The New Year often seems like a revolving door. No sooner are you carefully negotiating your entrance and getting ready to launch yourself into January, than you find yourself spinning into the next round of New Year celebrations.

And all those things you we were intent on achieving over the past 12 months are still on your “to do” list – giving up smoking, losing weight, getting fit, changing jobs, leaving that disastrous relationship, taking up that hobby you’ve always wanted to try or reading the complete Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings saga.It’s no wonder that we find ourselves always referring to the passing of time in negative terms. “My how the year has flown”, “another year over, another year older”, “I can’t believe New Year is here already”. Unfortunately as we age the years seem to pass us by more quickly. This is probably for two reasons. As we get older our lives become busier, and the busier we are the faster time seems to fly. And proportionate to our age, 12 months becomes shorter and shorter. A year is still a reasonably long time to a 15 year old (1/15th of a life) but when you get to 40, 50 or more, it’s a pretty brief time span.

This means that the older we get the more we need to ensure we make the most of our time on earth. Unfortunately for some of us, self sabotage comes much easier than self development, preventing us from having the life we really want and, let’s face it, the life we deserve!

What is self sabotage? It’s all those things we do that get in the way of us achieving our goals. So you wouldn’t intentionally prevent yourself from being happy, fulfilled and living the life you’ve always wanted to live, right? Wrong!

So your circumstances are just a result of bad luck, not enough time, or lack of resources? This may be true, but if we are honest with ourselves, it may not be.

My mother always told me “procrastination is the thief of time”. And she always told me this because I was a chronic procrastinator. “Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow” seemed to be my motto. It took me 30 or so years to work out that if I did the things I didn’t like doing now, I would save an awful lot of energy worrying, avoiding the issue or dealing with the consequences of delaying. And I could get onto the things I liked doing much sooner.

Some of us don’t do things or delay doing things because we truly believe that whatever we do there won’t be a good outcome. Why? Because we actually believe that we don’t deserve a good outcome. We believe that nothing good will ever really happen to us so there is not much point in working too hard on something that will only end in disappointment.

We deny ourselves opportunity and refuse to chase our potential because of a negative view of our own self worth.

Delaying actions or decisions can cause us additional hardship and bring disastrous results. That assignment you left until the last minute, submitted late and got low marks for; that event you were planning when you failed to book the venue in time so you missed out and had to settle for an inferior location; leaving your Christmas shopping until the last minute - not finding the right gifts then having to spend way too much. The list is endless.

Unfortunately the disastrous consequences don’t always teach us to get in and get things done early, rather they reinforce our belief that we got what we deserved. Life wasn’t meant to be easy and everything needs to be a battle. We have denied ourselves success because we don’t honestly believe that we deserve to be successful. Right?

Wrong. We all deserve to be happy, successful and fulfilled. Look at the person down the street or in the office next door, or sitting next to you on the bus. Do you agree that they have a right to be happy, successful and fulfilled? Then you need to tell yourself (over and over again if necessary) that you have a right to the same things.

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.” (Ayn Rand, Russian-born American Author)

Join us next month as we conclude the 2 part article on "Saving yourself from self sabotage".

© Wendy Rush 2008