Why Do I Keep Self-Sabotaging My Goals? And How You Can Stop
- May 21
- 9 min read
Why do I keep self-sabotaging my goals?
Self-sabotage isn’t about laziness. It happens when you stop sustaining action toward your goals, despite knowing what you want
The root cause of self-sabotage is how your goals are motivated: they are either fear-based (avoidance) or love-based (desire-driven)
Fear-based goals create quick initial momentum but aren’t sustainable, leading to stagnation
Hustle culture reinforces fear-based motivation, encouraging people to act from pressure and avoidance
Sustainable progress comes from “running toward” something meaningful, not just escaping something undesirable
The language of your goals matters: negative phrasing reinforces what you’re avoiding, while positive, sensory language builds motivation
Love-based goals feel energising, expansive, and motivating, helping you maintain long-term consistency
In this article:
You set the goal. You know what you want. You even start taking action on the goal - sometimes powerful, huge action that feels extraordinary.
But then somewhere along the way, you stop. You procrastinate. You let things drift. Before you know it, you’re asking yourself:
Why do I keep doing this to myself?
Why can’t I keep on top of things?
What’s wrong with me?
If you’re a high achiever and devoted to your calling, you’ve probably already ruled out laziness. You work hard, you’re driven, and you’re self-aware enough to know that something deeper is going on.
What you’re experiencing is self-sabotage, and the root of it almost always comes down to one thing: what your goals are actually built on.
Let’s look at exactly why this keeps happening, and what to do instead.
The Hidden Root of Self-Sabotage: Two Types of Goal Motivation
The first thing to understand is that there are two types of goal motivation and they produce very different results.
You might have heard coaches talk about goals based on values, identity, or the person you want to become. But I’ve always thought it’s simpler than that.
Your goals are built on one of two things: fear or love.
Fear-based goals are about avoiding something you’re scared of or don’t like. Love-based goals are about something you are deeply, compassionately dedicated to; something you truly desire and yearn for.
Two people can have the same goal but with very different intentions. You might describe it as a negative intention coming from fear, or a positive intention coming from love, or a lack mindset versus an abundant mindset.
These two different intentions, even with the same goal, will produce very different results.
Recognising the Self-Sabotage Pattern in Yourself
As an example, take a goal that lots of the people I’ve worked with have, either as a dream or something they’ve already done: you want to quit your job and work for yourself, or turn something you’re passionate about into your full-time calling.
Do you want that because you hate your boss, because you’re afraid of ending up stuck in a dead-end job for years? That’s fear.
Or is it because you’re totally in love with the idea of building a business, including all of the hard work that comes with it, and what your life could be in the future? That’s love.
It’s the same goal with an entirely different intention.
The thing is that fear-based intention gives you immediate momentum. When I’ve quit jobs I didn’t like, left relationships that weren’t good for me, or moved on from places, often it came from that feeling of “I’ve got to get out of here!” That fear-based momentum is immediately useful - but it is not sustainable.
Unfortunately, it is insidious, prevalent, and even popular.
How Hustle Culture Keeps The Self-Sabotage Cycle Running
We live in a culture of fear. We’re scared of the future, scared of not having enough, of not moving fast enough, scared of failing - rather than allowing progress to be a sustainable, organic journey with its own ups and downs.
Many well-known business coaches and personal development gurus purposefully activate that fear in you: “Do you really want to be stuck in a dead-end job for years?” There’s a real push to use fear as a motivating force, as the ‘stick’ that will get you acting, including promoting the daily grind of hustle culture.
People don’t grind because they love grinding. They grind to reach a point where they can stop! The thinking is: I’m afraid of being stuck where I am, so I’ve got to hustle until I can be somewhere else. But what happens when you get to that next place? What drives you then?
The Horror Movie Analogy
Think of it like a horror movie. The terrified group of teenagers suddenly realise the monster is in the house. So they run as fast as they can out of the house and into the city - and as soon as they think they’ve got far enough ahead, what’s the first thing they do? They stop.
And that’s exactly when the monster gets them!
Whether you’re running from a monster, or you’re running from a life you don’t want, your actions slow down after you’ve overcome the initial problem. Once you’ve quit that job, that job is done. The fear that was powering you disappears, and there’s nothing left to move you forward.
To be clear, that’s not a weakness or a character flaw. It’s just human instinct telling you “Run, now!” and you finally listening to it - but then not having anything else to keep you going once you’ve run.
But what it will look and feel like is self-sabotage. You’ll say to yourself:
But I was doing so well!
I don’t understand why everything has slowed down.
I just can’t seem to get motivated.
That is self-sabotage triggered by fear-based goals. If your progress is powered only by what you were avoiding, once that ‘monster’ is nowhere to be seen your progress will slow, you’ll start to procrastinate, and the goal loses all its power. There’s nothing to fuel it once you’ve cleared that initial hurdle.
The key is to find something to run towards instead.
Introducing Soul-Driven Goals: The Antidote to Self-Sabotage
About ten years ago, as an obsessive planner who used to set goals driven by fear without even realising it, I developed my own method for goal setting.
I’ve used it ever since, I teach it to my clients, and it’s brought me remarkable results: travelling Europe while building my business, and securing multiple five-figure contracts from just a few LinkedIn posts. I was able to magnetise opportunities because I was focused on what I loved and yearned for - not what I was running from.
