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Motivate Yourself and Reach Your Goals: Self-sabotage – Overcoming our scripts

by Francis Coombes

Many of us are driven by our unconscious behaviour to self-sabotage ourselves. It is as if we were handed a script of pre-ordained self-sabotaging behaviour in childhood and that we are compelled to act out our role – even though it does not serve our own purpose.

We can recognise and categorise other characters’ self-sabotage scripts more easily than our own. There is the person who wants love but whose words drive others away; the competitive person who must win no matter that it costs their relationships and other things they hold dear; the passive-aggressive character who seethes internally at a situation but will not challenge others or initiate change.

How do you recognise your own script? If the other characters, the location and scenery in your script keeps changing and the only constant in the scene is ‘you’ – then it is your personal script.

Being aware of our situation will not be enough to resolve it. We need to explore options and identify alternative behaviours that will get us better outcomes and then to put them into action.

Change your thinking and behaviour and you change your script and the outcomes you get become positive. (Chapter 18 – Who have you got on your team?)


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