🌼7 Ways You Are Sabotaging Your Mental Health(HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)

🌼7 Ways You Are Sabotaging Your Mental Health(HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)

I realized that I was the one working against myself, and things had to change.

I realized that I was the one working against myself, and things had to change.

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“Whatever Your Mind Can Conceive and Believe, It Can Achieve.” — Napoleon Hill

We are sensitive to everything that happens around us. The stress of life, unemployment, the death of a loved one, and a bad breakup are things that can make us sad, anxious, and depressed, but there are also things we do to ourselves on a daily basis that also have a big impact on our health.

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A while ago, things were not going well in my life. Getting out of bed felt like a punishment, I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror, and anything I did unmotivate me. In general, I felt completely burned out.

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Part of me thought that everything was happening because of external events. However, I realized that I was the one working against myself. There were things in my daily habits that were ruining my mental health, and once I accepted I was the one that needed to change, my life began to shine again.

Read also: Disappear for 6 months and watch it change your life- Here’s how (Highly recommended)

Here are the eight ways you may be sabotaging your mental health and how to delete those common habits from your life.

You have an unclear vision of what you want.

Doing things you don’t care about because you don’t know what you want from life can cause you to waste energy on insignificant things that don’t move you forward.

For example, I realized in 2020 that I was wasting my life on a job that I didn’t like just because it “paid me well,” it was an easy job, and I had many friends there. I didn’t have a clear vision of what I wanted from my life, and I was just getting paid.

But everything changed when my dad passed away, and the pandemic began. I understood that a stable job is not that secure when the global economy is suffering, and if I lost that job, I would have nothing because I was not gaining valuable experience.

I was having depression because I was simply not thinking clearly about what I wanted from my future, and start planning a new vision helped me get on track again.

You don’t have boundaries.

Saying yes to everything and everyone can cause significant damage to our emotions and self-esteem.

There will be things you will not want to do, but you will have to do them because you don’t “want to look bad,” and that can heavily impact your emotions. Also, saying yes to everything means you feel that people will not like you anymore if you say no.

In 2021, I planned for three months a trip to Peru. One week before the travel, one friend asked me if I could help her to record a movie, and I said yes because I didn’t know how to properly reject that offer. I spent three days straight with people I didn’t know exposed to Covid, and worked late for basically nothing.

In the end, my friend stopped talking to me because I couldn’t keep helping her because of my anxiety, and I almost lost everything I had planned for my vacation.

Not having boundaries can impact your mental health, it is better to say no and sleep in peace than commit to something you don’t want to do.

You ignore your capacity and limits.

When we ignore our own needs, don’t prioritize our physical and mental energy, or keep pushing ourselves even when we know we can’t keep working on something, we are slowly killing our health.

It’s okay to not give the maximum if you don’t feel you can do it. Because you can lose more for trying to force your body than just letting some things go.

In 2021 I was a productivity maniac. I even have two Software Developer jobs and my side hustles and spend basically all my day on my projects. I ignored some signals of burnout my body was trying to tell me because I felt completely capable of keep working that way, but the stress I was having was not normal.

That you can overwork for two or three days without feeling tired doesn’t mean you have to keep pushing your body to that environment. Little by little, he will eventually tell you that you are doing too much, and it could be too late when you decide to pay attention to it.

You practice avoidance/denial on things you are not prepared to confront.

Not acknowledging the things that really bother you can make those things get bigger and bigger until you can’t control them. And the stress that can cause you to have that problem there instead of just solving it is worst than the solution you can find.

I used to believe that if I didn’t think about something, at some point, it would disappear. The problem is that when night came, that problem was still there and didn’t let me sleep (which later caused me a lot of concentration issues).

In the end, the issue was always bigger in my mind, and the solution was simple and didn’t worth the denial I was having.

You expect to fail

If you allow your mind to think you will never achieve what you want, it will find ways to prevent you from not accomplishing anything.

There are many studies that confirm the benefits of positive thinking. It lower rates of depression, distress, and pain, has greater resistance to illnesses, and in general, gives you better psychological and physical well-being, to name a few.

Basically, when you put your mind to accomplishing a certain goal, it will help you see the best methods to achieve it. The same happens when you only think about failing: it will help you fail.

You don’t have aligned your desires and actions.

Not doing what you want to do is one of the most common causes of clinical depression. This includes working on a job you don’t like because you are afraid you will not be successful doing your passion, staying in a problematic house because you don’t feel you can find something better, or just doing an activity you don’t enjoy for others.

Many times our desires and actions are not consistent because we believe that it is the best thing we can do now for our personal development.

But in my life, I have realized that no matter how successful you are as an accountant, if you are not happy working with numbers every day, it is not worth all the money you are making.

You give up when things get harder.

Disappointments have the power to lower self-esteem and kill the passion for our dreams. They usually happen when you can’t meet people’s expectations or things don’t turn out as planned. Things can get messy and complicated, and you lose the desire to continue.

However, abandoning everything when those moments happen can heavily impact our self-esteem and mental health.

Something that helps me stop that behavior is to let myself be sad about things not going well for a while (because we all have the right to be mad or sad), and then make a list of the positive and negative things about continuing working on that goal.

Usually, the positive things that motivated me to start are stronger than the negative aspect, and I just find ways to be inspired again and come up with more strength.

Read also: 5 simple changes to make today for a happier life ( check this out)

Final thoughts

While everyone wants to be successful and happy at some point in life, many of them work against that vision without even knowing it. We can be our own enemies if we let bad patterns invade our power.

If you feel stuck, unmotivated, or can’t stay focused on your goals, you may be sabotaging yourself without knowing in these ways:

You have an unclear vision of what you want.

You don’t have boundaries.

You ignore your capacity and limits.

You practice avoidance/denial on things you are not prepared to confront.

You expect to fail.

You don’t have aligned your desires and actions.

You give up when things get harder.

You don’t care about your physical health and don’t do anything to be healthy.

Contributed by Desiree Peralta

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