How To Engineer Your Life to Prevent Self-Sabotage

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Lifestyle Engineering is a way of mind and hence a way of life that engenders happiness. Its concepts are not new but demonstrates the need to live within a self-imposed frame work of values that is a necessary addition to ANY self empowerment process and consequently fundamental to achieving long-term wellbeing.
It is a simple concept that I originally designed to counteract the things that most of us unconsciously do to make sure that we are NOT 100% happy with our lives. This is “Self sabotage” in action. It was only later that I realised that what I had really done was define a way to be.
I was reading a newspaper article about how a lottery winner had spent millions and ended up worse off than before. I asked myself that if such a win does not change how you feel about yourself then what would.
Now everybody without exception wants to feel good. They want to have positive feelings of self-confidence, self-worth, strength of character, self-esteem, self-respect, whatever the words used to describe how one wants to feel. Overall then how you feel about yourself is principally determined by your perception of success as a person. And in no small measure perception of achievement and success has a large bearing upon this.
So what is success? Three different dictionaries all have similar definitions. “The quality of succeeding” or “The state of having succeeded” or “Judged favourably by others” or “Attainment of wealth”. However given the subjective nature of perception, I believe that those definitions should include the following.
Success is “The difference between how you feel towards yourself now and how you felt before any commitment to change was made”.
Therefore commitment to change is paramount for achievement in any endeavour if we want to improve how we feel about ourselves. It is the first step necessary to help overcome the natural resistance of our belief system to keep the status quo. Keeping things as they are is all too easy and results in either not doing things at all or putting them off in favour of doing something more enjoyable. Every single person has this tendency albeit to varying degrees. So why do we do it?
If we let it, our unconscious mind will steer us away from just about any action that is even the slightest bit uncomfortable, boring or time consuming. This occurs even when such an action is of paramount importance to long term happiness and wellbeing. Other safer and easier lines of action will somehow materialise that seem to take a higher priority. Quite often this happens on a recurring basis so that no progress is ever made on the original life-enhancing task.
It is easy to live the life of a couch slouch. Not bother to keep the garden tidy not make the bed each day or dress smartly. It is easy not to show gratitude when the situation demands it or tell lies in place of the truth. It is easy to create litter rather than take the trouble to put it in the proper place. It is easy to groan and complain whilst doing nothing or to follow a mob. It is easy to remain in the same humdrum job rather than to look for something better.
It is easy to excuse your own actions by saying “Well everybody else is doing it” even when this blatantly untrue. Some will excuse themselves for doing nothing because they are waiting for some event that will miraculously turn up to change their otherwise mediocre lives.
Self-sabotage manifests itself as the self-ingratiating excuses we use in justification for action or non-action. It really doesn’t matter what the excuses are just as long as the ego is satisfied. Even feeling uneasy about not doing what we know we should makes little difference. We often still don’t do the right thing.
The belief system is very adept at deflecting us away from anything that is likely to steer us away from the comfort zone. It has been doing it for many years and knows all the tricks. It is persistent to the extreme and will even go so far as to make one feel ill to prevent an action that is out of the comfort zone. More especially if fear of failure is involved.
It’s too difficult I don’t have the money, I don’t have the time,BURBERRY DISCOUNT, I don’t know how, are all typical excuses of the unconscious mind in action. Alternatively a sudden attack of tiredness occurs that prevents doing what needs doing when it needs doing. Any one of a myriad of excuses can materialise for not taking the right action.
Before I continue I feel it necessary to put these particular excuses into context. If I can get an Open University BSc. Hon. Degree studying in my spare time whilst in full time employment at the age of sixty, then so can anyone else make time available and/or accrue any knowledge necessary.
There are many self-made millionaires who originally committed themselves to change and who started with nothing or huge debts. Some went unbelievably far into debt and still got themselves out of it. They were able to do this because they had faith in themselves and viewed their lack of money as a temporary condition. If they can you can. There are NO buts. No matter what you think at this time. 'Buts' are just excuses not to take the right action.
Okay then the first thing is to make time available if it is necessary. If money is an issue then that too can be resolved with the right approach and determination. If you feel that you cannot agree with this then I suggest you don’t read any further. Clearly you prefer your life to remain as it is and that is not the purpose of this article.
What we need to do then is to determine the difference between when we are using self-ingratiating excuses and sound reasoning. The key factor in doing this is to determine how one would feel after a particular line of action is implemented. It is never wrong to do the right thing. Decide for each of the alternatives the likely outcome in terms of feelings. If your conscience is adversely affected then the logic for that particular choice is faulty. Often a ‘but’ will be in evidence; like I know I should do this but…
Now you might be saying this is all very well for tasks that we know we can do like wash the car, shine the shoes, clean the kitchen floor and so forth but what about those that we are unsure about. Those business-related ideas that might have a significant impact on the future for example. How do we know if it is the right thing for us to commit to or not?
I’d like to say there is a cast iron remedy for this but unfortunately there isn’t. However what can be said is that perception of the size of the difficulties that must be overcome controls whether action along a particular line is taken or not.
Since the level of difficulty, just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder then the most likely route to a successful outcome is one that encompasses your passion. When it is something that you love to do, the perceived difficulties and errors of judgement are minimal because the process will always be enjoyable.
Unfortunately how to determine the venture best suited to you is beyond the scope of this article but one particular methodology to achieve this is covered in Lifestyle Engineering for Beginners.
It is a thousand times better to do something and be wrong than to do nothing at all.
Self-sabotage is characterised by the self-ingratiating excuses we give ourselves for not doing the right thing when it is necessary. Doing the right thing also means being persistent. Mistakes only become failure if they are not corrected and are part of the learning process of what not to do. Many, many projects have failed because errors of judgement were not corrected.
Happiness, like anything that is worthwhile, has to earned. There are NO short cuts and there never will be - and yes, never is a very long time.