5 Self-Defeating Behaviors Sabotaging Your Success in Business

Hey Friend!

Did you know that 90% of us sabotage our own success in business? Weird, right? I know over the past almost 11 years of being a full-time entrepreneur, I’ve gotten in my own way more times than I’d like to count. Self-sabotage comes in many forms and in today’s blog we are looking at five of the most common self-defeating behaviors and how to stop them. Get your pen and paper ready because we dive deep into how to work through them and step into God-centered success in your business. 

How to Overcome Self-Defeating Behaviors to Achieve Success in Business 

What is self-sabotage and why do we do it?

Self-sabotage is when you come in and mess yourself up. You might do something that throws a wrench in God’s plan for your life or you let your mind go crazy. This leads to you either not doing something you should be doing or doing something without thinking about God’s blessing. Basically, it’s you in your own way, messing things up. 

We self-sabotage for many reasons: self-protection, coping mechanisms, and fear manifesting as your comfort zone or protection. While most people may not recognize that they are doing it, I believe everybody deals with these behaviors throughout their business journey. 

The second we have an awareness of how we are self-sabotaging our success in our online businesses, the sooner we can take it captive, stop doing that behavior, create new habits and routines around it and surrender it to the Lord. 

The top 5 self-defeating behaviors keeping you from success in business and life

1. Procrastination is one of the most extensive self-defeating behaviors

This is when you know what you should be doing, you have clarity on the direction, but you keep overanalyzing it.  You keep doing more and more research and courses, but since it’s not perfect, you can’t do the thing. You might think now isn’t the time, so you wait for the perfect moment that never comes. 

Procrastination is when you keep putting off whatever it is that you know you have to get done. Procrastination is one of the biggest self-defeating behaviors because procrastination doesn’t allow you to take any action. It also allows fear to manifest. The longer you take to get something done, the bigger it becomes in your mind. If the only thing to fear is fear itself, the longer you wait to do it, the longer that fear has to root itself into your heart. And as fear gets deeper into our hearts, it begins to manifest as truth even though we know fear is a liar. 

2. Perfectionism strangles your success in business

What is perfectionism? It is for those who think something must be perfect before it can be done. Sometimes perfectionism goes hand in hand with procrastination; sometimes, it can stand alone. 

For example, if you are building an online course, you must know precisely how it will work out. What are the modules going to be? What are they going to look like? Are they perfect? What about this thing? Should the button be here or there? And until you perceive the thing to be perfect, you can’t do it. 

The reality is that it will never be perfect. There is no such thing as being perfect. Because you will grow, things will change, and you must be willing to fail forward. You have to be willing to redo stuff, it’s part of your success in business. You are going to get more clarity as you go. 

One of the big reasons perfectionism is so detrimental to success in business is that it snowballs. The more you sit in perfectionism, the more you end up procrastinating, and then you creep into the fear anchors, and you start to hold yourself back in so many ways.

3. Doing everything in a desperate attempt to have success in business 

This is the person who feels like they have to do ALL.THE.THINGS. They start a podcast, a YouTube channel, blogging, and repurpose content for Tik Tok, Instagram reels, and stories. Plus, they need an email list and a hundred different reminders in an attempt to get it all done by lunchtime. And this is at the detriment of everything else in your life. 

You are doing everything hoping something sticks. We need to show ourselves some grace for this one because this is what the world tells us we must do to be successful. Almost every podcast and business coach says you must do everything, hoping something might work. 

So you’re doing all these things but the problem is you’re doing so much, you’re doing nothing well. Your messaging isn’t right yet, because you’re still newish in your business. You aren’t making any money yet, so you don’t know what to double down on. And you’re not sure what you should be doing, so you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping it will stick. 

You can’t grow something that hasn’t been proven. So self-sabotage here looks like distraction wrapped up as an opportunity. You think the opportunity is being everywhere, doing everything but the truth is, it’s keeping you from success in business and in life!

4. You give up on success in business too soon

Giving up too soon looks like you started the podcast; you tried it for 90 days and then gave up. It was exciting and fun at first, but it got hard because it was real life. Anything great, incredible, and successful is always hard. You don’t get to experience breakthroughs, favor, astonishing momentum, and impact people without it being hard. 

