Sabotage; What Holds Us Back

Last week I was having an email conversation with a friend of mine. The topic of discussion was success, or lack thereof, and why neither one of us was rich at this time in our lives. Her initial question to me was why do we sabotage ourselves. Her second question was, what is it that holds each of us back respectively.

For once, I actually had to take some time to think about my response. Usually, when it comes to e-mail, I'm thinking on-the-fly, as if the words are in my hands before I've even thought about them. But this time, I felt that the topic deserved some serious thought.

On the first point about sabotage, while there are many people who actually do sabotage themselves as it applies to their business, I didn't think it applied to me at the time I was thinking about it. In retrospect, I have to say that, after thinking about the second part of the question, I suppose, in a way, that I do sabotage myself, just like everybody else.

So, of course, is leads directly into question number two. This one is definitely an open ended question, one that everyone would probably answered differently, but one where almost all of us share the same reasons.

And what are those reasons? The first reason is, we are not as driven as we need to be. Many of us had big dreams and aspirations, but when it really comes down to it. Very few of us are driven to do everything we should do in order to be as successful as we dream. This is probably why .3% of all the people in the world control 80% of the wealth. And, though the growth for small businesses of less than five employees has grown drastically over the last 10 years, the overwhelming majority of people still work for someone else. This is because most people are taught to think along the lines of get education, then get a job. There is nothing wrong with that, but jobs offer security, and the more secure you are, the less driven you are, to achieve greater things. This is what Robert Kiyosaki talks about in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad.

The second reason is that many people feel they don't deserve better than what they have. Some might contradict me on this, but T. Harv Eker, in his book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, talks about how so many people look and view those who have money and wealth in a negative light. His postulation was that people have it drummed into their minds from an early age that money is the root of all evil, and that rich people are all corrupt and crooked. And, since nobody ever wants to be associated with the terms corrupt and crooked, they tend not to reach so high that others might view them in a negative light.

The third reason is that we're not focused. It's getting harder and harder to focus on the things we say we want because there is so much coming at us that it gets in the way. For instance, most of my day, when I'm home, is sitting at my computer with the television on in the background, many times with the sound down, the curtains of my window open behind and next to me, either a heater in the winter or a fan in the summer blowing towards me, the phone ringing, email coming in (and not all business, of course) and sometimes other distractions. The flashing of the TV can distract me, but I keep it on often because it makes me feel like there's someone else here with me. The curtains being open brings me light, but sometimes something catches my eye, a shadow maybe, and that takes me from my work. The phone calls aren't always business calls (it's mainly other people trying to sell me things). And email,… well, who doesn't want to take a moment to look at that funny video clip or make a quick chess move (I play email chess)?

Then there's trying to decide which project I want to work on; marketing, writing, creating or tweaking a website, or researching something. Marketing which business, and how; phone, email, letters, mailers, postcards? Tweaking which website, mine or a client's; am I optimizing, advertising, what? Researching what kind of information and for what; a project, something personal?

The fourth reason is comfort; that's a big one, even for sole proprietors who really should be scrambling for more business. Whether one is in an office or working from home, you get comfortable in your job. Most of what people do on a daily basis they do without thinking about it because they fall into patterns. One of the best things about when I was in management, because of the particular job I had, was that each day brought something different that I could get into. However, the people who worked for me did the same thing day after day, as did most people in the other departments. They basically only had to work with themselves; I had to work with everyone. When most people get comfortable in their jobs, they might start to daydream, but that takes them away from being efficient. They may get disenchanted and wish they had another job, but most of the time it takes some great impetus, most of the time negative, to get them to decide it's time for a change. One gets used to vacation time, where they know they're going to get paid to stay away from work; who doesn't love that?

For me, I have the comfort of being able to sit here at my computer most of the day, even when the weather is bad. I have the option of eating in the house, or going out to a small restaurant for lunch. I have the option of picking up the phone and calling someone whenever I want, and I can stay on the phone as long or as short as I want to, because there's no one around to tell me I'm on the phone too long. And, when I have to produce, because I work from home, and because of the hours I keep, if I wanted to, I could go out and play all day and still put in eight hours if I decided to start working at 6PM (I don't recommend this to everyone).

In my mind, these are the things that hold us back, and then, because of these things, it's how we can sabotage ourselves. It's not intentional; it's just the outgrowth of our behaviors. And it brings us back to the original question; how can we stop sabotaging ourselves.

We have first acknowledge the four items I mentioned in some fashion, come to grips with it. Then we have to decide if we're up to the challenge of the change, or if we're actually really happy with how things are. If you are, fine. If not, then we have to decide to do and believe in the opposite premises of what's listed above. I've actually done some of that in the last week. I've turned off the TV during the day and started listening to music, which I always do when I'm on a consulting assignment. I still open the window, because signs of spring are coming, but because I'm playing music, I seem to concentrate better. I've been trying to start my days by listing what I hope to accomplish, but I only list a few things instead of everything I want to get done eventually. I do this because I realized I needed to see some accomplishments during the day to keep me motivated; everyone should do something they feel will help to motivate them.

As for the email,… I went a different direction with that one. I wait until much later in the evening to respond to much of my personal email, but I have been reaching out to more of my business contacts through email. I find that, of all things, the majority of them are responding more to email than they do if I leave a message on their phones. I don't know why, but it's been working. What it's done, though, is kept my distraction level down some, because though I might scan through an email to see if it deserves a quicker response, I'm not being totally distracted for hours at a time, though, I will say that during the periods I establish for myself to eat, I will get to some emails then.

All of us, and all of the people around us, deserve to have the opportunity to take charge of our lives and be as much as we want to be. All of us can do it. As Robert Collier said, "Your chances of success in any undertaking can always be measured by your belief in yourself."