Stop Self-Sabotage

Stop Self-Sabotage

About the Book

Award-winning clinical psychologist and TV personality Dr. Judy Ho helps you stop the cycle of self-sabotage, clear a path to lasting happiness, and start living your best life in this a must-have guide perfect for fans of You Are a Badass, Unf*ck Yourself, and How to Stop Feeling Like Sh*t.

Have you ever had a deadline for a big work project, only to find yourself down to the wire because you spent too much time on social media? Or gotten excited about meeting someone new, only to convince yourself he isn’t really interested? How many Januarys have you resolved that this is the year you’re finally going to lose the weight, only to abandon your diet in just a few weeks? If these scenarios sound familiar, you are stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage.

At one point or another, we’ve all done something that undermines our best interests and intentions. Even the most successful people get in their own way—often without realizing it.  In Stop Self-Sabotage, licensed clinical psychologist, tenured professor, and television personality Dr. Judy Ho takes a fresh look at self-sabotage to help us answer two vital questions: Why do we do it? How do we stop?

Combining therapeutically proven strategies with practical tools and self-assessments, Dr. Judy teaches you how to identify your triggers, modify your thoughts and behaviors, find your true motivation, and unlock your willpower to stop this vicious cycle in its tracks. Practical and transformative, Stop Self-Sabotage is your ultimate guide to jumpstart lasting, positive change and start living the life you want.

“People always wonder how and why they find themselves in the same situations over and over again; repetitive difficulties and bad decisions plague their lives, and self-sabotage is the most common reason people get stuck.  Judy Ho provides an analysis of the sources of our sabotage and then offers practical and proven exercises for breaking this pattern.  If you are interested in changing this is a must read.”

“There are few things that make you feel worse than self-sabotaging your success and happiness, but few things will make you feel better than stopping it and Stop Self-Sabotage is just the right guide to help you do that.”

Stop Self-Sabotage is the playbook for eliminating behaviors that interfere with the life that you deserve. Dr. Judy Ho guides the reader with practical action-oriented guidance that lead to long lasting fulfillment and happiness. This book is essential to those who desire lasting change.”

“Dr. Judy Ho has written the most amazing tool to help you on your journey to “Live Your Best Life.” This book is a must read for anyone looking to do a self-audit to dispel the things that are not working! Enjoy dawlings!”

“Everyday I see people stuck in negative behavior loops. In Stop Self-Sabotage, Dr. Judy Ho gives you the tools to intervene in your own life. Life is short, and everybody deserves their own intervention! Get busy getting better, with her easy to use six-step program for more meaning, purpose, and joy.”

 ”Stop Self-Sabotage is a power-packed guide for those who get tied up with self-defeating thoughts or actions.  Dr. Ho uses her many years of clinical experience, research, and teaching to provide the reader with an engaging roadmap toward greater happiness and fulfillment.  Applying the practical steps in this easy to read book can help transform your thinking from self sabotage to self motivation.”

“Motivating, empowering…Stop Self-Sabotage will provide support and guidance to readers looking to overcome self-destructive habits.”

“The rabbit hole of self-sabotage is treacherous…Stop Self-Sabotage provides a winning blend of insight, compassion, and practical advice. Ho’s writing is lively and compelling, and loaded with useful techniques. This is without a doubt the finest book on self-sabotage in the field!”

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Preface:
What’s Holding You Back?

Have you ever tried to reach a goal like losing weight, getting a new job, curbing overspending, or finding a satisfying relationship, only to be disappointed when your efforts didn’t bring you any closer to your dreams? Have you ever avoided getting close to people, or wanted to connect with someone so badly that your insecurity and neediness scared them off? Have you ever gotten in trouble for poor money management, or found it hard to do what it takes to take your career to the next level? Have you ever stopped and thought, Why did I do that? after you reached for the cookies instead of something healthy, or when a break from a work project turned into a binge-watching session that left you bleary-eyed and behind on deadlines?

