Setting goals feels good.
We are meant to learn, strive, grow, achieve, and evolve throughout our life.
Our brains were designed for this.
Having a challenge motivates us to become a more developed version of ourselves – whether it’s through learning new skills, practicing a new behavior, or evolving and maturing emotionally.
We take on new challenges for this exact reason.
But we often get side-tracked or do things that hinder us from getting to our goal.
We self-sabotage.
Self-sabotaging behavior can be summed up as any behavior that creates problems in your daily life and interferes with your long-term goals.
You have something you want, but then you do things that are in direct conflict to this.
Consider wanting to follow a healthy lifestyle by getting in movement, eating healthy, and not abusing alcohol.
But you find you drink more than you want. You binge or overdrink.
You act in ways that are the direct opposite of what you want for your life.
This leads to frustration, disappointment, guilt, and anger.
Internally, you are in conflict.
The problem with this internal conflict is nothing makes it go away. You are happy and mad when you decide to drink, yet again. Immediately, you are happy but then get mad and upset because you gave in again. If you decide not to drink, you are mad and upset initially because you feel deprived, but then you are happy about your choice the next day.
To your brain, it feels like it is a lose-lose situation since the next day’s happiness is not enough to keep the behavior going. Naturally, you’ll wind up giving in to the immediate pleasure of drinking because this feels better to your brain. This leads you to justify your actions to yourself.
Continuing on this way takes you further from your goal of being a social drinker or one who can be in control of their drinking.
This is the cycle of self-sabotage.
Breaking any self-sabotaging behavior is about identifying why that behavior exists in the first place. You need to determine what need of yours is being met by the behavior.
We all have needs. But how we choose to meet those needs will determine the quality of our life. We feel good if the way we meet our needs is moving us toward our long-term goals. We don’t feel good if the way we meet our needs is taking us further from the goals we set out for our lives. We live in conflict because we are not living as the human we want to be.
It’s possible to learn how to meet our own needs while pursuing our most meaningful goals in life. We don’t need to create this unnecessary internal conflict. Instead, we can live aligned. From this place, contentment and satisfaction become natural by-products.
This is this process I take my clients through to become a woman who can take it or leave it with their drinking. We discover why they’re overdrinking and develop ways to meet their needs without needing to drink. Through my program, you’ll understand what has kept you stuck with your drinking and how to build a new relationship with alcohol and with yourself. My coaching program transforms the way you relate to alcohol and your life improves significantly. You are confident and free again. Schedule a free consult call here. Let’s get you living your best aligned life.
