A new year is often the time to dream of new possibilities, especially when it comes to taking on new challenges, personal growth, and becoming the fullest realization of the person we desire to be in life.

The most common experience people face when attempting to change for the better is self-sabotage, where we consciously or unconsciously try to block ourselves from achieving our aims.

Blocking can be quite a distressing experience and can cause people to tackle the same goal time and time again with little result except for a bit of self-loathing. Instead of wondering whether you lack willpower, the most productive way to examine this pattern is to determine the root cause. When you identify the root cause, you can create strategies to keep yourself on your true path as soon as you feel you are working against your intentions. So, what causes self-sabotaging behavior? To help you identify what is going on for you, here are the causes of self-sabotage and how to fix it.

Identifying the root causes of self-sabotage:

1. Reflect on learned behavior

Learned behavior refers to the things we learn through watching others in our lives. This extends to the way we self-sabotage, as we often see people self-sabotaging right in front of our eyes to the point where we believe that is a behavior we should follow without question. Notice how your environment around you affects how you relate to the world and yourself. Notice the behaviors you see and how they affect the way you behave. Are you simply following what you have seen someone else do in a similar situation, or are your current actions something you’ve seen modeled by your parents or family members time and time again?

2. Observe your fear of change

Self-sabotaging behaviors can sometimes stem from a deep desire to avoid change. Fear of change can run so deep that we can self-sabotage ourselves if we are beginning to experience new success or anything that feels outside the norm of our surroundings, or how we see ourselves. If you’re going through the fear of change, focus on how you visualize yourself to be, discard the things keeping you back in your previous state, and acknowledge the fear of change is a problem for you. When you know what you are dealing with, you are more capable of addressing it.

3. Break down unconscious blocks

When you begin to take control of your energy frequency, the circumstances and relationships you interact with and experience begin to transform as well. Because we feel a lot of stability in the status quo, we can begin to feel destabilized as soon as even the most positive change occurs. As we shift our energetic frequency, we need to learn more about how to continue to clear old energy from our lives and open up to a new frequency orbit that fully serves the whole person we are becoming. As you feel new discomfort arising, or any sensation that indicates a block in energies, emotions, or spirit, take the time to work through the reasoning behind the block and be brave enough to work through it.

Working towards a self-supporting stance

The opposite of self-sabotage is a self-supporting stance that goes well beyond helping you create lasting personal change. A true self-supporting frequency acknowledges that change is a journey. Raising your vibrational frequency helps you move away from self-sabotaging relationships or ways you hold yourself back in life. You may run into times when old coping mechanisms, reactions, behaviors, and responses emerge. The challenge is to be kind to yourself as they arise, respond to them in a constructive way, and maintain your approach so you are not derailed by them. Out of the three types of self-sabotaged mentioned, which one is the most pressing for you? What actions could you take today to help you override this pattern?