If any of this sounds familiar, you’re stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage. Simply defined, self-sabotage shows up as thoughts and/or behaviors that undermine our best interests and conscious intentions. Have you ever thought, I can never do (fill in the blank), so then you give up and don’t try? That’s self-sabotage. Or do you act in ways that are counter to what’s good for you, for example, binge eating half a cake when you know the importance of a healthier lifestyle? That’s another example of self-sabotage. It’s a phrase many of us throw around in casual conversation, and a phenomenon we easily identify in the lives of our friends and loved ones. Even so, many of us invite the harmful, inhibiting, defeating effects of self-sabotage into our own lives without even realizing it. Because self-sabotage often works behind the scenes, we are often oblivious in the moment to what we’re doing and how we’ve gotten in our own way. And as though they weren’t hard enough to notice, these self-defeating patterns tend to rear their ugly heads just when you are at your most stressed, or feeling crappy, or stretched too thin. Even the most successful people may engage in self-sabotage in one or more areas of their life—maybe you have a rewarding career and solid marriage, but can’t seem to keep up an exercise routine, or maybe you’re a social butterfly and keep great company except when it comes to romantic partners.

Over time, self-sabotage zaps our motivation and drive. When we fail time and again to achieve our goals, but can’t identify why, we become frustrated, defeated, and stop trying. If you believe you won’t get what you want, why bother making an effort? Slowly, you stop dreaming big. You settle for what you have even though you’re dissatisfied, and remain in the dark about how you can truly change your life for the better. Self-sabotage can lead you to miss future opportunities to get your life back on track.

Without a clear understanding of how self-sabotage works, you may find yourself eating that extra piece of cake, or having a late night out before an important meeting—behaviors that don’t bring you closer to your goal and, in fact, push you further from it. You may find yourself becoming resentful of others’ successes while feeling hopeless to enact positive change on your own. You may blame your misfortune on bad luck, lack of drive, or worse—some personality defect that keeps you from success and happiness. You may have even come right out and identified self-sabotage as an issue in your life but then shrugged it off, sighed in exasperation, and moved on. Maybe part of you thinks you have no control over the problem.

If any of this sounds like you, I have great news: starting today, you can change course and transform your life. I can show you how to spot the problems that put you on the path to self-sabotage and teach you ways to transform your thinking and behaviors to reverse the vicious cycle it created in your life. Many of my clients have come to me with a problem they can’t seem to wrap their heads around, only to discover that the core issue is self-sabotage. Once they see how they have been working against their own best interests, they are relieved to discover ways to permanently retrain their brains and keep them moving toward what they want. I will teach you to develop a crystal-clear vision of your desires, focus on your most important values, and create a precise plan for success. Ultimately, you’ll learn to stop self-sabotage in its tracks and make the lasting, positive change in your life that you’ve always wanted.

I was driven to write this book because I wanted to shine a light on self-sabotage and empower people to be their best selves—to have rewarding careers, fulfilling relationships, better health—and teach them a foolproof method to pursue whatever it is that will bring them satisfaction and happiness or however they come to define their “best” life. Drawing on scientific principles and my years of working with patients and talking to family members, friends, and colleagues, I realized how incredibly common self-sabotage is and how it explains many of the difficulties people encounter that are caused by problematic habits, negative thinking, and an inability to maintain progress toward their goals. I saw people stuck in ruts that eroded their confidence, dampened their self-esteem, and created chronic sadness and anxiety. I realized that I needed to help as many people as possible to understand self-sabotage, break the cycle, and lead them to experience success, so that they can believe in themselves again and realize that they can reach their goals.

Through years of research and clinical experience, I have developed a six-step program to stop self-sabotage. Based on scientific principles and practical tools, my program has helped hundreds of my clients lose weight, stop procrastinating, stick to exercise routines, find fulfilling relationships, succeed at work, and ultimately transform their lives for the better. Each step of the program contains proven techniques that you can use to identify self-sabotaging behaviors and self-defeating thoughts, intervene in the moment, and support long-term personal growth to reduce the likelihood of self-sabotage in the future. This program has worked for my patients—some of whom you’ll get to meet later in the book—and I know it can work for you too.

