Self-sabotage is the great obstacle that prevents you from achieving greatness

We have a strange way of limiting ourselves and limiting our potential because we frequently subject ourselves to a chilling internal boycott to prevent ourselves from growing. Yes, to ourselves…, how crazy, right? Maybe you already know what I’m talking about, let’s see what’s behind it…

Why if we are born with great potential do we limit ourselves?

Years ago Abraham Maslow called this “Jonah Complex”alluding to the biblical passage in which God commissioned Jonah to deliver his message to Nineveh and he fled, not believing himself capable of doing so.

Sometimes we start a career literally in the opposite direction to success, even knowing that that is not the direction. It is out of fear of our own greatness and it is a cruel way to sabotage ourselves.

The demons that make up the Jonah complex are fear and anxiety stopping our chance to succeed. That is, you know that you are worth it, that you can achieve it, you visualize yourself being successful but you act in a way that you know will not help you achieve it. You cross the river into the valley of mediocrity for fear of not being up to par, for not valuing yourself, and because you don’t know what it means to reach the top.

Maslow said that just as we fear “let the worst happen”we are afraid of “may the best happen”. I mean, it’s something like “I don’t want everything nor do I want nothing, I prefer to stay where I am”.

These fears and anxieties respond to the fear of achieving something beyond what others have achieved, of facing the responsibilities that greatness entails, of not knowing how to make our way on the horizon, of being arrogant, of failing…

I mean, It is a dark way we have of creating our own suffering. It’s not that we stop success or pain, it’s that we stop our own joy. Self-created suffering, self-sabotage, is a totally unnecessary and harmful type of pain.

Overcoming this requires a very demanding implementation. The only way to eradicate this type of personal suicide is by facing the demon of envy that as a society embraces and grips us, since underlying it is the fear of not achieving our goals or of doing so and being rejected by others for it.

Because There are two ways to respond to the success of others: with greed or admiration and unfortunately we tend to do it the first way. So with this panorama, who dares to clash or show themselves new and unique? Of course not all or in all aspects, which is why we make that unconscious determination to stay put and emotionally depend on mediocrity.

The prison that each of us creates for ourselves has different bars and different executioners stationed at the doors, watching each of our movements and our own breathing. What is clear is that our prison will become our grave with an epitaph that will show the world that we have lived without pain or glory. We will die with what we are wearing and they will bury us with the garments of mediocrity and emotional comfort.

It’s necessary that Let’s balance our aspirations with keeping our feet on the ground. Most people sin too much in one aspect or another, that is, they either set their sights too high or seem to be burying themselves. If we look at truly successful people, we see that the majority have known how to balance this issue, that is, they shoot towards the sky without separating themselves from reality.

Fearing our achievements has largely to do with our inability to tolerate uncertainty. We are sick with certainty because we do not trust our ability to face whatever comes. We need to have everything tied up, tied up and checked a thousand times.

Our need for reinsurance is brutal, is our way of fraternizing with the obsessive thoughts that guide every step we take before the giant of success. We are not aware that looking up means believing that we are below and allowing ourselves the luxury of feeling inferior, something that will actually penalize us for the rest of our lives.

Images courtesy of nuvolanevicata and Africa Studio