covertly camouflaged in the actions we make.

Imagine you have a huge crush on a girl. You knew her because you both shared the same hobbies and you met up every weekend with this group of people for rock climbing. Every week before going to rock climbing, you tell yourself that this time, I will ask her out. But guess what, this time always becomes next time. Every week you tell yourself, she will always be here next week, there is no rush, in the meantime, I will continue to build rapport, this will increase my chances of asking her out the next time. Next week I will do it! And then next week comes around and you say the same thing again.

Do you see the main default behavior we fall back on when we self – sabotage?

QUOTE

“Taking the easier choice by procrastination. Driven by a belief that there will always be another chance to do it tomorrow”.

Then three months passed, and one weekend you saw her coming holding hands with another member of the group and your heart sank (true story).

So what can we do to counter self sabotage?

Recognized that this cycle is a natural human biological process employed by the brain. The brain does this to free up mental processes so we can get on with life and face further challenges. Only novel situation (things we are doing for the first time) gets analyzed and then once we had made the decision on how to handle that situation, that situation will be handled the same way when it comes up again and again.

Imagine how hard it is to drive a car the first time you are learning it, do it for a year and you find yourself being able to carry out a conversation with someone or listening to the music. This is the same process employed in leaning any skill, do it again and again, it will start to become automatic. Do it again and again for a dysfunctional self sabotaging behaviour and it will become problematic.

To counter the destructive cycle of self sabotage, we need to recognize the vicious cycle we are in and to consciously break them the next time they crop up. You can do this by identifying the cue for the event and pre-planning your response. Stop to consider your actions and you will stop doing the same thing over and over again.

The thing to recognize is – this is not your natural state. You picked up this self- sabotaging behavior from your early life experiences and decisions. Now go out and break the cycle and ask her out already!

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How We Self Sabotage to Keep Us Safe and SINGLE