There was a deep need for me to develop a new goal setting method. I was successful on paper but numb, tired and burnt out. I realised that we need new ways of setting goals - ways that aren’t based on SMART methodologies, which just don’t work, and ways that aren’t linear, hyper-masculine, or hyper-capitalist.
Because these methods aren’t designed for who we truly are as human beings. We’re not here to live based on fear and everything we don’t want. We’re here to experience life based on what we do want: what we desire, what we yearn for, what we are drawn towards.
I call my method, which is grounded in these exact things, Soul-Driven Goals.
The Soul-Driven Goals Methodology is built around my 10 Rules of Wild Success, and one of the most powerful of those rules is what stops self-sabotage in its tracks.
Run Towards, Not Away - How You Stop Self-Sabotaging
To succeed - and to stop self-sabotaging - you’ve got to have something you’re running towards, not just something you’re running away from.
(This is Rule #4 in my Rules of Wild Success).
Think of all the videos you’ve seen of people meeting loved ones off a plane. They’d run through crowds, run through fire to reach them. They’re not running because they’re scared of being on the plane! They’re running towards something they truly desire.
It’s about reorienting your goal from avoidance - such as “I want to leave this job” or “I don’t want to be stuck” - towards what’s truly desirable for you. It’s the process of moving from avoidance and fear-based language to language that feels delicious and desirable when you think about it.
Because changing the words of your goal doesn’t just change the language - it changes the entire energy behind it.
The Language of Self-Sabotage
If you’ve ever set a resolution using the words stop, quit, or don’t, you’ll have discovered that those goals are much harder to achieve that ones phrased positively.
If you say “quit smoking,” your brain is constantly thinking: smoking, smoking, smoking. It doesn’t really register the stopping. Whereas goals like “breathe easily every day” or “I want lungfuls of fresh air” paint a picture of the world you want to live in.
This is how to keep your goal full of energy and motivation, and to avoid the procrastination and freeze that shows up as self-sabotage.
Finding Your 'Run Towards' Language
So what is the dream? What is the desire? What sensation, feeling, emotion, or idea do you want to move towards?
When I think about leaving jobs that I no longer love, what I’ve truly yearned for is time and freedom - to go where I want, when I want, and earn money while doing it. The more I focus on that freedom rather than the opposite - trying to avoid constriction or rigid schedules - the more I stay in that expansive mindset and the more likely I am to take action and experience success.
When you find the right language, it will feel not only joyful and pleasurable, but there will also be an element of relief. Just like the tension in the horror movie, goals created from fear create tightness and panic. But when running towards something you love, your heart opens, your mind expands. You feel free.
You’ll know you’ve found that ‘run towards’ goal when the language pulls you in, like a powerful magnet drawing you forward.
Three Exercises to Stop Self-Sabotaging Your Goals
These exercises are part of my Soul-Driven Goals methodology. They’re simple, but they’re transformative.
1) Identify the Fear Behind Each Goal
Go through each of your current goals and identify whether they are primarily based in fear or in love. A helpful approach is to assign a percentage: what percent of this goal is coming from fear, and what percent from love? This single step alone will start to reveal where your self-sabotage is rooted.
2) Rewrite One Fear-Based Goal
Pick one goal that you’ve identified as predominantly fear-based and rewrite it so it describes what you’re moving towards, not what you’re moving away from.
If you have a goal about changing your body, for example, rewrite it as: “I want to feel strong, I want to feel healthier, I want to enjoy my body, I want to be able to move freely”. Framing it entirely around what you’re moving towards, not what you are avoiding.
3) Notice the Difference in Your Body
Then sit with the difference in feeling between the two versions for a day or two. What does it feel like, to have a goal based in fear vs a goal based in love? If it still doesn’t feel quite right, rewrite it again until it truly reflects a love-based intention.
Remember that the goal that triggers self-sabotage is the one that makes you freeze every time you think about it; you’re stuck behind a tree, waiting for the monster. The goal based in love is the one that feels free, easy, big, and energising.
Rewriting your goals and noticing the physical difference in how each version feels is a powerful practice. Your body knows. Understanding the percentage of intention, rewriting one goal, and noticing the difference in your body will genuinely help you move forward and break the self-sabotage cycle for good.
Ready to Understand Why You’re Really Self-Sabotaging?
If you recognise this pattern in yourself - the outer success alongside the inner frustration, the goals that keep losing momentum - this is exactly what the Soul-Driven Goals Workshop is designed to help you with.
It’s a two-hour video workshop, available on demand, that teaches my full Soul-Driven Goals method including a deep dive into the exercises above.
I’ve been using this method for ten years, plus teaching it to all my clients. It took me from being successful on paper but numb in real life, to living, breathing, and celebrating my dreams coming true.
Enrol in the Soul-Driven Goals Workshop.
🤔 Not quite ready to invest two hours yet?
Then start with my free diagnostic quiz. It’s called What’s Really Stopping You? - because once you understand the self-sabotage pattern at the root of your stagnation, you can finally solve it. You’ll receive a personalised result and a short email series using key ideas from the Soul-Driven Goals method.
Comments