A Quick Note on the Exercises

The tendency to engage in self-sabotage didn’t happen overnight, and it will take some time to retrain your brain to put yourself on the right track. That’s where the exercises you will find throughout the book come in. They are opportunities for you to slow down, take a closer look at your thoughts and behaviors, and, by working the exercises, essentially reprogram yourself so that you will no longer self-sabotage.

Each of the six steps in this program builds on the one before it, so you’ll need to work through them in sequence. As a part of each step, there are exercises that I will ask you to complete. Some require quick responses while others will ask you to dig deep and give more thoughtful responses. I’d like you to give all the exercises in the book a try, even the ones that seem weird, too simple, too difficult, or illogical to you. I have had many clients tell me they were dubious about a technique, but were pleasantly surprised at how helpful it was once they gave it a shot. That said, if not every exercise resonates with you, don’t worry. Each person has distinct needs, goals, self-sabotage triggers, and personality traits, so it’s only natural that some exercises will be more helpful to you than others. Still, you won’t know until you try, so take a deep breath and tackle each exercise from start to finish. You may find that the exercise you resisted the most becomes the one that helps you enormously. In fact, the benefit of many of the exercises is that you can take them with you, beyond doing them in the book, and put them to work in your life.

When you find yourself in a self-sabotaging situation, these exercises can work as an emergency fix. For tools you can use to stop self-sabotage in the moment, I’ve created a list of Self-Sabotage Busters (here), which contains a combination of summary techniques we will go over in these next chapters as well as a few bonus exercises that will be brand-new but especially effective for when you are about to commit a self-sabotaging action and need something that works quickly. This can be your use-in-case-of-emergency resource for a comprehensive list of easy and quick exercises.

At the end of each step, you will also find three types of exercises: a quick and dirty assignment (to complete in the next ten minutes), a short assignment (to complete within the next twenty-four hours), and a long assignment (to complete over the next week). They are designed to build upon one another, so make sure to do them in order, and be sure to work through each of them before moving on to the next step.

As you go through this book, you may feel the urge to rush through the material as quickly as possible. And who can blame you? You want to stop self-sabotage already! But remember, it’s not a race. Take your time to fully absorb the information and discover how it applies to your life. Although it is important to be consistent in your progress, there is no need to rush though a step or an exercise. It is much better to go at your own pace, give your full attention to all of the information, and practice the skills until you are comfortable with them before moving on. The more you invest in each of these assignments, the more effective this program will be for you. This means taking your time, revisiting steps when you need to, and making time to regularly review all steps in the program. It’s like exercising. You don’t do a workout once and expect to be fit for the rest of your life! You have to keep working out on a regular basis. It’s the same with the exercises in this book. Your mind loves routines and habits, and consistent practice will solidify your understanding of self-sabotage and retrain your mind to let go of old patterns and adopt new ones. This helps build up your stamina to prevent self-sabotaging thoughts and behaviors long term, and keep you on track toward your goals.

One last thought before we start: call me old-school, but I highly recommend that you use a physical journal to document your progress. Studies have shown that people learn and remember more when they handwrite their notes rather than type them.1 When we are writing by hand, we have to slow down a bit (because we can’t write as fast as we type). Slowing down helps us to process things a bit more thoughtfully and integrate what’s important about the material as we write. This extra processing of the material helps with learning and remembering, and later, when you look back at your notes, your memory of the material can also come back to you more quickly.

I sincerely hope that you will be transformed by this program and empowered to make lasting change in your life, no matter what you’re struggling with. If you are willing to turn yourself over to this program, you will learn the tools to continue living a meaningful, fulfilling life without getting in your own way. Help is here, and I know you can do this!

Let’s get to it.

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