Not taking steps to be better is a disservice to yourself
How do you take the necessary steps to do better for yourself?
When you set a personal goal, do you also set out actionable steps or is it just wishful thinking? Say for example, your new year’s goal was to quit smoking or to land a promotion, how do you intend to do it? Do you have a plan? You see, a goal is only a goal when you’ve mapped out actionable steps to fulfill it. Up until then, it’s just a thought, a desire, a wish, and this I believe is how people set themselves up to fail, unconsciously.
Unconscious self sabotage is a subtler form of self sabotage which happens when a person unknowingly does things that prevents them from successfully attaining their goals.
Your goal is to lose weight and you know you will if you had a partner cheering you on and encouraging you along the way but since you don’t (yet), you continue to sit in this body that you do not like and nitpick every visible flab on your body. You know that you’d work harder for that promotion if it meant your family could see you in a better light- as an accomplished woman that you aspire to become, but because you’ve convinced yourself that you are invisible to them, you continue to show up as you are, doing the barest minimum at work to maintain status quo. You know that if you had an accountability partner you would pray more, but since you don’t, you’ve relegated your personal devotion to third party morning prayer platforms. You know that if you had a dependent you would be more disciplined with money but you don’t so you continue to splurge and act like your account is a bottomless pit of coins you keep plowing through.
My question is this- why do you not think you should do these things for yourself first? Why do you need a man to ginger you to reach your weight loss goal if loosing weight is a personal goal you aspire to. Or why do you need there to be repercussions of a bad spending habit before you fix up. Do you not rate yourself? I know that you do so why not act accordingly?
I think that constantly waiting for something or someone to motivate you before you strive to become the better version of yourself is a disservice to yourself. It’s unconscious self sabotage. It’s easy to think that surely if we were self sabotaging, we would know. As if it would come with whistles and bells and blinding red signals. But it doesn’t. Sometimes we are truly the ones standing in our own way.
Recently, I was talking with my friend about how I have such big goals for this year and how that translates into me working really hard and that alone had me dilly dallying. And then he goes “plenty work doesn’t mean the work is hard, it just means it’s a lot”. He said that he only considered a thing hard when it required something he did not possess and could not readily acquire. Up until that point, I hadn’t articulated every single goal I had for the year in detail because every time I started, the list kept getting longer and longer with every ink I put to paper and then I end up aborting mission. But hearing that plenty work doesn’t mean the work is hard really forced me to retire the perfectionist procrastinator in me and articulate in detail every thing I wanted for the year. It was freeing. To see on paper that everything I wanted to do was dependent on my own ability to follow through. To see that the power I needed to level up my life was reliant on my ability to do the heavy lifting and not on someone else to doing it for me. All I needed was the self discipline to make detailed plans and follow through with every one of them.
So this year, I no longer will self sabotage in the name of being a procrastinator. I look forward to being able to say I truly did the best I could for myself by this year end. Knowing that I followed through with every single one of the goals that needed my full effort, is important to me. Plenty work doesn’t necessarily mean hard work, it’s just a lot of work. And even if it does eventually translate to hard work, I still will follow through because I’m committed to me. I am committed to seeing how much of my dream life I can attain if I put in the necessary amount of work. Knowing that everything I can and will be is largely dependent on the amount of work I put into self actualization is enough motivator for me to get up and get to work.
So I hope like me, you’ll be motivated to do the very best within your ability that your goals require from you this year.
Love and light. 🫶🏾
Happy new year. 🤍
Glossary
ginger in Nigerian speak means motivation (to ginger = to motivate)