You can’t give up because it was hard, it doesn’t work, or it isn’t making money in five minutes. Stopping and moving on to try the next new thing and the next is self-defeating behavior! You’ve got to see something through long enough to hear how God wants you to improve it. How God wants to refine you by the process, how you are supposed to fail forward so you can flourish. 

5. You chase money in your business over service or impact 

The fifth self-defeating behavior is chasing money over the call. Depending on what you do, this could be service, impact, or mission work. It’s chasing this outcome and reward of money instead of chasing the heart work, how you truly help people and how you can bless people with whatever it is God is calling you to do. 

When you are chasing money, it is so easy to look at someone else and decide, since that particular thing made her money, that must be what you need to do. Wrong! Their calling is 100% different from yours. Because no two people on this planet have exactly the same calling. It may look like someone else, it might feel like someone else’s calling, and you might even have the same avatar, but it’s not exactly the same. 

There is an incredible uniqueness that you bring to the table because you are uniquely and wonderfully made. There is no other person like you. So you have got to show up alone. Which is where it gets so hard. You have to stand up alone, with God, and say, I’m going to do this thing; I don’t know exactly how to do it, but I am willing to impact and help people without knowing how it will make me money. 

Practical steps for working through these self-defeating behaviors 

I want you to grab a pen and paper and write down any of these behaviors that apply to you. Be honest with yourself. It’s okay to have all five written down. 

Here are my simple, practical steps for working through these self-defeating behaviors.

Step 1: Inventory why you identified each behavior as an issue for you. 

On your paper, make notes on why you wrote each of them down. This may be a very straightforward answer, or it may go a bit deeper. That’s okay; let it flow, invite God into the process and take the time to journal why. Why are you self-sabotaging in this particular way? For example, when I was working through doing all the things, I was chasing success because I thought worthiness came from success and recognition. 

So much healing comes from recognizing where self-defeating behaviors come from. Discover the root of the behavior and why you keep doing it. Once you recognize it, you can be honest about why it has to go and why it isn’t your story anymore. It might be a learned behavior, someone else’s behavior, or a trait you no longer want to have. You have the power to change every self-defeating behavior in your life with God’s help. 

Step 2: Do the opposite for 30 days

Pick ONE (only one to start) of the behaviors you wrote down and do the opposite for 30 days. Stop trying to do all the things, and do one thing well. When I was trying to do everything, God told me to start a podcast, so I decided to do that and nothing else. Now, if you look at my business, I only do very few things. I just have my podcast, my courses, and my team running my Facebook group. 

For example, if you wrote down procrastination, how do you do the opposite of that? Write down what you are procrastinating and commit to working on that for 10 minutes every day for 30 days. It can even be something small like working on the laundry for 10 minutes each day for 30 days. 

It all comes back to what you are called to do. If I am called to have a podcast and make an impact and I spend my time doing everything else, I don’t have time to do the things God wants me to do.

I want you to prove to yourself that you do have the power to do anything and change anything that is on this piece of paper. That begins by being intentional and making some different choices in your life and sticking with it long enough that it becomes a new habit. 

Step 3: Pick another thing from the list 

At the end of 30 days, you are going to be so proud of yourself for staying committed. Now it’s time to go back to the list and pick a new thing to tackle for the next 30 days. Keep repeating this 30-day cycle until you have worked through all of the items on your list. 

If you are struggling to figure out what your thing is, what that special calling God has placed on your life and that’s causing you to participate in any of these self-defeating behaviors, please go check out my course, Clarify Your Calling. I walk you through how to discover your God-led calling and help you create a five-tier brand map to provide clarity for your God-led success in business. 

I hope this has helped you identify any self-destructive behaviors you might have which are sabotaging you. In order to get success in business, you’ve got to be willing to do the hard things, commit to one thing, and be willing to fail forward. Remember, you have the power to change, you can do hard things and get amazing results. 

Let us know in the comments below which of these five behaviors you are going to work on. Then, come back in 30 days and let us know the outcome

I pray this blesses you!

Xo,

Stef

P.S. Listen to podcast episode 482 for the full training on Sabotaging Your Success in Business? 5 Self-Defeating Behaviors to Stop NOW!

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